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hen it arrived, it recalled nothing about its existence prior to arrival. It was born to the planet as a middle-aged caucasian male. The form mattered little for it could be changed. It quickly learned that it had a gift. It had a voracious appetite that was only satisfied by the consumption of the two-legged creatures known as humans. After eating each one, it gained not only some of their physical qualities but knowledge as well. This was useful as its appetite for chaos was even greater than that for the humans. The more it learned about their environment, the greater its abilities became at destroying it.
At a park, it started a conversation with a young man walking his dog then ate him. The dog he left. Black fur and a tail on a human form would have been less than inconspicuous. The man had been a baseball player.
Months later, it attended a AAA tryout and excelled. Quickly, it was picked up by a pro team and signed to a lucrative contract as their starting pitcher. It soon grew restless. At a meet and greet, it met a physicist. She was delicious.
It remained in the male form but gained softer, feminine features. It also became brilliant. At a conference, it met and then ate a well renowned chemist. To its amazement, it learned that a bomb could be made from household items.
It visited a local video store then waited behind bushes across the street until closing time. It ate one of the young employees while he was walking home. All it learned from him was battles with acne and masturbatory dreams. However, it gained a position at the video store a week later when one suddenly became available. Weeks later, it detonated a bomb in the store killing twenty. It had just made employee of the month.
To avoid authorities, it quickly ate an obese mother of two then a high school cheerleader. With this it made a complete transformation into female. It did not keep this form for long. Each month was pain and bleeding which it found difficult to tolerate.
It ate a stock boy and then took over his job later at the supermarket. It worked hard, stocking the shelves with the useless items humans consumed. It then started adding a special ingredient to the milk bottles. A major recall swept the city. Shelves were emptied. The store was shut down. Thirty-two people perished. In their systems were found traces of rat poisoning.
After munching on a second year medical student, it enjoyed the knowledge of human anatomy. With the money from its brief baseball career, it attended med school. During the day, it sat in class. At night, it dragged victims into alleys and dissected them. After all, one could learn only so much from a book.
It ate a hot dog vendor. Turns out, this was only the woman’s part time job. She was a full time counselor for battered women at a shelter. It noticed that after eating her, it looked almost identical to her. It played her role, listening to desperate women during sessions discuss their distrust of men.
One evening, it went to a local sports arena. After the event, it ate the women’s wrestling champion in her locker room. The following day when one of the women arrived for her session at the shelter, it showed her that women could not be trusted either. After pulling off the human’s arms and legs, it ate her. It did not like to waste food.
When the medical examiner arrived at the shelter later in the day, it followed him to his office and after eating him, examined the lifeless corpses there. They meant nothing. It needed a live body pumping with blood for nourishment with a working brain to add to its arsenal of information. The more it ate, it increasingly resembled its hosts. This pleased it.
It ate the homicide detective assigned to the shelter case, and through him met the police commissioner at a fundraiser. It had a meal with the commissioner. Actually, the commissioner was the meal. Before long, it was in the mayor’s mansion then in the governor’s company.
The governor’s duties were tiresome. It did not enjoy the position. It was in the spotlight surrounded by security. It reminded itself to be cautious. Along its journey had been a trail of missing persons.
It checked the calendar and smiled. The president and the secretary of defense were scheduled to arrive the following week. Both had access to the country’s weapon defenses. Its smile widened.
It would be ready. After all, it was awfully hungry.
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