And how my parents’ evil murderer-known as The Prayer-was number one on that list… and that it was my life’s goal to hunt him down and kill him.
Sorry, I get a little hung up on that sometimes.
When I finished, Judy was looking at me like I was C-RA-Z-Y nuts, so I slapped on my best damage-control smile and said, “Psych! Just messing with you! I love making up stories.”
“Oh, sure,” she said, blinking her gorgeous peepers and looking more than a little confused-and creeped out.
Sometimes I’m more extrastupid than extraterrestrial.
“Okay, gotta go!” I said, flashing damage-control smile variation number two.
“Sure…” Judy said. “Come back and see us real soon, um-what did you say your name was again?”
“Daniel,” I said, and flew out the door before she asked me my last name.
That part of getting to know someone is always a little awkward… when you don’t have a last name.
Chapter 4
YOU KNOW HOW dogs go wild over mailmen? Well, you haven’t seen a dog go postal till you’ve seen one detect the scent of the bad sort of alien. It’s hilarious.
Right now, I was the one about to go postal because I couldn’t detect anything at all. My alien-tracking nose could rival a bloodhound’s, but unfortunately, I wasn’t getting any directional indications on Number 5. I sensed he was still in town someplace, but he must have started taking some new kind of precautions against me.
I was upset, but not so much that I couldn’t recognize it was a beautiful night, and since I needed some rest anyhow, I decided to make camp. I took a minute or two to gaze at the twinkling stars and run through the names of all that were visible. Even on the clearest of Earth nights, you can only see about two thousand stars from the planet’s surface… but get me up past the murky atmosphere, and I’ll name you a couple million that would be distinguishable even to your human eyes.