Turd

© 2011 David Jasmin-Green.
It was a pleasure to write this story. Well, mostly it was a pleasure, but at one point I very nearly gave up and wandered off in search of greener pastures because I couldn't figure out where the plot wanted to go, and it was driving me doolally tap (a phrase with an interesting history, if you care to Google it). Like all stories, though, 'Turd' had its own secret agenda and it won the battle in the end despite my feeble objections. I expected it to turn out a whole lot weirder and whackier and a lot less traditional, but I guess it turned out exactly how it wanted to turn out – don't forget, folks, stories are living things, and some stories possess a more powerful will than others.

“No doubt at a first glance most intelligent beings would take me for a foetid, repellent, completely non-sentient object, for a nauseating dollop of filth to be avoided at all costs,” the newly arrived alien organism said quietly to himself (or itself, but for the sake of convenience we'll stick to referring to the creature as a he). “Few if any would guess that I am the last conscious remnant of a truly wondrous entity. Not many would be capable of discerning that I'm a disembodied intelligence of mind-boggling complexity, but that's only to be expected. Look at me - I'm ruined, I'm a shadow of my former fabulous self, I am ugly, I am despicable. It could be worse, I suppose; I could resemble Snoop Dogg or Tracey Emin or, heaven forbid, David Guest.....
I was begotten a long, long time ago, if anyone on this tiny, uninspiring planet cares. I was the oldest son of the ruling line on the planet Ol-Q'arraka, and though it's difficult to believe bearing in mind my present configuration I was cherished by my parents, the extended family to which I belonged and the people I was destined to rule over upon the death of my father.” The creature paused because he thought he heard a noise in the undergrowth of the strange world that he found himself in – a twig breaking under the weight of an otherwise stealthy predator's foot, maybe. “Perhaps it's a ravenous wild beast intent on devouring me,” he whispered. “Naah..... Even a starving pariah would turn its nose up at me; I guess I'm too repugnant to appear on the menu of even the most loathsome creature. Now where was I? Ah yes, I was fondly recalling my mislaid greatness.
I was taught countless magical skills over the years by men and women of renown, skills designed with only the common good in mind, but as it was written in our holy books the time came for me and my entire family to be humiliated, broken and slaughtered by the invading Kraa-Ashekelans, the sworn enemies of my people, and our magic wasn't even nearly powerful enough to repel them. As the last spark of my life was about to be snuffed out it was concentrated into a fiery pellet by forces I don't fully understand, expelled from the arse-hole of my dying body at tremendous speed and cast into space to wander aimlessly for aeons before I arrived here..... I say 'men and women' and 'mother and father' for want of the correct terminology; some lurking sorcery has forced me to mislay the ability to speak my native tongue, and in its place I have somehow absorbed one of the many languages of this alien world. The words I utter are in a surprisingly complex, rather beautiful tongue called English – they belong here, they are words familiar to the sentient beings that I sense not too far away. Their kind would be incapable of comprehending my own language because I come from a place many hundreds of light years away from here, and in my original skin I was unlike anything that ever walked upon this world.
Behold, Earthlings, I am here! I am lying on the edge of a rough track that I stumbled across after dragging my weak body many leagues in total darkness through a dense, noisome wilderness full of appalling nocturnal monsters before the day broke. Help me, someone, please! Perhaps I should identify myself - perhaps then someone will listen to my cries and take pity on me..... I am Turd, humans, and before you covertly sman that isn't my real name, but I must admit I've grown rather fond of it over the years. My real name was stolen from me by my enemies' head shaman, an obnoxious, grossly deformed creature who didn't deserve to mouth its incomparable glory, and hopefully his line is still suffering from my hastily uttered curses. All I have left is the crass descriptive title that the thieving dogs bestowed upon me as a derogatory expression of my appearance. I am determined to win back my real name and find a fitting temporary vessel to inhabit so that I can seek out my enemies and destroy them one by one and eventually rebuild my former glorious self. Aha! It's all coming back to me now - I am Prince Alphonse Onerous Valhalla Nutmeg (but curiously that doesn't quite sound right to me), and I swear to wreak terrible vengeance upon my-”
The alien's strange, possibly deranged monologue was cut short because all of a sudden an enormous brown and white behemoth appeared out of nowhere, its monstrous head blotting out the morning sunlight and its wet, black nose sniffing him excitedly. Turd wanted to cry out in anguish, but somehow he managed to control himself. The monster's curiosity was short-lived, because after a few seconds it lost interest and trundled off into the surrounding undergrowth in search of something more intriguing to sniff. But then something even bigger loomed into view, something almost impossibly vast; the giant extended one of its two oval ended lower extremities, which came crashing down on the alien's soft body, crushing him completely, and he swiftly lost consciousness.
“Eewwwww!” a voice thundered from Turd's huge assailant. “I've trodden in a great, steaming pile of dog shit – it's all warm and mushy, and its wrapped itself all around my toes. Fucking Gross!”
“Ha!” another booming voice said. “It serves you right, woman; how many times have I told you not to wear bloody sandals when we're walking Bronson, especially along this path? All the dogs in the neighbourhood evacuate their bowels here, and it seems like all the dogs in creation on a bad day. You'd better scrape that mess off, because we don't want it walking into the house. Look, wipe as much of it on the grass as you can, and then I'll find you a reasonably clean chip wrapper to get rid of the rest – there are plenty of those lying around.”

“This is a flipping joke,” Mandy complained a while later as she tried to prise the turd that she suspected wasn't a turd off her toes (though she didn't reveal that suspicion to her husband for fear of ridicule). She had soaked her foot for over half an hour in a bowl of hot water copiously laced with Dettol, her hands protected by a pair of bright pink Marigolds. “I've never heard of such a thing; surely shit isn't supposed to set like concrete. How am I supposed to get a stubborn, apparently indelible chunk of dog-do off my foot?” The chocolate brown something had snaked itself around and between her toes, moulded itself into a snugly fitting shape and miraculously solidified, and it wasn't budging an inch - and somehow it had avoided her sandal completely.
“How the hell should I know?” James replied. “It's not in that book of a thousand and one handy household hints that you bought from the church jumble sale last Saturday, because I checked. The only thing I can suggest is that perhaps it isn't a turd – it certainly looks like one, but I can't smell the unmistakable aroma of shit and there's no trace of it on your sandal, so I'm not a hundred percent sure..... This is a very odd situation, my love.
Do you think it could be a living thing of some sort? If it is, maybe it's dangerous. It could be a parasite, a camouflaged, blood-sucking terrestrial leech, perhaps. It could be an extraterrestrial leech, come to think of it - it might have burrowed through your veins and sent a tube into your innards like those ugly-buggly face-huggers in Alien; it might be laying a big clutch of eggs in your stomach at this very moment. Look, we're going to have to get you to the doctor's surgery somehow. Dry yourself off and I'll wrap your foot in a towel and a plastic bag, and then I'll try to find someone who can give us a lift - I'll have to call the office and tell them I'll be late. I guess the doctors will know what to do. They'll probably soak the damned thing in industrial strength solvent or burn it off with a blow torch or dip it in concentrated hydrochloric acid. If all else fails maybe they'll have to amputate your toes.....”
“You sure now how to put a distressed woman at ease, James, you absolute prick,” Mandy muttered. “If I had to pick my favourite feature of your character it'd have to be your loving, caring, incessantly considerate, utterly sarcasm free nature.”
Bronson came in from the kitchen licking his lips because he had just finished his breakfast. Bronson was a huge brown and white mastiff/pit-bull mix, and despite his rather brutal appearance he was just about the daftest, most loveable dog on the planet. The Crofts had had him for almost three years since he was a fat, ungainly puppy, and he did his best to fill the gap in their lives that would have been filled by a whole bunch of children if God wasn't so cruel; Mandy had suffered a womb infection as a teenager, and as a result she was sterile. Bronson sauntered over and sniffed the thing between his mistress's toes with more than a passing interest. It had a vague scent, the dog knew that much, but even under the scrutiny of his powerful olfactory powers it didn't smell of ordure – it smelled like nothing in the world. He licked the object cautiously and his lips trembled almost imperceptibly as his Jacobson’s organ tried to figure out its novel chemical fingerprint.
“Shit – shit!” a tiny, almost indiscernible voice yelled. “Get that horrible thing away from me!” James looked at Mandy and she looked back at him blankly; they glanced at the TV and the stereo, which were both off; they studied Bronson for a second or two with an expression of utter disbelief on their faces, and then their attention wandered to the thing lodged between Mandy's toes. “Yes, it's me, you stupid, inconsiderate bastards,” Turd said. “Kindly control that terrifying animal before it eats me, because I'm not ready to die just yet. And I don't like the smell of the stuff in this bowl, by the way, so please dry me off.
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Turd – feel free to laugh if you dare - which at this moment in time seems more appropriate than Alphonse Onerous Valhalla Nutmeg, which is my official title, I think. Maybe I'm misguided, though; maybe my long exile in space has driven me stark, raving mad, or maybe my name just doesn't translate very well – I'm sorry, but I can't say with complete confidence.
Show me a little respect and maybe, just maybe I'll release the grip of my suckers from your extremities, but if you refuse to treat me fairly I'll never, ever let go. I could inject you with a virulent poison from my stinging glands if I really wanted to hurt you, but honestly, that's not part of my schedule; if I intended to kill you you'd both be lying tits up by now with a disbelieving expression on your cold, dead faces. I clung onto your foot out of self defence, Mrs. Woman – that's not the correct way to address you, is it? - because you squashed me flat, you great, lumbering dolt. Why don't you look where you're bloody going? I apologise for losing my temper, folks, but forget that for a minute. I'm absolutely famished, which is understandable seeing as I've been travelling through space for a long, long time. I can't recall the last time I ate..... Look, how many more hints do I have to drop? I don't think much of the hospitality on this crummy planet. Don't you have any food in this joint to offer a desperately hungry traveller?”
“Wha..... What is this?” James eventually managed to stutter, holding on tightly to Bronson's collar as he studied Turd's tiny, bright green eyes. “Who are you - or what are you?”
“And why are you attached to my bloody foot?” Mandy added. “I know I trod on you – it was a complete accident, because you're, well, turd sized and I didn't have a snowball in hell's chance of spotting you in the long grass – but don't you think it's about time you let go?”
“I will let go now, madam,” Turd said, and he kept to his word and rolled onto the towel that the woman was drying her foot on. She noted that the alien possessed half a dozen little flipper like appendages that he use to drag himself around with..... “You took me completely by surprise after your ugly animal companion frightened the crap out of me if you'll forgive the pun, Mandy,” the unlikely looking creature continued, “and you knocked my lights out good and proper. Hanging onto you like that was a reflex action, I suppose, I don't really know. This isn't my real body, you understand; it's a sort of emergency escape pod, a sentient, cack shaped survival capsule shitted out at great speed during the death of the being that produced me many light years away from this planet. I intend to give you an annotated version of my life story after you've fed me. Please make it snappy, or I'll black out again – I've just about used up my final reserves of energy, I'm afraid.”
“What do you want to eat?” James said. “I have no idea what manner of sustenance an, er, alien survival capsule requires to keep body and soul together.”
“It might sound brutal, as most sentient beings seem to be vegetarian, but I really need flesh of some description; it doesn't matter if it's living or dead, dried or frozen, raw or cooked, scrag end or premium cut - whatever. It doesn't need to be a vast quantity because I'm rather small compared to you creatures, but I need a little more than you might imagine; I guess I could manage something a trifle smaller than myself.”
“We're not shocked, Turd, because we eat flesh too,” James said as he went into the kitchen and returned with a lamb chop that had been thawing out on a plate with half a dozen others for the couples' evening meal. “Will that fill the gap, or do you need more?”
“That'll do splendidly,” the alien replied. “I may not be able to eat all of it, but I'll try my best because I detest waste. Would you mind slicing the meat off the bone, cutting it into more manageable pieces and bringing me a plate or a tray to sit on while I dine so that I don't leave a bloody mess on your furniture? Despite my appearance I'm almost completely odourless, and I don't carry any harmful pathogens, so there are no hygiene concerns. And I was lying about being capable of injecting you with toxins, Mandy – I assure you that I don't bite or sting, and I'm non-poisonous.”

As soon as he had finished his meat, which he devoured with ease despite the fact that there were no visible teeth in his tiny mouth, Turd related his life story, or at least what he could recall of it. The account wasn't nearly as short as promised, because as he spoke fresh chunks of information constantly sprang to mind. There were still gaps in his recollection, though, and those gaps worried Turd deeply. His chronicle sounded rather..... Well, it sounded rather expurgated, censored even, but he was sure that his entire, undiluted history would come back to him in good time. The couple sat at either side of their guest, and they didn't interrupt once.
“So that's about that,” the diminutive creature said after quite some time had passed. “I was floating randomly through space with limited consciousness for hundreds off thousands of your years, and I guess the assorted rigours of the icy, highly radioactive vacuum forced my body into suspended animation. Eventually I was dragged into the tail of a passing comet, which brought me most of the way here; I floated for a while longer in a chunk of ice and debris and your planet's gravity did the rest. I don't know about you folks, but I'm a firm believer in destiny – if my destiny doesn't lie here I'm confident that some vessel will be presented to me which will allow me to continue on my long journey, sniff out and destroy my enemies and eventually win back my rightful throne on Ol-Q'arraka. Would you mind taking take me to your leader now, because I need to discuss the options open to me. You do have a procedure for dealing with alien visitors, don't you?”
“Your plan's not going to work out quite how you imagine, I'm afraid,” James said. “What do you mean by 'vessel'? Are you under the impression that some kind soul in the upper echelons of this crappy nation's government will give you a gratis rocket ship with a full tank of fuel - can you imagine how much that would cost? Even if that was to happen, our space vehicles are very primitive and we have nothing capable of transporting you over the vast distance you claim to have travelled. We're not exactly the oldest, most well-travelled race in the cosmos; a couple of hundred years ago we were just starting out on our technological journey, and if you go back a tiny bit longer we were still hunter gatherers living in mud huts and caves. Apparently we've sent unmanned vehicles to the edge of our solar system and beyond, but the furthest that manned space craft have travelled is to our moon and back, if NASA are to be believed, which as far as I'm concerned is questionable – there's a lot of evidence to suggest that the moon landings were faked, but it's a complicated subject and I'm not qualified to give a definite verdict beyond my humble opinion.
And I don't think it's in your best interests to be 'taken you to our leader' as you so quaintly put it. There's the question of what would happen to you if your existence came to the notice of the authorities; even if we introduced you to the world on live TV I fear that your outlook would be pretty bleak.....
The British government is as weak as a baby, and they invariably bow down to the wishes of whichever superpower they believe will protect them in the event of danger. Britain has been the Americans' favourite poodle for a good many years now, and all of the Prime Ministers I recall during my life time have been pretty adept at balancing balls on their noses and jumping through hoops for the entertainment of the current American President. I guess our nicey-nicey government would requisition you and hand you over to the Yanks in a flash, and God only knows what they would do to you..... I have a feeling that they'd incarcerate you in a bunker a mile or so beneath Area 51 in the Nevada desert, leach as much information as they possibly could from your mind by fair means or foul and once you outlived your usefulness you'd be dissected alive and kicking in an attempt to find out what makes you tick – not a nice way to go. The heartless bastards would send samples of various parts of your carcass to other laboratories for further study and deep freeze the paltry remains or pickle it in formaldehyde for the benefit of future scientists. The majority of folk on this planet are half decent, Turd, believe it or not, but I strongly suspect that covert government organisations aren't nearly as nice, especially military organisations, and it's those fuckers who call all the shots.”
“Hmmm,” Turd replied. “Actually it wasn't a space craft I was thinking of. I was thinking of - never mind, it wouldn't work; my mind's still hopelessly addled from my protracted journey, and I'm not thinking straight. I really don't know what to do for the best, folks..... I guess I'm a little boy lost, and I'm a damned long way from home.”
“I've just thought of something else, Turd,” Mandy said. “You were talking about finding your way home, wreaking revenge on your enemies and regaining your rightful throne and your place in the grand scheme of things. I don't want to piss on your dreams, but what if there is no home any more? As a fairly new species we find it difficult to get our heads around very large spans of time, but even I can grasp this concept, buddy: you reckon that you've been travelling for hundreds of thousands of years, and that's a bloody long time - how do you know whether or not your home planet, your species and your enemies still exist? How do you know that your sun hasn't exploded or some other race hasn't casually strolled in, destroyed, enslaved or eaten your descendants and turned your planet into a gigantic space port or an intergalactic hypermarket?”
“I don't,” Turd replied. “I know nothing, so I simply have to trust my intuition. At the time of my termination my species, the Shaddeik, was perhaps half a billion years old, and during that time we changed very little, physically or mentally. We have occupied many worlds during our long existence, and we are very..... We are very resilient no matter what obstacles we stumble across, no matter what calamities befall us, and I'm confident that by hook or by crook my race will have survived in one form or another. What more can I say?” Turd smiled to himself. James and Mandy were so naïve, he reflected. Did they really think he intended to travel millions of light years in order to reclaim his throne and destroy his enemies? Did they seriously believe that Mohammed intended to go to the mountain when the mountain could just as easily come to Mohammed?
“Look, Turd,” James said. “We're simple, ordinary and I hope fairly nice people living in a complex, sometimes intensely cruel world. We mean you no harm, and we're willing to do whatever we can to help you, but your existence must remain a secret from the rest of humanity or you might find yourself in grave danger. You're welcome to stay here while you think your situation over; you can stay as long as you wish, in fact. Make yourself at home, and if you need anything – anything at all - just ask, and we'll see what we can do to accommodate you. Ignore Bronson, I promise he won't harm you. I could talk to you all day and all night, little buddy, but unfortunately I have to go to work now..... I'll see you folks later.”

Turd slept on the sofa all morning to recuperate his energy and digest his food. Mandy offered him more food when he awoke, but he refused it. “My metabolism is radically different from yours,” he explained. “The meat you gave me will nourish me for a very long time. I have no urgent needs, my dear, but if I do require anything I won't hesitate to ask. Actually you could do me a small favour. I see you have a computer, and I trust you're connected to the network that my intuition informs me is referred to as the world wide web..... I'd very much like to learn as much as I can about your world and its mysteries.” Mandy informed Turd that they did indeed have an internet connection. “Kindly turn the machine on for me and lift me to the keyboard,” Turd said. “I'm rather bright, as I'm sure I've already told you, and I can adapt to most situations; I'm confident that I can master this equipment without assistance, but if I struggle at any point I'll let you know.”
“Have fun,” Mandy said.
“Oh, I'm sure I will,” he replied.
Mandy looked in on Turd a couple of times over the following three or four hours, but he seemed to be managing perfectly well with his surfing without her help so she left him to it and carried on with her chores. The alien's forelimbs were surprisingly elastic, and when he sat on the edge of the laptop's keyboard he found that he could use it well enough for his needs. Bronson came over and gave him a cursory sniff on occasion, but the dog's main interest was in sleeping as close as possible to the radiator.....
Turd studied local maps, world maps and the governments of various nations; he studied modern warfare and armaments; he checked out a number of sites concentrating upon human psychology and the psychology and behaviour of dogs and various other creatures, and then he moved on to genetics and the latest developments in DNA technology. He learned phenomenally quickly, and by trial and error he hacked into a number of sensitive websites unavailable to all but a tiny minority of ordinary folk, overriding their security and deciphering even the most complex encryption with frightening ease. He pondered the differences and similarities between this world and his own..... He was still flitting between websites like a bee on speed when James arrived home after a pressing day at the office; though James had been looking forward to using the computer himself after he had eaten he decided to leave their guest to enjoy his new toy. Turd was still surfing when his hosts announced that they were going to bed. “Feel free to stay on the computer as long as you like,” James said. “It's not a problem.”
“I've just about had enough for today, James,” Turd replied. “I've learned a lot about your species and your fascinating planet. Thank you very much for letting me use your computer, the exercise was most revealing. And thank you for your hospitality – I promise to return the favour if you ever find yourself in my neck of the woods, though I doubt if that's very likely.....”
“Think nothing of it,” Mandy said. “You're more than welcome.”
“I'm feeling a little tired now – I still haven't fully recovered from the mental stasis I was subjected to in open space. I'm happy to sleep on the sofa, if that's all right with you.”

An hour later Turd was determinedly crawling across the lounge carpet towards the open kitchen door. That was where the mutt was sleeping – you didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to reach that conclusion, he reflected, because it was impossible to miss the creature's loud, guttural snoring. Soon he was traversing the black and white chequerboard tiles of the kitchen floor towards his unsuspecting target. Bronson was curled up in a large plastic dog basket on a paw-print patterned cushion, his huge, wedge shaped skull hanging over the side and his moist, flabby flews obscenely draped across the floor like fleshy curtains, blissfully unaware of the little brown alien's slow but sure approach.
“Now what?” Turd whispered to himself, looking up in terror at the animal's massive canines and slightly skew-whiff incisors and recoiling a little as it exhaled an invisible cloud of hot, moist, decidedly rank breath. “This is a new challenge for me. I have to get inside this thing somehow, and I'm not sure if it's wise to use the front door. If the creature dreams of gnawing a large juicy bone he may well bite me in two, and if he wakes up he'll probably bite even harder - I'm made of pretty durable stuff, but I'm not sure if I can survive the pressure of those monstrous jaws. I guess I'll have to use the tradesman's entrance, an undertaking that I'm not exactly looking forward to.....”
He scuttled to the other end of the dog basket and climbed up the steep, smooth side with the help of the tiny suckers on his belly. Once at the top he realised that the back door was firmly closed because the dog's tail was curled around it, effectively blocking the entrance. “Shit!” he said. “Just my bloody luck – but maybe there's still hope.”
Turd leaped onto dog's heaving ribs and gradually worked his way to the armpit (or legpit, perhaps), and began to rub the area firmly with his flipper. Bronson groaned blissfully, and after a few seconds he rolled over onto his back, still fast asleep, almost crushing his passenger in the process. “That's better,” Turd muttered, “but we still need to shift your stubborn tail. I have to utilise a little known detail of canine anatomy I learned about this afternoon and find your elusive Bill Haley button.” He climbed onto Bronson's chest, crawled along his sternum and probed around until he found the soft spot directly below the junction of the ribs, and he rubbed the area vigorously, seeking out the nerve. One of the dog's hind legs began to twitch spasmodically as if he was trying to scratch himself in his sleep, and his great paw almost knocked Turd off his perch. “That's it – do the twist for me, doggy. Let's twist again like we did last summer, let's twist again like we did last year.....” Eventually the dog's tail flopped to one side and he uttered a low growl as he chased a dream cat. “Eureka!” Turd yelled, making his way towards his unsavoury goal.
When he reached the dog's twitching anus every pore of the alien's body exuded a viscous, oily lubricant which he rubbed in with his prehensile flippers. “This is it, then,” he said. “Planet Earth, wave goodbye to Turd and say hello to Prince Alphonse Onerous Valhalla Nutmeg, a once renowned but now long forgotten megalomaniac, in the first of his new guises. This pooch isn't exactly the perfect vessel, but it'll have to suffice until I find something more fitting. I would have preferred a human host, but though Mandy and James are only in their early fifties they're a bit past it for my needs. No, to tell the truth I'd feel a little uncomfortable about using them seeing as they've been so kind to me.....” He braced himself, oiled the dog's sphincter muscle with his flipper and with a little difficulty slithered into its lower intestine with a repulsive slurping sound. Bronson sighed and rolled over, completely oblivious to the fact that he had been invaded.

The following day was a Saturday. James was enjoying his customary weekend lie-in and he was unlikely to be up before ten, but Mandy was up at seven thirty, which was unusually late for her. Though Mandy was an early riser she wasn't at her best first thing in the morning, so she didn't realise that Turd was missing until she had made herself a mug of coffee and sat down.
She searched the living room to no avail, followed by the kitchen, and while she was looking behind the fridge with a torch and calling Turd's name Bronson let out a huge burp and a most unpleasant fart. The dog lay in his basket gently wagging his tail and looking guilty. “Oh, Bronson, you haven't,” Mandy muttered. “You have, haven't you? I wondered why you didn't come to greet me and bark to be let like you usually do. You wicked dog!”
She opened the back door, but Bronson stayed put and looked at her as if she had lost her marbles. “Come on – out!” she said, but even when she grabbed the dog's collar and attempted to drag him outside he refused to budge. “What's the matter with you? If eating our surprise guest has made you ill it serves you bloody right.....” When Bronson still refused to move nearly two hours later and he continued to stink the kitchen out with his foul smelling flatulence Mandy decided to wake James and break the bad news; she had no idea what the ingestion of an alien organism might do to the dog's stomach, and she didn't know what to do for the best.
“Maybe he hasn't eaten Turd,” James reflected as he nibbled on his toast and watched Bronson emptying his bowels through the kitchen window – he had found it necessary to half drag, half carry the huge, cumbersome animal outside. “Maybe our little friend found the mysterious vessel he was wittering on about, or maybe his people came to rescue him. Perhaps ET phoned home..... Seeing as Bronson has the running shits it looks likely that he has eaten the poor creature, though. I don't suppose it'll do him any harm, he just needs to get it out of his system. Poor Turd.....”
Bronson had diarrhoea for the next several hours, and he refused food for the rest of the day which, James reckoned, was a good thing. “His stomach needs a rest. All he wants to do is nap, break wind and totter outside every half an hour or so for a liquid crap. If he isn't any better in the morning we'll have to take him to the emergency vet and lie through our teeth, but I think he just needs to sleep off the assault on his digestive system. I'm pretty confident that he'll get over it by tomorrow.”
James didn't realise how right he was. Bronson slept without stirring for eight solid hours, and just before one am after the Crofts turned off the TV and prepared to go to bed he climbed out of his basket, stretched his legs, wagged his tail vigorously and whined to be let out. “There,” Mandy said. “I think he's a bit happier now.”

By the time the Crofts retired Turd had dissolved completely, seeped into the dog's circulatory system a few cells at a time and travelled around his body like a swiftly spreading cancer. A couple of hours later a radically modified Bronson climbed the stairs and crept stealthily into the Crofts' bedroom. James was on his back snoring like a pig, and Mandy lay on her side in a tight, foetal ball.
'I'm terribly sorry, but I'm going to have to kill you, my friends,' Turd's voiceless new brain said. 'It makes sense not to leave any witnesses. I'll make your demise as swift as possible, I promise, and I apologise – again.
But perhaps not. I really don't think I can do it..... I'm overcome with compassion, an emotion that's completely new to me and one that I don't intend to dwell on too often, but surely this case merits special treatment. You people have been uncommonly kind to me. Though I entered your house under what might be interpreted as false pretences you listened to what I had to say and you freely offered your help and advice; you fed me and sheltered me when I was at my most pathetic and vulnerable, and cold-blooded execution is hardly a fitting reward for such benevolence. If I let you live I don't believe that you'd betray me – and even if you did, who would believe you?'
“Get out, Bronson,” Mandy muttered. “What's got in to you? You know this isn't your room. Aah, you're still feeling poorly, aren't you? I guess you're worried..... Never mind, you'll be well enough to go for a walk in the morning, I promise. Go on now - go to your bed.” The new Bronson licked his former mistress's hand gently and then left the room, quietly making his way down the stairs. Mandy went back to sleep immediately, but not for long; a couple of minutes later a loud crash woke her and James in the same instant as Bronson launched himself through the lounge window and disappeared into the night.

The modified dog's primary desire was to make his way to London, but that would have to wait for a while because he had more urgent plans to deal with first. He had decided to appropriate a new vessel as soon as possible, a young, vigorous human vessel, because there were tasks that he wanted to complete in Newport Pagnell before he headed for the capital, tasks that a mere dog, albeit a monstrously intelligent, quite possibly psychotic dog would be incapable of carrying out with anything near a hundred percent efficiency.
Once he found a fitting human host Turd intended to brainwash a dozen disciples – for some obscure reason a dozen seemed like an appropriate number. The chosen ones would be programmed to scatter in all directions; each of them would convert as many individuals as possible on their travels as they gradually spread all over the globe and the new disciples in turn would do exactly the same thing until the infection reached its natural conclusion, until the last domino majestically tumbled and the entire human race was subtly and wonderfully altered.
“You and your kind are scum - you're demon seed, and you have to be completely eradicated because you're a disease,” Turd suddenly recalled the Kraa-Ashekelan shaman whispering before the final blow was dealt. The shaman was a fool; he didn't realise that killing the Shaddeik didn't necessarily mean that they died.....
It might take quite a while for his dastardly plot to come to fruition, the invader pondered, but that didn't matter because he had all the time in the world. Maybe Bronson would return home to the Crofts once he had served his purpose and give them a little comfort while the biggest upheaval in human history occurred, Turd mused, which would be nice; surely they deserved a little comfort before the inevitable happened.
Conversion didn't mean death - not inevitably anyway, but it did mean giving up being human. Though becoming superhuman – becoming Shaddeik - promised great rewards for some Turd guessed that most humans cherished their fragile humanity and a significant proportion would hang on to it jealously. Fear would persuade the majority to submit without putting up too much of a struggle, but many would resist; many would surrender their worthless lives trying to protect their genetic heritage, maybe millions of them, but that couldn't be helped.
'This is the first stage of my cunning plan for global domination,' Prince Alphonse Onerous Valhalla Nutmeg AKA Turd mused, 'but like all invading generals I have to take over enemy territory one small chunk at a time. Today Newport Pagnell, tomorrow the world!'