It would be a good idea.

Given the circumstances, it’d probably be best to get out of here, and fast, but what about this mysterious box? With the alien creature gone, I’m suddenly more suspicious of its intentions. It’s almost as if the being had some strange effect on my mind as it spoke. My thoughts clear, I deign to see to what kind of alien artifact I might have carried with me into the city. God, it might be a bomb!

But if it –is- a bomb, its shell certainly looks inconspicuous enough. Like an egg, it is seamless and unblemished, with no apparent lid or door, though I find a pair of identical indentations on opposite faces. As it happens, the tips of my index fingers just fill the shallow space.

click

With a hiss, the box’s apparent lid slowly lifts away and reveals its precious cargo. I don’t find a bomb, but, rather, what looks to be a toy gun. I pull it from its housing and examine it carefully under the glow of the burning woods. It has a trigger and a handle, as one would expect, but not any kind of barrel that I can identify; in its stead, a half-sphere of glass (or something like it) encasing a host of wires and circuitry.

Great. A light bulb-gun. Just what I needed. But at least it’s not a bomb. Besides, if the aliens were real, then I shouldn’t have a problem believing that this thing they gave me really does something after all. And I pray that it does, as I here something amiss in the tree cover above me. I drop the box and look up, hoping to see a squirrel or something else cute and cuddly… but I’ve never been that lucky.

It drops from a branch overhead, its legs splayed out like a six-pointed star as it descends. Before I can react, it’s on my face, the spindly crab-like legs gripping my head like a vice. I try to pry it off, but it’s too strong… blinding me, suffocating me… yet I don’t give in. Eventually I can feel the animal’s strength declining, and I take one good, long breath as I finally get some space between it’s body and my nose and mouth.

But then the creature does something unexpected, turning its head downward into my eyes, as if to get a peak at the victim so audacious as to resist its ****. Its eyes are an array of filled green diamonds, glowing! Like a neon sign! For some reason I’m captivated by this incredible light emanating from the animal. It fills me with a sense of calm and well-being, and that I don’t need to fight, and that I can trust this alien being. Slowly, slowly I release the thing from my prying hands and…