Iain

“That was close,” Iain said, as he was dragged backstage by the surprisingly strong grip of Rickie Reeble’s long thin genetically evolved guitarist’s fingers. They were certainly strong from a guy who looked like Heroin chic come to life.

Behind them, the quartet of bouncers appeared to be examining their scanners, but at least they weren’t threatening to shoot anyone else with their horrible weapons.

“You don’t know the half of it mate,” the Reeble singer said. “Our security is very, very protective. You don’t know how many fans I’ve had to save from disintegration. We’re the bees-knees you know. The greatest rock band in ten thousand light years. Suck on that Mick!”

He raised a fist in the air. Iain kind of doubted there was a rock band within a million light years. Nickie suddenly stop and turned back to squint at him again.

“What’s your name? Where you from? How’d you get here?,” the rocker fired off.

“Un, Iain,” Iain said. “Canada.”

“Ah, we did a tour of Canada in ‘82,” Nicky said with a smile. “All the way across. Took like... half a year I think. Fookin’ went on forever. Pretty swank birds you have though, eh?”

He said that nudging Iain in the side with a knowing smirk.

“And the cleanest toilets I’ve ever seen,” he continued. “I mean mate, even the worst dives we played in in Canada was cleaner than the best you can find in Cambridge, mate!”

“Thanks, I guess,” Iain said, suddenly glad during that trip he’d taken to England he’d avoided that particular city.

“Come on, come one,” the Reeble urged, getting back to leading Iain backstage. “Robbie’s going to be tickled. Last time either of us ever saw another human being... well, it’s been centuries, yeah? I mean you know other than each other. I mean we haven’t even seen what human beings have turned into, but that’s probably for the best. Mimes... Clowns...”

Iain couldn’t argue there.

They got to the Reebles green suite, which looks like something out of psychedelic nightmare, with green shag rug everywhere, floor to ceiling lava lamps, weird circling gel lights and not a few skimpily dressed and weirdly arousing alien women wandering and lounging about. He was sure he’d seen a music video that was like this, something about a phallic shaped spaceship that docked into another space’s ship vagina like dock back before music videos were all relegated to YouTube. Anyway, this was that in spades.

“Hey Robbie,” Ricky shouted, “Look what I found. It’s a fooking human being and his name is Iain, an’ ‘e's a lumberjack! And He’s OK!”

Robbie, who was the rhythm guitarist of the band as far as Iain could remember was kind of squeezed in between a couple of rather busty alien women enjoying himself, but he did pull himself enough up to gaze blearily over at Iain and rub the live looking 70s porn ‘stache he bore. Iain imediately and desperately hoped it wasn’t actually a live ‘stache.

“Well foock me,” Robbie said. “A genuine human being! Get over here, mate. Hey, barkeep, get our fellow human something to drink, and some droogs, get this guy plastered!

Ricky had pushed him over towards his brother, and slapped a drink of some kind in Iain’s hand. He had no idea what it could possibly be. All he could see was it was orange, it was warm and it was glowing.

“This is safe isn’t it?” Iain asked holding the cocktail as far away as he could. “It’s not radioactive, right?”

“Keh, radioactive,” Nickie snorted, then turned to the short bald bartender in a polka dot outfit. “It’s not radioactive is it?”

The barkeep shook his head offering a definitively negative, “mhmhm.”

“See, it’s fine! Drink up!”

“And get him a bird,” Robbie continued. “Or, just find one and tell them you’re the bass player. You can play bass can’t you? Any idiot can play bass.”

Just at that moment, Iain’s ‘Zos started pointed out again the many different ways the women in the room could kill him. Iain took a gulp deciding if these British headbangers were still alive, then it wouldn’t kill him, as well as hoping it would drown out his brain parasites and not melt his internal organs.

“Hey,” boomed a deep voice, drawing Iain’s attention over to a lizardoid alien with a multicolored female with three breasts on his lap kissing her way up his scaly neck.

Iain noticed the being had three fingers on each hand. His head was already swimming, and the lizard man’s thing about things in three seemed hilarious.

“Oh, shut it Moe,” Rickie scoffed. “And beat it, you’re fired. Bass is the easiest instrument to play in the universe, next to drums anyway, and you suck at it! My mate, Iain here is a human being, and he’s got the right number of fingers!”

He turned over to whisper to Iain.

“You can play bass right. Because he’s not bad for a three fingered iguana.”

Moe rose to his what looked like seven foot height and went off in a huff. His girl, however, started sashaying over to Iain bearing a lascivious turn to her very blue lips.

“I guess,” was the best he could answer the Brit, suddenly noticing the girl approaching him was also topless in the most mesmerizing way.

And then whatever he’d drunk really hit him. Iain didn’t remember much after that, but he figured he had to have had a good time.