The Simps - another unused short horror story

You would have expected some profound words from the moment of first contact. Something poetic. Something biblical. Hell, even a good science fiction quote would have been more acceptable.

Instead, the first thing our meme-addled, jaded world heard anybody say about our first glimpse of an extraterrestrial intelligence was one young journalist's outburst of "It's Homer Simpson!!"

They were, to be fair, bald-headed and vividly yellow beings, with lidless cue ball eyes and pinprick pupils. That, however, is about where the resemblance ended. The head was more lightbulb-shaped, tapering into a pencil-thin neck, the mouth was an anemone-like cluster of short, blunt petals and a barrel-like, hardened shell slid comedically up and down, up and down the knobbly, thin body as the creature walked, its head swaying side to side and its oversized, boneless feet flopping with every step. It could only possibly have been any sillier if the movement sounded like an accordian. 

It did.

Overnight, the preposterous creatures had become the comedy sensation of the century. What should have been a life changing breakthrough for the whole of civilization, an answer to questions we had asked ourselves since before we had language to express it, became viral video clips set to the latest pop songs and catchphrases. Gifs of our first intergalactic visitors spread across social media with photoshopped sunglasses and party hats. There was pornographic fan art within hours, and within days, a trendy t-shirt depicting one of our intergalactic guests smoking an impossibly oversized blunt.

We had, apparently, lost all sense of wonderment or reverence quite some time ago, and it didn't help that what everyone insipidly came to call "Simps" exhibited no interest in actually communicating with us, no scientific secrets to share, no apparent regard at all for our very presence. All they ever seemed to do was teleport down from a mothership shaped like a big bowler hat, bumble around like circus clowns and inspect whatever objects caught their inexplicable attention, with results that only generated more jokes and memes. "ALIENFAIL" became one of the most sensational new video channels, chronicling the sometimes slapstick-like antics of our visitors from beyond as they attempted to figure out where a manhole cover went or how a bicycle worked, and rarely made any progress that wasn't, admittedly, absolutely laughable.

There were, of course, attempts to touch or even attack the creatures, but no force so much as budged them. In one particularly infamous clip, a "Simp" leaned in close to a fire hydrant, learned it could rotate the bolts and only kept standing there, face-first for a full fifteen minutes in a stream of water that could have taken someone's head off. And yes...it made a loud, continuous gargling sound.

The attack began while half the planet was asleep. Towering war machines touched down in almost every city on the planet, colossal metal bulbs with gigantic, cartoon springs for arms and legs. They hopped on their stupid spring legs, complete with stock "BOING!" sound and they punched buildings down with stupid spring arms that terminated in fat, metal boxing-glove hands.

Then, in the smoldering rubble, they deployed their ground troops. The mothership apparently held billions of the damned things, and they swept through our communities in search of surviving humans, spraying purple gas from foghorn-like weapons with a flatulent honking that would have made us laugh if it were all just a bad horror movie, but there was nothing funny about the effects of the fog. Nothing funny about a puddle of quivering jelly that used to be a human being, blowing bubbles of its own liquid flesh in one final attempt to scream before it finally grew still.

Protected by force shields, the Simps did as they pleased. When they'd clear out a whole city they would take some time to stomp the remains. Grind anything left standing down to dust with huge, cork-shaped metal feet. In just thirty hours, they had exterminated nearly half the human population and wiped out almost every metropolitan area that could be seen from space, apparently either not caring about smaller towns or not even equipped to spot them all.

And then they were gone.

And they left us a message.

Their first and last communication, burned onto the face of the moon in English.

"no!!!
YOUR[sic] stupid!!!!!!!!!"