Bob was an alien spawn. He was still a young thing, but it was obvious to any other alien that he wasn't going to grow into much of hunk. His third tentacle was wider than the second, his rows of teeth merged into one another and his skin just did not have that shiny black armour plating look that was the hall mark of a good piece of crumpet. It was clear that he was not going to be the kind of material to make the alien queen go "Phwoarrr!!"

And things always seemed to go wrong for him.

Not that he had much experience of things going wrong for him because he was still a young thing. Cute in his ugliness but, well, when the cuteness of new youth wears off, just plain ugly. And he had a brother.

His brother was Fred. Fred and Bob. Bob and Fred. They were a sort of complimentary couple. If one failed to mess things up, the other would be valient enough to succeed. Not that it was pure ineptness that made them the future failures of alien society, just things always seemed to go wrong for them.

It was the end of a long day and the queen alien was getting tired and wanted to get the spawning over as quickly as possible. Tomorrow was going to be even more tiring as she was determined to beat the record of the queen in the next colony. They were both friends of course, the two queens, but there did exist some competition between them. Under the surface of course. Anyway, it was the end of a long day, she was developing a migraine and she had been given a particular stupid drone to collect the eggs. Out popped the two eggs of Bob and Fred and implanted into the nearest host.

The host wasn't a particularly good specimen of human being but, well, there wern't many left unoccupied and there was a lot of gore to clean up before the next day. It was just that this human was fat in comparison to all the others. When I mean fat, I don't just mean does-my-bum-look-big-in-this, plump, overweight, or even "cor blimy!", I mean FAT. A big, huge wallowing mass of host that had spent far too much of its life ordering out greasy burgers. It had been house bound for two years before being harvested by the colony. So for a start Bob and Fred were going to have a life long problem of high cholesterol. But at
least they wern't going to starve.

Having two alien spawn implanted into the host did not really feel any differnt to all the other times when it had overeaten. The host never knew where all of it's body was at any one time anyway. And being strung up in a web was no real differnt to being housebound. Just there wasn't any of that really engaging day-time tv, it could do with a snack right now thank you very much and Oh God did it need some alchohol.

Bob twitched and looked around. His mind was rather fuzzy and he had a bad hangover.
"Fred? You awake?"
Fred awoke. "Oh, time already?"
"Yeah. Got to get going and all that."
Fred shook himself and stetched out his hind legs and tentacles. The host wobbled. Fred sensed around him.
"Wow. This host has gone off. Did they leave him out of the fridge for too long?"
"Not sure. This blood tastes funny though. Got a bit of a sharp taste to it."
"Hmm. Makes me feel a little bit fuzzy when I drink it. Let's get out of here and get some serious food down us."
"Agreed."
Fred waited.
Bob waited.
Fred waited.
"Well?" asked Fred.
"Well what?" asked Bob.
"When are we going?"
"When you give me the map."
"Map? It's supposed to work like instinct!"
"Well no one told me that!"
"You have to know! Your the first born spawn in this host!"
"Ah well, I am sure it will be easy enough to find our way out. After all, how big can these species of host be?"
Fred looked unconvinced, but as he didn't know what else to suggest decided to say nothing.

"Right. Down this tube I think."
Fred looked at his brother.
"You think?"
"I know. It's instinct remember? Trust me, I'm your older brother."
"Oh yes, I trust you're my older brother alright with brains like yours."

Fred stopped to contemplate fully the insinuations of the comment he just made and eventually came to the conclusion that perhaps it was not the most successful insult ever made. Bob ignored him and looked around. Right, there should be some passages around here somewhere. Hmm, perhaps they under this fold of fat here? The body trembled and the aliens lost their balance. Hmm, no, I think that piece wasn't meant to be handled like that. Ah! A big wide easy passage, lets burrow through this wall here and go down that!

"Follow me" Bob said as he made a nice entry into the well-used passage. He looked around, up or down? Down he decided.

Fred looked around, there was something wrong about this passage. He was sure that there was something wrong, but he followed his brother dutifully in the hope of getting out into some fresh air. And besides which, he was aching to get down to work. He wasn't quite sure what work exactly, but he knew he would recognise it when he saw it. And so they walked. Well ok, maybe not walked. More sort of pushed themselves along by their tentacles. The passage took turn after turn, up, down, left, right and then ...

"Oh blimy! What a stink!"
Bob sniffed around.
"Do you think that's blood over there?"
"It's the wrong colour."
"No, just darker."
"No, it's definitely the wrong colour."
"Yes, but the host has gone off anyway, perhaps we can still eat it. We are hardy creatures you know, designed to survive in
the hardiest of environments when prey is scarce."
Fred looked at Bob.
Bob looked at Fred.
"Well go on then."
"Me? You're the oldest!"

Bob shook his head contemptuously and went to the rather dark blood. He sniffed it cautiously and recoiled back. He was aware of Fred looking at him and so decided to take a little nibble. Bob vomited.

"This way!" he said as he turned back the way they had just came. An hour later they were back to where they had started. Fred sat down, in as much as you can sit down in a human being's digestive tract.

"Well we tried down, perhaps we should try up!"
"I thought you knew where you were going?"
"I do! I just wanted to see where the other path led. We only get born once and no one ever does an exploration of the body."
"No. You got lost."
"Never!"
"Well we're going to have fine ancestral memory to pass down to future off-spring of the queen now arn't we! And it's all your fault!"
"I'm enriching their experience!"
"You're making us the laughing stock of generations to come."
"Oh shut up."
They sat in silence, shiny black back turned against shiny black back. Fred thought.
"Couldn't we just burrow our way out?"
Bob shook his head contemptuously.
"There are bones everywhere you know. Skeletons. You can't go burrowing your way at full speed in one direction as otherwise you end up with a bone stuck in your head."
"We could take it slowly." Fred thought about this and realised they were. Bob got up.
"Onwards!"
Fred followed dutifully.

Up they went. It was a bit of a difficult climb but at least it wasn't as long or as winding as the other direction. But the higher they went, the draftier it got. There was this terrible noise in the background. It seemed to follow each rush of air. Air rushed in. Air tried to rush out but the flab sort of stuck to each other and made horrible gargling noise.

"I don't like this at all!"
"What's the host doing?"
"I don't know."
"Look, we'll never get out that passage up there. Everytime the air rushes out, the walls of the passage cave in. We'll get stuck."
"Not if we do it quickly."
"Quickly? If we could do things quickly we wouldn't have spent the two hours travelling around this body!"
"Look, just follow me OK? I'm the oldest spawn."

Fred imitated Bob in a sarcastict way, mumbling something about being the oldest plonker. Bob ignored him. He paused, looked intently at the passage and start timing the interval between breaths. Then with a tremondous effort he rushed up through the passage. Bob got stuck. Fred watched him. Bob struggled. The breathing stopped.

"You plonker! You killed our host and we arn't even out of here yet!"
Bob slipped down again and looked sheepish.
"OK, maybe I did go the wrong way. Perhaps we should have broken out through the chest. I didn't know. I'm just the oldest spawn. Not my fault if things don't go to plan and we get a stupid host like this."
Bob sat down. Once the host dies it is not long before it's cleared up by the drones. Oh well, so much for starting a new life. Bob just looked at the passage wall in front of him dejectedly. Fred listened.
"Hold on, the breathing is starting again."
Bob looked up and started to remember something about dangly bits that you could grab onto in case you got lost and needed a fast exit.
"Grab onto my tail."

Fred looked at him hopelessly. They had not managed to kill the host last time, but they were sure going to do it this time if they both went up together. Due to a lack of anything better to do though, he complied. Bob timed the intervals between breaths again and jumped. He shot out a long tongue to where he imagined the dangly bits to be and felt around, scrabbling to stay up. He got stuck again. His tongue felt around, came across the tonsils and grabbed them Then he yanked as hard as he could. Bob and Fred ended up on the floor of the colony in a pool of vomit.
 
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