Beragrub and the Beast

Caution: story contains a little bit of inappropriate language

By the third day, Adam was pretty much covered in thick, lustrous fur. You cannot ask for better results than that. And how did he thank me? Completely ghosted me. Not just me, everyone. No online presence at all. You would think he would be showing off the glossy pelt my elixir made possible, but no. Some people are never satisfied.

Admittedly, I was not supposed to get involved. That is the first rule of our interstellar conglomerate. You call it the prime directive I believe: Do not interfere with the societies of developing worlds. But I monitor your media content and am well aware that this directive is regarded as a suggestion, not a hard and fast rule. So you should understand my impulse to “get involved,” as it were.

As it was. But I can hardly be blamed. I’d been sent here to the tail end of the galaxy, again, as a punishment for some small infraction of protocol that was really more of a misunderstanding. All I can do while I loop de loo around the two gas giants and the ringed planet, is monitor the transmissions from the pretty blue planet you call home. It was entertaining for a time, all the media content, streaming content, promotional content, emotional content, irrational content, and so on thrown out to the galaxy as if the rest of us cared.

Which I actually do, but only because I have nothing to break the monotony of this pointless surveillance mission where I am to await your emergence as a star faring race and notify Galactic Headquarters should that occur. The novelty of the human race has worn off sharply.

When I get bored, I get into mischief.

In this case, the mischief was named Adam Prinze. He was a complete asshole, to use the common parlance. A man of great material wealth, a marketing executive to a major software company, he seemed to feel he should be loved by others on that basis alone. Such faulty reasoning doubtless contributed to his assholery.

He even posted the evidence on his Instagram feed as if his antics were the acme of wit. There was a video of him pouring maple syrup on paper currency in a food establishment with the comment, “a sweet tip ha ha ha!” He posted an image of a human in a cardboard box with the comment, “Experience the great outdoors lol!” He posted belligerent comments designed to “trigger the snowflakes #ownthelibs.” I have yet to understand what winter precipitation has to do with what I assume is short for libraries. I am still achieving fluency in human speech patterns.

So why would I help this reprehensible human? My rudimentary understanding of human beings, as informed by many time units of watching Dr. Phil, led me to believe that Adam’s disrespect toward others was rooted in his own deep-seated insecurity. While Adam’s public presence was calculating and cruel, in private he spent a great deal of time in utter misery, fretting about his thinning pate. He was a sucker for the promotional content that peddled “clinically proven” hair treatments. All puppet cock of course. He’d tried everything to no avail. So I saw an opportunity to do a good deed, in direct contradiction to the prime directive. Blame it on Dr. Phil.

I set up an Instagram account to befriend him online. I designed a composite visage based on the boringly similar female faces he had shown interest in and posed it in front of a variety of intriguing earth locations and food items. I even used my own Beragrub name for my username: @aghuurl. I know, honesty online! I wrote that I was a designer of biotech parapharmaceuticals for Hair Apparent LLC.

He bought it hook line and stinker and in no time, we had a lively exchange of DMs establishing socially distanced intimacy as is currently popular. He was keenly interested in the hair-growth elixir I claimed to be developing and insisted on a sample. I coyly protested it was still in the testing phase and unavailable for the general public. All that did was make him more insistent.

What Adam wanted, Adam got. I asked my operational command unit, what you would call AI, to develop a real cure, none of that hocus focus hawked on the promotional content. The only catch: I would have to come down to the planet to give him the elixir in person, so to speak.

As a Beragrub, my form drives humans mad on sight, so a little cloak and dagger was in order, pun intended. I programmed my personal cloaking device to project the image of my Instagram avatar, right down to the hot couture, disguising my objectively horrifying form for my visit to the planet. Humans are amazingly easy to fool with the ocular senses.

I zipped down in my landing cruiser to the sparkling gem of NYC, which is one of those places that look festive from afar, though it doesn’t hold up under close scrutiny. Certainly not to the olfactory receptors.

I met up with Adam at a bar of his choice, slipping onto a stool beside him. He was already being rude to the bartender, calling out unpleasant words about her generous proportions. Time for @aghuurl to step in.

With a provocative bat of my eyelashes, I handed over the elegantly packaged elixir my operational command had prepared. Emphasizing I was only giving this prototype to him as a special favor, I said I’d return in a few days to check the results. Then I toddled out of there before he got handsy.

The next day, he posted an image of himself with a luscious head of hair and a rather thick beard coming in. I literally could feel his pleasure in a rare case of inter-special empathy. Better yet, he did not do an unkind thing to others all day. Mine was the gift of making him a better person.

The next day, he didn’t post at all. Or the next. He didn’t even DM me.

Until he did. His incoherent joy at the success of our treatment was expressed in all capital letters with many exclamation points and suggestions that he would be contacting his lawyers. Was he looking into a partnership with my imaginary firm? I had to know. Best to get claws on the ground to surveil the situation personally.

He didn’t open the door to his dwelling, requiring me to break the pathetically simple code and let myself in. The apartment was dark. A single blade of light fell between the partially closed drapes onto a huge bouquet of long-stemmed roses on an end table, their floral sweetness like saccharine washing over my nasal fins. 

I adjusted my irises to the gloom and spotted an unusually large dog curled up on the couch in a ball. But dogs jump up and make a lot of noise when humans appear, and this beast simply opened one eye and said, “You bitch.”

It seemed the hair elixir worked rather better than anticipated. He was head to toe in beautiful golden fur the color of first solarset on my home planet. It was shining and lustrous. He would have been all the rage on Pheloghyx. My elixir was an unqualified success.

Apparently, he felt otherwise. “You fucking bitch,” he elaborated.

“I beg your pardon?” I almost had the vapors at this uncalled-for attack.

“You did not mention it would turn me into a human hairball.”

“You wanted more hair. That was the brief.” He was, in fact, a masterpiece of furriness.

“I am not amused.” Okay, that is not what he said but its essence. His language was not fit for documentation in the annals of @aghuurl.

“Am I to understand you are unhappy with the efficacy of this product?”

“UNHAPPY???” Yes, he said it the same way he would have posted it. “UNHAPPY??? I am unhappy when I stub my toe. I am beyond pissed off…”

I tuned him out so I could think. My good deed had backfired and would now ricochet off others; if Adam was “beyond pissed off,” his behavior would get worse, not better. I needed to recalibrate. I consulted operational command through my data input. Sounding miffed, operational command indicated an antidote would take time. I told it that Adam was a spoiled brat who was looking a gift horse in the face. Mollified, operational command suggested he avoid stress, as stress increases cortisol which enhances the effectiveness of the elixir.

“Avoid getting stressed out about it,” I told Adam.

“You must be joking. How am I not going to be stressed out? Look at me! I am Chewbacca!”

I started to explain the science, but his eyes glazed over, so I summarized. “Stress will promote hair growth.”

He let out a primal scream that was really more of a howl. I could practically see his pelt growing.

Operational command pinged me to add that increased dopamine would counteract the elixir.

“You could take a holistic approach in the meantime.” I kept my voice calm to soothe the savage beast, as someone said. “Engage in pursuits that bring you pleasure.”

He stared at me through the fringe of golden fur. For a minute, I thought he was going to use what are referred to as “choice words,” but to my surprise, he began to blink furiously. I have seen humans do this when they experience strong emotion which causes their eyes to leak. 

“Nothing gives me pleasure except…” His eyes darted around the darkened room as if he was searching for lost contacts.

“Being an asshole?” I supplied.

“Yeah.” He pushed the hair out of his face with a paw-like hand. “I literally only feel better when other people are having a worse time than I am.”

“That is very introspective of you.” Praise is important in self-improvement. I scrolled through my databases for relevant advice from Dr. Phil and decided on, “It’s never too late to start making changes.”

If it is possible for humans to shoot acid out of their eyes like laundograds do, he would have done so. And here I thought I was offering encouragement.

He buried his furry chin into the couch pillows and howled again.

I consulted operational command while he wore himself out generating noise. Once he was reduced to sniffling, I handed him a tissue and reiterated his best option. “Activities that produce dopamine will help in the short term.”

“What does that even mean?” He was so plugged up with the gooey residue of emotion that it sounded more like, “Wha dosh ee me?”

“Errr…pursue a hobby.”

“Fuck off.”

“I mean it. Pleasurable activities stimulate production—”

“—I do not take pleasure from hobbies.” He said it like I had asked him to finger paint with snot.

The sticky sweetness of the roses saturating my nasal fins gave me an idea. “How about flower arranging? You wouldn’t need to leave—”

He made a strangled sound like a purging waste unit. Perhaps he suffered from allergies.

Besides watching media content, I don’t have any hobbies either, so I felt I was gasping at straws. The best I could do was chirpily quote, “Winners do the things that losers don’t want to do.” Dr. Phil would be so proud.

He gargled again through his nose.

I cast about trying to recall what I knew from my one hobby of watching media content. “I believe falling in love also releases high levels of dopamine.”

“And I would do that how?” He pointed a paw at himself.

“Watch Netflix and ch—”

“Do not say it.”

“—check the listings for romantic comedies.”

“I hate romantic comedies.”

As do I, but this was not the time to bond with him. Instead, I said, “Well, there’s your problem right there. Maybe balding isn’t what is making you unhappy but your bad attitude.”

“I do not need a lecture from someone who appears to have the compassion of a deadbolt.”

That cut to the prick. And here I was trying to help him! I considered walking right out the door and leaving him to wallow in his own hirsute ingratitude. Instead, I took another page from Dr. Phil. “Adam, you have three options in this unfortunate situation. Either remove yourself from it, change it, or accept it.” The Dalai rama had nothing on me.

“You are saying I just have to accept this? Do you have any idea what I can do to your company? I am taking you down, lady. Down. My lawyers will eat you up and spit out whatever is left so that I can step on it. Am I making myself clear?”

“What is clear is that you did not read the indications on the package."

“What indications?”

“The ones that listed all possible side effects.” I had included everything as a possible side effect in microscopic print on the package because, while I occasionally misinterpret the human mind, I am not unaware of their propensity for legal suit.

He opened and shut his mouth a few times without making any sound.

“I will gladly provide a remedy for your condition, but it is currently undergoing our rigorous testing protocols.” This jargon came to me pretty easily because I’d been monitoring the intellectual tennis match of the recent vaccine debate. “Until then, I counsel you to consider falling in love as your best option for reducing the extent of your condition.”

He stared at me, giblet-eyed. Correction: my data inputs are telling me the expression is supposed to be gimlet-eyed, a piercing gaze.

“I. Am. A. Monster,” he articulated, exactly the same way he would have posted it.

“I. Will. Get. Back. To you.” It is very difficult to speak like that. “Appearances are in the eyes of the beholder, anyway. You should see me first thing in the morning before I put my face on!” I gave a little laugh like wind chimes. Really, he should see me without my face on. He would run screaming into the night. I am ugly even by Beragrub standards, and Beragrubs would not win any prizes in a galactic beauty contest. Not even Miss Congeniality, if I am anything to go by.

My self-deprecation did not help establish the sympathetic bond I had anticipated. He was still fixing me with the piercing gaze of someone calculating violence as an option.

“If you sue me,” I pointed out, “I won’t provide the remedy, and I am the only one who can.”

Operational command pinged me that the remedy was now available. But I was beginning to have second thoughts. You just don’t reward bad behavior, you know? I need to credit that to Dr. Phil as well, though honestly, it is just common sense. The point is, this man might benefit from experiencing a little suffering. It would be character building.

“The antidote should be available in a matter of weeks,” I lied smoothly. “In the meantime, is there truly no one who might find you lovable?”

“I don’t even find myself loveable.”

“Well, there’s your problem then. Loving means believing in you.” I attempted a heartfelt ooze in my tone.

He ignored it. “You should frame that shit and put it on the wall.”

This comment confounded me utterly. Fecal matter has no place on a wall. Even I know that.

Well, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him think, as they say. I’d have to do it for him. I scrolled through his online presence on my data inputs until I located an image of a young woman who did not look like all the other females. She was the daughter of one of the product designers at his company and an up-and-coming designer in her own right. Her name was Belle.

“How about Belle?” I suggested.

He looked confused. “You mean Morris’s kid?”

“That’s the one!”

“Are you trying to set me up? Now? After turning me into a mutant?”

“While you await delivery of the remedy, you need to beef up the happy chemicals in your brain. In other words, fall in love!”

He stared at me, hairy hands tightening into fists that were still considering punching me. I hoped he didn’t, as direct contact with my cloaking device would shatter the façade. Then he’d see a monster far worse than a human hairball.

“I’ll be off now. Must go work on the cure!” I started skipping for the door.

He held out a paw, but only to forestall me. “When can I expect delivery?”

Truthfully, I could be up to my ship and back in a few earth minutes, but the woebegone expression on what I could see of his face was just too much fun. Anyway, my nasal fins needed a break from the cloying sweetness of the roses.

“I’ll be back with the cure,” I promised, pointing to the bouquet, “when the last petal falls.”