The Last Egg: A story about Easter Eggs, Aliens and Faith

It was a chilly, rainy, Easter Sunday. We’d been to church and back, and my family, all nine hundred and ninety nine of them—okay, maybe only seventeen—were tromping around my house hunting for Easter Eggs.

I was pleased because this year was going to be different. Every Easter my nephews talk me into letting them hide the Easter Eggs, and every Easter there’s always one egg we can’t find. One lousy egg that eludes everyone—for a couple of months—then it’s just a simple matter of sniff, find, and fumigate. But those eggs—those last eggs aren’t the ones this story is about.

As I was saying, this year was going to be different. This year I’d hidden the eggs. Not only hidden them, but noted in detail, via my fancy MacBook Pro, the exact location of all twenty-four eggs. It was brilliant.

Confident, I tromped around with my video camera, trying to capture some golden Kodak moments. Great Grandma stealing candy out of the kids’ baskets, my dad stealing eggs out of my nephew’s basket, my dog stealing marshmallow bunnies he’d puke up sometime during the middle of the night; and of course, the innocent faces of children beaming as they uncovered beautiful multi-colored eggs.

I had just run upstairs for a quick bathroom break, was finished and standing at the top of the stairs, my foot poised to take that first step down—when it happened. There was a kind of blue-green shimmer and then a short, sharp, electric-sounding ZZZZAP.

I paused, pulled my foot back, scrunched my eyes and—everything looked okay. Everything until—Georgia! My daughter was holding an egg up in the air, staring at it and staring at it and—oh my gosh, I thought, look at Great Grandma! I bent forward. She must have great thigh muscles because she’s been squatting over that same chair, trying to sit down for thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two—Holy Easter Lilies—THEY’re all frozen!

I fell against the wall, trying to catch my breath and unscramble my brain. Atomic bomb? No—that’s ridiculous! It must be some sort of advanced time manipulation technology. Russian, maybe Chinese—Holy Cow! And that’s when I saw them—Aliens. Three of them, beamed right into the middle of my living room. Little green men, big heads, wide eyes, skinny bodies and really, really deep voices. That was weird.

And wouldn’t you know it, I’d left my camera sitting beside the toilet! Inching backwards, I ducked inside my son’s bedroom, peeked my
head out, just enough to see, and prepared to listen.

You might think it strange I wasn’t more frightened, I mean with my family down there and all; but looking back, I believe it was because the alien’s voices were so mesmerizing…almost sultry.

“Joey,” said the biggest one, his skinny green stomach bulging around the sides. An overweight alien? “Rememba, da boss sent us here to observe. No funny business. Don’t want dis turning into one of doz…tabaloid fiascos.”

Did I mention they sounded like Italian, New York mobsters?
“Hey boss,” said the littlest one. “Whaddaya tink I am? An amateur?”

“Eh guys,” said an alien I can best describe as, the ugly one, (he had a scar running all the way from his nonexistent chin to the top of his left nose hole) “look what I found.” He was pointing to my daughter’s hand, the one holding the egg.

“Yeah, and she ain’t the only one.” The littlest one said. “Dey’s all holding pretty little oval-shaped thingies.”

“Dem’s eggs, knuckle head,” said the big one. “Easta Eggs.”

After that, I can’t be sure who was talking because I’d ducked back into the room, not wanting to press my luck. But I could still hear their conversation.

“What’s Easta Eggs?”

“Deys hides ‘dem and deys looks for ‘dem.”

“Why?”

“Now ya startin to bug me Joey! Rememba, we’s just here to observe, take notes and get back to da spaceship. DON’T be touching nonna dem Easta Eggs.”

“Ah boss, whaddaya tink I am…whaddaya tink I am!”

It went on like this for a while, I heard them scurrying around my house—thank God they didn’t come upstairs—and then suddenly there was that sound again, that electric ZZZAP and I heard my daughter yell, “Mom, Josh stole my egg! I had it. It was right here in my hand!”

Well, you guessed it. Sure enough, we searched and searched, then I got out my list, but in the end, there were only twenty-three eggs. The last egg was missing—never to be found.

So, that’s my Easter mystery. Well, not really a mystery to me, but nobody else seems to believe me. You have to have faith, I tell them. Aliens really do exist. Just because you didn’t see them, doesn’t mean they weren’t here!

Faith, that’s all it takes. Faith and…a little Easter Mystery.

(Happy Easter. Hope you enjoyed my little Easter sci-fi story. I wrote it several years ago and thought it would be nice to share it again today.)