Touched by an Alien

hairspray. Why not? It hurt if I got it in my own eyes. Besides, I didn’t have any mace. I pulled it out, flipped off the cap, and sprayed, right into his mouth and eyes.
    “GAAHHHH!” he screamed as he let go.
    I didn’t have time to scream as I fell. But I didn’t have to. I didn’t hit pavement, I hit Martini.
    “Can we go now?” he asked, as he turned and ran.
    “How do we stop that thing?” I watched Mephistopheles stomp around, gagging and rubbing his eyes.
    “We have no idea, though no one but you has ever tried hairspray.” We reached the others, who were all together.
    Martini set me down and Mom grabbed me. “What did you think you were doing?” She hugged me tight.
    “Could ask you the same thing. Mom, I can’t breathe. You’re squeezing tighter than our monster friend.”
    “Dammit,” Gower said. I pulled away from Mom and looked in the same direction he was. Mephistopheles was shrinking.
    “Isn’t this good? He’s getting smaller.”
    “He’s going back to human form,” Martini said, his voice clipped.
    “Great. Let’s stop him while he’s our size.” I wasn’t seeing the problem.
    “No, let’s get out of here,” my mother said, with a lot of authority. How had she been put in charge?
    The men agreed, and we all started moving. I kept turning around. Mephistopheles was smaller, only about nine feet now, and shrinking all the time. The wings were gone, the horns, too.
    “Why are we running away? Why aren’t we killing that?”
    Martini grabbed my hand, presumably to keep me from racing back. “He’s invulnerable in his human form, too.”
    “And he’s the head of the Al Dejahl terrorist organization,” my mother added angrily.
    “Who?” Second time today the same group I’d never heard of was mentioned, but then, I wasn’t a big follower of international politics. “Isn’t the, ah, terrorist I stopped supposed to be from that same place?”
    “Yes,” Christopher snapped. “They’re the easiest terrorists to blame anything on, because they’re thrilled to take the credit.”
    “Isn’t that making them more powerful, though?”
    “We’re fighting a war, princess.”
    “Badly, from all I can tell. So, who are these Al people?”
    “Al Dejahl,” Mom said in a pained tone. “It’s a worldwide terrorist organization. They make the news regularly.”
    “And not just from altered footage like today,” Gower added.
    “Yes, I guessed. What’s their deal? ‘Go their god’ or something?”
    “Why am I at all surprised you don’t know? They weren’t in a comic book, they don’t make rock CDs, and they aren’t known for their swimsuit calendars. Of course you don’t know who they are.” Mom’s sarcasm knob was turned to full. I figured I was one smart mouthed comment away from being grounded, even if I did live on my own.
    “Sorry, kind of overwhelmed here. And also wondering, still, who these guys are.” And why one of them was an in-control superbeing, but I figured I’d stick with one big question at a time.
    “They’ve got cells in, as near as we can tell, every country in the world,” she finally explained. “Some are single operatives, some are cells of twenty or thirty. Very mobile, very hard to catch. They aren’t religiously motivated, they just want the world in a state of chaos.”
    “Their leader is Ronaldo Al Dejahl. He’s one of the richest men in the world,” Christopher added. “You’d know him as Ronald Yates.”
    “So? Why can’t we kill him, especially because of all those things?” I didn’t see the downside to getting rid of a man who’d made his fortune in the porn industry and then gone legitimate by becoming the head of one of the biggest media empires around.
    “Killing a public figure’s sort of bad for the image,” Martini said. “There’s more to it, but can we please just get to safety?”
    I looked over my shoulder. I could see a man, now, not a monster. “He’s back looking human. Well, as human as he can be.” You couldn’t miss pictures of Yates. He was in his seventies but looked as if he were pushing ninety. He claimed to never drink, smoke, or indulge in any kinds of narcotics, but he constantly dated twenty year olds, making Hugh Hefner look like the poster boy for morality. However, he owned the media outlets, so they showed pictures of him all the time.
    “Wonderful job,” Martini muttered. “How the hell did this escalate?” he asked Christopher.
    “He was after her,”