They’d been stranded so long you might have mistaken them for eccentrics rather than extraterrestrials. Shipwrecked without an ocean, just a sky that didn’t answer back. They kept their heads down, fixed watches, tuned carburetors, worked the jobs nobody bragged about at the club.

Then the Inspectors started singing about green. Said the only green to be trusted was on the golf course or folded in a wallet. After that, the roundups rolled in like bad weather. Secret police in sensible shoes, asking impolite questions.

The little green people went to ground. Basements. Boiler rooms. Anywhere the light forgot to look. Didn’t matter. The jig was up.

That’s when the whistle cut the night clean in half.

A 1955 Cadillac convertible came screaming around the corner, chrome grinning, paint new as a fresh indictment. Behind the wheel was a woman with Violet eyes that seemed less a color than a natural phenomenon. There was something volcanic about her. Not chaos exactly. Heat.

The aliens stared. “Beautiful,” they murmured .

They meant the car.

The driver had too many fingers, too many toes, no antennae to speak of. Not their type.

They piled in anyway. Rubber arrows stitched the air behind them. The Caddy fishtailed, laughed, and swallowed the dark.

By morning there’d be headlines. By noon there’d be committees. And by nightfall, somebody with soft hands and hard eyes would be asking who whistled and why.

This wasn’t the end of the matter. Not by a long shot.