More Flash Fiction

Pulled Over (#limit)

Marjorie Gray sat in her squad car with the lights on and steeled herself before she stepped out and wrote the speeding ticket. After the promotion from parking enforcement, she thought her work life would improve, but the riffraff she encountered on a daily basis really got under her skin. The hunk of junk in front of her surely contained a squirrly driver who would give her trouble.

She had tried to perfect the art of waiting a few minutes before approaching a vehicle, a tactic designed to unnerve drivers. She was a cop after all, and the police were supposed to be fearsome authority figures. Maybe she didn't get respect because she was a woman, but given the undefined genders of so many drivers these days she doubted it. 

She approached the vehicle and peered in the window. The occupant appeared distracted, but given how many sets of eyes this species had on roving stalks it was hard to tell where their attention lay. Finally it opened the airlock with a hiss.

"Do you have any idea how far over the speed limit you were going?" she asked the driver through her tablet's universal interpreter. It transmitted her question in a series of beeps and hisses.

"Just passing through ma'am," came the reply. 

Trying to play it cool, thought Marjorie while she watched the creature's dozen or so tentacles slither over the dashboard. She noticed one inch towards the glovebox. 

"You can't go 17,000 miles an hour in a landing zone on this planet," said Marjorie. "I'm going to have to write you a ticket."

The reply from the interpreting tablet was a long series of pitiful whines and sniffles. 

"Save your 'poor me' song and dance," replied Marjorie. "You were given the rules along with the entry data by ground control."

Marjorie took her eyes off the alien for a split second. When she looked up, it had reached into the glove box and pulled out what looked like a grenade and ripped off the pin. Before she had time to react to the danger, a foul smell of methane and hydrogen sulfide accosted her nares. You have got to be kidding me, she thought. 

"Sir," she said sternly. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to report you to the interstellar armed forces for being in possession of that weapon and attempting to overpower local law enforcement with it."

The tablet interpreter responded with an incomprehensible word that sounded unmistakably like a curse. 

"Look, Buster!" said Marjorie, losing her temper. "That bomb of yours might work to overpower other species, but humans create about ten farts a day. Just because it isn't deadly here doesn't mean we won't prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law."

Before the interpreter tablet had even finished her tirate, she felt a slimy tentacle softly and lovingly caress her inner thigh. Rolling her eyes, she took out her stun gun and blasted the creature in the forehead. It flopped over in a pile of noodly arms and eyeballs. 

That's it. She quit. Tomorrow she would ask for her old job back.