“So,” Mark started, and then paused.  “They do exist?” He asked, unable to mention what they really were.

“Yes” came the typically short answer.  John looked up at his partner in crime.  The look on Mark’s face said he needed more than that.  “Think of them like aliens. Most people can deal with it better in those terms.”

“Aliens?  I don’t think so.  They’re too…” Mark searched for the right words as the events of their recent, close encounter ran through his mind.  His hands reached up to massage his scalp as his words stumbled over his memory.  “They’re just, it’s just that, well, they’re not alien enough.”

The old beggar stopped sorting through the items they had pilfered and looked Mark strait in the eyes.  There was another pause before John looked away, almost as an act of mercy, and pretended the rags he was wearing needed adjustment. “I think you might mean that they’re too alien.”

Mark started to object but closed his mouth quickly.  I think this is the most he’s spoken since this whole thing began he thought, and he could tell that there was more to come.

“Think about the aliens you’re used to seeing on the tely in the theater.  What does everyone say they are like?”

“Well, that’s not exactly a real question.”  Mark’s subconscious was grateful to be focusing on anything but what had just occurred.  “It’s all just speculation, after all, but they’re nothing like us.  And they’re definitely not…”

“Do they have colour?”

“Well, yes, of course they do. Everything has colour.”

Already he starts to forget. “Do they have bodies?”

“Of course an alien would have a body, but it wouldn’t be like ours.  It would…”

“What did they make you think?” John was starting to get a little impatient as Mark’s memory faded.

“What kind of question”

“Think of what you just saw!”

The verbal slap in the face brought Mark’s mind back to the alley where it had happened.  Time stretched out as the part of him that strived to answer every question forced its way past his refusal to accept the very thing it sought.  Colour?  The thought almost made him cry.  Body? His hands were trembling.  I, he tried to breathe. I am, only short breaths were manageable.

John saw the moment for what it was.  “They are innocent.”

Mark’s body began to convulse.  For fifteen minutes John held the weeping Mark.  Had anyone seen them they would have wondered at a young professional being comforted by a dirty homeless man with an obvious odor issue. They would have pondered the missing footwear from either of the men.  They likely would have even called the police, especially if they noticed either of the men’s wounds.  But this was not a place where anyone went.  Not anyone respectable, in any case.  Not here, and especially not now.

When Mark did, finally, look up he did not care about his surroundings in the least.  Well, not right away.  He was looking, instead, to John who had resumed his fussiness over the stolen goods.  “What do you mean by innocent?” His hand wiped his eyes clear.

Stillness.  Mark knew now to wait.

“Do you have any children?” John asked.

“Yeah, Sarah.  She’s just a year old now.” Mark couldn’t help but smile at the thought.

“When you saw her for the first time, what did the sight of her make you think?”

A slightly puzzled look crossed Mark’s face.  “Well, to be honest one of my first thoughts was that I was going to have to cut back on all the overtime I’ve been putting in.  You know, so I could spend more time to be with my family.”

“So seeing her, in all her innocence, made you want to be a better husband and father?  Be a better person?”

“Yes.  That’s exactly it.”

“Why would you want to be a better person, if not that you were already failing at being the person you thought you should be?”  Again there was silence.  “You see, this is what innocence does to us humans.  It reveals our faults, our failings. If another human can invoke such feelings, how much more a creature of pure innocence?”

Mark was at a loss for words.  He had never thought of such things before.  Finally, he asked “what do they do?  I mean, why were they there?”

“They have their orders.”

“Orders?”

“Yes.  Just like your child will obey you, until such a time as she thinks she knows better anyway, so too they obey their father.  It’s the nature of innocence.”

Mark thought about all that had just happened.  As John finished packing what they would need, Mark looked around.  “Wait.  Where are we?”