Blipp lived alone, but there was a red button beside his bed.

His windows were closed and latched shut. The front door was locked and there were no holes in his apartment walls, floor, or ceiling. But there was a unfamiliar button beside his bed.

The button was red. Blipp was not sure if he had ever seen a blue button before. This one was red, and it fit in the palm of his hand. It was attached to a small wooden box. He rapped his knuckles on the bottom of the box and it rang out dull and hollow.

"Curious," Blipp said as he put down The Button. It was only then that he noticed The Note.

"Very curious," Blipp said as he picked up The Note. A few curt words had been scribbled on the fancy piece of cardboard paper. Or at least the cardboard paper felt fancy. His fingers glided over its smooth surface like a pair of ice skates.

DO NOT PRESS ME!

The four words had been hastily scratched onto the face of the cardboard paper. Blipp flipped The Note over idly and found a few more words written on the other side.

Much love,

That White Goat

"That white goat...?" Blipp chewed on the unusual words and wrinkled his nose. "More like that sounds stupid."

He tossed the fancy piece of cardboard paper onto the floor and returned his attention to The Button.

"Well, I have to press it."

He was not sure how the unusual button had ended up in his apartment. He had not drank last night, after all, aside from three or four Core Lites. It was a mystery.

The red button felt like cheap plastic. A faint smile touched his lips as his fingertips tickled the top of the button. There was something primal about wanting to (or perhaps having to) press a button. Blipp was sure that The Note and That White Goat would forgive him this small disobedience.

"Sorry," Blipp said, and BOOOOOOOM went the world in a shower of chaos.

Dust filled his apartment as the world shook like a small wet dog. Outside of his window, the street was blanketed in a blinding yellow glow. A hundred different car alarms answered the disruption with a noisy orchestra. His upstairs neighbors and those down below cried out in fear.

The world stilled after a while, and Blipp looked out his window in open-mouthed shock.

He lived in the big city, so he was used to strange things outside his window. He was often accosted by strange things on the subway to and from work. But he had never, not once, seen an alien spaceship parked in the middle of the street before.

The alien spaceship was a cliche circular disk resplendent with flashing lights and sleek white plates, and it had appeared out of nowhere.

"What the blipp!?" Blipp exclaimed with excitement as he stared at the sudden spectacle.

He had a sweat-stained undershirt on, as well as week old boxer shorts. That did not stop him from racing to his front door, and then out his front door, and then down the apartment stairwell, and then he ran out of breath and had to rest for a moment.

The street outside was busy with other half-dressed neighbors and strangers. Most had their phones out. They were taking blurry pictures and narrated videos. An older woman with a pronounced hunch was banging on the sleek white hull of the alien spaceship with her crutches.

"Curious!" Blipp said, and then he remembered The Button.

Between the unusual red button, the unusual note, and the unusual alien spaceship, Blipp started to wonder if he had really woken up. He pinched his left arm and then his face and then his left downstairs marble. He blinked away a few tears and still found himself outside in his underwear.

"What a morning," Blipp muttered with a childlike exhilaration as the street around him grew more and more crowded. He checked his pockets for his own phone, but he was only wearing his boxer briefs.

A cold weight suddenly pressed against his back, and Blipp's smile froze in anticipated dread. He had lived in the big city long enough to have imagined up a situation like this.

"Turn around slowly," an unusual feminine voice said. "Hands where I can see them."

The street was full of slack-jawed gawkers, but not one of them offered him or his predicament even a wayward glance.

The cold weight pressed harder against his back.

"I won't repeat myself, human. Hands where I can see them."

Blipp frowned at the human comment, but he still raised his hands into the air. It occurred to him that he did not have his wallet or even his shoes to offer this would-be thief. He had left his apartment barefoot.

"Nice and slow nyeow," the unusual female voice said as Blipp turned around. Somehow nobody offered his distress even a sniff.

"Oh." Blipp blinked as he took in his assailant. "Oh my."

The alien had a human face. The alien even had a human female body. But a puff of fluff wagged back and forth behind her back like a furry metronome. Her explosive mop of hair was pulled back in a rainbow ponytail. Two pointed animal ears rested on the top of her head, and her eyes glittered like a monochromatic rainbow.

"Just keep them hands where I can see them," the furry alien said, and she started to frisk Blipp like a uniformed officer. Which, he supposed, she was.

The alien did not wear a futuristic spacesuit, but rather the distinct blue uniform of a police officer. Her uniform was replete with a bullet-proof vest, a walkie talkie, and an empty holster. In her human hand was a futuristic pistol. It was a sleek white slab of plastic.

"Easy there," Blipp said with a blush as the alien police officer started to frisk his downstairs department. He was not sure what she was looking for, but he did not have many places to hide it.

"Where is it?" the alien police officer asked with annoyance, and she took a step back. "No games, human."

"Where is... what?" Blipp asked. He looked around at the early morning gawkers, but his half-naked neighbors continued to snap away at the alien spaceship with their phones. None seemed to care about the alien.

"The button!" the feline alien hissed. Blipp felt as though her ears and tail were catlike. "Don't think we don't knyeow, human!"

"Oooh. The button..." Blipp nodded to himself. It had been odd for The Button and The Note to appear beside his bed. But if aliens were involved... "No, it is still odd even if aliens are involved."

"What was that?" The feline alien narrowed her catlike rainbow eyes. "Nyeow more games!"

"Wait, wait, wait!" One of her human fingers had started to slide across her alien pistol. "Upstairs! By the bed!"

The alien police officer continued to stare at him suspiciously, but then...

"Nya?"

Her rainbow-colored eyes widened in apparent surprise. Her posture sagged slightly.

"You... don't have the button with you?"

Blipp shook his head, and the hairs on the alien officer's tail and head seemed to stand up on end. Her eyes bulged wider still and darted around in a manic panic.

"Nyaaa! This is bad! Real bad!" She raised her futuristic pistol to her head and started to rub her catlike ears with both hands. "How could you be so irresponsible, human?!"

"I'm... sorry?" Blipp started to lower his hands, but the catlike officer quickly recovered from her distress. She trained her unusual pistol on his sweaty chest.

"Keep them hands up," she said albeit with a little less spunk than before. "By the bed, which means your home? Take me there! Nyeow!"

"Fine, fine!" Blipp said nervously as he lifted his hands back into the air. A few of his nosy neighbors looked at him as if he had fallen out of an alien spaceship. None seemed to notice the actual alien in-front of him.

"Enyeough dawdling!" the fury police officer said with a feline hiss. "Lead the way!"

"This is bad..." The feline officer crouched beside his apartment door, her futuristic pistol cocked and ready. The hallway outside was somehow covered in seaweed, oyster shells, and bits of sand. "This is real bad..."

"Where did all of this come from?" Blipp asked aloud as he picked up a particularly beautiful seashell from outside of his apartment. Something inside the seashell tried to snip his fingers with its miniature claws.

"Shhhhh!" the alien officer hissed. She yanked on his boxer shorts, and accidentally revealed his tackle box to the beach-like hallway.

"H-hey!" Blipp said as he quickly pulled his boxer shorts back up.

"Get. Down!" the alien officer hissed, seemingly unfazed by his brief nudity. Her indifference wounded Blipp, but he still crouched beside her.

He had been so taken aback by the sand and the water in the hallway that he had not noticed that his apartment door was open. He was sure that he had closed it on his way out to see the alien spectacle. From where he crouched beside the feline alien, he could even hear the distinct sounds of movement from inside.

"A thief!" Blipp exclaimed, and he jumped to his feet in virtuous outrage. While it was true that he scarcely had anything worth stealing, he was not about to let someone take advantage of the morning's strangeness and rob him.

"Wait, what?" The alien officer remained crouched beside his apartment door as Blipp hurried inside. "Nyeow! Wait, you stupid human!"

"Bah!" Blipp exclaimed as he looked around at the mess the would-be thief had made of his apartment. Still more sand and seashells and puddles of water filled each room. "I am going to make calamari out of this blingblatt!"

A pronounced thud earned his vindictive ire, and Blipp rushed into his bedroom to accost the unusual intruder.

"Keeek, kek, kek, kek!"

Hunched over the nightstand beside his bed was another unusual woman. At first Blipp thought she was wearing military fatigues, but then she turned towards him with a vicious smile, and he realized that she was dressed in an over the top shark-themed onesie. The hood of her shark-themed jumpsuit covered a mess of black hair and sharp white eyes.

"Yer too late, copper!" the unusual woman said with a cockney accent. She revealed unusually sharp teeth as a pair of footsteps followed Blipp into his bedroom. "This here button is ours now, ya see?"

"Hands where I can see them!" the alien officer shouted as she burst into the room. She held her futuristic pistol with both hands. "On the ground, scumbag!"

"Or what, copper?" the shark-like woman asked with a gleeful menace. She revealed The Button from earlier in the palm of her small hand. "You shoot and I press this here button, ya see?"

"You fiend!" the alien officer said. Thick beads of sweat rolled down her face.

Blipp looked between the two unusual women, and his head started to hurt. He pinched himself a few more times, but the unusual standoff continued uninterrupted.

"Hand over the button!" the feline alien shouted, but the shark-like woman only scoffed.

"I'm walkin' out of this here building, copper, and if ya try to stop me..." The shark-like woman wrapped her hands around the red button, which earned an embarrassed yelp from the alien officer. "BoOOOoOM! I'll press this here button, ya see?"

Slowly, the shark-like woman tiptoed towards the bedroom door. Blipp had not noticed at first, but her shark-suit pajamas even had a small tail that wagged behind her.

"You won't get away with this..." the feline officer said as the shark-like woman reached the doorway.

"Just try and stop us, copper!"

Blipp stared in open-mouthed horror at the ruin of his bed as the shark-like woman left his bedroom. There was enough wet sand on its covers to make a sandcastle, and that was to say nothing of the crustaceans that crawled out from and underneath his pillows as if they were some damp cave.

"You blip-blapping-blooper!" Blipp cried out as his frustration reached its boiling point.

He pushed the alien officer out of his way and stomped towards the retreating shark woman.

"Not another step, ya git!" the sharp-toothed menace said, but Blipp took more than a step.

"H-hey!" the shark-like woman said as Blipp grabbed her by her petite shoulders and hefted her into the air. He had not noticed amidst all of the strangeness, but she was rather short and small. "I-I'll press the button, ya s-see...?"

"You!" Blipp said, the word a curse. He did not know what to do with such a small woman, so he simply shook her like a piggy bank. "Yoooouuu!"

"H-help..." the shark-like woman said, and a jet of water splashed into Blipp's face.

He was so taken aback by the sudden wet that he dropped the shark-like woman.

"Les' blow this joint, Shark Tooth."

Blipp tried to rub away the salty spray from his eyes, and he saw a second woman had appeared in his damp apartment. She was similarly dressed in an over the top shark-themed onesie, but the salt that burned in his eyes kept his vision hazy and unreliable.

"Wait!" the alien officer shouted from behind him.

Blipp continued to rub his eyes as the two shark-like women seemed to... jump into a sloshing hole in the middle of the floor. More water bubbled out from the unusual hole as the criminal characters sank deeper and deeper into the floor. The salty wet rolled across Blipp's apartment like a low tide, lapping pleasantly against his naked feet.

"Come back here!" the feline officer shouted. She knelt beside where the hole had been, but even with his blurry vision, Blipp could tell that the two women had thoroughly escaped.

"Curses!" the unusual alien shouted, and she rose from the sodden floor. She paced back and forth as Blipp rubbed the last of the discomfort from his eyes.

"What a mess..." Blipp muttered to himself as he looked around at the sorry state of his apartment. How would he explain this to his landlord? How would he explain any of this to anyone?

"You!"

Blipp jumped as the alien officer cracked her voice like a whip. He turned and found her marching towards him with a fire in her gait.

"You!" She jabbed him in the chest with one of her thin fingers. "This is bad, and it is your fault!"