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Description
I was sipping on a pumpkin spice latte when I got the text. It confirmed what I was afraid of.

"I can't keep doing this. Goodbye."

Goodbye. We've all been there, haven't we ladies? Broken hearts hurt, and I thought I had patched mine up until I got this text from him.

I met him at a bar three months ago. Some of my friends introduced me to him. It sounds Disney, but it was love at first sight. We quickly struck up a conversation. I won't give away his name here, but our conversation got really deep. I found out that he was a medical student who was paying for his student loans by working as a bartender on weekends.

And that he was married.

I just wanted to be friends, but we knew from that first night that there was a connection between us. At first our "fling" was kept on the down low. Emails, Facebook messages, the occasional phone call. We were just friends. But things moved faster than I expected.

He had been married for three years when we met. He told me there was trouble between them, but he stayed with his wife for the sake of their two young children. I didn't find out about the kids until the relationship had moved past the point of no return. I slapped him when he told me that night, but I couldn't stay angry at him. But now that I knew it was over between us, I didn't know what to say.

Part of me was happy. I never wanted to be in affair. I never wanted to be a "homewrecker." And, to be honest, that initial spark between us was dead. Another part of me was angry. I felt betrayed, even though I knew I was the outsider. I wanted to save him from a loveless marriage. And this was all his fault! Why did he let things get this far?! I was confused, so I texted back a question. "Why?"

"Because I'm a genestealer."

I've had bad relationships before, but I've never been betrayed like this. I thought all the secrets between us were gone. I poured by heart and soul into him, and I expected him to reciprocate. I never expected he'd keep this from me.

It did explain a lot. His devilish looks, his beautiful eyes, his chitinous bulletproof exoskeleton. I have to admit, I had my suspicions that he was keeping something from me when he ate an entire ten-ounce steak and the restaurant wait staff when we went out to dinner one night. His constant trips to far-off cities like Damascus and Monrovia. But I still couldn't believe it. I asked him if he was lying.

"No. I'm dead serious. I'm an alien-human hybrid infiltrating Earth's society so I can sow civil disorder and make the conquest of this planet easier for the Hive Fleet. Now I have to take care of my brood cult and instigate civil disorder in South America. I'm so sorry."

Sorry. I had never seen any emptier words in my life. How could he leave out that he's actually an agent for a malevolent alien intelligence that seeks to consume all organic matter on the planet in their ceaseless, ravenous consumption of the galaxy? You don't leave things like that out of a relationship, even if it is an extramarital affair.

"What are you going to do now? Lay eggs in some bitch?"

"We don't lay eggs, Sarah. We insert an embryonic organism in our target and rewrite their genetic code, transforming them into another servant of the Brood Mind." I knew it, that's why he never wanted to use protection. I wasn't having any of his attitude. I'm a strong, independent woman that doesn't need to take any nonsense from any man or biologically sexless alien infiltrator. I told him to shut up, and asked him why he's only telling me this now after giving me the cold shoulder for three months.

"The Hive Fleet will enter orbit around Earth in a few days. I just wanted you to know before you were eaten alive by an insectoid horror from your worst nightmares. My time with you was my way of seeing what it was like to be away from my wife, and I had a wonderful time. So I'm pouring my heart out now. I thought I owed it to you before you were dissolved into a pool of your constituent organic compounds to further fuel the invasion."

That made me feel better, even though I didn't want to. I wanted to feel nothing but hate for him, but that spark we had when we first met came back to life just a little bit. But I had no desire to continue the relationship, and I knew he didn't either.

"So it's over?" I asked him.

"It's over," he texted back. "We won't see each other again, unless I happen to run into you during the chaos of the Hive Fleet's initial orbital strikes. Goodbye."

"Oh, and I put a mutagen in your drink the first night we met. Your body is now a breeding ground for Tyranid spores."

I put down my phone and wiped a few tears away. It was over. But my heart was intact, at least until the ravenous parasite that was once my pancreas consumes it in its mindless hunger and bursts out of my chest to assail the other people in this Starbucks.

Description
I was sipping on a pumpkin spice latte when I got the text. It confirmed what I was afraid of.

"I can't keep doing this. Goodbye."

Goodbye. We've all been there, haven't we ladies? Broken hearts hurt, and I thought I had patched mine up until I got this text from him.

I met him at a bar three months ago. Some of my friends introduced me to him. It sounds Disney, but it was love at first sight. We quickly struck up a conversation. I won't give away his name here, but our conversation got really deep. I found out that he was a medical student who was paying for his student loans by working as a bartender on weekends.

And that he was married.

I just wanted to be friends, but we knew from that first night that there was a connection between us. At first our "fling" was kept on the down low. Emails, Facebook messages, the occasional phone call. We were just friends. But things moved faster than I expected.

He had been married for three years when we met. He told me there was trouble between them, but he stayed with his wife for the sake of their two young children. I didn't find out about the kids until the relationship had moved past the point of no return. I slapped him when he told me that night, but I couldn't stay angry at him. But now that I knew it was over between us, I didn't know what to say.

Part of me was happy. I never wanted to be in affair. I never wanted to be a "homewrecker." And, to be honest, that initial spark between us was dead. Another part of me was angry. I felt betrayed, even though I knew I was the outsider. I wanted to save him from a loveless marriage. And this was all his fault! Why did he let things get this far?! I was confused, so I texted back a question. "Why?"

"Because I'm a genestealer."

I've had bad relationships before, but I've never been betrayed like this. I thought all the secrets between us were gone. I poured by heart and soul into him, and I expected him to reciprocate. I never expected he'd keep this from me.

It did explain a lot. His devilish looks, his beautiful eyes, his chitinous bulletproof exoskeleton. I have to admit, I had my suspicions that he was keeping something from me when he ate an entire ten-ounce steak and the restaurant wait staff when we went out to dinner one night. His constant trips to far-off cities like Damascus and Monrovia. But I still couldn't believe it. I asked him if he was lying.

"No. I'm dead serious. I'm an alien-human hybrid infiltrating Earth's society so I can sow civil disorder and make the conquest of this planet easier for the Hive Fleet. Now I have to take care of my brood cult and instigate civil disorder in South America. I'm so sorry."

Sorry. I had never seen any emptier words in my life. How could he leave out that he's actually an agent for a malevolent alien intelligence that seeks to consume all organic matter on the planet in their ceaseless, ravenous consumption of the galaxy? You don't leave things like that out of a relationship, even if it is an extramarital affair.

"What are you going to do now? Lay eggs in some bitch?"

"We don't lay eggs, Sarah. We insert an embryonic organism in our target and rewrite their genetic code, transforming them into another servant of the Brood Mind." I knew it, that's why he never wanted to use protection. I wasn't having any of his attitude. I'm a strong, independent woman that doesn't need to take any nonsense from any man or biologically sexless alien infiltrator. I told him to shut up, and asked him why he's only telling me this now after giving me the cold shoulder for three months.

"The Hive Fleet will enter orbit around Earth in a few days. I just wanted you to know before you were eaten alive by an insectoid horror from your worst nightmares. My time with you was my way of seeing what it was like to be away from my wife, and I had a wonderful time. So I'm pouring my heart out now. I thought I owed it to you before you were dissolved into a pool of your constituent organic compounds to further fuel the invasion."

That made me feel better, even though I didn't want to. I wanted to feel nothing but hate for him, but that spark we had when we first met came back to life just a little bit. But I had no desire to continue the relationship, and I knew he didn't either.

"So it's over?" I asked him.

"It's over," he texted back. "We won't see each other again, unless I happen to run into you during the chaos of the Hive Fleet's initial orbital strikes. Goodbye."

"Oh, and I put a mutagen in your drink the first night we met. Your body is now a breeding ground for Tyranid spores."

I put down my phone and wiped a few tears away. It was over. But my heart was intact, at least until the ravenous parasite that was once my pancreas consumes it in its mindless hunger and bursts out of my chest to assail the other people in this Starbucks.