X is for Xiness

Almost to the end of the A-Z challenge! X is for the Planet Xiness, featured in the story below.

Disharmonious Sounds

By Colleen Chen

Yury leaned out the window, spending a full minute hocking up a giant wad of phlegm in his throat before spitting it nineteen stories down. He listened for a shriek of disgust, then closed the window, satisfied.

He almost bumped into three small green-skinned aliens as the turned back from the window. "Whoa! Who are you guys and what are you doing in my apartment?"

"Hello, Yury. We're Oodel, Boodel, and Toodel. We come from the planet Xiness. We are the editorial council for the Xiness Book of Galactic Records, and we came because you have just broken a record for the most disharmonious sound ever made." 

"Wow! I didn't know there was a record for that." 

"The reigning champion, who you have just deposed, is a triple-headed slugabug from the planet Keeko. He broke the record when he had indigestion from eating two of his own heads, and he burped so disharmoniously that it induced temporary paralysis in all creatures within hearing range."

"Cool! Do I get a prize or something?"

"You get a trophy embedded with precious stones from the cores of seven different planets, and much honor on Xiness, where the people are in awe of powers such as yours. Please, come with us.”

The three aliens held hands, and Yury joined them. They activated their teleportation device and in an instant they were standing on an outdoor stage on the planet Xiness, surrounded by an enormous crowd of small green people.

"The new champion of disharmonious noises is here!" Oodel cried, and the Xinessians twinkled their antennae in approval.

"Wait!"  A ten-foot-long slugabug with three heads oozed onto the stage. "I contest my loss of the title! I saw the footage of this fellow making his disharmonious noise. As unpleasant as it was, it caused no paralysis; it didn't even break any glass. How can you judge his sound more disharmonious than mine?"

The crowd murmured its agreement.

"Perhaps you are correct," said Toodel. "The Xinessian people are very psychic, sensitive enough to register minute levels of disharmony, so we can have a contest right here. Slugabug, as reigning champion, you may begin."

The slugabug gobbled up two of his own heads in his signature record-breaking move. He burped, and a quarter of the crowd, nerve-endings afire from the dissonance of the sound, was paralyzed for a full minute.  

"That's nothing," Yury said. The sound of his hocking up phlegm in his throat caused seizures and fainting spells in half the crowd, and a minor stampede occurred where the phlegm flew out into the crowd.

"You call that disharmonious?" The slugabug, who had grown back his other two heads by now, made his mating call--a high-pitched keening noise--which was so horrible that three-quarters of the crowd lost their hearing and sight for ten minutes.

"Oh yeah?" Yury lifted his armpit and stuck his hand in it. The crowd gasped--many of them clapped their hands to their ears, but were unable to avoid the tremendous fart noise that came from Yury's armpit. It rippled out across the crowd, physically tossing them ten feet back on soundwaves of disharmony.

"I will not concede!" screamed the slugabug. He oozed off the stage and grabbed Boodel, still holding a microphone, swallowing him in a single gulp. The crowd could hear through the loudspeakers Boodel's screams, as well as the noises of him being digested. The sounds were so terrible that the remaining conscious people began to go insane, running in all directions and screaming.

"No more--please--" Toodel begged. He flipped through his emergency manual.

"I didn't want to have to do this!" Yury opened his mouth and began to sing.

Everybody who could still hear instantly died as the strains of the Alphabet Song wafted over the crowd. From A to a poignant "next time won't you sing with me," Yury continued to sing until all was silent and still around him. 

Yury looked around at the bodies strewn around the stage, and he kicked the dead slugabug. He took the trophy for disharmonious sound champion from Oodel's limp hand. Then he took the teleportation device and sent himself back home.