“New Year, New Me!” Says Alien Body Snatcher

By Drew Thomas-Nathan

LOS FELIZ, CA — With another year in the can, some are already looking forward to the next one with foolish optimism. But no one seems more excited for 2021 than Bartholomew “Barry” the extraterrestrial body snatcher.

Barry promised he’d show the world “a new me” in the upcoming year. “I’ve been in this elderly woman’s body for like 20 years,” he said. “Her grandchildren love me because I always give them money and tootsie rolls. It’s a sweet gig, but I’m thinking it’s time to find someone else’s skull to hollow out and puppeteer from inside.”

The alien, whose true form is a triskaidecagon with lots of tentacles and one hole that’s simultaneously a mouth, anus, and vagina, spoke about the lack of authenticity in LA. “A lot of people complain like ‘Everyone’s so mean here.’ But the people complaining are mean too! They’re not helping,” said Barry through the lifeless gaze of his current corpus.

Barry says the issue led him to consider a big change. “This isn’t going to be something where I get a gym membership I stop using after a week,” he said. “I’m looking for a full transformation. Mark my words, you won’t recognize the Barry you see a year from now.” Barry’s loose plan at the moment is to move to New York where he can hopefully get into a career in graphic design and also a bohemian millennial. “Someone without Parkinson’s would be nice,” Barry admits.

Barry’s parents came to Earth nearly 50 years ago, fleeing political turmoil on their home planet Djfcsn. Barry said being an alien on Earth has gotten easier over the last half-century. “We used to have to work a lot harder to be inconspicuous, to assimilate.” Barry says now we’re seeing a lot more positive representation in the media for body snatchers. “It used to just be Freaky Friday and some horror flicks. Now Wonder Woman gets to have Chris Pine back by having him take over some guy’s body. It’s not treated as scary or something they have to fix, it’s normal. Wish I had movies like that when I was a larva.”

When the new year came Barry’s friends observed him not doing anything differently, much less finding a younger host or skipping town like he said he would. Barry explained that he’s celebrating the new year based on the Andromeda calendar, which lasts about 67 Earth years. “I have time,” he said.