ET- No Hangovers

  Elliott lifted the old voyager up from the pillow. “He’s loaded.”

  E.T. opened his eyes. “Spell sixpack.”

  “You’ve had enough, E.T.”

  The ancient pilgrim from the stars made some cosmic finger signals, rotated his eyes, and hiccupped. Lance continued, appalled, “What do you want to hide him for, anyway? Do you know how many people pay good money to see KISS, for Pete’s sake? He’s bigger than KISS, he’s bigger than the New York Yankees! Elliott, you have a gold mine here. Take him on the road.”

  Lance gestured, to show he had all the qualities it took to be a manager. His cowlick, glowing red, gave him the appearance of someone whose scalp had been elongated by a narrow escape from a cheese-loaded spring-trap; a big promoter would have had him thrown down the backstairs with the trash. But, being a nerd, he didn’t know that. Nerdishly he pressed on. “You, me, and E.T. We’ll make it legal.”

  Elliott kept E.T. upright, but the timeless traveler kept swaying back and forth. “Spell headache, Elliott.”

  “He’s hung over,” moaned Lance. “Elliott, you need a handler in here. You don’t know the first thing about taking care of an extraterrestrial.”

  Elliott continued bracing E.T., but felt the heaviness in the old creature’s body—a strange heaviness, a deep heaviness, unlike anything he’d ever handled.

  “E.T.” He shook the extraterrestrial, and E.T. turned his eyes upon him, but they held visions of the cosmos such as Elliott had never seen, not in all the weeks E.T. had been with him. They were the farthest-out signals imaginable. They hit Elliott all over the body, and the heaviness became his own.
...

  But E.T. wasn’t anybody’s, except gravity’s. He had come fully to himself, had neutralized drunkenness out of his system with one instant’s focus. But this other thing, this deep imploding of his being, that he could not change.

- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in His Adventure on Earth, chapter 13