He had been feeling off all day. Stomach problems. No diarrhea or anything. No nausea. Nothing like that. He just felt off.

His shipmates saw it too. They saw him clutching his stomach as he moved from navigation down to the galley. He cried out in pain even as he was sitting down to eat. He dropped his tray of food, then fell to the floor.

His shipmates turned him over and saw him covered in blood. Or at least what they thought was blood. But the realized it was just the red sauce from his pasta dish. Four of them picked him up and rushed him to sick bay. He cried out in pain the whole way.

The crewman looked up at the ceiling and saw the light. Or at least that was what his shipmates thought he saw.

“The sun! I see the sun! Oh it’s so good to be home.”

“He’s delirious, Doc. He was crying out in pain in the galley.”

“Well, let’s get that shirt off of him. We need to see what’s causing all that blood.” The doctor cut off the man’s shirt before his shipmates could explain.

“That wasn’t blood.”

“I see,” said the doctor. He laughed.

“What’s so funny, Doc?”

The doctor wiped sweat from his forehead. “Well…” He laughed what the crewmembers thought was a nervous laugh. He looked at the crewmen in turn. “Well… I was watching a movie just now. And crewmen brought in their shipmate to sick bay.”

He looked at them again. They were all staring back, just waiting.

“Well… I was just at the part where…”

“Alien!”

“Yeah. That’s the movie I was watching. How’d you…”

Everybody looked in horror at their shipmate’s abdomen. There it was coming out through his skin. Something hideous that they had only seen in the movies. There was an alien. Or at least it was supposed to be. But it was a sunflower.

Everybody laughed.

A voice came from afar. “Alright, cut! You buncha morons.”

The director looked at his crewman with the sunflower. He waited.

“I hadda do it. It was getting too serious in here.” The crewman smiled. “Besides, we’ve all seen Alien. And the alien doesn’t come out of the guy’s abdomen, it comes out of the guy’s…”

Just then, the alien came out of the crewman’s chest.

Everybody screamed. Then they laughed.

The director walked away shaking his head. “Buncha morons.”