Crazy Kenwood Christmas (Written December 24th 2011)

It was the night before Christmas, and all through the store

Every creature was stirring, stampeding through the door

Through the loudspeakers, the Christmas music did blare.

To ask for a new station, none of the employees did dare.

The boss was a sociopath, manic depressive or worse

To ask him for a favor, “YOU’RE FIRED,” he’d curse.

So soldier on, the good employees would do

Stocking beer, stocking liquor, telling jerkoff customers, “Fuck you.”

The night drags on long, the customers keep coming

While over the radio for the 30^th time that day, the Little Drummer Boy is drumming

Then the sun goes down and the customers thin out, you’d think

But it’s only six o’clock, and all of them still must drink

They buy whisky and gin, vodka and beer

You’d wonder if there were any other liquor stores near

Then the usuals come in and the employees are almost done for

Because the guy that came in is here to stock HIS liquor store

The decorations are up, and the music is on

But Christmas isn’t over yet, it’s barely begun.

As the night finally winds down, the lights are turned off

The employees punch out as they stifle a scoff.

Merry Christmas, O World, and what can we say?

We’d be in a better mood if we didn’t have to come back the next day.

In the Summer of No Fear (Just Go With It) ~Written in September or October of 2008~

In the Summer of No Fear (Just Go With It)

            Before the Forties

They were bored, I think.  Bored with a bygone summer, the days building up longer and longer and each one with less to do to pass the time.  I think it was Jeff’s idea; he’s the one that usually comes up with the crazy schemes; whether we should survive the more dangerous streets of Chicago (he called them “Shootables”) or drive around picking up cardboard boxes to make robot armor, his ideas largely went only half fulfilled.  I don’t know why we decided to go along with his newest scheme that Saturday night.  I suppose we got tired of going to the same bar or checking out terrible summer movies, and that’s really all we do during the summer.  Jeff got bored of the same old, so he decided we should drink forties and walk up and down the railroad tracks. 

I laughed.  That was absurd; we would wind up in jail for sure.  But he said, “No man.  It’ll be like we’re channeling the bums from the 1920s.  It’ll be crazy.”  He always said stuff would be crazy, and a lot of the times he was right.  But to me, crazy doesn’t mean good, and too much crazy can take its toll on me.  I told him as much and he said, “Life is about experiences.  You especially should be doing crazy shit all the time.  You’re the writer, aren’t you?”

I knew it too, that crazy meant it would be a story to tell, and I suppose that’s what it has become.  I just chalked it up to what Jeff said, it’s all about life experiences, and I kept telling myself that in five, ten, twenty years from now, or tomorrow, I would regret if I didn’t at least go along for the ride.

So that’s how Jeff, Phil, Brett and I ended up on the railroad tracks with forties that summer night.

There was more lead up to this; perhaps it had been brewing since the beginning of summer.  Jeff, returning to his home in the Southside suburbs of Chicago from school in California, said that this summer would be known as “The Summer of No Fear.”  Things started off poorly in that regard.  Let’s just say they involved a trespassing on government property incident.  The fallout led us to our limited choice in activities, and the monotony just built up until my friends all bought forties of Steel Reserve and hit the tracks.

They were Metra tracks that ran southwest from Union Station in Chicago to God knows where.  At points they pass through residential neighborhoods and commercial areas.  My three friends left the gas station with forties in paper bags and we began walking down the tracks.  The sun was going down with us, tingeing the sky red, but soon it would be dark.

It was awkward at first.  The initial thrill was over.  We were no longer invincible 22 year old kids; now we were a group of douche bags with forties.  But we went with it anyway.

Half Done With One

In order to spare myself as much jail time as possible, I didn’t buy any beer, but by the time their forties were half gone, their movement was looser and their voices louder.  “How far do you guys wanna go?” I asked, feeling as though I was the only sane person in the group.

“Till we die,” Jeff said.  “Or pass out.  Both are fine.”

I remember thinking, how is this ever gonna help my writing?  I think the experience was all about Jeff’s character.  Because if you knew him, you’d know that few of the crazy things he talks about ever comes to fruition.  He was just as surprised as any of us that we were actually out there doing what he said we should do.  And he didn’t know what to do after that.  Stop?  That’s not good enough; not for the The Summer of No Fear.  But it would end more befitting of that moniker than Jeff or I would have liked, because deep down we both knew this was a bad idea.

If you know Steel Reserve, then you know it doesn’t take long to get drunk from it.  As we walked, they grew louder, their comments more obnoxious and their footsteps more clumsy.  As day turned to night, we started talking about music.  I don’t remember what we said, but it ended in Phil saying, “Yeah, we could make our own songs!”  And that’s how they started singing songs about some girl I don’t know, and hitting sticks against fences to produce the music.  I think they called the song “Kristen is a Garbage Bag.”

“That’s kind of a mean thing to say,” I said.

Brett came up with the name and it was he who responded, “It’s not my fault she looked like a garbage bag when I saw her.”

There was something about this senseless noise that I found relaxing though.  I wasn’t worried about getting caught anymore; it was just like drinking in a bar, but this time we brought the bar onto the railroad tracks with us.  We made the suburbs a beer garden.  But this beer tasted like steel and blood, and the bartender was an unsuspecting convenience store clerk. 

One Down

So they’d finished one whole forty each, and I got to taste some of it.  I mean that literally and figuratively.  I couldn’t keep up with their drunken ranting, Brett especially.  He’d long ago decided that he wasn’t going to talk anymore.  Instead everything that escaped from his lips was yelled. 

As luck would have it, the tracks came upon another store.  This one had some sixteen-year-old kids standing out front, and this is where I mention that I’m not happy with what happened next and you might not be either.  But it was all part of the experience, man, just go with it.  The conversation went from, “Hey let’s get more forties,” to Phil walking right up to those kids and saying, “You guys want cigarettes and beer?”

We were all shocked, the kids included (maybe even Phil), but of course they said yes.  I shot a look at Jeff and he just shrugged his shoulders.  “It’s part of the experience, Adam,” he said, as if that made this legal.  And it was part of the experience.  It’s the part that should be left on the cutting room floor.  It’s the part that you may think, they wouldn’t have done that.  They’re all responsible adults.  But it happened, man.  Just go with it.

The kids were in high school, but I don’t remember which one.  The three of them, Dan, Tim, and Ryan drank forties of Corona, but we were cooler than them, so we continued with our Steel Reserves.  And they did think we were the coolest cats on the planet.  Tim is the only one of them I really remember, and he said, “If you guys need a place to crash tonight, you can stay with me and my sisters.”  I think we might’ve thought that could work, that hey, maybe his sisters are hot, but then again, maybe he would kill us in our sleep too.

These kids, they joined in the loud singing and after that we told them how the music their generation listens to is unfocused and will never be as good as our music.  They argued back, and then broke into a fake wrestling match on the Metra tracks.  While that went on, I stood to the side with Jeff.

“I don’t like this,” I said.  “Drinking on the tracks is one thing, but buying liquor for kids is a little different.”

“Adam,” he said, his voice sounding frustrated instead of reassuring.  “You won’t even get in trouble if the cops come.  There’s no proof that we bought them alcohol, and if there was, Phil would be the one to go down for it.  And look at him, he’s not worried.”

No he wasn’t.  He was too busy fighting drunk sixteen-year-olds to be worried, but what Jeff didn’t understand was my moral objections.  Sure, it was all part of the experience.  You can’t have an experience if there are no emotions involved, but it’s completely different when you feel outnumbered by your own friends. 

One and a Half

It was around 1 AM now, and the kids were still with us.  It took until late July, but The Summer of No Fear was finally upon us.  We didn’t care what we did.

We saw in the distance a small four car parking garage attached to an apartment complex, and Jeff thought it would be fun to revisit our youth.  Back in our own high school days, climbing to the top of a parking garage at night was exhilarating, so why wouldn’t it be now five years later.  Plus most of us were drunk, so that always makes things more fun, right? 

It was only one story tall and we had to climb on boxes and dumpsters to get to the top. Before we all had our feet on the roof, Phil threw his forty off into the driveway below.  It shattered magnificently sending shards of glass and the remainder of his beer in all directions, and sent us laughing at the randomness of his act.  Jeff came up to me and said, “See Phil?  He makes mini experiences out of bigger ones.” 

I don’t know if Jeff was going to say anything else to me, but Tim came up to him and pointed at someone’s backyard.  “Those chairs look like they belong in that pool,” he said.  Before the smile even spread across his entire face, Jeff and Tim were off.

I watched them from the top of the garage.  Tim hopped the fence into the backyard, followed by Jeff.  From my bird’s eye view, I saw them both, and I think I saw Jeff hesitate for the first time that night.  When Tim flung a chair into the pool, Jeff picked another one and just stood with it for a moment.  He threw it in, he had to, cause after all, we’re much cooler than any high school kids, but after that he hopped the fence again and left Tim.  I never told Jeff that I saw him hesitate, that maybe he might think the experience was getting out of hand too.  If he started having doubts, then who knew what I would start thinking.

Before Jeff and Tim came back to us, I started to smell smoke and I didn’t see Brett anywhere.  I asked Phil, but he only shrugged, so I started looking around for smoke and was afraid of what I might find.  I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised; when you smell smoke, there’s usually a fire.  In the alley behind the garage sat a garbage can with flames shooting out of it turning the night orange.  At the same time, Jeff and Tim were climbing back onto the roof, Brett right behind them, and when Brett climbed up all he said was, “Hey guys, I started a fire.” 

We all stood on the edge of the roof looking at Brett’s work of art.  “You should put that out,” Phil said.  But no one did anything.

            Two Down and None to Go

            They threw their forties down into the parking lot next to Phil’s.  A symphony of breaking glass joined the crackling of the fire, and the parking lot below became a graveyard of shattered bottles of beer.

            We talked on the garage for a while, not about anything important, and while we talked, the teenagers left.  We’d never see them again, but we knew that they would tell their friends how they met the coolest college kids ever and had a blast with them. 

            “We have to get back to the tracks, guys,” Jeff said.  “This night is supposed to be about the tracks.”

            The experience definitely left an impression on me by that point.  The most I was used to was trespassing, and usually just at a cemetery at night.  Now I was able to add public intoxication (I exaggerate, I was barely even drinking), vandalism, supplying alcohol to a minor, and disturbing the peace to that list.  All in one night, no less.  And it was awesome.  The constant fear of getting caught was exhilarating, and I knew that it would be a story to tell.  And in the end, life is just a series of stories that you tell.

            Now we walked down the tracks, douche bags without forties, and we were just drunk.  I mean sputtering, stupid, and belligerent drunk.  Brett and Phil tripped over each other and mumbled things when they tried to speak.  Jeff was only buzzed, and that’s because he drank much less than he let on.  The forty that he threw off the parking garage had more beer in it than glass, and that was probably for the best.  It made me feel like I was on the same page as someone.  For as much talk as Jeff gave me about going with the experience, I knew that he had reservations too, that he knew when enough was enough and maybe he just didn’t care.  That’s what I was searching for too, I just wanted not to care.  So what if we’re arrested and spend a night in jail?  So what if we’re fined a few hundred dollars?  So what?  Life is about the experiences you have, about the stories you tell, and I wanted to stop being afraid of just going with it.

            “How’re you doing, man?” I asked Jeff as we made our way down the tracks.

            “Great,” he said.  His faux enthusiasm helped me realize that we were now worried about the same thing.  We weren’t stopping until Brett and Phil passed out.  How the hell were we gonna get them back to the car?  Disregarding that thought, he said, “So how do you feel about tonight?”

            How did I feel?  I felt like we did a lot of stupid shit that we should’ve gotten caught for.  I felt relieved that we didn’t, and I figured that’s because the cops had something better to do like take down murderers and drug dealers.  But I also felt like the night was worth the fear.  That being caught would’ve just added to the experience.  It felt good to feel that.  “I’m glad I came along,” I said. 

            Since I view life as a series of stories, I feel like the only point of life is to find those stories.  The railroad tracks that night helped me find a story, a story that isn’t finished quite yet, but this is the reflection part.  The part right before the climax that involves vomit and cops and the culmination of fear and anxiety.  I think what happened next both proves and disproves every feeling I had about going into that trek.  What happened next made that night epic on a small scale.

            We stumbled off the tracks.  But to be clear, I should say only Brett and Phil stumbled.  Jeff and I walked behind them down a residential street.  The street lights shone down adding a ghostly glow to their already pale white faces.  I knew it was coming soon and wasn’t surprised at all when Brett clung to a “For Sale By Owner” sign and chucked all over some stranger’s lawn.  Maybe seeing this accelerated the process in Phil, but he knelt down on the ground on the other side of the “For Sale” sign and let loose as well.  They both sat now on all fours on either side of this sign mumbling nonsense between epic bouts of vomiting.

“They’re not making it back to the car,” I said.

“I know, I’m gonna call for a ride.”

It was past 3 in the morning, but Jeff had no problems waking our friend Craig up and asking for a favor.  Jeff had to explain the situation, but Craig agreed to come pick us up.

Moans came from the “For Sale” sign and I looked over and saw the two of them still dry heaving.  Luckily none of the noise attracted the attention of the home owner, but the sight caught the interest of a passing cop.

            The police car pulled over next to us and the officer shined his light in Phil and Brett’s direction.  Then, looking at Jeff and me, he said, “Are those guys gonna be okay?”

            Jeff answered him, “Yeah, we just came from Jack Desmond’s and they had a little too much to drink.”

            “I didn’t ask where you came from,” he said, his light on us now, “I asked if they’re gonna be okay.”

            “Yeah, they’ll be fine.  I just called for a ride.”

            “Alright,” the cop said and he drove off.

            We were both holding our breath as the cop drove away.  I think as soon as the squad car pulled up, Jeff and I both thought that we’d be spending at least the rest of the night in jail.  The fear I had of getting caught had become reality, but we were set free.  I didn’t really know what to think of it then, and to be honest I still don’t.

            When he was out of sight, Jeff and I sat on the curb and waited for our ride.  After a few minutes, Brett and Phil settled down and fell asleep in the lawn, and when Craig finally arrived, they needed to be carried into his car.  By the time everyone was driven home, it was a quarter past 4 in the morning and I couldn’t wait to lie in bed and sleep until 4 in the evening.

            So in the end I went with it, if only a little bit.  Maybe next time, I’d be the one throwing up in a stranger’s yard, but for now this was good enough for me.  I didn’t regret what we did that night; in fact, I wished there were more nights like that.  That there were more stories to tell.   

            And in the spirit of conclusiveness, it should be known that Brett and Phil had a 40 hour hangover.  I don’t think they’d approve of this narrative if I didn’t make that clear.

             

There's a few stories behind this piece. I wrote this story for a narrative class that I took at Illinois State University. This story is based on true events that I was not a part of, but the assignment tasked me with writing a nonfiction story involving me, so I took Steve out of it, put myself in, and gave myself a fictional existential crisis while being surrounded by events that did actually take place. Make sense? Take me out of it and it becomes true, and here's the true story: On a Summer night in 2008, Jeff (who was visiting from California), Phil, Brett, and Steve had a foolish drunken adventure in the streets and back alleys of Oak Lawn. Something here or there may be fabricated. Believe what you want to believe. The important thing is that they drank forties of Steel Reserve, and really, no one should do that. Ever.

Insert Name Here (Written sometime in the Summer of 2006)

He said he’d do it.  Kill himself, that is.  When he said it, no one believed him and he

didn’t expect them to either, it was just so goddamn outrageous.  Why would he even want to do something like that?  That question probably passed through everyone’s head at some point after he declared that his life was over.  What bugs me the most is how did he get those two retards to help him?  No, for real, they were retarded—no one else would have helped him do it.

I keep saying “he” and “him”, but the guy I’m talking about, his name is Rod.  Rodney Blake.  His friends called him Rod, but since he no longer has any friends, I’ll just call him Rodney Blake.

Rodney Blake was twenty-five and he was balding.  Some people joke that that’s why he did it, killed himself.  He was kind of tall.  Well, average really.  And he had a small beer gut, but a lot of women found it cute or whatever.  He didn’t care either way, he was always chasing tail and telling me about a new girl’s number that he got, or some chick that he was friends with on Facebook, or how he was gonna meet up with some girl that he’d been e-mailing.  Rodney Blake considered himself some kind of “player”, but really, he’s just dead. 

I say “it” and “killed himself” but really I mean suicide.  It’s a nice word; it rolls right off the tongue.  Just say it, “su-i-cide.”  It’s calming really.  The next time you want to hurt someone, instead of closing your eyes and counting to ten, you should really just close your eyes and say “suicide” five or six times.

He talked about it, suicide, only one time that I can think of.  We were partying and he said to me he says, “Hey man.  I’m gonna do it.”

I asked him, “What do you mean ‘do it’?”

And he says, “I’m gonna kill myself.”  And he starts laughing like someone just busted the funniest joke he ever heard.  We all thought he was joking too, but a few days later he was dead, and we all stopped laughing.  And Rodney Blake, he stopped breathing.

He was found on a building; it was a bar.  I don’t remember what it was called, some hole in the wall that had kicked him out one night.  That’s what started this whole thing I think.  We were at this hole in the wall one time and they let us in without checking our IDs.  Rodney Blake, though, he was only drinking pop cause he was voted designated driver that night.  We liked to call ourselves responsible, but really, it’s our fault that Rodney Blake killed himself.  We should’ve seen it coming.

The bartender got curious as to why Rodney Blake was drinking pop while everyone else was getting hammered.  He accused Rodney Blake of being underage and the two started arguing.  The hole in the wall probably belonged to the bartender, so he was just protecting his assets.  I don’t blame him for Rodney Blake’s suicide.

“Get the hell outta here, ya damn kid,” said the bartender as he leaned across the table and stared Rodney Blake in the eyes.

“No way, man, I’m not botherin’ anyone,” Rodney Blake said.

“You’re botherin’ me.  Now get out!”

“Oh yeah, man?  How’s this: I’m gonna get trashed on your place and I’m gonna die and make it look like your fault!”  Anyone else would mistake this for a drunken stupor.  But we, his friends, his former friends, his non-friends, we knew better.  If he were drunk, he would’ve clocked this guy by now.

We exploded into laughter.  “Oh Rod,” we said.  “You’re a damned genius.”  And we laughed.

He turned to us, laughing with us, and said, “You guys gonna help me?”  He asked, “Gonna help me show this old guy?”

“Oh man, Rod,” we said.  “We’ll help you overthrow the country.”

A few days later and Rodney Blake is dead.

The day after that and his non-friends are cursing themselves.  I’m cursing myself. 

Rodney Blake said it too, he said, “I’m gonna do it.” And when I found out what, I kept joking with him.  Then I made a comment about his bald head, and he looked at me for a second.  I thought I saw his eyes flash, but then he smiled and rubbed his head.  “Yeah man,” he said.  “It’s falling right the hell out, ain’t it?”  He said, “There’s a pile of it on my pillow every morning.”  He wasn’t laughing.

That was the day he finally did it.

It was a Sunday, I think.  I found out about Rodney Blake after I got out of church.  His mom called me.  “He’s dead,” she said.  There was no feeling in her voice.  But she would weep later.  Right now, she had a reason for people to lavish attention on her.  Mrs. Blake isn’t a bad person. But to tell you the truth, I fucking hate her.

His funeral didn’t last very long, and there wasn’t a very nice service.  I was a pall bearer.  At the very least, I got to try something new.

Some guy wearing a suit came up to say a few words about Rodney Blake when no one else would.  They were all cookie cutter descriptions that you could say about anyone and make it sound true.  “Rodney Blake was a kind and giving soul who is survived by a loving mother and friends that will always hold his memory in their hearts.”

Later on while people were paying their respects, I snuck into an office in the funeral home.  There was a drawer in there that was like a filing cabinet.  Inside of it was a stack of cards that read similar things as the eulogy that Rodney Blake received.  Except at the start of each of them it read “insert name here.”

I wish now that I would have said a few words about Rodney Blake.  I even know what I would say; I have it memorized by heart.  I would say: Rodney Blake was kind of a dick.  He would call me all the time to tell me about some girl that slept with him, or how he banged this other broad. He was drunk a lot, but at least he had the decency to stay sober for the rest of us every now and then, even if that fact is what led to his suicide.  Rodney Blake liked to make fun of amputees and retarded people.  It’s kind of ironic that he got two retarded people to help him kill himself.  On the weekends, he would go downtown and make some extra money by acting like he was a bum.  He watched a lot of pornos, and sometimes he would call me while he was watching them, and I would be able to hear him making weird noises over the phone.  He thought it was funny. One time he even called me while he was sleeping with some chick.  That’s fine, I guess.  Lots of people find crazy stuff like that funny.  That’s who Rodney Blake was.  And I liked him for who he was.

That’s what I would have said, anyway.  But instead, some stranger said a bunch of facts about Insert Name Here.

Rodney Blake paid two retarded guys to set up a ladder for him on the outside of that hole in the wall.  He climbed up with them onto the roof and he started drinking hard liquor.  I’m talking grain alcohol.  He probably pounded a half gallon of it as fast as he could.  He threw up too, cause it’s all over the roof still, but he kept going.  When he passed out, the retarded guys woke him back up and dumped the vodka back into his mouth.

It was alcohol poisoning.  He was good and dead soon after that, and the retarded guys took the money that each of them earned and made off with the booze and the ladder.  But they left one half gallon up on the roof with Rodney Blake.  In the night, it fell off the roof and shattered in the parking lot.

Rodney Blake committed suicide four days after he thought about it and two days after he said he would.  And we joked about it. 

The two retarded guys are in jail, I think.  They’ll probably get out soon on some technicality, but that’s just fine.  The owner of the hole in the wall was questioned, and I think Mrs. Blake is trying to sue him, but she’ll lose cause they found the receipt for all the liquor under Rodney Blake’s bed. 

In the end, Rodney Blake will win against the owner of the hole in the wall.  No one will go back there now that someone’s died on the roof. 

There’s still puke up there next to where Rodney Blake died.  There’s also a small memorial there for him.  Some people think that the owner of the hole in the wall is at fault.  Really though, it was just Rodney Blake’s idea of a joke.  It’s too bad there was nothing funny about the buildup or the punch-line. 

And my thoughts: This was my first attempt at satire. At least I think it's satire. When people have asked me, "Hey Adam, what are you satirizing here?" I usually say that I'm satirizing alcoholism and/or suicide. It's however you want to take it I guess. This was a story that came to me one night and I was able to write it all out in a few hours. My hope is that the reader will feel like the narrator is talking to him or her perhaps at a bar, so there is a very conversational tone to the story. This is the fifth (and I suppose final) draft. Originally there was much more explicit language but I dialed down the f-bombs so that the one that I left in would be more potent. I've thought about taking the term "retarded" out of the story, but decided against it cause that would take away from the narrator's character. I don't feel it's gratuitous use of the word, offensive as it may be. This is also the first and only story that I've ever submitted to a contest and it won second place, so that's pretty cool I guess.  

The Last Thing You Ever See (Prologue and Chapter 1)

Ice Age, heatwave, can't complain. 

If the world's at large why should I remain?

--Modest Mouse, "The World At Large"

Prologue

At Home

April 12, 2007

It didn’t all start with this list, but that’s probably the most significant thing we did during that first week. I started the list after we lay down on the grassy hill at the park. I didn’t tell her what the list was for; I simply said, “The last Harry Potter book.”

“What?” Chloe said.

“All that new music that I’ve been waiting for. A new cell phone.”

She caught on to what I was doing, so she started adding to the list. “Me getting my car fixed. Moving out. Getting better than you at Xbox.”

“Ha, you were never gonna get better than me anyway.” She pushed my shoulder then laid her head against it. We continued listing things that would never happen. We looked at the sky as we did it.

For the week after the news broke, I spent most of my time staring at the sky. Probably a waste of time, sure, but the sky usually wasn’t something that appeared threatening. Even now, it still didn’t.

It was blue. Bright blue, with a tinge of orange just off in the horizon right where the ground meets the sky. Thin clouds hovered as if held by strings, so thin that they appeared more as mist that spread across the sky from an unknown source. It was hard to believe that in less than two years, a meteor would tear through that beautiful sky. And of course, more frustrating than that was death.

We came to this park often. It was just down the street from my house, making it easy to escape to if we ever needed it. I glanced to the left, blades of grass tickling the inside of my ear, at the old swing set next to me, rusted out, a husk of the swing that I used to push my little brother on. Chloe, her head still on my shoulder, had fallen asleep while I stared at the sky. At what was to come. Perhaps it was the first time that I thought so much about the future, that I decided to list it all out, but I guess it’s human nature to yearn for things that you can’t have. A future. A future with Chloe. That was one thing I couldn’t bring myself to put on the list. I stroked her hair as she slept.

A siren went off in the distance, and Chloe stirred as she woke up. “What’s happening?”

I continued looking up at the sky, my mind still wandering, and I said, “Don’t know.”

She lay her head back down on my chest, her brown hair brushing my neck, but I didn’t move. And I didn’t care about the siren.

“It’s only been a week, and everything’s already so . . .” she trailed off.

“Yeah.”

My attention was always at the sky. I thought if I looked hard enough that I might see the planet-killing rock off there in the distance. It was past the misty clouds and through the blue with the orange tinge. Because it didn’t seem real yet. It wouldn’t be real until I could see the thing.

A squad car raced past us on the street at the foot of the hill. Red and blue flashing lights danced on Chloe’s face, and my eyes followed the car down the street toward whatever new disaster was taking place. Whether it was a robbery or a fight, maybe even a murder, it didn’t faze me. Because none of this was real yet.

“What time do you wanna go home?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “My brother’s gone again, and Mom doesn’t care.”

“I bet she worries about you more than you think.”

“Well, she shouldn’t.”

I sat up, and so did she. She looked down the hill and brushed her bangs to the side, but they fell back into her face. I slid them behind her ears with both hands and then kissed her. “C’mon,” I said. “I’ll walk you home.”

“What if Collin’s there?” she asked.

“Then he’s there,” I said. I stood up and then held out my hand. She took it, and I pulled her up next to me, and we walked down the hill toward her house.

Other than the sirens, the streets were quiet. Most people opted to stay indoors instead of venturing outside, almost as if the sun itself was a threat. We walked down a suburban street, hand in hand, past the driveways that were packed with cars and past the families huddled inside their homes, hoping that what we’d all heard was some kind of cruel joke. Chloe scooted closer to me, and I let go of her hand and put my arm around her shoulder.

“Are you going to Landon again tomorrow?” Chloe asked.

“Yeah,” I said. Landon Community. The college where futures begin. I had no reason to believe that classes would be back in session. The website had said the school closing was only temporary, but if things tend to turn from bad to worse, then perhaps temporary turned to permanent.

The sun was almost out of the sky now, and that meant things could get more dangerous outside. I walked Chloe to her front door and took both of her hands and said, “If you need anything, just call me.”

She looked at me with those brown eyes of hers, and she smiled. “’K,” she said. She rose up on her toes and kissed my lips before she turned and ran inside.

Chapter 1

At Home

April 5, 2007

I was in a math class just before I found out the world was gonna end. In the middle of taking a test, a man burst into the room and, grabbing the professor by the elbow, took him to the side and whispered something in his ear. “You can’t be serious,” I heard the professor say. The man that came in only nodded and then turned to leave.

Professor Green sat at the desk and put his head in his hands. Even from the back of the room, I could hear him breathing heavily. A few minutes went by, and he stood up and paced back and forth in front of the whiteboard until his cell phone rang, and he left the room to take the call.

Everyone in the class felt something was wrong, yet nobody attempted to cheat as we all looked around and exchanged glances. Some of the less patient students up and left when the professor didn’t come back right away, leaving their papers piled haphazardly on his desk.

Twenty minutes passed, and Professor Green was still gone. As far as I know, he remained absent; I just finished my test, put it on his desk with the rest, and left the building. I never saw him again.

My car was parked all the way across the campus, and on my ten-minute walk to it, I saw a group of people accusing another student saying something about terrorism. One of the group members pushed the lone student. I recognized the aggressor from my math class. He was usually quiet, stuck to the back of the classroom, and didn’t participate. I ran up to the group and stood between them and the single student. “What’s your problem? Go home,” I said. I wasn’t sure where this bravado was coming from.

The aggressor had to look down at me. Our eyes met, and he said, “Why don’t you tell him to go home, and take his bombs with him?” Bombs? Really? Sure, the terror alert was red, I think, but I never imagined it would cause anyone to act as rashly as this guy was right now. He grabbed me by the collar and pulled me close to him. That’s when campus security showed up and escorted all of us to the security office.

I sat in isolation on an uncomfortable bench in the lobby of the security office for over an hour. A single woman sat at the front desk keeping an eye on me, but every few minutes she would part the blinds with her fingers to take a look outside.

The student who was accosted finally came out of a door in the back of the lobby and said, “They want to talk to you now.” He was almost out of the building before he added, “Thank you.”

I went into what I imagined to be a kind of interrogation room. There was a water cooler in the corner and a long rectangular table in the center with papers littered across it. A man in a light-blue security uniform sifted through a stack of papers. I took a few steps into the room, but the man looked up from the papers. I stopped in my tracks as I reached for a chair. “Don’t sit down,” he said. “I just need your name and student ID number.”

“Cameron Worth,” I said as I fumbled through my wallet for my student ID. I’d been going to school there for three years, and I was never able to remember my ID number. I read off the seven-digit number.

“Amir said you helped him out, and that’s what I saw when we stopped the fight. That’s good enough for me. Normally there’d be paperwork that you and I would have to fill out together, but given the circumstances, we’ll forget about all of that red tape.”

He looked back down at the papers in front of him. I stood for what felt like hours but couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds. “I can go?”

“Try to stay safe, Mr. Worth.”

Too shocked to ask him what these “circumstances” were, I turned around and left the security building.

Campus security was busy that day. As I jogged to my car, I saw them break up another argument, but there were several ongoing, and in the distance I heard the sound of metal smashing against metal and tires screeching against the street. Everyone looked across campus to the street that ran by the school. Two cars smashed together, and a plume of smoke and fire bloomed into the air. The two security officers left the group that was arguing and ran to the accident site. That parking lot exit was a magnet for car accidents. In my three years there, I’d seen at least one a year, but never this bad.

People began crowding the accident, but those who didn’t shifted their gazes to the sky. Hands shaded eyes as if they were looking for some astrological answer to what had been going on. Still I joined them, if only for a minute, but looking in the sky yielded nothing except the clear beauty of it all: the clouds rolling across the brisk blue atmosphere. But it looked like in the distance there were pillars of black smoke. More accidents like the one that happened just outside of school. What was going on?

The parking lot had been vacated. Whatever Professor Green was told, whatever these “circumstances” were, must have shocked a lot of people, and I wondered if whether or not there really was some kind of terrorist threat. The idea that those students could have been looking into the sky for missiles crossed my mind, but if such an imminent disaster were to be taking place, they wouldn’t have been so calm.

I took to the road slowly even though it was a warm spring day. Traffic accidents seemed more common than usual. Most were minor fender benders, but there were some bigger wrecks. Ambulances and squad cars raced past me down the street, their lights blaring, and they stopped at an intersection. An officer began directing traffic, and as I drove by, I saw a body covered under a white sheet, and a woman was being wheeled into an ambulance on a stretcher. I wondered if things like this were happening all over, or if I just happened to be in a particularly unlucky area.

Only a few miles down the road I ran into yet another accident. A semi had jackknifed, and three cars collided with the trailer. Smoke hung like a veil in the air over the scene of the accident.

It would have been as easy as turning around and finding another route, but I recognized one of the cars in the pileup. I pulled to the side and ran to the car. Though there was no one inside, I did notice a streak of blood on the steering wheel and the dashboard.

There were no police or medical presence, but it didn’t seem like anyone else involved was hurt. They were just wandering the accident site confused, and one man was screaming at the truck driver. A car horn sounded off, adding to the confusion and causing a middle-aged woman to hunker down in the middle of the street with her hands over her ears and tears in her eyes. But I didn’t see Megan anywhere. I called 911 on my phone and got a busy signal like I expected, then I called Chloe. Megan was her best friend, and I couldn’t think of anyone better to call.

“Cam, did you hear?” she said, her voice shaky.

“No, hold on,” I said, interrupting her. As I spoke, I looked around and tried to take in everything at once. The plumes of smoke that hung in the sky. The traffic accidents that plagued the streets. Chloe was going to tell me something important, but before she could, I said, “I think Megan was in an accident. I saw her car smashed by a semi on the way home from school.”

There was a pause, as if she was weighing the importance of what she had to say against her friend’s life, but then she asked where I was.

“Ridgeland and Eighty-Seventh Street.” This intersection was notorious for accidents as well. It was actually a five-way intersection that people around town nicknamed the Black Hole. Today, its name was proving accurate.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

After returning my phone to my pocket, I walked around the accident site again, calling out for Megan. I even traveled a few yards down the road, but I wanted to be there when Chloe showed up.

When I decided that Megan wasn’t going to answer, I turned my attention toward the woman who was sitting on the ground. She had begun screaming a few minutes earlier, and I tried to calm her down. I knelt down next to her and put my hands on her shoulders and said, “Ma’am, you need to calm down. You’re fine.” She looked at me and fell backward out of my reach. A few more minutes went by, and Chloe showed up in her brother’s car. She got out and threw herself into my arms.

“Collin let you use his car?” I asked.

“Yeah right. No, he’s just not home right now,” she said. “If he knew I took it, he’d kill me.”

I shook my head. Collin was a problem, but right now I was more worried about finding Megan. “I looked around, but I didn’t want to leave until you got here. I don’t think anyone’s seen her.”

Chloe grabbed my hand and led me to the sidewalk, where we both began to walk and call Megan’s name. A few minutes went by without any luck, so I looked at Chloe and said, “Maybe you should call her parents and let them know.”

“I did just before I got here,” she said. “They’re probably on their way.”

We’d been walking down this street for ten minutes, and I was just about convinced that Megan had wandered in the opposite direction, but then I saw her sitting on a bus-stop bench in the distance.

“Should we go back the other way?” Chloe asked me.

I put my arm around her shoulder and steered her gaze toward Megan. “Oh, thank God,” she said. She ran over to Megan and called her name.

Megan stood from the bench; she smiled as she saw us coming. Then she fell forward, arms at her side, not bracing for the impact with the concrete.

I turned her over onto her back, her arms sprawled like she was trying to make a snow angel, and she stared wide-eyed into the smoke-filled sky. Blood flowed from a gash in her forehead and formed a small puddle on the ground. As Chloe dove to Megan’s side yelling her name and teetering on the edge of tears, I was sure she was dead.

Chloe cradled Megan’s head gently in her arms. “You gotta wake up,” she said. “Come on, don’t do this! She was just standing a second ago, what happened?”

I knelt down next to Chloe and touched two of my fingers to Megan’s neck in search of a pulse. I finally breathed a sigh of relief as I found it thumping steadily.

Chloe was on the verge of tears, but she remained strong and held them back. I felt adrenaline rushing through me as I put my hand on Chloe’s shoulder and said, “She’s alive.”

She let go a long sigh of relief.

No ambulance was coming though, I was sure of that. After a minute I let go of Chloe and asked, “Can you stay here with her while I run back for my car?”

“Yeah. I’ll call her parents and tell them to meet us at the hospital.”

“Okay, I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I said as I began to run back.

There was still no one in authority at the accident site. The hysterical woman remained unconscious in the street, and the man that had been yelling at the truck driver was now nursing a broken nose with a blood-drenched handkerchief.

My chest burned from the run as I entered my car and drove over the sidewalk and through a gas station parking lot so I could get back to Megan as quickly as possible.

Chloe stood up as I returned. Leaving the car running, I got out and picked Megan up. “Open the back door for me,” I said to Chloe. I eased Megan into the backseat and sat in next to her with my arm around her shoulder. Her head fell limply to the side. Chloe sat behind the wheel and drove to the nearest hospital.

There were very few cars on the streets and no more accidents that we could see. Smoke floated in the air in almost all directions, and the sky was no longer a peaceful blue color. A soft rain began to fall as we pulled into the overcrowded emergency room parking lot. Cars pressed against each other; horns blared over other horns. We left the car in that mess and carried Megan into the building.

Chloe and I sighed in relief as we saw that the hospital was up and running even though outside’s chaos was slowly making its way in. Streaks of blood were smeared on the floor and walls. A man sat in the corner with blood running down his neck. There were so many people sitting unattended. I was worried that the hospital was too busy to take care of Megan, but I told the receptionist her name, and then Chloe and I sat down in the waiting room with Megan still unconscious in between us.

            Twenty minutes went by, and Megan was still bleeding next to us, so I went back to the lady at the reception desk. “When is someone gonna take a look at her? She’s bleeding out, for Christ’s sake!”

“Sir,” the receptionist said as she glared at me, “all of these people need a doctor right now, not just your friend.” I looked around the room and noticed that I was one of the few people who wasn’t bleeding or tending to a broken bone. Without saying anything else, I sat next to Chloe and took her hand.

“They’re busy right now, babe,” I said. “I don’t know when they’ll be ready for her.” I rubbed my free hand through my hair as she rested her head on my shoulder.

A few minutes later, I said, “What was it you wanted to tell me on the phone?”

After a moment of silence, Chloe said, “I don’t think you’ll want to hear about it right now.”

“Tell me anyway.”

She squeezed my hand and gestured with her head to a TV that sat mounted on a wall. I couldn’t hear the anchorwoman through the chaos of the hospital, but the news ticker on the bottom of the screen read, “Meteor to collide with Earth in less than five hundred days. Authorities rush to stifle rising panic.” 

My mouth hung open in surprise, and I looked at Chloe, then at everyone in the room. They still moved about in disarray, but it was as though the noise was muted, like someone was holding his hands over my ears. Everything that was happening suddenly made more sense now that it was given context.

My gaze found its way back to Megan, and at first she looked peaceful, but then her body started to shake. She was having a seizure. I laid her on the ground unsure of what to do when I noticed a trickle of blood on the corner of her mouth. I felt a pain in my stomach that moment, one that I never felt before, and I thought I might throw up. In a few seconds, the pain passed, and I had Megan turned on her side so she wouldn’t choke on the blood, but I didn’t know what else to do. She was still shaking.

“What’s wrong?” Chloe asked.

“I don’t know, I don’t—she’s seizing, bleeding from her mouth. Get someone!”

“Oh god,” Chloe said as ran for a nurse.

I kept my attention on Megan. “Megan, don’t do this,” I said to her. She stopped shaking, so I felt her pulse, which was very light, and placed my hand under her nose to see if she was breathing. She wasn’t.

Sliding my arm under her legs and placing my other arm around her back, I lifted her off the floor and brought her to the nurse behind the counter. Chloe was already there, and when I came up, she started rubbing Megan’s cheek.

“She’s dying. I think she’s bleeding internally!” I said.

“I’ll see if anyone’s available,” the nurse said.

She picked up a phone, and over the intercom I heard her ask for more doctors to the ER.

I’m not sure when exactly Megan died, but it was sometime while I was holding her in my arms. I think I knew it when it happened too; she was suddenly cold and, in a way, lighter than before.

Yeah, she was definitely lighter.

Zenoplex (Written sometime in October 2011)

If you looked up into the sky on the night of April 5^th, 2012, you wouldn’t see anything. Well, you would see something. Depending on how close you were to a city, whose bright lights absorb the light from the stars, you might see endless black. To think that that blackness is empty, though, would be to think like a fool. In that blackness are machinations that the human mind has a pretty tough time grasping. Swirling vortexes of gas, stars and suns dying and being reborn, maybe even other planets that could sustain intelligent life. Though “intelligent” relative to the life on Earth could mean anything.

                If you lived away from the city lights, somewhere out in the country, maybe Kansas or one of those other flat states, or maybe in the countryside of England or Ireland, or maybe somewhere in Asia or Australia, or probably definitely Antarctica, you may look up at the night sky and see those stars. Their light is free where there is no light of our own. And probably you would not see that much else. Because dodging to and fro in that illuminated sky on the night of April 5^th, 2012 is a small alien about the size of the average adult male’s foot.

                He inhabits one of those planets other than Earth that can sustain intelligent life, and much like the humans on Earth, his people have spent time scouring the universe for life other than their own. Here this alien, whose name is largely unpronounceable by human vocal cords, sits above Earth’s atmosphere looking down. And if you were looking back up, chances are you wouldn’t have seen him, because his spaceship was only about the size of an average adult male’s torso.

                This alien’s spaceship was designed for just one member of his species at a time. His species name is largely unpronounceable by human vocal cords as well. There will come a point in this story where the alien will tell his name and his species’ name to the humans, but they must reform the sounds they hear by emulating the names with their own vocal cords. After this confusing process, the alien will become known as Zenoplex and his species known as Korkashourt. 

                During the flight from his planet, Zenoplex spent a cumulative total of three years asleep in his bedchamber and five years at the controls of his ship. You see, Korkashourt didn’t require as much sleep as humans did. And a year on the Korkashourts’ home planet was just as long as a year on Earth, because the two planets were the same distance from their suns. Zenoplex’s planet had a name, but he never told anyone on Earth, and as such, it will remain unnamed in this story.

                Zenoplex once had the Earth equivalent of a wife, but he was now the Earth equivalent of a widower, and she was the Earth equivalent of a rotting cadaver. And so when the mission to find “intelligent” life was announced, Zenoplex volunteered right away. He wanted to escape his planet and the memories of his now dead wife.

                The first year of Zenoplex’s travel was a sad one. He spent much of his time in the bedchamber of his ship. He left the ship on autopilot as he watched old Korkashourt movies of his wife before she was dead. Korkashourt movies were a lot like human movies except they  broadcast from the Korkashourt’s brain into the air in front of him so he and others could see it. That’s what Zenoplex did for that first year.

                After that he tried landing down on a planet far away from his own. This planet had no name because the creatures that inhabited it were a far cry from what the humans and the Korkashourt might call intelligent. These animals were like furry dinosaurs and they battled for food and territory. They ripped flesh from bone. Poor Zenoplex hid under a blue bush as two of the furry four-legged beasts lashed out at each other with razor-bladed tails just a few feet from where he landed his tiny torso sized ship.

                There may have been intelligent life on this planet. Maybe somewhere on the other side, or perhaps just a bit down the road, but Zenoplex didn’t stay long to find out. As soon as the furry violent creatures were far enough away, Zenoplex retreated into his ship and then his ship retreated into the comfort and confines of space.

                It was another lonesome year before he tried anything as crazy as landing on a planet again. In that time, Zenoplex saw stars explode and he drove his ship past many swirling galaxies. There was a lot of blackness out there in space, but he certainly wouldn’t have said space was empty. Zenoplex wondered if maybe somewhere out there in that vastness, he might find God.

                God exists differently for the Korkashourt than He exists for most humans. Humans have so many different religions that depict God in a different way. Sometimes when two large groups of religious people disagree with each other, they hurt one another so much and so badly until the group being hurt the most finally says, “Yes, you’re right after all,” although this concession rarely happens and both groups usually just keep going on hurting each other.

                For the Korkashourt, God exists as the idea of chance. Just like humans, the Korkashourt have no idea how the universe began. Just like some humans, the Korkashourt surmise that chemicals and particles and things much smaller may have bunched together and exploded outward somehow creating everything that exists. And the Korkashourt believe that this all happened by what humans would call “chance.” As chance would have it, the Korkashourts were created through their own little chemical reactions on their home planet. As chance would have it, Zenoplex was born when his parents’ chemicals and fluids mixed together in just the right way. As chance would have it, Zenoplex grew up and enlisted in the Korkashourtian  military. There, thanks to chance again, he met his wife who, by chance happened to be hit by the Korkashourtian equivalent of a bullet in the Korkashourtian equivalent of her temple. By chance, the bullet didn’t kill her immediately, but left her mental capacities in disrepair.

                The saddest part is that the Korkashourt have never known war. Their military is there, in what an Earth phrase describes perfectly, “just in case.” Zenoplex’s wife was shot when a police officer dropped his gun two towns over. Korkashourtian bullets go much farther than human bullets.

                By chance, Zenoplex’s wife’s head stopped the bullet. No one knew this, but if it weren’t for Zenoplex’s wife’s head stopping the bullet, it would have continued until it hit a young boy and killed him instead. Maybe if Zenoplex knew that, he would have felt the slightest bit of comfort in his wife’s death. But he didn’t know.

                Zenoplex didn’t arrive at Earth on April 5^th, 2012. He had actually been there for a few weeks already, but he knew from past experience that he was better off scouting a planet out first before setting down and fully exploring. The Korkashourt didn’t have a word for this, but on Earth, this strategy was often called doing “reconnaissance.”

                Zenoplex did reconnaissance for over a month by flying around the planet at different times of day. It only took his spaceship a few seconds to circle Earth, and he circled Earth several hundred times a day. Some days he found a city that he liked, like Kyoto, or Edinburgh, or Chicago, and he would stay above that city all day watching the people get in and out of their cars and buildings. He watched from above as they went about their lives, and he inferred many of their laws that governed their societies.

                It took Zenoplex a few days to realize that on Earth, the humans lived in different societies. And it took him a few more days to try and understand why. It didn’t take long for him to gain full understanding; that societies were made up of large groups of humans who had similar interests and who were similarly different than the humans in other societies. Some of these societies got along well with other ones, but some of them liked to fight over things like religion or territory or food or natural resources. Some people liked to kill others just for fun or for their God or for what-have-you. This made Zenoplex a bit frightened, but he determined that most of the humans were harmless for the most part.

                The night of April 5^th, 2012 was the night that Zenoplex came down into Earth’s atmosphere completely undetected by any human surveillance. His ship had the most advance sensors and Korkashourtian stealth technology. It was on this night that if you looked carefully, you might have seen the telltale glint of the stealth technology kicking into full effect. After that split second, the ship would be almost completely invisible. No one was looking up at that particular torso sized section of the sky when Zenoplex engaged the stealth mechanism though.

                Zenoplex made his first contact with a human at a tourist attraction in Chicago known by some people as “the bean.” “The bean” was a metal structure designed by Anish Kapoor that was shaped like a bean and polished to perfection. You could see your reflection in it and it would be distorted a bit and cast back down on you. “The bean” was actually called the Cloud Gate, but not many people used that name because it looked more like a bean than a gate.

                Zenoplex stood on a table near “the bean” and motioned for the man to come nearer. The man’s name was Roger Cronish. He was a lawyer for a law firm based in a large skyscraper in Chicago. There were skyscrapers all over Zenoplex’s home planet, so he was very familiar with them when he got to Earth. They made him think of home. That’s why when he was doing reconnaissance, he spent most of his time over cities with skyscrapers.

                Roger Cronish was in his early thirties which, for a human, was often considered fairly young. At the time, Zenoplex didn’t know that though. Humans aged differently than the Korkashourt did. The older a Korkashourt got, the taller he or she got. The oldest Korkashourt ever recorded in Korkashourtian history was around two and a half feet tall. He had been alive for six thousand years. Most Korkashourtians only lived to be about one and a half feet tall. That’s about one thousand years.

The ten oldest humans who ever lived were all female for whatever reason. The oldest, Jeanne Calment, was one hundred and twenty two years old when she died. Zenoplex looked up this information in his spaceship while he was doing his reconnaissance on Earth. He also looked up the regional language of the humans in Chicago because, for whatever reason, many humans spoke different languages based on what region or society they hailed from. The concept of language was new to Zenoplex as well, but it was a concept that made sense based on the societal structure of Earth. Zenoplex could find little fault with it.

And so it was that Zenoplex spent the final two weeks of his reconnaissance teaching himself to speak English, which was weird to him that English was the native language of this country and one called England. Well, it was weird until he researched it and saw why.

Zenoplex spoke slowly. “I am here for doing discoveries.”

Roger didn’t speak back. He screamed and ran. The scream was unlike any noise that Zenoplex ever heard. The only thing he could liken it to was the cry of the furry creatures he saw that fought each other for territory and food back on the first planet he had ever explored. He was crestfallen. All that time he spent researching the humans and their planet seemed wasted. But he didn’t give up. This time instead of speaking, Zenoplex broadcasted one of his mind movies into Roger Cronish’s mind. This made Roger stop and turn around. As Zenoplex played the history of the Korkashourt, Roger began to understand. His fear waned and he drew closer to Zenoplex until their hands touched.

Roger then turned to dust and blew away in the early morning wind.

There was some strange reaction of chemicals within Zenoplex’s body and Roger Cronish’s body that caused the molecules of Roger’s body to come apart. There was no way that Zenoplex could know this would have happened. He felt horrible, but at least now he knew. Better that this happened to poor Roger Cronish than to a powerful world leader. Zenoplex returned to his spaceship and flew to Washington DC. He knew this is where the leader of this country resided.

A week later, Roger Cronish’s wife and children called the police to report him missing.

Zenoplex played the same movie for the President that he played for Roger Cronish, but this time he knew not to touch any humans. After explaining that he was only there to discover intelligent life, Zenoplex returned to his ship ready to bring the proof back to his home planet. But instead of leaving, he stayed in Earth’s atmosphere and watched as the planet celebrated the contact with another form of life. He watched them declare that day a worldwide holiday. He watched for months and learned more about their laws and what made the human race tick.

Then he wanted to see what would happen if he posed a challenge to the human race. He broadcasted his message to every human in the world that could understand such a message. The message said something along these lines: “For one day, do not murder one another. If you do this, I will tell your planet the secret of immortal life.”

Zenoplex didn’t know the secret of immortal life. In fact, he was more than ninety-nine percent sure that there was no such thing as a secret of immortal life. But he felt that was an adequate prize for such a challenge.

But it was a challenge that the humans could not live up to. There are normally an uncountable number of murders every day on Earth. In the time frame designated for Zenoplex’s challenge, there were nine thousand four hundred and thirty two murders. There were one thousand two hundred and sixty attempted murders.

The concept of murder was not unknown on Zenoplex’s home planet, but it was rare. Since the Korkashourt were very small and their planet fairly large and fertile, they didn’t need to kill each other for food or land. Usually murder happened when a leader was incompetent and couldn’t complete their expected task, and in that case, murder was okay. But even that rarely happened.

Zenoplex decided to alter his challenge. This time he broadcasted his message only to those who drove vehicles. “Obey all vehicle laws,” he told them. “Don’t speed your vehicle over the posted limit. Always stop at the red signs that say ‘stop.’ And so forth.”

There are even more traffic disruptions than murders every day, and in the case of Zenoplex’s challenge, things were no different. There were more than one million traffic laws that were disobeyed. Zenoplex concluded that humans didn’t want to know the secret of immortal life.

Now he flew his ship back down to Washington DC. He wanted to ask the President why no one on Earth would heed his challenges. Didn’t they want to know the secret to immortal life? But when Zenoplex flew near the President’s house, bullets started to hit his spaceship. He was frightened because he wasn’t aware of the strength the bullets possessed. It turns out they didn’t have much strength compared to Zenoplex’s spaceship. He was perfectly safe in there. The spaceship had weapons “just in case,” so Zenoplex activated them and shot the people who were shooting at him. The beam made the people set on fire and melt almost instantly. Unlike bullets against spaceships, heat lasers against humans were quite effective.

Zenoplex wondered why the humans were shooting their weapons at him. He didn’t bother asking though as he flew his torso sized ship into the President’s house and shot the people who tried to shoot him. When he finally found the president, Zenoplex got out of his ship and said, “Why do you now try to hurt me?”

“Zenoplex,” the President said. “You’ve been here for so long and you threaten us all the time with your challenges. We thought you would leave. We want you to leave.” Zenoplex was confused. He pondered what the President had said as he returned to his ship. He understood that the President was an important part of this country’s inner machinations, so he apologized for the confusion and left the President their cowering in his own home.

Zenoplex left Earth and returned to his home planet. While he was at Earth, Zenoplex had killed five people including Roger Cronish. In the time since he had left his home planet, there were no Korkashourtian murders. In the past ten thousand years, there had only been two Korkashourtian murders, and they were both of unjust leaders. The last innocent Korkashourt to be murdered doesn’t exist, because by chance, no innocent Korkashourt had ever been murdered.

Zenoplex thought on this as he began his long journey back home. Perhaps he had murdered five humans on Earth, but think of all those he may have saved with his challenges! Unlike when the bullet had spared the child by killing his wife, Zenoplex could find solace in this.

He elected not to share his findings of Earth. The planet and its humans would live unbothered by the Korkashourt; they would sit in their strange chemicals and reactions and they would murder each other, and some would help others, and some would grow old while others died very young for one reason or another and it was all left up to chance.

I wrote this shortly after reading "Breakfast of Champions" by Kurt Vonnegut. If you've ever read Vonnegut, you could tell that I emulated his style here. I think my goal with this was to write a satire and practice merging a satiric voice with my own. I hit on a lot of themes in this short work and sometimes I think I'm even borderline clever. It's definitely a work in progress, but I think this shows promise. With some revisions, I'll be able to integrate my voice and style into this story more thoroughly, because what I have here is a concept that I love, but the execution could be better. I also think this short story has the potential to grow into a longer one. We'll see where the future takes it. Or maybe we'll leave it up to chance.