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.

A Haze of Monochrome Light (Written sometime in Summer 2006)

Every time I go to or from school, it’s on the train.  Good old, smelly, rotten CTA train rides; four bucks there and back if one chooses not to include parking at the station.  The Orange Line is usually safe.  Most of the time I listen to my iPod or read a book just like everyone else, but some days something happens and I can’t help but take notice. 

This is one of those days.

On my train-ride home from school, someone shouts and across the train, what seems like miles of strangers lined up end to end, a tall man with shaggy brown hair stands.  He wears a tan vest, like something you’d see a fisherman wear to hold his bait and other junk, and underneath that is a black T-shirt.  He looms over a girl who is probably my age and for all I know she is going to the same place as me, and he demands that she give him her money.

No one else looks.  On the train, people tend to mind their own business.  Things happen and people are expected to keep this element of privacy.  I respect that privacy along with all the other passengers as I put my head back down and listen to my music.

It is a snowy night outside of the Orange Line and the street lamps flash by the windows in a haze of monochrome light.  Snow blankets the streets and frost covers the windows.  I am probably the eighty-seventh person that day to sit in this seat.  Advertisements flank me left, right, even above and below, and I am forever surrounded by strangers, yet no one pays any mind to the girl as the vest wearing man accosts her.

The train slows down.  In only a few seconds, it will make one of its many stops on its journey back to Midway.  The guy with the vest jams his hand into the girl’s pocket, nothing sexual as far as I can tell, and he pulls out a wad of cash.  She struggles to retrieve her money, and as she grabs and claws at him, he pushes her head into the window.  She puts her hands on her injured head, and while she does this, the man takes her purse and runs past me to the door. 

In my head, I rise from my seat and stand in front of the man blocking his path like a lineman on a football field.  He stops and looks me in the eyes and then back behind him.  He sees a chance to run away, but when he turns to make his escape, I grab him by the shoulders and pull him to the floor.  He drops the money and the purse as he clambers to his feet, and when he finally gets there he swears in anger.

He swings at me, but I dodge it like I’ve been a fighter since birth.  I punch him once in the jaw and then send my knee into his stomach.  He cringes in pain and stumbles back a bit.  Then he pulls a knife out of his pocket and says, “Get outta my way, kid.”

I keep my cool and shake my head.  “Not until you give that girl her things back.”

Then he lunges at me with the knife, but the train slows down and pitches from side to side, sending the clumsy mugger tumbling into some empty seats.  I kick the knife from his hands and then grab him around his neck and pull him to the doors.  As the signal for the automatic doors sound, I throw the man out of the train and he rolls onto the pavement.  The people who were waiting at the train-stop simply walk around him and enter the train as if nothing happened, and then the doors close and the train pulls away as the mugger lays unconscious in the cold night.

But what really happens is I let the guy run by me.  He gets to the doors and calmly waits as the train comes to a full stop.  The signal for the opening doors sounds and then I stand up and face the man, this time in reality.  The purse hangs from one hand while the other hastily shoves the wad of cash into his pocket. 

“Hey,” I say to him as he starts to walk out the door.

He looks me over and the automatic voice recording on the train says, “Doors closing.” 

The mugger sticks his foot in the door’s path to stop it from closing and he glares at me.  His stone cold eyes seem to lower the temperature of the car, and I swear that I can see my breath.

I look back at the girl.  She is frightened and sobbing into her arm and no one even moves to comfort her.

Then I turn back to the man and return his stone stare and I say, “N-nevermind,” and sit down.  The robber escapes the train without looking back and two new strangers pile in and take their seats.  Neither of them gives the crying girl a second look.

So many unknowns; no matter which way I face, I make awkward eye contact with another John or Jane Doe.  For such an unsocial place, this is the only kind of interaction between people; commonly approved of in an unspoken pact.  Passengers on the Orange Line, or any other L train, know what they’re in for.  And that is why no one looks at the girl.  She has broken that pact by calling out for help.

These events are just another piece added to the whole; it is my part to play in this train’s history, and as the train makes its last stop at Midway, the automatic voice informs all of the passengers that they must disembark.

People grab their belongings: suitcases, laptops, backpacks; a man wheels his bike out to the platform, but I sit on the train and look back at the girl as she tries to compose herself.  Wiping some tears from her cheek, she stands up and walks toward me on her way to the door along the same path that the robber had taken just ten minutes earlier.  I stand as she walks past me and she stops with her back to me.  She looks down at her feet and she sniffs.  “Don’t feel bad,” she says as she stifles a small cry.  “At least you did something.”

In my head, I say, “I’m sorry.”  And she turns to me, tears still in her eyes, and I wipe them from her cheeks.  There are other people with us, other passengers of the train.  They are all crying with her, and someone lays a hand on her shoulder to console the girl.

A woman says, “I’m sure the police will catch him, honey,” and a man says, “Someone mugged me last week, so I know what you’re goin’ through.”

Then she stops crying and she smiles because these people care after all.  Everyone understands one another, whether there is any real interaction or not.  Because at the most fundamental level, everyone is human, and all humans know what it feels like to be hurt.

But what really happens is no is there with us.  She leaves the train in silence, solitude, and tears and I never see her again.  We go our separate ways, not just her and me, but everyone else on the train.  All of us lost in the haze of monochrome light.

And now my commentary:

I wrote this after riding the Orange Line from the Loop to Midway. It was dark out and since this was in the Summer, that means it was probably after 7pm; the train was packed and I don't remember why. Come to think of it, I can't remember why I was downtown either. What struck me about this train ride was that of all the people there, some sitting and some standing, no one was talking. Except for the sound made by the train and the guy who tells you, "This is Ashland," or "This is Halsted," it was complete silence. I remember joking to myself that if there was mugging happening right in front of everyone, no one would do anything. Then I rested my head against the window and watched the street lamps flash by in a haze of monochrome light. I thought of that line and really liked it, so I wrote it on my hand because, back in the day before cell phones could do everything, it was the only stationery I had. 

I began writing that same night and I knew right away that the line I'd written on my hand would be the title. I think this is the only time I ever began a story with the title. The story contains flaws of logic; I knew it would as I wrote it. Real life would not go down like this. A mugging in public would probably not happen, and if it did, people would step up. I like to believe that anyway. The apathy shown by the commuters in this short story is hyperbole. I took a chance that potential readers would accept that, because if not, the whole point is lost. 

It's Like Purgatory, but It's Not (Written October something, 2011)

There’s something sad about coming home. When you’ve been gone so long, the unfamiliar becomes familiar and the former familiar becomes stuffy and alien. That’s what it felt like to come home from college. Everything was still there, neatly preserved as though it were all in a museum. A museum the size of home, something that is both familiar but sad, like it’ll never change. All the stores, the restaurants, they may as well be encased in glass with a bronze plaque in front of them. “This is the McDonald’s on 91^st and Cicero. Founded in the 1950s, it is exactly like the McDonald’s on 103^rd and Cicero.”

Jim told me, “Not everything is the same. A couple of places closed down. We got that new place called Andy’s, but I’m not even sure what they sell there. Ice cream maybe.” Jim was my connection to home while I was away. Instead of going to school like I did, Jim stayed back and continued to work on cars. He did some roofing on the side. They all told us we should both go to college, but only I listened to them. Because of that, Jim was earning a living with respectable jobs and I, well, I had a piece of paper and over $40,000 in debt. It happens. I don’t regret my choices; I just think it’s kind of funny.

There is meaning to that old phrase “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Other than being a catch-all phrase that can’t possibly be proved wrong, it more or less describes everything that I’m experiencing on my homecoming. Jim is still the same, and he’s eager to start up our band again. But he seems aged somehow. World-worn even though he never left. His eyes appear deeper set, a small shadow beneath them. His hair is receding. We’re getting older. The impossible is finally happening.

In our band, Jim played guitar and I played bass. That didn’t change. We got together one afternoon on a Tuesday for a small jam session in my parents’ garage, just like four years ago in high school. We had to use my parent’s garage. Jim’s apartment was too small; the noise would bother his neighbors. Plus, being inside his apartment made me self-conscious about the fact that I was 22 and still lived with my parents. People told me there was nothing wrong with that, it was normal. I’d find a job soon enough. Until then, I’d cut the grass, wash the dishes, and clean the gutters not for a pittance, but for room and board. Not a bad deal I guess. Until you meet new people at a club or bar in Wicker Park and you have to tiptoe around the subject. “Oh, I live on the South Side,” I’d say. “No, I rent. One roommate. We get along pretty well.” Just don’t ask to come and visit. Or one of my favorites, “Hey, you’re pretty cute. Wanna go back to your place?”

After a while of jamming by ourselves, we called Kyle who used to be our drummer. When Jim and I quit the band (mainly because of me leaving), Kyle went on to play drums for a local band called Meth Lab Explosion. After playing with them for a few months, Kyle Stanford changed his name to Kyle St. James, and I don’t know why, but I grew very jealous of him for this. He agreed to come over just for old-times-sake, so we bought a twelve pack of Heineken, finished that between the three of us before we even started playing, then went out and bought a thirty pack of Busch Light. By the time any of us even picked an instrument up, we were pretty drunk. We started haphazardly playing the one original song we ever came up with. It was a ballad, styled after and reminiscent of the greatest rock ballads of the 80s, and we called it “Bitch, I Wanna Lick Your Tits.” Our explanation for the name is always some variation of, “We were 17. Sue us.” But when “Bitch, I Wanna Lick Your Tits” is one of the only things you have to call your own, you find a way to think of it as your very own Stairway to Heaven. And then you play it in your parents’ garage, drunk off your ass five years later and you love every goddamn second of it.

Back in high school, our band played only one show at a battle of the bands sponsored by the Oak Lawn Park District. We didn’t win, but we received some praise for our name: Oedipus and the Momma’s Boys. “That’s pretty clever,” some people said. And we’d sit there with our “yeah we’re so smart” smiles on our faces while not letting on to the fact that we stole that name from a friend who moved to California. When he left, all of us agreed that his intellectual properties were up for grabs.

We finished our one-garage reunion tour about the same time we finished the thirty pack. Cans of Busch Light were pyramid stacked on the table that we had set up for beer pong and we were finishing a conversation on how fucking stupid it is when people play beer pong with six cups instead of ten and call it “Beirut” because we’re from the Midwest and we’re entitled to that, and what the fuck is up with the Bears’ offensive line because as Bears fans in Chicago, we’re entitled to that, and fuck the Cubs because as South Siders who don’t really care about baseball, we’re entitled to that, and the fucking Blackhawks are fucking awesome because they won the Stanley Cup recently, so we’re entitled to that. It’s amazing how many things alcohol makes me realize I’m entitled to.

On the South Side, it’s pretty normal to be drunk on a weekday, and everyone knows when you’re drunk late at night, there are only four options for food. They are: White Castle which is mercifully open 24/7, Rosie’s whose hours are never set in stone, but mostly based on how stoned the guys are who run the place. Then there’s Huck Finn’s, though you’re more likely to run into savagely drunken teenagers there. Finally there’s the fan favorite El Gallo, the only one of the four that I can say with confidence I’ve never eaten at sober before.

When you’re back home after a long time, these places take on a bizarre nostalgic quality. As a child, I’d go to Huck Finn’s with my grandparents after church on Sundays. Now I’d go there with a few friends, my speech slurred, just craving the greasiest food I can get my hands on. A childhood memory becomes  warped. The glass housing all of these museum displays becomes a little dirtier every time. There’s no one there to keep them clean. I keep throwing dirt on them, but no one is stopping me.

Being home right now is weird for sure. It’s like purgatory, but it’s not. There’s the looming feeling that things could change for the better any minute. But it can be a tease too. The three of us are stuck there, each in our own way, but for now we’re on our way back to Jim’s apartment with greasy Rosie’s deliciousness. We would eat it, fall asleep splayed randomly about Jim’s living room and in the morning we’d drive back to my house to pick up our instruments. Then on Thursday, we’d meet up and do it all again. Rinse and repeat. For now.

And now my thoughts on this story. I like it. I think it speaks to my thoughts on when I first got home from college. First and foremost, I am NOT the main character in this story. It is fiction created by weaving some experiences I've had with experiences of people I know. Some things in the story have happened to people I know. Somethings are entirely fabricated. There is no band called Oedipus and the Momma's Boys that I know of, but there should be. There is a band called Meth Lab Explosion, though I can't say whether or not they're talented because I've never heard them. Perhaps you can look them up on youtube and let me know. Also, to the best of my knowledge, no one I know has changed their last name to St. James. 

This story was meant to describe the feeling of stillness that I felt after college. Everything becomes a museum exhibit. But I think the feeling is temporary.

Not Really Something Clever

I want to share my writing, and I want to talk about my writing (or at least create the illusion for myself that I am talking about my writing when in fact I'm probably just talking to myself). But I'm okay with that, because I think I make pretty good company, even for myself. So I think I'll post a story, and then post my thoughts on that story in the text following it. Yeah, that sounds good to me, and since I'm probably talking to myself, that means it sounds good to everyone. So here goes nothing...