Aliens, Insects and other Inexplicable Critters

Aliens, Insects and other Inexplicable Critters

It was the hottest day of the year, only to be exceeded by the following day's temperature predictions. New York was suffering from the most unrelenting heatwave on record. Water restrictions only added fuel to the figurative fire. The simple task of walking barefoot to the mailbox was sufficient preparation for ritualistic firewalking.

Jack’s wife was packing for a well-deserved girls’ weekend away, while Jack would care for their 5-year-old, twin sons in Jess's absence. His beautiful wife was reciting instructions like a drill sergeant: 50-SPF at all times outdoors...booster seats even when they yell 'shotgun'...bug spray sparingly, never the face, hold their breath...no processed sugars, regrets...Disney channel.... blah blah blah...

Jack lay on their bed, trying to cool off, directly under a high-speed ceiling fan that could slice meat. Jess was beginning to sound like authority figures in Charlie Brown cartoons. SPF-50? Really?? Houses didn't even have that level of sun protection.

Distracted by a small water-stain overhead, Jack feared he'd forget about it once horizontal, until filthy rainwater dripped into his mouth while he slept. Maybe he'd switch sides with Jess.

"Are you listening, Jack?"

"Yes., absolutely." Jack waited a beat. "Mind if I sleep on the right side from now on."

"What? Why? We've always slept this way."

"A change of scenery?"

"We both have a stunning view of white stucco." She sighed. "Sorry, not happening."

"Fine." Jack surrendered. Without rain, this slow-moving water-stain disaster could wait.

"Ever since this heatwave took the wind out of our sails, quite literally; you seem dazed, like a lost space alien just passing through." Jess softened her tone. "I totally understand. You work from home where it's mind-numbingly hot and oppressively humid. It's exhausting simply existing. Maybe I shouldn't go?"

A question, right back in his court. Damn she was good. "No, no, no, Jess, sweetie, you need this and planned it for months. I can babysit two 5-year-olds.”

Suddenly, she loomed menacingly close to his face, flushed cheeks and droplets of perspiration beading her upper lip. "You're not babysitting! You're fathering." Then, her tone shifted to a homicidal whisper. "Nothing will happen to my babies on your watch, are we clear?"

"Crystal," Jack nodded like a bobble-head toy. "Jess, I've got this. It’s only two days. What can go wrong?"

“This coming from the same man who called 911 because he got a quarter stuck up his nose while trying to impress kindergartners.” Jess resumed packing.

“That was one time.” Jack grimaced at the memory.

“And last week? I raced home from work because you found a tick on Felix’s neck, only to discover it was a dried watermelon seed.”

Easy mistake, Jack thought.

“Please just stay indoors, where it's safe. The swim-club is closed with the drought and all." Jess looked at him. "Honestly, it's one less thing I'll worry about. Remember last time? Three stitches in Felix's perfect chin.”

Jack sat up. “Whoa, wait! Some lady spotted a poop float by and freaked. Max refused to get out, even after the lifeguard frantically blew the whistle at him. I had to carry him out of that e-coli water. How could I know Felix, whom I told to stay-put in a folding lounger, would somehow get his head stuck in it? He was attached to a lounger, so of course he fell. How's that my fault?”

“I don’t know, I just know it was. They think pooping in the pool is normal. Why is that, Jack? Because you told them at the beach it was okay to pee in the water. I believe you referred to the Atlantic Ocean as God's toilet.” Jess air-quoted toilet.

Jack chuckled. “Hey, I’m thrilled the swim-club is closed. It's tough being the poolside stud.” He flexed his biceps. “Really, Jess? It isn’t that funny." Jack huffed. 'Did you just snort? Please stop." Jack changed tactics. "Actually, I’m thrilled you’re leaving. Take your hot-bod and Bye-bye-bye. It's just me and my boys.”

“If you just quoted NSYNC, I may not come back.” Jess shook her head and sat next to him. “Honey, I know you believe you 'got this,' but if not, I will have to kill you.” She kissed him and was gone before he could ask about the whereabouts of his precious charges.

The twins went to bed without issue Friday evening. Even the moon seemed to radiate heat. The steady whirring from the boys' window fan was enough for Jack and Charlie, his neighborhood buddy, to enjoy a couple of ice-cold beers without waking the boys.

At midnight, Charlie called it a night, just as Felix appeared.

“I can't sweep, Daddy.” Felix whimpered.

Jack lifted him into his arms. Poor little guy was sweating in just a pair of boxer-shorts. As soon as Felix saw Charlie, Felix displayed his toothless grin.

“Unca Chawie!”

Jack grinned at his son’s excitement until he saw concern on Charlie's face.

“What is that?” Charlie pointed to Felix’s exposed right leg.

Jack flipped on the foyer light for a better look. Felix’s balmy skin had a line of at least seven perfectly round discolored bruises along his outer leg. Nothing on the left leg. “What the fu...?” Jack ran his fingers over them, then he rubbed a bit harder.

Felix groused. “Ow, Daddy.”

“You’re the EMT, Charlie, what are these?” Jack’s heart began to gallop.

“Hey, I’m no doctor - looks like bruises or something more serious - a platelet issue, honestly, I’ve never seen anything under the skin like this like this, they’re alien-like.”

“I’m not an awien, Unca Chawie.” Felix giggled.

“If it were my kid, I’d take him to the ER. Better to be safe. I’ll hang with Max till you get back, He's sleeping anyway. Got any porn channels?”

Jack ran out the door, carrying Felix under his arm, like he was kidnapping the kid.

Entering the ER, Jack yelled. “I think my son has leukemia! He needs a doctor, if it’s cancer, it’s growing every second we stand here. Please, someone, help us!” Jack sobbed.

Back home two hours later, Jack was wiped-out while Felix was wide-awake. Charlie was snoring on the couch and Max was intently watching Pink Floyds’, The Wall. Jack wondered, if in twenty years, Max would be on a talk-show, discussing this exact night, from his prison cell.

Jack shoved Charlie awake with his knee. His friend sat up, momentarily disorientated.

"Dude, you look like shit. How did it go?"

“They washed off, you dumb-ass! They were caused by the coins in his bed, that you gave him earlier. When Felix lay on the coins, his sweat caused a chemical reaction. Cancer that washes off, go figure, genius. Thanks for the 20 years that I aged in two hours, not to mention my humiliation.”

Charlie stood and stretched. “I knew it was nothing serious.”

“Get out!” Jack followed him to the door.

In earnest, Jack thanked Charlie. His friend skipped down the front porch steps, and as Jack watched him go, Jack heard a few random jests... penny for your thoughts, dime a dozen. As Jack shut the front door, he heard the faint, opening lyric from a Billy Joel song, “Don’t go changing…”

Both boys were wide awake. Jack could barely keep his eyes open. What would happen if they all just stayed there all weekend, in that very room, leaving only to eat and eliminate. When Max started pestering Jack as to why teachers should leave those kids alone, Jack snapped out of it. Used his best creative parenting technique, he bribed them.

“If you go straight to bed, I'll get your cereal ready now so you can do breakfast like big boys in the morning, while daddy sleeps-in.” They nodded. "You can even pour your own milk from the small container in the fridge.”

Breakfast table set, critters in their coinless beds, Jack was convinced this was why Jess never relaxed; she’d never tried this level of independence with them.

The following morning, Jack was not awakened by the sun streaming through his bedroom, but by Max, charging through, screaming with laughter, sporting a toilet plunger suctioned to his back.

The frequency and severity of plumbing problems experienced living with boys, forced Jack years ago to invest in an industrial plunger, marine-grade polymer, one solid unit with a suction cup the size of Wimbledon Stadium.

Jack wasn’t dreaming. He insisted Max remove it. In Jack's periphery, Felix stood in the doorway. In a sheepish voice, Felix said, “It won’t come off.”

Felix was right, that thing was so secured to Max’s back, the surrounding skin took on the hue of a stop-sign. Jack reminded Max where the plunger had been, and Max panicked. Same kid who refused to get out of the pool of poop was suddenly a germophobe. Putting aside the whole unhygienic aspect, the sucker was stuck. That was money well spent, Jack thought.

To avoid being featured on News at 11, he knew phoning for help was out of the question. Who would Jack call, a plumber, or worse, Charlie? Jack was on his own.

Getting a hysterical 5-year-old, unnoticed, safely into his car's backseat when there's a 3-foot pole sticking from his back? Only one way: face down.

“Owww, the seat is too hot, Daddy- it’s burning me!” Max awkwardly tried to back out.

Jack noticed Felix grinning. “Nothing funny about this Felix, darn good thing you didn’t plunge his face, he’d be dead by now!” Jack needed to calm down. They were making a scene.

Max extricated himself with just minor reddened areas on his chest and thighs. Jack started the car, then blasted the AC. It was better than their house fans. Once this was over, they could live in his car until the first frost.

Jack sent Felix inside to grab something for Max to lay on and he returned with a few pieces of copier-paper. It was then Jack spotted an elderly man, on the sidewalk sweeping.

What was he sweeping? The grass was like tobacco-row, no rain for more than a month. No breezes blowing anything, anywhere. He briskly swept his was towards them as if he'd won gold in the 1948 Olympics for Curling. Nosy but impressive. Hal introduced himself, they'd apparently been neighbors for over 6 years. Hal gestured to Jack to give him a minute by holding up an arthritic index-finger.

Hal returned with a razor blade and Vaseline. Within seconds the plunger’s grip released, and Max was set free as though nothing had happened. That, however, did not stop the blood blister the size of the frying pan Jess was going to whack him with, starting to form on Max’s back.

“You may want to get that checked out at the ER.” Hal advised. "Internal bleeding and all." Once this heatwave was over, Jack sincerely needed to get to know his neighbors. Or move. Most likely, the latter.

Off they went to the ER, again. Why a weekend when their pediatrician was closed, did they decide to play jousting plumbers. As Jack pulled away, he saw wise, old Hal, in the rearview, like a mirage, apparently concerned Jack wasn't capable of driving without causing further carnage.

“What up, doc?” Jack joked to the very same doctor from the coin incident, who’d kindly said in those wee hours that, boys will be boys. This time, the doctor didn't return Jack’s fist-bump.

Max’s back required a bit of salve. Then, in his elegant Middle Eastern accent, the doctor said, “Good sir, a plunger is not a toy, it can cause harm, carry diseases, so please, do not encourage this sort of play with your children.”

Shut up, doc.

By noon, Jack lay sprawled out motionless on the den couch, practicing levitation on the piles of detritus surrounding him, a portable fan whirring directly in his face. Jack needed to clean before Jess got home. She better be enjoying herself, he mused, because he never loved her more and she was never going anywhere else ever again.

Jack’s powers of concentration were suddenly broken. Max barged through the back door. Felix and a few other boys milled outside the sliding-door, anxiously awaiting Max’s return.

After catching his breath, Max blurted, “Daddy, we need some eggs!”

Were they celebrating Easter in July? “No,” was all the oxygen Jack could conjure. If he remained horizontal, and heat rises, he was cooler this way.

“C’mon, we just want to show those girls across the street that we can cook an egg on the street. Sophie says all the Gen Alphas are doing that on Tik Tok. We tried peeing in the garbage cans, but they didn’t even look.”

What the hell was happening right now? Tik Tok? They were five!

“You want the girls’ attention? Try taking out the garbage.” Max didn't get the reference, but Jack was too hot to care.

In Jack’s day, eggs cooking was his brain on drugs. No way were his kids wasting eggs, at fifteen bucks a dozen at the market. Jack found it ironic these days; people could go to a local store to purchase marijuana; yet they needed to buy eggs on the streets.

What Jack needed was get his own boys off the street. He stood and his head was instantly hotter than his knees. Jack ran through his options. No bowling -balls bigger and heavier than his kids’ heads, no thanks. He didn’t even suggest Disney’s latest sequel, Cars 7. He’d sooner eat lint. He reluctantly settled on an afternoon at Chucky Cheeze. He’d have sold a kidney to avoid the place but at least it entertained his kids and had industrial strength air-conditioning.

He sat on an orange plastic chair one may find bolted down in a jail visitation area. He had perfect view of his boys in the ball-pit. Great. They’d inevitably be sick in a week, running around like human biological weapons. He'd catch it and slip into a coma for two weeks.

He glanced around and wondered why that enormous, animated rat didn’t seem to disturb anyone else. There were screaming kids everywhere, mothers chatting like it was a church luncheon and the fathers had deadpan expressions. An idea struck Jack. A real money-maker for Mr. Cheese would be a vasectomy booth in the back.

After enough junk food and games, it was time to go home. Jack marveled at his creative parenting by once again, resorting to bribery.

“Hey, guys, how about we go home, you get in your boxers, we go outside in the dark and make smores and catch fireflies?” Again, it worked. And to think Jess said they needed to stay inside. This would be good wholesome outdoor father-son fun.

By nine that night, Jack was face-up on the backyard lounger with sticky marshmallow goo permanently in his forearm hair. Half-listening to Jess over speaker-phone prattle on -how much she missed them- was so excited to see them in the morning. Jack simply prayed they'd still be alive.

Total darkness had set in, dropping the temperature about five degrees, a blessing. The boys held little nets and were catching fireflies. Jack was content to not move a muscle while watching his boys dancing and giggling surrounded by hundreds of fireflies, his wife’s loving voice in the background.

Jack knew he had a lot of explaining to do, but it could wait – Jess sounded so happy, and relaxed. When they both spotted Orion's Belt at the same time, and yet they were hundreds of miles apart. A refreshing, cool breeze from nowhere washed over Jack. He knew without asking, Jess felt it too.

Just as Jack was about to wrap-up their conversation, he caught a glimpse of his sons eating something. He jumped from the lounger, nearly throwing out his back and yelled, “What did you two just eat?”

“Fireflies.” They exposed their bellies – taking turns staring into each other’s bellybuttons.

“Spit those out, why are you eating bugs? That’s disgusting. What is the matter with the two of you?”

“Max said our stomachs would light up like ET – did it work?”

“Get inside now! Drink some water, get ready for bed. Lots of water! I’m done with both of you!"

Following the boys inside, Jack heard a slight tinny sound. He turned to find his phone still laying in the same spot where he’d left it, Jess was still on speaker phone. Jack lifted it to his ear.

“You do realize, they could get sick from eating nocturnal insects. Insects have ways to protect themselves, like poisonous secretions and all kinds of…”

“They only ate one and spit it out. I love you but I gotta go. See you soon. I can’t leave those critters alone for five seconds." He’d apologize for his lie the next day, more pressing at the moment was Googling risks of ingesting fireflies. They’d survive. The boys, not the fireflies.

After tucking his half-asleep boys into their bunks, he cleaned the house as best he could, prepared a weak outline for Jess he titled, “explanations,” checked his slumbering boys one last time that night, and headed toward the master bedroom like dead man walking.

Supine under his ceiling fan, Jack contemplated vast variety of college degrees one could study, anything from entomology to outer space to Taylor Swift. The one area of study totally absent from all college catalogs, is a parenting degree. In that lovely antechamber of semi-lucid sleep, he surmised it was why they were called bachelor’s degrees.

Jack woke from a deep sleep to sweat trickling down his cheek. Then, another cool droplet formed, and another. Jack quickly realized it wasn't coming from his skin. It was coming from the ceiling. He ran to the window. Forget roof repairs -Jack excitedly woke his critters to dance in the downpour.