5 A.M.

This story contains sensitive content, including descriptions of depression and a stillbirth.

Evelyn woke up at dusk. She let too many minutes slip by as she watched the hollow gray light pour across her ceiling. When she finally rolled over and faced the forest outside her window, Evelyn saw what she thought were hundreds of white flowers descending into view, but when she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, she realized the flowers were merely the gaps of sky between the trees. 

Evelyn felt a pang of disappointment at having lost so much of the day–all other human beings woke up at a reasonable time, why was she nocturnal? These thoughts battered her down the steps, out her front door, and down the driveway, where her garbage bin was the only one on the street still left out. Evelyn winced as she pulled it in, the sound of its wheels raucously tumbling down the block. 

“It’s about time!” teased Evelyn’s next-door neighbor, Nancy. She paused her hedge-trimming to squint at Evelyn through pointed Hepburn-esque sunglasses, even though the sun had already burrowed beneath the horizon. “I don’t know how Tom does it,” Nancy went on, “It’s like he has a ghost for a housewife!”

Evelyn pursed her lips into a smile and gave a puckered nod. “Good morning to you, too, Nancy.” Evelyn shuffled back into the garage, tripping over a bin of her old, dried-up paintbrushes. They were practically unusable, now: ancient relics of a dream long forgotten.

Somehow Evelyn made her way to the living room, where the black and white glow of Gilligan’s Island–Joey’s favorite program–washed onto the walls. Oh God, Joey. Had he spent the whole day by himself? The worries of whether her son had eaten or accidentally injured himself while Evelyn slept the day away caused a sharp pain to pound through her head.

“Joey? Joseph…” The words wandered down the halls.

“Looks like someone’s finally up!” Joey beamed as he sat at the kitchen table, his oversized red turtleneck falling well past his hands and knees. Evelyn couldn’t help but chuckle at the sight: Joey had always been small for his age, and now his head hardly poked above the table’s edge. The words he echoed were his father’s, but they lost all their sarcastic bite when said in his innocent, squeaky voice.

“There’s my beautiful boy…” Evelyn whispered as she kissed her son’s hair. “Are you doing okay? Where’s Dad?”

“He just left. His business trip starts today.”

“Oh yeah? Where’s he going this time?”

“Oklahoma City. Two weeks.”

Evelyn was always amazed at how sharp her son’s memory was. She envied how his mind never stopped ticking.

“I made you this!” Joey pushed a bowl of cereal in Evelyn’s direction. He must’ve put it together hours ago; the pieces of cereal were soggy and inflamed, the milk sand-colored. Evelyn ate a few grateful spoonfuls.

“Thank you, Joey,” she cupped his shoulder, “It’s delicious. Now why don’t I make us both some eggs?”

As Evelyn watched her son guzzle down his warm meal, she allowed her thoughts to paint over the guilt she felt for leaving him alone all evening. Even though it may not have seemed so to outsiders, Evelyn did love her son. She loved his baby-toothed grin, his stumpy stride, his squeal-of-a-laugh. She loved that he was different from the other boys his age, for better or worse. She loved that she would sometimes wander downstairs in the middle of the night and catch him staring out the kitchen window, watching the stars drift across the sky. She loved that Joey adored her old paintings, that he would ask her to sketch scenes from his favorite television shows…

Evelyn used to be an artist. Aspiring, anyway. That was before she married Tom, became a housewife, had children. Yes… She had children, plural. Joey’s twin brother was stillborn. Samuel… That’s what Evelyn had wanted to name him. She would never forget his cold body leaving hers, giving life not to him, but to the stale hospital air. She hadn’t painted since. She was numb. The whole world was gray.

It was like time had stopped for Evelyn, and yet continued to churn along for everyone else. Snowflakes hung still in the air, autumn leaves never kissed the ground–then all of a sudden she would realize that Joey had learned to walk, talk, ride a bike; that Tom’s once-amicable face had frozen into a permanent scowl; that whispers and stares were shot her direction in line at the grocery store; that her friends hadn’t called her in years; that she couldn’t even remember their faces.

Suddenly, Evelyn’s ears began to ring. Unfortunately, this was not an uncommon occurrence when she thought of Samuel, or her art, or her exile. She watched Joey’s lips move in silence; she knew her son was talking to her, but the ringing drowned out his words. His lips moved faster, and faster, and faster. Evelyn glimpsed his hazel eyes: wide and tickled with panic. He was shaking her. Mommy… Mommy…

 “Mommy! Did you hear that?”

Evelyn snapped back to the present. “...What?”

“Outside! Look!”

Evelyn did. A glowing red light ignited their backyard. She strode to the sliding kitchen door–is that smoke?–and heaved it open.

“Oh my God…”

 A strange machine–red and arrow-shaped, the size of a refrigerator–had crashed into her backyard. It lay half-burrowed beneath her dying flower garden. Light pulsed from inside it to the rhythm of Evelyn’s heartbeat. It was the first time in years that Evelyn could actually feel her heart pounding. It was in her breath, her neck, her hands… boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom…

There was something else. Something pale curled up in the corner of the yard, as if it had been flung from the vessel upon landing. As Evelyn approached this unknown… thing…she saw that it was really a small, unconscious body. It jerked slightly in its sleep, startling her, provoking her to grab a nearby shovel in preparation to eliminate the creature, if she must. The sour taste of guilt prematurely flooded Evelyn’s mouth as her arms brought the shovel higher, higher, higher…

Red flashed before her eyes. Evelyn thought she had done it–that she was seeing the creature’s blood. But no–it was unharmed, the shovel was still suspended in the air, and Joey in his red sweater had leaped in front of the sleeping creature: in both curiosity and protection.

“Mommy, wait,” Joey said. “He might not be bad.”

Evelyn realized she was hyperventilating, her hands shaking above her head.

“Just look. Hey! He kinda looks like me.”

Evelyn leaned in closer. Joey was right: other than the creature’s gray skin, wispy charcoal hair, and pointed ears, it looked exactly like a sleeping human boy. If it weren’t for his odd traits, Evelyn could see the creature as being just another boy in Joey’s class.

Evelyn threw down her shovel.

“My God…” she whispered. “It’s only a child.”

She bent down next to Joey and carefully combed the dirt off the boy’s face. “He is quite strange, isn’t he?”

Joey watched his mom from behind. “Well… So are we.”

Evelyn couldn’t help but chuckle. Suddenly, the boy stirred and opened his brilliant, sad, sapphire eyes.

“Wow! Would you look at that!” Joey exclaimed. His gaze moved to his mother. “Now I know two people with blue eyes.”

By midnight, Evelyn quieted the smoke emitting from the strange boy’s vessel, brought him and Joey inside, tended to the boy’s scrapes, and clothed him in Joey’s shorts and t-shirt. The black, baggy garment was speckled with white dots for stars, and over them hovered the words: “You have now crossed over into… The Twilight Zone.”

“Joseph, would you do me a favor?” Evelyn said, trying to mask the quivering uncertainty in her voice. “Would you keep our guest entertained while I, uh… Figure out what to do with him?”

Joey chirped with agreement and led the boy to his assortment of toys strung about the living room.

“Just another playmate,” Evelyn muttered to herself. It was shocking just how human the boy was, especially for having descended from a place that most certainly was not. What could she do about this? Call the authorities? Send the boy away to be poked and prodded and isolated for who-knows-how-long? Evelyn couldn’t do that. But the boy was also inhuman enough to draw attention if anyone else were to see him–all the make-up in this house wouldn’t be enough to mask the gray of his skin. God knows what Tom would say. Or Nancy. It was clear to Evelyn: She would have to care for the boy herself, in private. At least for a little while.

Evelyn sighed with relief. She had given herself the answer she’d wanted to hear.

“Hey Mom! Look at what he can do!”

Evelyn raised her head from her hands. Joey and the boy shuffled over and presented her with Joey’s finicky digital alarm clock. Evelyn inspected it closely.

“He…changed the time?”

“No–he wrote a message. Look closer. It’s his name.”

“His name is ‘Five O’clock,’” Evelyn said skeptically.

“No,” Joey said. “5 A.M. 5AM. S-A-M.”

Even though Evelyn and… Sam… couldn’t speak the same language, they found it easy to understand each other. On his first night in the house, Evelyn discovered that Sam possessed an enormous appetite for such a small being. He ate a dozen eggs, ten strips of bacon, three pancakes, and even the ketchup-pickle-toothpaste monstrosity that Joey concocted for him–and that was just breakfast alone.

Evelyn also found that Sam was fond of Joey’s exploration books. She’d wander into Joey’s room (most likely serving another plate of food) and find the two boys combing through the biographies of Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo, and Amerigo Vespucci. Sam was hungry for much more than food; he had a taste for adventure, as well. Maybe that was how he ended up here.

On the weekdays, while Joey was at school, Evelyn taught Sam how to draw with colored pencils. He was quite clumsy, at first. No matter how hard Sam tried, his fingers couldn’t quite grasp the pencils the way they were meant to. Evelyn found this endearing. Hundreds of uncertain pencil marks poured down the page like a rainstorm down a windshield. She had never seen anything like it before. Soon, Sam learned how to draw shapes, then objects. A boy made of timid gray lines standing alone on a small circle: a planet. A dozen other strange figures bordered the page. All of them turned away from the boy.

“...You’re lonely too, eh?” Evelyn whispered.

That night, Evelyn found Joey and Sam curled up next to each other on the bedroom floor, angelic in sleep. A picture book–explorer Robert Peary’s journey to the North Pole–drooped from their hands. It was the first time she had seen Joey sleeping comfortably in a long time. A warm feeling melted into Evelyn, seeing the two children–both of them once so alone–have so much trust in one another. And so that night, with the two boys as her subjects, Evelyn started to paint again.

Nearly two weeks after Sam’s arrival, Evelyn set out into the backyard to revive her flower garden; she’d purchased a half-dozen rose bushes that morning. Behind her, Joey and Sam tossed a football back and forth (Sam had the better aim, by far). What Evelyn didn’t see, though, was the moment when Joey misfired the ball over the fence and into the yard next door.

The break in the panels was just wide enough for Sam to slip through. He wandered over to the football, which had crash-landed halfway across the yard, and bent down to pick it up. When he rose, his eyes were stung by the sight of a woman looking back at him from her back porch.

Her mouth was agape. Her oversized, insect-like sunglasses had shifted down her nose, revealing two piercing green eyes. They twisted in panic. In disgust.

That was when Evelyn heard the scream.

She ran across the lawn, jiggled open the gate, and burst into the neighboring lawn.

“Nancy, what happened?” Evelyn cried.

Nancy could not stop shrieking. The shrill sound pierced the humid air. She pointed at the gray boy standing, panicked and perplexed, on her lawn.

“What happened to Joey?” Nancy demanded.

“It’s okay, Nancy. Calm down. That’s not–”

Confused by the commotion, Joey meandered through the gate and into Nancy’s yard. The sight of two Joeys–one human, one not–caused Nancy to lose her mind.

“...J-Joey! What’s going on here, Evie? Why are there two of them? Why is one a freak?”

And with that, Nancy screeched one more time, her sunglasses crashing to the ground as she ran inside.

Evelyn rushed the boys back into her house. Sam’s expression was empty, and he walked slowly as if in a daze. While Joey was busy taking off his shoes and Evelyn was closing every curtain in the house, the distress was too much for him; Sam collapsed on the kitchen floor.

“Sam!” Joey bolted forward to comfort him, but the noise only worsened Sam’s condition. He squealed and curled into himself.

Joey faced his mother, hot tears welling up in his wide, panicked eyes. “What do we do?”

“I have no idea…” Evelyn mumbled. “Nancy’s probably told half the neighborhood by now.” 

“He’s shaking!” 

“Maybe we could call your father–no that wouldn’t work, he would just send him away…” 

“It’s gonna be okay, Sammy…” 

“The whole town’s going to be on our front doorstep, we can’t hide him here forever…” 

“Mom… He’s just so scared.” 

Evelyn looked up. Her two boys–one broken, one unraveling–leaned against each other as they sat on the tile floor.

Evelyn… What are you doing? A small voice said from somewhere deep within her. They need you as much as you need them.

Evelyn walked forward. She bent down to the two crumbled boys and held them both in her arms. As they relaxed into her embrace, it felt as though they were shrinking back into the newborns they once were… or could have been. Evelyn felt herself shrinking, too. She was just as broken as they were–even more so. All those years Evelyn spent denying herself–becoming a recluse, losing her identity, letting her passion fizzle away… Life was hard, she knew. But that shouldn’t have stopped her from being Joey’s mother. His protector. His friend.

She looked at Sam, now. This little boy, so full of wanderlust, that she had conjured here through her grief and loneliness. Evelyn knew how it felt to be trapped. She couldn’t do the same to him.

She held Sam tighter and whispered in his pointed ear: “It’s time you get to leave this place.”

Evelyn wasted no time in unburying Tom’s toolbox, allowing Sam to repair his ship while she attempted to dig the cockpit out from her lawn. She felt the shovel, lighter now in her hands. To think that the same tool she’d used to nearly end Sam’s life was now being used to save him.

Sam departed that night. Joey hugged his best friend goodbye, sending him away with a few picture books to share with the civilians of whatever planet he ended up on next.

“Don’t cry, Mommy,” Joey said as Sam’s ship lifted off the ground and into the bleeding sunset. “Sam had to go. There was nothing we could do.”

Evelyn smiled, yet somehow sobbed harder. She embraced her son from the side.

“I love you, Joey… You know that right?”

Joey stayed silent. Tears trickled down his face.

“I promise I’m going to try harder… For the both of us. I’ll try to walk you to school in the mornings, I’ll branch out, I’ll keep painting–”

Joey wrapped his sweater-curtained arms around her.

“Mommy… Do you know why I look out the window at night? I like to think that there’s someone else up there, someone far away, who feels different from the rest of their neighborhood… Just like us.”

Evelyn heaved her son onto her shoulders, so they could both see the red spacecraft melt into the horizon.

“Well, Joey… Now every time you look at the sky, you’ll know it for certain: we are not alone.”