A Real Clunker

There was actually a time when they felt foreign to us. A time when they could send chills down my spine, I feared them so…earnestly. Their great power over us, their brutality, and their extensive cruelty drove fear into our Earthly hearts. But now I feel hot hot heat running through my veins because of those damn reptilians! Those cold hearted, cold blooded, intergalactic barbarians took everything from us!  

On a breezy late Summer evening  in early August a quiet neighborhood on East Shambleau Court, existed in quiet despair. Hummingbirds grazed by Lilies, Azaleas, and Red Roses. Cat colonies napped lazily against warm concrete.  In every household of our communal neighborhood lived strangers to each other. Our proximity mattered little to how strange we were to each other as neighbors. In each house we all orbited a different planet each with their own value system, culture, and lifestyle. I cared little of what my neighbors did for they had little to do with my own life.  In my household, as a teenager then, my angst and my greatest battles were against my overbearing mother--

“Please, can I go to Northwest Smith’s party tomorrow night?” I just about begged my mother.

“Anok no, it’s your Auntie Rose’s funeral tomorrow night, you  have to pay your respects to your Godmother.”

“But!--”

“--I shouldn’t have to force you to pay your respects to family Anok.” My mom ominously interrupted in a  gentle tone. My mom’s word was final.  

“You will not go to that party, you will pay your respects to your auntie, your Godmother, and you will show some respect! For all that your father and I do for you, this is how you respect us, you ungrateful child. Go to your room and I don’t want to see you leave your room until we are ready to go to your Godmother’s funeral!” 

How could I argue against that?... but Northwest Smith’s Literature club  party took precedence over my family, because  I was in love, and the party was my chance to win over Zady Schmidt, the smartest girl in our class and the love of my life! We were in the literature club together and I loved Zady’s essays on David Foster Wallace, Nora Zeal Hurston, and even her take on The phony  Hollywood Elite. To talk to her was life-changing, her words could spin your entire world’s view over its axis, every time I heard her talk I felt myself grow stronger as a human being, and the tempo of my heart was like a love ballad every time we shared space  together, and I was going to make my move at Northwest Smith’s Literature club together. That party was going to be so lit! 

The mood in our house was decidedly sour. I felt so angry at my mom for forbidding me to go to the party. I felt angry at my Aunt for getting pancreatic cancer and dying…what unfortunate timing for the both of us!

After our “conversation” with disgruntled respect for my mother, I went to my room and  sat at my desk sulking, I remember watching the setting sun color the sky magenta outside the window through my room, the temperature was perfect for an evening stroll, the breeze balancing out the summer heat, and there was sky’s calming blue view to surrender all our worries to, but then a great big disc-like shaped spacecraft descended upon our quiet neighborhood on East Shambleau Court. The sky went from magenta to midnight blue, the spherical spacecraft eclipsed our neighborhood filled with peaceful despair, briefly uniting us as we came out of the orbit of our individual worlds  to observe the inauspicious eclipse of this Circular spacecraft. After some anticipation the space craft sounded off a high F sharp pitch siren and out came raining down the vibrant red scales of these giant reptile like creatures carrying advanced weaponry, just ready to welcome us with a wave of heavy violence. They came to slaughter and slaughter they did, killing off many of us, and then taking some of us captive.

I don’t know why some of us were spared but we were abducted into their Spacecraft and forced to go where no man has gone before to voyage through the great unknown throughout the galaxy and beyond…as prisoners to intergalactic Reptilian Space Barbarians.Their language was impossible for me to decipher, and they had little interest in communicating with us. The interior of the ship looked like the infrastructure of Zoo, and us Survivors were housed, fed, and treated like a prized menagerie for those celestial savages. We were like their pets and the patronizing kindness afforded to us, broke me. Why was I spared?  I wish that they could have killed me for at least I would be with my mom, my dad, and my Auntie Rose.

. Did these vicious foreign intruders bring my neighbors and I together, what’s left of us? I would never have otherwise befriended Albert, the astrophysicist Vietnam War veteran who lived across the street from my family on 1111 Shambleau Court. Or Heddy Kumar, computer engineer, the current love of my life, I wonder what became of Zady Schmidt, if the Aliens also attacked her side of town?--Truly it gives one perspective where our previous creature comforts like Television, WiFi, Netflix, drugs, the law of attraction, and money mean so little to us now as they were obliterated by those interstellar brutes who keep us imprisoned like Whales at Sea-world. Albert, Heddy Kumar, and I have new priorities now to overthrow the Reptilians one day, and to voyage our way back to Earth maybe. But I no longer have any real sense of how much time has passed since we were taken. Time is in the eye of the beholder because Time fluctuates from Space and I can barely tell anymore when actually our Alien overlords became normal to us, or how comfortable I feel now when they come to feed us our strange meals that I have grown to depend on, where does my will to live even come from anyway--cowardice?