The Chosen One

It’s an honor to be chosen. That’s what they always tell you. I’ve heard it since elementary school, the first time I heard of the National Lottery. The highest honor an American can be given is to be chosen, my teacher once told us and the biggest service you can do for your country is go. Some years there were even volunteers, overly patriotic martyrs who saw this as their way to serve their country. On the years there was a volunteer, the country sighed in collective relief.

Some years the Chosen One was not an ideal candidate. Mothers of young children, the elderly, the disabled. Those were sad years, where a dark cloud seemed to descend on the country. Neighbors would pass each other on the street, exchanging sad glances, school children sang a little softer. Newspaper headlines always showed a picture of the lottery winner with a short biography, usually containing the words: Eternal Glory and God Bless the Chosen One. I always hoped someone I loved would never have their name in the newspaper besides those words.

The night of the lottery, I, like everyone in the country, sat before my television screen and watched as the president reached into the glass container and, one by one, pulled out a bright red ball from it’s depths. He would show the number printed on the ball to the camera before reaching in and pulling out another one. Some years, the relief came early, when the first number didn’t match.

“Seven!” says the president. I cringe. Seven is the first number in mine. I tense and my father sets a hand on my shoulder.

“Still eight more to go, son. Relax.”

I take in a deep breath and force it out. He is right. There is no point in worrying, yet.

“Three!”

The President’s salt and pepper hair is slicked back with gel, giving him a poised, professional look. His suit is slim cut, showing off his thin frame. He smiles each time he reaches in for a ball and he must be an amazing actor because the smile is hardly strained.

“Four!”

I bite my lip. Three for three. I had never made it this far before. Sweat begins to prick the lining of my forehead.

“Nine!”

My fingernails have dug so deep they threaten to draw blood. I realize my eyes are closed and open them. My father keeps his hand on my shoulder and his fingers are tight. He is in the clear, his number doesn’t match.

“It’s okay, son,” he says again, but his voice is losing conviction.

“Three!”

“Please, god, please god,” I whisper.

“Eight.”

I stare at the television in disbelief. It can’t be real. It can’t be. I can feel my chest tightening, it’s becoming harder and harder to breathe.

“One!”

“Dad,” I say, both of us are looking down at the small blue card in my lap. There is one more chance, one more chance for it not to be me.

“Four!”

The president picks up the last ball, smiles to the camera and sets the ball on the small rack behind him. The room seems to blur, the television tilts as the floor flies upwards. I try to stand, but my legs are jelly. I hit the floor, the old house shaking slightly from the impact.

“And the winner is Alan Holgate from Massachusetts!” the president announces, but his voice is distant, as if I am hearing it from under water.

“Dad,” I try to call, but my voice has abandoned me. I reach for the coffee table to support myself.

“Son, son,” he says, but something is wrong with his voice. It takes me a moment to realize he is crying. I have never heard him cry before.

“Oh god,” I say because suddenly it’s the only words I know. The only words that make sense. “Oh god, oh god, oh god…”

“My boy.” My father is on the floor with me, pulling me into his arms. His face is wet. I want to cry but I have forgotten how to. The president keeps speaking.

“We look forward to seeing you Alan at the National Space Station in Arizona next week.”

The numbers are still on the television, nine red balls lined neatly on a rack. It can’t be real, I think. My father shakes as he holds me. It can’t be real.

One week is not a lot of time to completely change your entire life. The morning after the lottery I call my boss at work and I tell her I won’t be coming in; I have been Chosen. My boss congratulates me when I tell her the news. I will be coming in sometime later to clean out my desk, I tell her. I hate the idea of going into the office. Everyone will want to shake my hand, tell me I am honoring my country and, worst of all, behind every smile and handshake, they will be pitying me.

I transfer all my money into my father’s account and sell my car to the neighbor’s teenage son at a more than fair price. I don’t tell him about being Chosen, I just tell him I need to leave town, I’ll be gone for a while. The teenager is ecstatic as he takes the keys and climbs into the front seat. He turns on the radio and grins as the clear sound comes in. I had just gotten a new radio installed last month.

I don’t have time to get rid of my possessions, but I tidy up my bedroom as much as possible. I had been meaning to move out within the year once I saved up enough money to put a down payment on a place. The least I could do was leave the room nice for my father. I clean the sheets and organize the bookshelf. So many books I had intended to read and never got around to it. I guess it didn’t matter now.

At meals my father doesn’t say much, but I catch him staring at me when he thinks I’m not looking. When my mother died, I could barely get him to look up from his lap where he would stare for what seemed like hours, his head hung in mourning. I don’t know which one is worse.

“Are you going to be okay?” I asked him more than once, usually after dinner when we would sit outside on the porch, drinking beer and looking up at the stars above.

“I don’t know,” he told me, but it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted him to tell me he would be fine; he would move on from his loss.

“They look so beautiful,” he says, breaking the silence as he watched the stars shine above us.

“A billion little suns,” I say. “Hard to believe.”

“At least it’ll be beautiful,” he says. “Up there.”

I don’t answer but take a sip of my beer.

“I’m gonna miss you, Dad,” I say because I know I need to say it, at least once. He nods, not looking at me. I can see the tears well in his eyes, but he turns away.

“I’m going to miss you too, my boy.”

The morning I depart for Arizona I awake early. My dreams had been fragmented, images of empty craters and gray wasteland swarming my mind. I call out for help but all I could hear was silence. I awake covered in sweat and, knowing falling back to sleep will be impossible, get up and get dressed in the dark. The morning air is chilly and outside the stars are still shining. I make myself a cup of coffee and sit at the kitchen table with the mug between my hands, enjoying the warmth of it. I wonder if the rocket will have coffee or if this will be the last cup I ever have. I nurse it slowly, enjoying the aroma. I look to the calendar. It’s Tuesday. Most Tuesdays I would be getting dressed in my usual khakis and polo and heading to the office, but today I am sitting in jeans and a t-shirt at the kitchen table, knowing this will be the last morning I awake in this house. An hour later my dad comes downstairs.

“Are you all packed?” he asks. I nod.

The drive to the airport is spent in silence. I rest my head against the windowpane and watch as the stars pass above us. The moon follows us quietly.

“Do you have your ticket?” my father asks for the third time. I nod.

“At least the government springs for first class,” I say.

“Least they could do.”

We pull up in front of the airport. I find it hard to look at my father, so I don’t.

“Don’t forget to feed my fish,” I tell him.

“I won’t.”

He reaches across the seat to me and, for several seconds we embrace in silence. I shut my eyes and wish this weren’t happening. After a minute, my father pulls away.

“Alright, well have a good flight.”

I nod.

“I’ll call you when I land.”

Soon I am standing in front of the sliding doors, a small duffle in one hand and another one waving as I watch the headlights of my father’s car fade from view.

The flight is long and uneventful. The stewardesses are kind and bring me champagne, even though it’s seven in the morning. They cheerfully announce the Chosen One is onboard and the airplane fills with applause. I wish they would stop calling me that. I drink the champagne without tasting it. By the time we land I am slightly buzzed and sleepy, wishing I could have fallen asleep on the flight. Other passengers thank me for my duty as I grab my overhead bag and make my way for the door. For a second, I am angry and want to tell them where to shove their thanks, but I instead duck out of the airplane door and make my way across the tarmac.

A large intimidating SVU waits for me in the parking lot. Two men in black suits and sunglasses take my bag and escort me in the car. The car is large, about the size of my apartment in college. As we drive the men recite in monotone voices what will happen now, but I don’t listen. In the sky I can see the moon has followed me again, showing its face even in the daylight. There seems to be no escaping it. It seems to be waiting for me.

The next two days are a blur and I have trouble recalling what happened from one moment to the next. I go through a medical exam, am given a brief overview of what to expect in space and before I know it, I am standing on the tarmac in front of a rocket larger than most buildings I had ever seen. The space suit is heavier than I expected it to be and I find it hard to breathe. The press is there, a flash of cameras and microphones being shoved in my face.

“Alan!” a reporter shouts over the wind on the tarmac. “What’s it like to be chosen? Are you excited to serve your country?”

“Did they tell you anything about them?” another reporter asks.

One of the Secret Service grabs my arm and pulls me away before I can answer. The ramp leading up to the rocket is steep and my legs threaten to collapse from under me. I turn and look back into the crowd that has gathered around the barricades. I search the crowd for my father’s face, praying he has come to Arizona to say a final goodbye, but the crowd is a blur. Soon I enter the cool air of the rocket and the door is shutting behind me. The crowd’s cheering is silenced as the door slams shut and I am reminded of what it must be like to close a coffin. The astronauts strap me into a chair and the truth finally hits me. I am going. No one is coming to save me. I am going to go to the moon.

Did they tell you anything about them? The reporter’s voice echoes around my head. What can they tell me that I don’t already know? Every student learns about them in school, the discovery that fateful day in 2024 on a regular journey to the International Space Station. The threats that were made, the deal that was created to protect the people of earth. A deal that descended the country in fear to protect the masses. One life chosen in order to save the others. A panic rises in me suddenly and I let out a sob, the first tears I have cried since the night of the lottery. The astronaut in the seat next ignores me. The countdown begins and I shut my eyes. A voice begins to count down from ten and I know it will be the longest ten seconds of my life. The voice reaches one and a thunderous sound booms from under me then we are soaring upwards. I look out of the window as the world I have always known vanishes beneath me until soon it is nothing but clouds.

I ask questions, but the astronauts don’t answer. I ask what they look like but am ignored. I wonder if they aren’t allowed to tell me or if they are tired of answering the same questions every year. I wish they would tell me. My imagination goes into overdrive. I try not to think about it, but with three days on a spaceship with nothing to do but wonder, I can’t help myself.

The moon landing was not as exciting as I was expecting. I had hoped they would give me at least another night, but we aren’t on the moon’s surface for an hour before they tell me it’s time to go. I look out the window onto the gray wasteland spread out below me. Was it my imagination or did I see a shadow move amongst the rocks?

I ask the astronauts where my space suit is, but one simply shakes his head.

“You won’t be needing it,” he answers.

They hadn’t told me that. I try to stand, but my legs are water. I manage to support myself, but it’s difficult.

“I’m scared,” I tell another astronaut. He has been kind to me the last few days. He had given me his share of ice cream and smiled at me when the others hadn’t. He simply pats me on the back.

“Thank you for your service,” he says.

Walking onto the moon isn’t as easy as they make it sound. Without gravity, every step sends me bouncing upwards. The spaceship door shuts behind me and I suddenly know what it’s like to be truly alone. I try to take in a breath, but nothing comes. Panic surges in me. I wrap my hands around my neck and wait. If they don’t get me, then the lack of oxygen will kill me first. Shadows stretch across the ground, movement behind the rocks. In the distance, I can see home, the magnificent green and blue of Earth. It looks so beautiful from here and I need to remember why I am here, who I am doing this for.

They hadn’t expected to find them on that mission, the hyper-intelligent beings who had more power than mankind ever dreamed of holding. They wanted us to serve them, threatened earth if we didn’t obey. After six months of negotiations and earth in fear, they finally came to an agreement. Every year an American would be chosen and sent to them as an offering, a sacrifice, a submission to their will. Now, almost thirty years later, thirty lives later, I am standing on the moon, watching as the shadows draw closer, moving as swift as liquid across the ground.

We had no name for them. They were simply them.

I gasp for air that is not there. I try to run, but there is nowhere to run to. I feel something wrap around my ankle, something cold and strong. I try to scream, but nothing comes out. I hit the ground hard and am sliding across the rocky surface, deep down into a crater, an endless pitch of black, darker than any night sky I had ever known. Pain flares up my legs, then my chest and soon the pain, like everything else, vanishes.

From the rocket, the astronauts watch as Alan Holgate disappears into a crater. The sound of several mouths feasting can be heard over the void of space. Black tentacles reach out from the depths and, after a few moments, disappear where they come from. After several moments, the monsters disperse, returning to the shadows they climbed from. The astronauts salute.

“God bless America,” one whispers.

Past the moon, the stars shine in the endless night sky. A billion little suns.