“Is he dead?”
It was lying still, so
Maurice poked it. Its mouth hung open slightly, eyes closed, dripping wet. As
if he had washed ashore from a shipwreck like Eric in the Little Mermaid.
I was so not singing
Part of Your World to him.
This end of the beach
was deserted. The teenagers who came out on Wednesdays, Thursdays and other
days that were “almost the weekend” to play volleyball looked like little ants
in the distance. Maurice and I liked to walk all the way around the inlet. The
most interesting parts of the beach were the deserted ones, as evidenced by our
friend Eric here.
“Maybe we should call
9-1-1,” Maurice said.
“I don’t bring my phone
on rambles, and neither do you.”
“Oh yeah.”
He was wearing hiking
boots, a curious thing for such a warm part of Asia no where near any good
hiking trails. Even the idea of socks made me feel too hot around here.
“Do we drag him
somewhere, or go for help?”
Maurice was looking at
me expectantly. Oh right. Eric probably needed to be rescued.
I leaned over his face
and opened his eyelid, then jumped back.
His eyes were green. Not
just the pupils either, like the whole eye. And glowing.
“Maurice,” I said. “I
think he’s an alien.”
I glanced nervously at
the teenagers playing volleyball. We didn’t actually know them, but I had never
liked the look of them. They were so peppy and loud, and they took up a lot of
space whenever they came.
“No way that’s an
alien,” Maurice said. “He’s so well, normal looking.”
“So was Superman.”
“Touche.”
We picked up Alien Eric.
He was heavier than he looked. We moved him down the beach, careful to avoid the
eyes of the teenagers. They were busy showing off, but one blonde girl turned
and looked at me. Was it me or did her teeth look extra pointy?
“What are you staring
at?” Maurice asked.
“That blonde girl.”
Maurice turned in the
direction of the volleyball net. Most of the girls were blonde.
“That one. The one right
next to the net. Our side of the net.”
“Oh. Denise. I know
her.”
“You do?”
“Sure, I asked her once
what she wanted to be.”
“Why would you do that?”
“We were stuck in
traffic. There was nothing else do. She said she wanted to be famous.”
“Like a star of the
screen?”
“Yup.”
“Did you notice anything
weird about her teeth?”
“Oh yeah, I’m pretty
sure she’s a vampire or a werewolf or something.”
“Vampire out in the
sun?”
“Werewolf then.”
“Any reason why a
werewolf would hate an alien?”
We didn’t wait to find
out. We loaded Alien Eric as best we could onto the back of Maurice’s moped and
drove away, the unconscious extraterrestrial sandwiched between us.
“So what are you
planning on doing with this guy?” Maurice asked.
Before I could answer,
Denise the Werewolf/Volleyball Player appeared on the road behind us, still in
her swimsuit and riding another moped that easily caught up to ours. She
grinned maniacally as she rode alongside, on the wrong side of the road, I
might add.
“We meet again my old
friend,” she said to Maurice.
“I thought you said you
only talked to her once.”
“Yeah, but I eventually
cut her off in traffic. She really didn’t like it.”
“Oh.”
Nemesis/Werewolf Girl
laughed.
“You have something I
want.”
“What this guy? We found
him first," I shouted. "And we’re going to, well, I don’t know what we’ll do, but I hope
he’s the kind of alien that sticks around because I have lots of questions
about outer space.
“What that? Oh that’s
not what I want. I want your bumper sticker.”
I glanced behind at the
familiar green and blue letters. “Transmorgfication,” it read. According to
Maurice it meant the moment of delight you receive when you take that first
bite out of an apple and it is delicious. His mother had given me him the
bumper sticker as an inspiration to get his learner’s license just before she
had died in a freak elephant training accident. It was why he loved mopeds so
much and refused to buy a car. The bumper sticker was all that was left of his
mother.
“We will never give you
the bumper sticker,” I said. “But you could probably find the same one on ebay
if you looked really hard.”
All of the sudden a tree
fell onto the road in front of us, and the other Volleyball teens leapt out of
the woods. Maurice swerved, and we went careening off the road and into the
jungle. I clung onto the alien and shut my eyes. I didn’t dare look until the
bike cleared the trees and went sailing through a chicken farm.
When I looked up.
Chickens were everywhere. Clucking, fluttering, and in general acting stupid
and terrified. Like chickens. Maurice had some nasty scratches across his face,
but was otherwise unscathed.
“Awesome,” I said.
“Let’s go home and see if we can wake up Alien Eric.”
“Eric?” Maurice said in confusion.
“Yeah, I named him after
the Little Mermaid.”
“Okay. What do you think
he’ll tell you?”
“Umm, what life is like
on other planets, how he got here, whether Star Trek, E.T. or Alien is more
accurate, you know, the important stuff.”
“Right. Well, I’m
rooting for Star Trek.”
“Yeah, me too.”
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