[stylist] Stylist: New Story, Food For Thought

[Watson, Katherine M]

Shaun,
     This was a great story! Just make sure all your words are spelled correctly. Your spellchecker may not have caught all of them, so you might want to read through the story just to double-check. Also, quotation marks that are followed by he said or she said should be preceeded by a comma, unless a question mark or exclaimation point is better. Make sure all your sentences are in past tense. Overall, however, I thought the idea was fun, and your analogies were great. I laughed out loud when you wrote about the Indians getting compensation for the loss of their cacinos. I think that with a little editing, this story could be entered in a writing contest. (If you are interested, you can find out about such competitions at the website of Poets and Writers magazine, which is one of the most reliable sources for legitimate writing contests. go to www.pw.org for more information.) I'm sure it could even fit in a science fiction magazine, like Azimovs Science Fiction or Analog or something like that. Good luck, and keep writing!
Best, Katie

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From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of stylist-request at nfbnet.org [stylist-request at nfbnet.org]
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2010 12:00 PM
To: stylist at nfbnet.org

Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:42:55 -0400
From: "Jacobson, Shawn D" <Shawn.D.Jacobson at hud.gov>
To: "Jacobson, Shawn D" <Shawn.D.Jacobson at hud.gov>,
        "'stylist at nfbnet.org'"  <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Subject: [stylist] New Story, food for thought
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        <A1A3EBA504582C449F7E37E5039CCD171051909C1B at EXMAIL03A.exh.prod.hud.gov>

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Here's my latest story; something fun for the summer that you can sink your teeth into.

Shawn Jacobson
Mathematical Statistician
Phone# (202)-475-8759
Fax# (202)-485-0275

Food for Thought
by Shawn Jacobson
Remember how it was?  There was crime, war, famine, environmental catastrophe, disease, ethnic cleansing, and all kinds of human suffering.  The environment was going to Hell, fear prowled the streets like a ravening lion, and the wolf was always at the door.  The world was better then, before the aliens came.
I remember the day the aliens came; everybody does.  We remember it the way people remember 9/11, the Challenger explosion or the JFK assassination; it's just one of those things you never forget  Yes, I remember; I was in a bar.
I hadn't intended to get trunk that night, but the bouncer spotted me as I was coming in the door.  "Hey Pete" he said.  "Sorry about your test yesterday".
"Oh?" I asked.
"Your math test" the bouncer replied.  "Your paper was on top of the pile outside professor Asim's office.  You really bombed the test."
At that point I was really ready to drink.  I was on my second pitcher of beer, or maybe it was my third, and I was giving the world my best thousand-light year stare.  I was trying to work up courage to beg my math professor, known as the butcher of Baghdad for the way he could cut up students, for mercy, trying to figure out how I'd tell my folks about my poor grades in general, and just plain hoping for oblivion to take me so I wouldn't have to deal with life anymore.
An old classic Motorhead tune had just ended and the newest hit from Kung Pao Dog, the infamous Chinese-American metal punk band, was starting when it happened.  The traditional Chinese instruments were being obliterated by savage guitar licks and when....
Silence!  Stark profound silence!  A silence that compelled absolute attention descended upon the bar.  The sound system, the play by play of the Hawkeyes latest atrocious loss, the roaring of the multitude of video games in the corner, all was silenced.  Conversations cut off, couples on the dance floor screeched to a halt, waitresses stopped in the middle of the floor, and the bartender stopped right in the middle of pouring a beer.  Everyone obeyed the silence.
Then the aliens spoke, every speaker carried there message, and every television screen displayed their image.  Even the video games seemed to chime in.  It wasn't a "take me to your leader" speech like you have in all the old Sci-Fi movies.  It was more like a "you don't know how to lead yourselves so we'll do it for you" speech.  "God!" said the man to my left "It's like we're being invaded by my third grade schoolteacher"
"Shut up!' said the man on my right.  "This is important."
The aliens looked like a cross between Mary Poppins, if Mary Poppins had ever destroyed a city, and Miss Frizzle, if the teacher from "The Magic Schoolbus" had ever destroyed the beer industry.
That happened shortly after they arrived.  One of the aliens decreed that all beer production stop.  One of the brewers refused and got a visit from an alien.  She pulled out something that looked like a long wide pencil and shot a beam of light from it.  From then on, all the beer that came out of there smelled like a combination of turpentine and raw sewage.  It had a bilious green appearance and had the consistency of industrial sludge with battery crud added for body.
I was never, quite, desperate enough to try it, but I had a friend who was.  He told me about the whole misadventure after he had his stomach pumped.  "Man" he said "it was horrible.  I found where someone had actually put the stuff into cans and I tried to drink it.  I think I got half a can down before my guts started feeling like someone was tearing them apart from the inside.  I don't think my stomach will ever be right ever again.  And you know the worst thing, I was sober as a judge through the whole thing."  Stuff like that happened to anything with alcohol in it; and that's how the aliens did their universal last call.
This made the Arab world happy for a while; after all the infidels could no longer get drunk.  But then the aliens started to decree women's rights.  The king of Saudi Arabia flat out refused.  He said he wouldn't be told by anyone how to run his society.  So one of the aliens showed up with one of her pencil things and Riyadh kind of, well, melt kind of described it and dissolved kind of described it but neither word is precisely correct.  It kind of morphed into a viscous mass of yellow-green goo from which greenish smoke emerged.  Anything that went into that cloud came out strange, if it came out at all.  I think it's now the Queendom of Saudi Arabia, but politics was never my strongpoint.  Anyway, it was about then that we realized that they were serious, deadly serious, about what they wanted.
My mother was the one who arranged my first face to face meeting with an alien.  I had been moping around the house one day and mom wanted to know what was wrong.  I told her that I was bored and depressed.  She replied that a friend of a friend had been feeling depressed and that the aliens had helped her with her problems.  So mom dragged me off to the local galactic friendship center where the aliens helped people.
I was not much of a place really, an office in a building full of other offices which were mostly occupied by dentists.  We waited in a spartanly decorated waiting room till I was my turn to be seen.
To my surprise, the alien was pleasant, attractive in a prissy sort of way and full of small talk.  She asked me how I was adjusting to the new world they were building and I told her what I thought of things.  She explained that we were an immature race and to take our rightful place in galactic civilization we would have to do some growing up.  "This self destructive behavior, drinking, smoking, gambling, all of that has got to stop" she explained; it was a lot like the first contact speech, only with some added comments that sounded like internet folk wisdom about how young men always had trouble fitting into stable societies.  She also explained that they understood that the transition would be hard and they had medicine to help with the transition.  "This is Zodozol" she explained.  "When you feel depressed or bored, take one of these and you will feel better.  When you run out, come back and we will give you a refill."
Zodozol didn't make you feel high, it didn't even, precisely, make you feel numb.  It mostly made you feel aloof from whatever was bothering you.  You still felt bored, depressed, stifled, or whatever, you just didn't care as much anymore.  I was a steady customer for Zodozol.
And so, with my new found medicine, I got serious about my studies; what else was there to do?  I found that I was decent with math and sciences and after many long afternoons in labs and many long nights with books I got, just barely, into the top half of my class.
But, by then, college degrees were about as rare as cow pies in a cow pasture and about as valuable.  I probably would have ended up working in one of the new all you can eat restaurants that were springing up like bad weeds except that my new friend Andy bailed me out.  His dad, Chief White Dog, the leader of the Indian Tribe that lived in Tema, had gotten some money that was due to Native Americans since the gaming industry was banned by the aliens and decided to go into business.  The aliens must have felt sorry for him to because they let him have some technology that allowed him to build cheap, light weight, efficient, and easy to install solar collectors.  Thus, Prairie Dawn Inc. was born.
Anyway, Andy and I got talking in his room just before we both graduated about what we would do after college.  He was going into his father's business and I was, as I've said before, at loose ends.
"Hey Pete" said Andy, "didn't you take a quality assurance class last semester?"
"Yep" I replied "I even got an "A" in the damned thing, God alone knows how."
"Tell you what" Andy said "we could use someone in our factory to make sure these solar collectors really work like the aliens say they do.  How about I talk to dad and see if he'll hire you."
And so I started work for Prairie Dawn Inc.  I tested one batch of collectors; no problem.  I tested another batch later that day; again, no problem.  By the time the 100th batch tested out perfect, the line foreman decided to cut back on the number of test batches and have me spell some of the other workers on the line.  By the 1,000th perfect test batch, I was familiar with every machine on the line and by the 10,000th perfect batch, I had done every job at the company except repair the machines; but then again, the machines never broke down, so no one else had repair experience either.
The one job I liked best was installation.  We installed the collectors for people who couldn't, or didn't want to, install them for themselves.  I'm guessing that we covered half the buildings between Des Moines and Dubuque with our solar collectors.
What really made the job fun was our crew boss, a Rastafarian wannabe who called himself Pappadoc.  He grew up just south of Tema, like I did, so he was no more Jamaican than any of us.  But he grew pretty good dreads for a white guy and he had a whole lot of reggae records that he'd play on his truck's stereo system during breaks.  Other times, he would take us to Cookie Monsters for megachoco suicide cookies, you know, the ones with the triple scoop of ice cream on top.  As bosses go, he was pretty damned good.
I also met Amy on an installation job.  She was a health nut who had taught exercise classes before first contact.  With all the emphasis on curing man of his many ills, she figured that the aliens would get people to get in shape and that these would be good times for her.  But overeating seemed to be the one bad behavior that the aliens were not bothered with.  So her exercise class languished and she ended up installing solar collectors instead.
Amy and I started going out and seeing each other a lot.  She taught me some exercises and put me on a running program to keep me from getting fat.  I didn't skim down, with what I was eating that wasn't going to happen, but it did keep me from getting really fat like a lot of other people I knew.  We would run together and a lot of our running sessions ended up as kissing sessions; I guess you could say we were a good match.
When day, Amy mentioned going to a meeting of PSI.
"What's PSI" I asked being somewhat curious.
"Paranoid Society of Iowa" she replied.  "We believe in questioning all the assumptions that everyone else makes about, the aliens, the Government and the media.  We want to check it out and discuss it first."
"Can I join" I wondered aloud.  If nothing else, it would be a good way to see more of Amy.
And that's how I started going to PSI meetings.  I found out that Pappadoc was also a member.  He'd had a reputation of growing and rolling his own smoke before the aliens arrived.  When they asked him to shut down his operation, he complied; after all, this was after what had happened in Saudi.  I think he still nursed some resentment over the whole business.
Then there were Bill and Phill, twin brothers who had run there own microbrew until the aliens had shut them down.  And there was Mabel who had been a vocational rehabilitation counselor until the aliens healed all her clients and put her out of a job.  She had been getting well into middle age and was having a hard time adjusting.  And then there was Fred who had run the local casino before first contact and Alex who had been a biker before the aliens tamed everyone.  As you can see, we were a pretty mixed bag, a cross section of those who viewed the aliens with skepticism.
We would meet at Pappadoc's house and discuss all sorts of things, but the subject always returned to the aliens.  Even though what we said wasn't particularly nice, the aliens didn't step in to stop us until one hot muggy evening when we started talking about how everyone was getting fat and what the aliens had to do with it.
 "It's real strange" said Amy "they're death on drinking, smoking, and gaming, and just forget about using hard drugs, but you can eat your way into a coma and they don't care at all.  It's almost like they want us to get fat".
"That reminds me" I added "the last time I went to get my Zodozol refill, the alien there kept asking if I was eating right.  She kept saying I would be happier if I didn't try so hard to be skinny" I continued "and I don't think I'm that thin, but she seemed obsessed with the subject."
"You see" said Amy "if I didn't know better, I'd say they wanted to fatten us up."
"You mean you think we're being fattened up like cattle?"  Asked Alex as he took a chocolate from the Fanny Farmer's box "That's totally off the wall".
"It wouldn't seem likely to me either" interjected Phill "If you consider all the effort it would take to go from one star system to another.  You wouldn't do it just to open up a new agricultural operation.  It'd be just too much effort to make sense."
"I'm not so sure" replied Pappadoc "You know what they did to Riyadh.  You know what they did to the beer and the machines in my factory never break down.  That requires technology that we aren't even close to having, and I doubt we see one percent of all their tricks.  For them, traveling to another star and raising the local animals for food may take no more effort than driving to the store for steaks."
"Or going to Grover's for a double-decker garbage burger" added Bill.
"With a double order of garbage fries" said Phill as he licked his lips "and an extra large slice of Mississippi mud pie."
"Or going to Big Bird's for a double breasted chicken fried chicken sandwich" added Mabel."
"You all make me sick" exclaimed Amy as she stormed out of the room "all you're doing is sitting around mooing like a bunch of contented cows while the aliens fatten you up for the slaughter".
"What's eating her?" asked Alex.
"She just believes in healthy eating" I responded "she used to run exercise programs until the aliens came and people lost interest in fitness.  "I'd better go see if I can calm her down."
I followed Amy out to the library where Pappadoc kept all his comic books science fiction classics and works of unorthodox science.  Amy was in an arguement with one of the aliens about what she had been talking about.
"You really have some nerve telling us how we should govern your planet given the stellar way you've run things before we got here" the alien snapped imperiously.
"You might know it all" replied Amy "but we've all started getting too fat since you've arrived, and that's bad for us."
"Well" huffed the alien "you won't have to worry about that anymore".  The alien pulled out one of those large pencil thinks and I had no double something really bad was about to happen.  I tried to tackle the alien, but I suddenly couldn't move.  The alien pointed at Amy and suddenly she glowed with an intense golden yellow light; I looked at the light mesmerized by its brilliance; when it disappeard, Amy was gone.  I looked around and the alien was gone too.  The only think I saw was a book on the table, moving closer, I noticed that it was a book of science fiction stories by Damon Knight; the book was open to the story "To Serve Man".
I spend the next few days moping around the house.  I called in sick and nobody questioned my decision.  Everyone know what had happened, though nobody know just why.  I'd also decided not to take any Zodozol, even though it might have helped.  I just wanted to feel the honest grief of losing someone I loved.  You know, you really have to grieve at a time like this and Amy's memory deserved nothing less.
A few weeks later, after I had started back to work again, I ran into George, my old drinking buddy from college.  I had just quit for the day and was leaving when I saw him come out of the company offices.
"George old friend" I yelled "I haven't seen you since you tried that last bad batch of beer.  How have you been doing".
"Don't remind me" George said as he hawked up blue phlegm "I'm still suffering from that."
"Sorry to hear that" I replied sheepishly.  "Anyway" I continued "what have you been doing with yourself?"
"I couldn't get a nice job like you" George said "so I ended up working over at Crusty's Crab masters.  You know the place?"
I know it, it was a take out sea food place; the food was not half bad.  "So how did that work out?" I asked.
"Got fired" he replied coughing again "I kept having these coughing spells and it would scare off the customers.  They thought that what I had was contagious.  Finally, management said it would be a good Idea if I would go somewhere else."
"Bummer" I commiserated.  "So, what are you doing now?"
"Got a job as a salesman for Kermit Tolls" he replied.  "It's a better job than what I had.  In fact" he continued "I was just in the front office here selling your boss a new rivet gun; it's called the Ribbit.  Want to see it?"
"Sure" I replied "I could use a new rivet gun.  The old one went sprong on me a while back."
"OK" George said pulling out a gun that looked like a revolver except that revolvers don't have a green frog logo above the trigger.  "Be real careful" George continued "you should avoid the top power setting.  I had a friend use it on high when he was working on his garage.  The gun shot the rivets so fast that they went through the garage and knocked over the neighbor's tree; it fell on his car.  That led to a terrible fight and it almost went to court.  The point is, if you use it be careful.  Just between you and me, putting a miniature nuclear reactor into a rivet gun seems like overkill; but I'm not going to question it, this job is better than anything I've had."
"Thanks" I replied "I'm sure this gun will do a killer job on what needs repaired.  See you around soon."
"Hope so" George said hawking up more blue phlegm "you'll need to come over for dinner some time."
I decided that the best time to show the aliens my new toy was the next time I went in for a Zodozol refill.  So I finished the bottle, I needed calm now, and went to the local alien office.  The absolute lack of security was noticeable now that I was worried about it, but the alien counselor acted as if nothing were different about this meeting.
We started with the usual small talk about my job, my weight, and my life in general.  Then we moved to the main issue.
"We understand your loss" the alien said "but it had to be done.  Did you know that your girlfriend was plotting revolution against us?"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"She was unhappy" the alien said "and instead of handling it like a grown up like you're doing, she plotted to bring back the old days, wars, plagues, hunger, you know, the times before we came to help your people mature into responsible citizens of the galaxy."
"She was doing this?" I asked.  "I had no idea."
"Yes she was" the alien replied.  "She was causing trouble and she had to be punished.  You understand that a part of growing up is learning to take responsibility for you actions don't you?" the alien asked.   "You do believe that you have to take responsibility for your actions?" she asked again after a moment of silence.  "It's a very important lesson to learn" she continued reached for a bottle of Zodozal.
"Damn straight" I replied pulling the rivet gun from the pocket of my work uniform and pressing the trigger.
I had to hurry and I'm sure it was not a great shot, but it was good enough.  I saw her fold in upon herself.  She would have crumpled to the floor except that she was riveted to the far wall.
I didn't stick around to see anything else; I bolted for the door as fast as I could.  I had just gotten to the street and was about to get into my car when I saw, with absolute shock, the alien looking as if I had never done anything to her.
"As I said, we all must take responsibility for our actions".  Then, turning to a couple of policemen behind her she continued "take him away."
And that's how I ended up in a squad car heading for the alien's regional headquarters in Cedar Rapids.
The policeman who was driving spent most of the trip cursing me out for what I had done.  "They're making the world a better place and you have to go shoot them" he snarled.  "Don't you remember how bad things were before?  Don't you know how much better things are now?  Don't you have any gratitude at all?"  He continued in that vein as we drove on.  "Don't you know about how they are healing us of all our afflictions and healing the environment too?" He continued.  "You take a lot for granted; this nice life we have.  You wouldn't be half as well off if the aliens hadn't come.  And besides" he went on "the doughnuts are much better now than they were before."
I let it roll right off of me.  If Zodozol smoothed out your emotions like an iron, the police drugs I'd gotten smoothed you out like a steamroller.  Part of me heard the tirade, but the rest of me felt removed from it all, like I was on Altair IV or something.
Meanwhile, the cop in the passenger's seat was trying to save my soul.  "Just remember" he said "that God can save you no matter what trouble you're in.  God can save even the vilest sinner.  As long as there is life, God can save you.  Even if you are in the deepest pit" he continued "even if you are on the brink of damnation itself, God can save.  Just call on him".
I had no doubt that this was true, though I suspected that God would turn me into a queer first.  After all, according to Brother Jeb, the crazy sidewalk evangelist we had back in college, that's what God seemed to do the most.  "If you listen to rock music" Brother Jeb would thunder "God will turn you into a queer!  And if you believe in evolution" he would continue "God will turn you into a queer."  Indeed if you did anything that Brother Jeb didn't like, be it living in a fraternity, voting democratic, or dating someone of a different race, God would, according to Brother Jeb, turn you into a queer.  As far as I could tell Brother Jeb had a gay old time with his message, and we didn't mind that much.  After all, baiting Brother Jeb was the closest thing to fun that was left on campus after the aliens came.  I let the cop's salvation speech roll off of me to.
The police were also passing a bag of Bert's bakery doughnuts back and fourth like a bong.  "I'd offer you one" the driver snickered, but you might get the back seat dirty."  He gave a pointed look to me as I was sitting, handcuffed, in the back of the car.
"That's OK" I replied "I'm not hungry; and I like Bert's cinnamon buns better anyway."
And so it went with me being upbraided and preached to by turns and the Iowa countryside going by till we got to Cedar Rapids.  We ended up at a building on an island in the Cedar River where the civic center used to be.  "Here's where you get out punk" said the driver as he opened the door and pulled me out.  "You'll get what's coming to you here."
The police brought me in; "Here's the killer" the policeman who had driven said.  "Be careful, he's dangerous."
The receptionist gave him a bored look and picked up a phone.  Presently, a stocky lady came down the elevator.  "Miss Cudd will take you" the receptionist said.
"Just call me Elsie" the woman said as she took my by the arm and walked me to the elevator.  She seemed to keep herself closer to me than was necessary, but then again, that was the last thing I cared about now.
Once we got in, Elsie pushed the down button and we descended into the bowls of the Earth.  A small part of me thought that descending into an alien stronghold was a bad idea; but that part of me couldn't get the rest of me to care.
The doors opened up on what looked like a large cube farm like what you see in a lot of large offices.  "Go to the end of the hall and turn right" Elsie told me as I walked off of the elevator.  Feeling like I'd always assumed the zombies felt like, I followed directions.  Turning the corner I saw two aliens that stopped me cold regardless of how much of a zombie I felt like.
The one looked like a kid's ring toy; you know, one of those toys with five differently colored rings where the object is to stack them from largest to smallest.  But in this case, there were seven rings more or less since they seemed to flow together and separate when you weren't looking, and they stood about as tall as a tall man.  They were all a burnt orange color and seemed to be made of a sort of thick gelatinous slime.  From the rings jutted an assortment of tentacles, eye stalks, and other protuberances with no purpose I could discern.
It was throwing nondescript chunks of meet to the other alien which looked like a nest of snakes sitting on top of a giant spider the size of a car.  I slammed my eyes shut hoping that it would not look so horrible once I had settled myself down.  Then I opened my eyes again; it looked worse!  Mucous covered the body and things that looked like oversized maggots slithered through the awful stuff.
"Yuk!" I exclaimed involuntarily as if my voice box had suffered a spasm.
"Very good" said the ring toy alien in that school teacher voice I remembered from counseling sessions.
"Oh?" I asked querulously.
"Yes" ring toy alien replied "that is Yuk and you can call me Miss Puff.  What's wrong?"  Miss Puff asked "You look kind of pale".
"It's just that your friend there looks like something that just ate the baby".
"Oh!" replied Miss Puff "we don't eat babies.  We wait till they grow up.  The meat is much tastier when it's properly aged.  It's tender that way" Miss Puff said as she grabbed me with a pinchers and started to need me with her tentacles.  My stomach started to lurch at the touch; whatever happened now would require intestinal fortitude.
"Just as I thought" said the alien "you're just too skinny yet.  I'll take you where you can get nice and fat."  We started back toward the elevator as Yuk's snaky upper portion writhed.  The alien snarled at the untimely interruption of its meal.
As we walked I noticed an alien of Miss Puff's kind working at a bank of monitors; it looked like there were twenty or so of them each showing a counseling session.  "You folks are monsters of multitasking" I said to myself.
"What do you mean monsters" Miss Puff asked indignantly.  I'll have you know I won a beauty contest before coming here.  For a while, I considered entering the real Miss Universe pageant; but I came here instead."
I thought that if she was up against things like Yuk that might not be hard.
We passed another cube area and a screen went blank.  An alien extended a tentacle and fiddled with some machinery and the screen came back to life.
"Someone else trying to kill one of us" said Miss Puff with contempt "you should realize how futile that is.  All we have to do is pull another avatar out of storage and we're right back in business.  So you see, carrying a gun into the office and shooting me did you no good.  A gun" she continued with what sounded like a note of disappointment "and all this time I thought you were just happy to see me."
"I just wanted to be riveting company" I continued; my zombie self seemed to be a fan of bad puns.
"And all for your friend, what's her name, that's right, Amy.  What you see in that skinny little witch I can't even begin to imagine."
"She has a gentle touch" I replied feeling where Miss Puff had handled me.  I would have some truly nasty welts if I should live so long.
"Just the same" she continued "a man of your sophistication should want someone with a little more meat on her bones."
As we neared the elevator, Miss Puff continued "I'd like to stay and talk about your problems, but my mother taught me to never play with my food."
"That's fine" I replied as I stepped into the elevator "I don't mind talking to you, but I wouldn't want to be your chum."
"Chow" she replied.  I heard the clicking of pinchers as the elevator door closed.  The elevator started down; it descended for a vary long time.
...............................
The nice thing about hanging out at swim up to bars was that you could talk to mermaids.  She liked to talk about eating at the great feasts of King Neptune and swimming through the coral reefs to hunt great aquatic beasts.  I sat there listening to the mermaid's tales and feeling the water lap up against my waste and feeling the sun beat down upon me.
The way the sun beat down on me it was hard to believe that I was really in a cave below Cedar Rapids; good hologram I thought.  I felt the back of my neck which was beginning to feel like sunburn was immanent; a most excellent hologram I thought again.
The mermaid continued with her story of adventures beneath the sea.  She looked like she had spent more time at King Neptune's all you can eat lobster bar and less time hunting great aquatic beasts than the mermaids of lore and legend, but than this was the age of eating and besides the conversation was amusing and she was a friendly sea spirit.  Life was good.
Indeed life had been good.  I would get up in the morning, eat a large breakfast, swim a while, eat a hefty lunch and spend the rest of the day hanging out at the bar.  And the music was good to old Kenny Chesney tunes and even older Jimmy Buffet parrot-head classics interspersed with a variety of beach and reggae ditties just the thing to listen to while hanging out in the water drinking and just chilling out.
"Well" said the mermaid, "I need to swim back to the palace of King Neptune; the lobster catch was good so there will be a feast in honor of the lobster spitir."
The menu here might not include lobster, but there was enough other food to keep one happy.  The bar tender, who looked like a Rastafarian for real, walked by; "what do you want mon?" he asked.
"Tequila" I said.
"How about I put the bottle here for you mon" the bartender said.  "I know how you drink."
"Thanks mon" I replied pouring myself a shot.  A great lassitude settled over me.  If I were eaten by aliens tomorrow, if I were to return to my life with no girl and no fun, if I stayed here forever, what did it matter?  The food kept coming and the numb feel of intoxication kept rolling over me.  I considered the ocean, how it was easiest to float in the water and let the waves move you around; that was the idea I thought to myself.  Just roll with it all and let the ocean take you.
"Do you really feel that way" a voice asked "like you don't care if you live numb or die a horrible death?"
"What?" I asked.  "Where are you?"
"Look in the bottle" the voice said, so I looked and it was the worm at the bottom of the bottle talking.
"What?" I asked again.  "Why am I talking to a worm?"
"I got your attention didn't I" the voice replied "I'm not vain, if I can get your attention as a worm, than a worm I will be.  And besides" the worm continued "I knew that if I hung out here that you'd find me sooner or later."
"My attention for what" I wondered aloud".
"Your attention to get your life together" the voice replied "or do you really wants to be alien chow?"
"And what's the alternative" I asked with some disgust "go to work, go home to an empty house, go out and eat till I feel sick, and generally get bored to death?"
"If that's all you can think of" said the voice with disgust "maybe alien food is all you're good for."
"You have any suggestions?" I retorted.
"Well, you used to bowl" replied the voice. "You could always try to put your game back together."
I had almost forgotten bowling.  The last time I'd thrown a ball in anger, and I had certainly been angry at the time, was back in high school.  I had been trying to improve my game with one of these how to bowl books.  I'd walked into the bowling alley in Tema and threw six straight gutter balls; I walked out in a huff promising that I would never bowl again.
"Or you could travel" suggested the voice "maybe go see the real Caribbean.  Believe me, this is not as good an imitation as you think."
"Hmmm" I thought to myself.  I really hadn't thought of that.
"Or you could go to church and find out what a bucket of bilge brother Jed's version of religion is.  "I can't believe that some people actually think God has nothing better to do than to stomp about the universe throwing tantrums."
"Church" I repeated without enthusiasm.
"Or start a hobby, get a pet, join a chess club, when your thinking straight you're smart enough to do a lot of interesting things" the voice continued.  "There's a lot of life out there, go find some."
And then my life passed before my eyes, and there wasn't enough of it.  Perhaps the voice was right, but how was I going to get out of here to live it.
"Listen and pay attention" the voice continued seeming to boom though it was not that loud.  "They will come for you tomorrow.  I will arrange for you to have a special condiment with you; when the aliens smell it, they are driven to eat anything that it is on.  Spray the condiment on them and run."
"What" I asked?  "Some condiment is going to save me?"
"Not save you on its own" the voice replied, "but it will give you a chance.  It will be in a small yellow tube; you will have to hide it between your fat rolls until the time is right."  I then realized that I had put on the pounds down here.
"Remember the yellow tube" repeated the voice "Keep the yellow tube with you at all costs."
"The yellow tube" I repeated.  This was just too weird, but then, what about any of this wasn't?
...............................
"This is so much better" Miss Puff said as she held me with her pinchers "I so like a man with meat on his bones."  Tentacles reached out and caressed me.
The voice had been right.  They had come for me the next morning.  I think it was the bartender, though I might be wrong.  "Did you have a nice stay mon" he asked?
I don't remember what I had said or much about leaving.  In fact, besides the bartender, and perhaps the mermaid, there hadn't been anyone who I had remembered, just a strange aquatic parade of people who swam into and out of my life as I was drinking.
I would remember Miss Puff, and if I wanted to live long enough to remember anything in the future I had best stay alert.  I felt the tube of condiment stuck between my fat rolls; at least I had remembered that.
Yuk made pleased sounds of contentment as Miss Pull continued.  "You're so nice and plump, I'm sure you will be delicious."
"I hope I drive you crazy" I said grabbing for the tube of condiment.  I sprayed the stuff all over, on Yuk, on Miss Puff, and all around.  The smell of the stuff partook of the worst qualities of machine oil, rotten cabbage, and road kill skunk, but somehow it drove them wild.
"Delicious" Miss Puff purred as she headed for Yuk and the monster's sounds of contentment changed to sounds of uncontrollable hunger.  I stood forgotten as tentacles, snake like appendages, and pseudo pods reached for each other.
I left Miss Puff and Yuk to explore their hunger for each other; such moments of intimacy deserve their privacy.  I sprinted down the hall looking for a way out.  A door to the right looked like an exit, so I banged my way through and saw, to my joy, stairs ascending to the surface.
I had definitely put on weight since coming here, but the sounds from below, a combination of baying, howling, and yowling that sounded like feeding time in Hell's own zoo gave wings to my feet.  I continued to climb, on and on, I hadn't realized that I had been this far underground.  Finally, just as I was about to drop of exhaustion, I crashed through the door at the top of the stairs into some sort of garage.
"What the Hell? You're naked!  What are you doing here?"  The woman working on a familiar looking mermaid suit yelled as I came in the door.  Suddenly I recognized her.
"Elsie let's get out of here!" I yelled.  "The monsters are after me."
"What do you mean monsters?" Elsie snapped.  "You go back where you came from and get some clothes on".
Suddenly a door that looked like it led to a loading dock opened.  "Yuk!" Elsie screamed "What is that".
"Meet your boss" I replied.  "I see you know his name."
"Boss" Elsie asked "What do you mean boss?"  Elsie paused then said  "Oh! He sounds angry to."
"No" I replied "hungry".
"What are we waiting for" Elsie yelled with mounting hysteria "let's get out of here!"
I don't know if Guinness keeps a world record for fasted 20-yard dash by two fat people running from an alien monster; if they did, we would have obliterated it.  It helped that Yuk was slithering after us at a speed that was amazing for the size of the thing.
Finally, we got to the truck that was our goal.  I looked briefly at the name, Burt's bakery, and jumped in the passenger side.
"There's a spare mermaid suit in the back of the cab" Elsie explained "you can get in that and be, well, sort of descent.  I'd wait for you to put it on" she said squealing the truck to the exit "but if we don't hall buns than we'll be toast."
So Elsie sped the truck in a zigzag pattern though the warehouse district south of the river as I flopped around like, well, a mermaid out of water.  Finally, I had the suit on as well as it would fit and had plopped into the passenger seat.  About then, Elsie gave up on losing Yuk in the maze of streets and headed for the on ramp to the interstate headed north toward Waterloo.
We had almost reached the Vinton exit when Yuk finally started dropping behind us.  Then we saw flashing blue lights in the distance and then a blockage of police cars.  Stopping, Elsie rolled down the window; the warm late summer air I had breathed before entering the alien stronghold had been replaced by cool air with the first bite of autumn to it; I had been gone a while.
A familiar man in blue approached.  "You just can't obey the law can you" he asked?
"There is still time to repent of your wicked ways" the second policeman added.
The first policeman took back the conversation with a screed about scofflaws and habitual criminals.  Just as he was hitting his stride, he broke off with an exclamation.  "Yuk!" he yelled "what is that?"
I turned to see what was behind us, and yes, it was Yuk only now I could not only see him, but I could smell him.  I hadn't realized that anything could smell worse than the condiment I had sprayed him with; but I was wrong.
"It's you alien friend" I replied.  "You might ask him for another doughnut, but I think he's in a helpful mood."
"Thanks" the first policeman said "but I'm not hungry now."  He turned to the other policeman "Shoot it!" he yelled launching into a stream of invective that indicated that he to was on a first name basis with the lord.
The two policemen started shooting at the thing without much luck.  Perhaps the monster was eating the bullets, I thought to myself.  Whatever the case was, the firepower was having no effect.  Someone in the other squad car called for backup; this gave more policemen a chance to fire in futility at the thing.  Just as the police were falling back before Yuk's charge, a strange glow filled the sky.  We looked up at what appeared to be a flying saucer.
"What now?" the second policeman said "it's like things just keep getting weirder all the time."
Then a familiar voice emanated from the machine.  It was Miss Puff, but I'd be damned if I could understand what she was saying.  Apparently the monster did for it suddenly stopped its advance and headed back down the road.
.................................................
Remember how things used to be?  We had peace, prosperity, security, good health, and all you can eat restaurants on every block.  Things are better now that the aliens are gone.
I remember when the aliens left; it was the day I got out of jail.
Yes they arrested me that night when we escaped from the alien stronghold; I was still in my mermaid suit, which made for one of the more interesting perp walks in the history of the Benton County sheriff's department.  I remember sitting in my cell a lot torn between wondering what would happen to me and just being grateful that I was alive.
Then on the third day, the first policeman came in and said "You're free to go; the charges have been dropped."  My mother came to get me; fortunately, she'd gotten the word to bring clothes; mermaid suits are not fun to be in unless you're in the water.
Anyway, we were on the way back to my house when the aliens announced that they were leaving Earth.  There wasn't the universal silence that had preceded their arrival; just one of those announcements over the radio, like what they have for storm warnings, stating that they were leaving.  I heard Miss Puff, or maybe they all sounded like that, telling the world that they had tried to end our troubles but humans were to incorrigible to help and so they had decided to give up on us.  All the respectable papers bought the "humans are too incorrigible" line, but I think the tabloids with their stories of cannibal aliens being foiled by something with a higher power are closer to the truth.
So now life is getting back to normal.  I got my job a Prairie Dawn back.  "Now that we have to start relying more on our own machines" said the boss "we need someone who can do quality control again."  And I've started going to church, a nice Lutheran church where they don't care if you have a few every now and then.  And a few is all I have these days; I no longer am the kind of person who tries to solve all his problems with a keg and a chaser.
Not that I've figured this whole God thing out yet.  I certainly find it hard to believe that God spoke to me from the bottom of the tequila bottle on that fateful day; and Brother Jeb would not have believed it was God since no one got turned into a queer.  But since I've started Bible study, I've learned about some of the queer things ascribed to God, like parting the Red Sea, making a bush that burned but was not consumed, and protecting Daniel in the lion's den, not to mention the virgin birth and water being turned into wine, so maybe what happened to me was just another link in the chain of divine strangeness by which we are tethered to or God.  With God, who can know?
And that pretty much ends my story, except what happened in late October last year.  A bunch of us were at our pastor's parsonage for a meeting to discuss the upcoming Reformation Sunday service and, as such meetings usually did, it morphed into a party out in the woods behind the house.
I had just finished a beer and was headed away from the camp fire to walk a little and to clear my head.  I looked up into the sky and looked at the stars.  I was not ready to call them the city of God, as our pastor did, but I could look up at the sky and not cringe anymore.  I was congratulating myself on my improved state of nerves when I heard a voice, a sweet third-grade schoolteacher's voice.  It was a voice I recognized all too well.  Suddenly I wanted to cringe after all.
"You're getting to skinny" Miss Puff said extending a pincer "you should really eat better."
"I though you had left our world" I replied shakily.
"Oh" Miss Puff replied "most of us have.  I was sent back to help clean up some of the stuff we left behind, things that children shouldn't play with, you know, like nuclear powered rivet guns."
"Oh! I said "you still remember that."
"And I wanted to give you a chance to leave this backward dirtball with me and see the galaxy."
"Thanks" I replied, "but I've got a life here, and a girlfriend, and she has a real gentle touch."
"Don't be hasty" Miss Puff replied "why stay when I will be young and beautiful long after everyone here grows old?  You don't want to wake up one day and find you're stuck with an old bag when you could have had the stars."
"I'm sure you would be an interesting companion" I replied, "but I don't want to be your chum.
"oh that" the alien replied "I wouldn't eat you until you were ready to die; and we could have so much fun together until then."
"I thought you didn't play with your food" I continued.
"Normally not" she said "but you're special.  You were able play with bad puns even though you were about to eaten.  A sense of humor like that is rare anywhere in the galaxy."
 "So you want to drag me around the galaxy with you because I make you laugh?" I asked incredulously.  I'd read that women preferred men with a sense of humor; but the idea that this might be galaxy wide was hard to swallow.  But then, I thought, with aliens who could know.
"Us gals like to have our fun to" retorted Miss Puff.  "And besides, a sense of humor makes you taste good; that and creativity and a richness of life experience.  That's why we forbade all those self destructive things your people did.  It's not that it makes you taste bad, necessarily, it just makes you taste dull and stale.  The only reason I had you stuck in the hole to get drunk was that otherwise you might do something totally stupid.  Sacrifices must be made."
"I thought you forbade all that stuff so that we would all get so board that we'd eat all the time and get fat" I said.
"Well" Miss Puff explained "you might as well kill two troll lizards with one laser bolt."
"You mean kill two birds with one stone" I corrected.
"We don't have birds on our world" Miss Puff explained "we have troll lizards."
"Whatever" I replied "I thank you for the offer, but I don't really want to go with you so you can eat me?"
"Why not" she said "you're going to be eaten at the end whatever you do.  It's either me or the worms; and the worms won't appreciate you like I do."
"Thanks anyway" I replied "but I think I'll go back with my friends".
Walking away, I thought of what the pastor would have done; he probably would have invited Miss Puff to church.  She would have understood the last supper; but her understanding would have been more according to the gospel of Heinline than the gospel for John.  Then there was the 23rd Psalm.  Here take on the lord being your shepherd would have been a little bizarre, even for the pastor.
As I was thinking this, I saw Elsie coming toward me.  "I can't believe that thing really liked you" Elsie siad.
"She wanted to eat me alive" I said.
"Well, you are a dish" she replied giving me a peck on the cheek.  "Why don't you come back to the party?  The pastor is going to sing some of his favorite German drinking songs; and you know how much fun that can be."
"Sure" I replied.  So we returned to the party and I left the contemplation of the acts of Gods and aliens for another day.



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