Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Mopeds Make a Good Escape Vehicle, by Lenitschka


“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.”

Turns out it’s not completely like Star Trek, but close enough Eric agreed to cosplay with us.