It Came From Nowhere

by Zachary Houle

I'll never forget the alien invasion of May 1, 1983, the day all the women died. It's something I've never stopped thinking about, even though everyone else in Herbertville probably pines for the day I eventually stop dwelling on it. See, I usually head down to the library during the weekend, and open up an old clippings file containing thousands of yellowing pictures taken of the aftermath by the tabloids and police. They're all pretty damn grueling to look at, even by today's standards. There's pictures of dogs eating body parts; pictures of hollowed-out buildings dripping blood; and one particularly infamous photo of Derek Stintson - a little kid who'd grow up to blow his brains out with a rifle - running down Lynne Street cradling his mother's fly-strewn, decapitated head in his arms. It's stuff you don't want to look at on a full stomach, and I'd caught weird looks from people as I've leafed through the clippings. Angie Rice, the head librarian, has already given me shit for looking at these photos while there were kids around. But what can I do? It's the only place in town you can find all this stuff under one roof.

Every time I look at the carnage, I'm reminded of Jimmy Somerville. He was this other kid in Grade 8 at Herbertville Elementary at the time, one of the few people who managed to see the whole thing first hand. Whenever I passed him in school right after the attack, he wouldn't ever look back. He would stare right into some kind of inner-space that only existed in front of his eyes. He was a blank slate. He didn't care about anything anymore; he'd already given up on life at 12-years-old, and none of the teachers were about to do anything to bring him back or give him any new hope. I guess nobody could. Every grown adult left in that town already had issues of their own to work through: they'd all lost their wives or their lovers or their daughters or their sisters or even just friends.

Besides, something as strange as an alien invasion had yet to be dealt with in any trauma handbook. Everyone thought it'd be the Reds, those damn Soviets, who would do us in with a missile, not little green men from outer space.

In the end, Jimmy was left to his own devices. He was a lit fuse that ran out of string thanks to Chuck Pollard. The two had been always fighting, even before the destruction of Herbertville. But a huge fight broke out between them a few weeks into September 1983. It happened in the schoolyard during a noon-hour softball game between two teams fronted by Jimmy and Chuck. Things had been going particularly badly for Chuck's team: Jimmy was obviously dealing with his post-alien assault trauma by batting in home run after home run. This angered Chuck to no end, who was dumb enough to go up and tell Jimmy to do a few things with his mother's corpse. It doesn't take someone with even a quarter of a brain to figure out what happened next.

None of the teachers saw the ensuing punch-up - I don't think anyone was even patrolling the grounds that day. They probably had their hands full as it was, trying to get through the working day without cracking open the whiskey bottles they kept in the bottom of their desks, an open secret if there ever was one.

I can't give you too many details about the fight since I was, typically, hiding out myself in the library. I spent most of my time during recesses and lunch hours there combing the science books, teaching myself things I could do with saltpeter and other combustible materials. But I found out about the fight second-hand, moments after it actually happened. Paul Cooper, a chess nerd in Grade 6 I didn't affiliate with much after May Day, even though he still tried to talk to me after the invasion like I was still his friend or something, raced up to me in the library to tell me all about it. He panted like an elderly husky who'd just run a cross-continental sled race.

"Marty, you should ... you should come see this," he said, fumbling with his asthma inhaler. "Chuck's bawling behind the baseball diamond. Near the ... near the portable."

"Yeah, whatever," I replied, barely poking my nose out of a book called The Century's Greatest Disasters, eyeballing a section about a little Ohio town called Xenia that'd been virtually leveled by a massive tornado almost 10 years before. I waited until Paul left the library to tell a few more people, then walked outside out of curiosity to take a good look just as the bell rang to call everyone back in the opposite direction. After walking against dozens of kids coming inside for recess I found the big fat blob that was Chuck all curled up and alone sobbing two minutes later. His lower lip was bleeding, his Judas Priest T-shirt had been ripped to shreds and his arms horribly covered in red bruises.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" I said, standing over him, feeling a strange glow of inner-satisfaction.

"Get ah-away from me, you fuckin' pussy," he said.

"What's the matter, Chuck?" I said curtly. "Someone beat you up like you finally deserve?"

"Get lost," he spat.

"Hmm, what should I do? Let's see."

I paused, just to keep him wondering what I'd do next.

"I know!" I added, suddenly feeling butterflies struggling to break out from inside me. "Maybe I should put my shoe into your face!? What do you think about that? Huh? Maybe one kick for every time you beat me up, like how you used to nail me with the dodge ball during recess. Remember that?"

"You couldn't k-kick a fly, you ... you piece of shit," he replied, quivering.

Under normal circumstance, he might have been right. Back in Grade 7, Chuck dared me to punch him in the schoolyard and I was stupid enough to do exactly what he said. Without wincing at all - I think he even had a devious smile on his face, too - he added, "C'mon, you can do that harder, can't you?" I kept patting my tiny fists into his stomach and punched him till my fists sang. He still didn't budge. Then, after I'd put all the effort I could into his rigid frame, he nearly leveled me with one quick shot to the shoulder. Ms. Jeffrey, who had been then the school principal, wanted to know why I'd tried to pick a fight with Chuck. I didn't say a word. I let the tears do the talking instead.

But that had been Grade 7, back when I felt and looked like a little sissy. I'd only recently had taken to wearing jeans instead of dress pants, I'd only recently begun seriously working on my upper body strength by doing 100 pushups at night. Being alone with dad probably had something to do with that, but I was growing, changing from the inside. Things were different now. I wasn't willing to be bullied.

As I stood over Chuck, I found myself glancing around the emptying play yard just to see if anyone was lingering around. When I was sure the yard was pretty much empty of witnesses - at least the kids who might try to help Chuck out or even try to squeal on me - I kicked him hard, right in the side of his belly.

His watery eyes flew open as the kick registered with his flesh, and I swung my leg at him again on the recoil. He anticipated the move and started to roll away like a squirming pig, but I still managed to put my foot into his side. He screamed pathetically, his arms lazily trying to swat me away like a gnat before I could do more damage. I kicked them, too. After a few more boots to the stomach area, he just opened himself wide like a rag doll. I could have pummeled him, but I held back. Instead, I stood there looking over his pathetic carcass, now knowing full well why he used to pick on me so much. It was just so easy, once you had a target.

"Wha-what are you doing?" stammered Chuck, futilely trying not to cry like a little baby.

"Trying to get your attention," I said, spitting on him. "Especially since there's something I want from you."

"What?"

"You told Chris Anderson that there's a whole bunch of skin mags on top of the hill by the water tower."

"I d-did not."

"Liar," I screamed, and kicked him again. He groaned as my foot sunk into his thigh.

"You told him in gym class last year. I heard you. You said some high-school kids had them up there. Remember?"

"I ... I don't."

"Remember now?" I said, and aiming my foot as though I was about to take out his left kneecap.

"Okay!" he said, clutching his stomach. "What d-does it matter to you, anyway?"

"I want to see them."

He hesitated for a moment, swallowed, then added, "W-what for?"

I really didn't know what to say. As I stood over Chuck, however, one thing was pretty clear: I could get whatever I wanted from him. And nothing seemed better to me at the time than taking a look at something only a handful of people knew about.

"Show me the magazines, and maybe I'll go away without telling anyone I've given you a real shit kicking," I said, licking my lips.

He groped around on his hands and knees for something to grab hold of to pull himself off the ground. He then looked up at me, his mouth briefly crystallized into a silent scream.

"Like they're g-going to believe you," he said, spitting out some blood and what appeared to be a tooth. "When I get up, I'm going to p-pound the crap outta you."

I looked at him, then the small puddle of crimson on the ground, then back at him. I smiled as though I had a knife in my pocket and was about to cut him open.

He did something that took me completely by surprise. He started bawling. It was one of the most annoying things I'd ever heard - more annoying than the emergency broadcast system tests they'd sometimes play on TV. As his voice hitched in his throat, he agreed to take me to the water tower the next day, a Saturday. A well-placed foot to the groin merely sealed the deal, and shut the little baby up for good. He got off lucky as far as I'm concerned. His sissy crying was really starting to annoy me.

*

My friend Lawrence had just one picture of Amy Korine, a school photo of a stupid girl he'd always pined for that was a year or so younger than him. After she died in the attack, he carried her picture around in his wallet and always guarded it like it was a miniaturized version of the once living, breathing real thing. The photograph was taken in 1982 and, in it, her hair was neatly tied back, her blue eyes sparkled, and the braces on her teeth gleamed as though they've been polished for the occasion. She truthfully looked cute, though anyone who knew her could tell you that she was about dumber than a sack of wet hammers whenever she opened her mouth. She always talked real slow, like she had cerebral palsy or something, and she still played with dolls even though none of the other girls in the upper grades had been playing with dolls before the invasion happened - they were all too busy swooning over Duran Duran. Still, Lawrence used to pull this photo out in class and look at it from time to time, annoying me to no end. Every time he dragged out that picture, he reminded me of the people I'd lost, like my mother. I'd lean over and whisper harshly to him to put that goddamn picture away and forget about her. It seemed easier, forgetting.

The evening after I pounded Chuck, I'd found Lawrence seated on his beat-up BMX by the fluorescent glow cast by the lights turned on inside pharmacy's picture window on Main Street. He was staring at Amy's photograph again, as usual, floating up on Cloud Nine just minutes before the curfew imposed by the army was to take effect. The last thing I wanted was any sort of attention from the Army, since I had a pseudo-narcotic drug in my possession. The village didn't have any cops - the nearest cop shop was 20 clicks to the east in Duneedon - so the military was still hanging around in case the aliens came back. Plus, they did a more-than-sufficient job of shielding the town folk from tabloid reporters and lingering out-of-town looters. No one wanted them to leave, except maybe me. I'd been preparing to cut loose with saltpeter bombs once they did.

"Lawrence," I said wheeling up. "C'mon. You wouldn't want the Army guys to catch you here."

He stared intently at the picture in his hands and smiled wearily.

"Quit acting like a retard and put that photo away," I said, braking. "I got the stuff you want."

His eyes lit up at the suggestion, and he slowly fumbled to put the picture away as I reached into my backpack and briefly flashed him the item in question: a sandwich bag containing a tube of old model airplane glue. It was a little something I'd swiped out of my old man's basement, something Lawrence had been bugging me to get ever since he'd become addicted to glue sniffing in the weeks following May Day. I had a good reason for getting him the goods - he'd been experimenting with PAM cooking spray, some pretty hardcore stuff, after his glue supply had more or less dried up. It seemed that the only thing the kids at school were interested in talking about that fall was how much PAM the high-school kids huffed. In retrospect, I think everyone was in awe of the cooking spray simply because it was named after a woman. Still, it worried me. I'd been hearing about all these overdoses in the news, and I didn't want Lawrence to be next. Glue seemed so much safer.

Lawrence got his ass in gear and he followed me to the path behind the elementary school yard, not far from where I'd pummeled Chuck a few hours before. We parked our bikes and ran into the bushes toward a tall pine tree with a tire swing hanging off it. As we lay on the orange carpet of last year's fallen pine needles, I told Lawrence what had happened earlier that day. His reaction was one of disbelief at first, but he warmed up to my tale after I told him about Chuck's promise to show me where the porn magazines were located.

"I hope you wouldn't mind tagging along," I said

"Why? You want me to watch you jerk off?" he replied, squeezing some of the glue out into the bag. I watched him for a moment, briefly hypnotized for a moment.

"No, stupid," I scoffed. "I was just thinking you'd play backup, in case Chuck tries to do something. Like, if he takes me out into the woods to have Bobby Fujita take a few shots."

Fujita was one of Chuck's lesser high school pals, but he was still big enough to do a lot of damage if he was ticked off enough. Once, I saw him nail John Vandermeek on the head with a plastic hockey stick during a backyard game of shinny. John went to the hospital with three stitches and you should have heard his mother scream when she found out what'd happened. I doubt she'd screamed so shrilly in her life. Until the night the space aliens killed her, at least.

"You think I'm gonna protect you from Bobby Fujita?" he said.

"I'm just saying that Chuck won't try to do something dumb if you tag along. That's all."

Lawrence sighed, put the cap on the glue and pressed his mouth and nose into the bag. He sniffed. I could feel his contempt wafting over me, along with the glue fumes. He pulled his face out, and he rubbed at his nose with his left hand.

"You think he's gonna show?" said Lawrence.

"Oh yeah, he'll show. Unless he wants the whole town to know what kind of wuss he is."

"Whatever, Marty," Lawrence said. "Like anyone is gonna believe you beat him up. Especially if you're asking me for help."

Lawrence giggled wildly, a good sign he was starting to get high, just before he put his lower face inside the bag again and snorted some more. When he was done, he lay back and looked to the sky with a sigh, clutching his precious glue bag like it was that goddamn picture of Amy. I wanted to reach out and touch him, just to see if he was okay. I held my hand out over his belly, and almost went further, before I snatched it back.

"What was so funny?" I asked, secretly hoping he hadn't noticed me a moment earlier.

"You think she's alive?" he said.

"Amy?"

"Yeah. You think it's still possible she's up there somewhere?"

I turned to look at Lawrence, and he now had this scary, spaced-out look in his eyes. He'd clearly blasted off onto his own plane of existence. He was starting to scare me, and I began to regret that I'd dealt him the airplane glue. I leapt to my feet, wanting to suddenly be anywhere but there.

"I think I'd better go now, Lawrence," I said.

"No, no," he said, starting to get up. "Please stay a bit. I - "

He coughed, and something red trickled out of his mouth. For a second, he looked like a goofy Halloween vampire.

"I don't want ... you to go," he hacked. "Not like ... ."

He looked up at me, reaching up to me. I wanted to grab him back, but I didn't. He fumbled around, coughing - almost choking - staring at me as though I might have an answer for his predicament. I had none. I only said the standard line you're supposed to say when something goes wrong.

"Jesus, man, are you OK?"

He shook his head yes, so I stayed with him until the fit subsided. After he was done coughing, he stood up. Still clutching his glue bag like a security blanket, he began to stagger over to his bike. He was shaking a bit, though the night was quite warm.

"My dad says the Army is going to leave," he said, trying to change the subject. "That's what Benny from the mill was saying."

"That's just a rumour," I replied, just trying to make him feel better. "That isn't true. They're going to stick around. You'll see."

Lawrence didn't respond to that, though I honestly don't think he was really listening. He was too busy zig-zaging towards his bike with a gob of red stuff running out of his mouth. He wiped that away with his left arm, before finally picking up his bicycle. It took him a few minutes to properly mount the bike - his behind kept sliding off the seat, and I even contemplated grabbing his ass and planting it where it needed to be. But he was finally able to get on, so I hopped on my own bike and followed him along the trail. We then rode side by side across the schoolyard and down Queen Street. A few times, he lost his balance and nearly fell off, but somehow he managed to make it a few blocks to the safely of his own home, or what was left of it at least. Right above the garage door, you could see the burn marks and the blood. Water or paint couldn't wash or cover stains like that - they lingered like an open wound that couldn't heal. I nearly choked myself, just looking at it.

"You're going to show up tomorrow, right?" I asked.

"Yeah, yeah," he muttered, before staggering tiredly through his front door. "Don't worry. I'll be there."

I shook my head and wondered if he'd be any shape to help me during my time of need. Then I wheeled away before the porch light switched on and his old man came out and yelled at me for being such a bad influence. I navigated the maze of streets - Lynne Street, Samantha Street, Stacey Street and Lydia Boulevard - before pedaling all the way up to my house just on the other side of Main Street. I did it without breaking a sweat and ditched my wheels beside a small pile of lumber on the front yard. I slipped past my old man, who was in the living room fast asleep in his recliner, wearing a wife beater and the bottoms of tacky red, blue and white stripe pajamas my mom bought him last Christmas. There were six or seven brown long-necked bottles at his feet. I still don't know why he drank so much after the attack - it wasn't like he'd seen mom die firsthand or anything.

I climbed upstairs to my bedroom, then crawled into bed only to face a hard time dozing off into dreamland. I thought about Chuck for a few hours. I tried to think about the victory I'd scored that day, how I'd managed to pummel him to no end. Instead, I thought what might happen once he rebuilt himself, after he was allowed to heal. What then? Would he turn the tables somehow and attack me?

I knew I couldn't let him settle the score with me, ever, or else I'd be the laughing stock of all the boys in the village. It was a scenario that nagged at me, batted sleep back from me every time it reached out to pull me under. Eventually, though, I felt suffocated by the darkness. It closed all around me, gripped me, and pushed me under. I felt as though I were drowning, being pushed underwater, and life's current problems disappeared. It would have been a good thing if only my current problems hadn't been replaced with something much more frightening: a dream-version of the past.

*

The dream was a two-parter, just like that miniseries, V, that I watched sometime after the invasion. In the first half, I was a scrawny 10-year-old pinned into a chair in a dark basement room by my dad, who grabbed me by my upper arms. A dim light bulb swung above me like a pendulum, flickering an SOS pattern. I looked frantically around for my Mom, but I knew she was nowhere to be found. She was out shopping for groceries.

I eventually turned my attention to the only other thing in the room, my old man. Big mistake. He roared at me like a locomotive careening down a railroad track at full speed, and once I was caught in his gaze there was no looking away. It was almost hypnotizing; it was just like watching a tornado coming right at you.

"You shouldn't be thinking about girls at your age," he yelled above me. "You shouldn't be thinking about them, period. They play these stupid little games, just like your mother, and they get you into situations you can't get out of."

Somewhere in the middle of his spiel, I felt my crotch get damp and I looked down to see that I'd wet myself. A little stream of piss ran down my leg, smelling like radioactive vinegar. I felt like crying, thinking dad was going to smack me for peeing my pants right in front of him, but the bastard didn't even notice. He'd merely continued on with his tirade without missing a beat.

"Who's it this time?" he said. "Mary? Or maybe that little slut down the street? What's her name again? Cindy?"

"It's ... it's nobody!" I yelled back, gasping for air. It was true. There was nobody. Girls didn't interest me, simply because anytime I was seen walking or standing next to one, my old man somehow heard about it. He always wailed on me for it, always when my mom wasn't around.

I felt something hard was on my chest and I couldn't breathe, couldn't look down to see what was holding me down. Then it happened. Water leaked out of my eye and I knew I was bawling. I was out of control, pissing from both ends of my body. I wanted to stop, but I couldn't.

Dad licked his lips and raised his hand. I looked up at the swinging overhead bulb, hoped I could hypnotize myself into believing I wouldn't be smacked by my old man. But the horrific shadow of his distorted hand distracted me. In the dim light, it looked like a gigantic knife that was about to slice right through me.

"Quit your girly whining and listen to me," he said. "Tell me, how'd you like to be in a situation you can't get out of? How'd you like that, huh? Do you know what can happen, huh?"

The shadow hand fluttered and wavered like a butterfly, before the real one pummeled into my check. My head cranked backward under the force of the impact. The chair fell back, and I gasped as I braced myself for the hard landing on the cold concrete floor beneath me. The landing never came, however. I merely floated backwards into space - barely hearing my dad answer his own question - and began tumbling head over heels in the darkness for what felt like infinity.

"Accidents will happen, that's what." That was what my dad would say to me about getting too close to girls. I knew what he was really saying, though. I was an accident; he never wanted me. I just came out of the blue, out of nowhere, and here I was - a fucking burden on him. He was always slinking around the house looking for new ways to trip me up, humiliate me, when mom wasn't around. No wonder I had nightmares.

That wasn't the end of my weird dream, either, not by a long shot. I suddenly found myself sitting at the kitchen table of my parent's home late at night, fixing myself a raspberry jam sandwich beside the glow of the open refrigerator door. It was my late night snack, something I'd usually fix well past my bedtime. This time, though, there seemed to be something ominous and oppressive in the air as I slid the goo-covered knife along the length of the bread slice. The sound of a million crickets began buzzing from the general direction of my parent's room overhead. I felt burning sawdust fill my nostrils, a smell that simply overpowered me, made me want to pass out. The messy knife clattered to the floor. Something was wrong, I thought. Something was wrong upstairs. That's when the screaming began.

I ran through the hallway beside the stairs, my mouth tasting of copper pennies and the muffled sound of murder surrounding me. I didn't know what it was at the time, but I knew it was the sound of the devil: the sound of female voices screeching together in horrific unison somewhere outside my own home. I'd put my hands to my ears, but it couldn't muffle the cries for help and mercy. Still, I ran up the stairs to my parent's bedroom that way - with my hands over my ears. I would have gone mad otherwise, I would have broke down and cried.

You're not going to lose it, I told myself, You're not going to allow it. I drew closer and closer to the bedroom with a firm resolve, but not before I felt a drop in air pressure and the heavy weight of something on my chest trying to make me fall backward again. By the time I got about two-thirds of the way up the stairs, I found myself almost walking in place like a mime and I didn't dare stop, afraid I'd get thrown down the stairs if I did. I nearly called out to my mom, but thankfully, a few moments later, the awful screaming and buzzing vanished and the air holding me back loosened. I was able to finally proceed to the closed bedroom door and I flung it open with everything I had. I was nearly blinded when I did.

Green light streamed everywhere into the room through the gaping hole where the window used to be. Someone or, better yet, something had almost taken a blowtorch and cut a massive hole out in the wall. I shielded my eyes with the shadow of my arm against my face, and saw what looked to be an upside-down light bulb floating off the distance. Words fail me here to describe the enormity of this thing, which was sucking bodies into a tractor beam that extended downward from the base of the craft. I could hear the screams, the goddamn screams, even louder than before, plus the gurgling of bodies being ripped apart.

I couldn't bear it, and I looked around for my mom. She'd know what to do. She'd somehow get me out of this mess, stroke my hair and convince me I was living some kind of horrible dream. Of course, that's when I noticed the empty spot on the bed, right next to the place where dad was sleeping. The bed was soaked in blood, and the whole room would have this eerie smell that was similar to the weird taste inside my mouth. I ran over to my father to desperately shake him awake.

It was the only thing I could think about doing, and it's surprising that I could even think straight. I was petrified. I literally shivered while I ran.

"Dad," I yelled as I reached the bed. "Get up!"

He didn't move an inch, though I was able to tell he was breathing from the contractions of his chest. I shook him again and he smacked his lips as though he were about to wake up, then merely rolled over on his side.

"Dad! C'mon! Get up!"

I nudged him harder, even though my hands were now covered in blood and some kind of weird slime mixed in with it that made my fingers stick together. It made me felt sick to my stomach, but I kept shaking him. I shook and shook and shook yet the bastard still wouldn't even budge.

"Dad!" I screamed, and began pounding him, hammering him with my tiny little fists. Again, he didn't move, not even as a greenish mist began to float its way up from behind the hole in the wall. I pounded him again and again, harder and harder. My sticky fists pummeled him, and sang out in pain. I wanted him to wake up, I wanted him to go find my mother, even though I really knew he could probably do jack shit.

I eventually collapsed on top of him and let my eyelids fall like deadweights. It was all I could do. I felt so sleepy, so useless, and so unable to do anything. As darkness fell all around me, I wished it would smother me, prevent me from waking up. Things, though, have a way of never working out exactly how you want them to.

*

I awoke from the dream from the sound of my own voice, acutely aware that my back was covered with something sticky. I quickly patted myself, and found it was just sweat much to my relief. I leaned over, looked at the clock and saw it was already mid-morning, and noticed some other signs that things had been well on their way to coming to life around me - maybe without me. For instance, there was the sound of buzz saws and pounding hammers coming from the carpenters my dad had hired to fix up his bedroom down the hall. The racket rattled the bedroom walls, and it felt as though the noise was going to go right through my head and cause it to explode. I groaned, climbed out of bed, took off my sticky pajama top, and poked my head out the window to see what the temperature was like. After a moment of basking myself topless in the sun, I found it to be quite the uncharacteristically warm day for early autumn. The temperature was a little on the humid side, in fact. I walked to the bathroom with some appropriate clothes, and then shat, showered, and brushed my teeth in precisely that order. The shower was remarkably cold in comparison, but it was all right. My impending headache could live with that.

Once I finished showering, I went downstairs, fully dressed in jeans and a Pac-Man shirt, still feeling the bad hangover of the dream. I passed a clock in the hall, which was pointing its arms to 11 a.m. I didn't have much time and wanted to hurry, but I carefully passed my parent's old room at the top of the staircase almost in reverence. The door was open and two workmen - out of town contractors - were busily rebuilding the wall. One of the men looked at me oddly, probably wondering what the hell I was doing just standing there, looking. I began to think the same thing, and moved downstairs, not wanting to get into a meaningless argument for once.

My old man was still in the kitchen, all haggard looking, sitting in his chair as he angrily watched himself stub out a cigarette. He'd gained weight in the months since the attacks, probably 10 pounds or so, and it was really showing that morning. It probably had something to do with his drinking - he'd fallen off the wagon once mom died and he, like most of the remaining men of Herbertville, had been on perpetual sick leave from his mill job ever since. He'd made a killing on the insurance, so he just bummed around pretending he wasn't even alive. It was pretty pathetic. Seeming him at the table dressed like a loser in that undershirt and gaudy pajama bottoms made me lose whatever appetite I might have had. Still, I thought I'd better grab something from the refrigerator just in case I was hungry later. Of course, he looked up and recognized me when I opened the fridge door.

"And where were you last night, mister," my dad said in a scratchy voice.

"Out," I replied, grabbing an orange from the crisper.

"You were out past curfew."

"You don't remember, do you? I told you I was going to stay late helping Lawrence with his homework. His dad drove me home."

"Lawrence?"

"Yeah."

He grunted and scratched his ass. I shut the fridge door.

"You shouldn't be hanging out with him," he said. "He looks like a girl. Almost like that Boy George faggot you kids are starting to listen to."

"He dresses just like everyone else," I mumbled, peeling back the orange. I walked past him with a wide berth.

"You're not talking back to me, are you?" he said, his voice now raised a notch. I glanced at him, and saw he had that homicidal glint in his eye, the kind of look he used to give me during one of his interrogations in the basement. I stood glued to the ground for a moment, then walked quickly towards the outside door on impulse.

"I've gotta go," I replied.

"And where do you think you're going now?"

"Out."

"Out?"

"Yep."

"Now listen here you - ."

The door slammed before he could get out of his chair, and I didn't bother to look back. My dad never went outside unless he had to, so I knew that if I could get a bit of distance, I'd probably be safe. I heard him screaming over the hammering, but I zoned out and forgot about him once I was on the street. I peeled the rest of my orange as I walked, dropping the peels as though I were leaving a trail of crumbs - kind of like that scene out of E.T. The fruit was sour, repulsive even, but I ate it anyway. I didn't have any spending money in my pockets for Reese's Pieces or some other candy.

It didn't take long for me to walk out to the post office on Main Street, where I waited for Lawrence to show up, something that took next to forever. I looked up and down the street to amuse myself and pass the time. I recalled how, five months before, Main Street had been painted red with blood and chopped-up body parts. I superimposed that mental image onto the sight before me. You could barely tell the difference. Most of its remaining stores had begun to hide the attacks well with an extra coat of paint and new windows, and much of the commercial property that had been destroyed had been rebuilt in the intervening months.

Still, there was still a lot of work needing to be done. For instance, all that remained of the A and W drive-through hamburger stand further down Main was a hump of twisted sheet metal and concrete beams. The body parts of twenty women had been hanging off the structure like twisted Barbie dolls during that morning in May. I could still sort of see blood glistening off it by squinting my eyes just the right way. I looked away from this macabre sight and noticed an Army truck parked in front of Anna's Smoke Shop, which was now run by her former husband, Frank Corigan, whenever he felt like opening for business. Three Army brats in their late teens or early 20s were lighting up cigarettes there. I glanced at them, and entertained going over and hitting them up for a smoke. I knew, however, I'd probably just be asking for trouble, so I sat on the sidewalk and waited for Lawrence instead. At one point, I looked right into the sun. It had a ring around it - a telltale sign that trouble might just be on its way.

That's about when I started to wonder if this whole ordeal was even worth it. I mean, here I was waiting to go up and see some stupid girlie magazine. Chuck would probably find some way of beating the crap out of me when I was least expecting it. Despite beefing myself up, some things hadn't changed. After all, instead of being picked last for baseball, I was now picked virtually last instead. I still couldn't hit a home run if my life depended on it. 

Maybe my victory over Chuck had been a fluke after all? After all, he'd been softened up quite considerably before I got to him. I almost got up, turned around and marched home to look at my books about explosives. The escapade didn't seem to be really worth it anymore. Still, I stuck around. Curiosity, if not pride, overrode my self-doubt, I guess.

When Lawrence finally appeared, it was nearly noon. He was particularly glassy-eyed from all of the glue sniffing he'd done the previous night and his right hand, in fact, was twitching gingerly on his handlebar. He wheeled toward me, wobbling about all over the place just like he did the previous night. I was about to question him, put a hand on his back and ask him if he was feeling all right, but Chuck showed up almost immediately behind him, hobbling like an old man. His face had purple blotches and part of his lower lip had blistered into a bright red scab. He wore a long-sleeve shirt and jeans, so I couldn't tell what kind of job I'd done on his stomach and legs. But the thought that I'd inflicted enough damage to make him cover up on a warm fall day was enough to make me grin, notwithstanding the fact Jimmy had done just as much to bust Chuck up.

"What's this?" said Chuck, pointing to Lawrence. "You need another sissy to back you up?"

"Give me a break," I snapped. "Lawerence is here as insurance. Just to make sure you live up to - ."

"No. You're going to give me the fucking break here," snorted Chuck. "I spent three hours waiting to see a doctor last night and you now need this glue-sniffing faggot to keep me from pounding the shit out of you?"

"Uh, I'm not a - ," said Lawrence.

"Shut up," said Chuck. "I wasn't talking to you."

Lawrence looked frightened by his remark, even through his drugged-up eyes. Chuck looked over at me and half-smiled. Something in his crooked grin came across as a coded message to me that I'd really be in for the shit-kicking of my life once he'd healed, something I hadn't really thought about until that moment.

"So," said Chuck, "are you two going to just stand there, or are you going to get your asses in gear?"

"We're ready," I replied, swallowing.

"Good," he snorted. "Let's get this bullshit over with, then."

He turned and started walking down Main Street, then Stacey Street. Lawrence and I followed him and we soon found ourselves at the base of the hill in the middle of the village that led up to the water tower. The hill was covered in maple and pine trees, and the former's leaves were starting to turn red at the tips in anticipation of their oncoming demise. Through the trees was a little pathway that slowly wound its way up to the water tower, and Chuck walked towards it with only the sound of crickets in the background to announce our arrival.

Lawrence ditched his BMX and I let him walk behind Chuck to create a kind of buffer between us. About halfway up the hill, Chuck veered down a smaller goat's trail that intersected with the main walkway. It was a rough trail filled with rocks and tree roots, and low-lying tree branches forced us to duck as we walked. Lawrence halted for a moment, but I poked him in the back and told him to keep following. It took a long time to traverse this pathway, given that Chuck was walking slowly and that it was rough going to begin with. Somewhere along the way, I could have sworn I heard my dad's voice creep up behind me ...

How'd you like that, huh? A situation you can't get out of?

... and recoiled as a tree branch struck my face. I turned around and stumbled forward, only to feel another branch reach out and whip my bare leg. I stopped to take a closer look - just to make sure I wasn't bleeding or anything - and I noticed as I bent over that what appeared to be a charred finger covered in maggots was poking out of the earth to my right. It was a rotting lady's finger. I looked the other way and just kept walking. It was all I could do to keep from losing my breakfast, even if it had only been an orange.

"Coming, lazy ass?" snorted Chuck.

"Yeah, wait up," I answered, running up the path as best I could to catch up.

As we continued, I noticed that the sky was starting to cloud over, and a chilly fall breeze seemingly had come out of nowhere as well. I was anxious to reach our destination knowing that rain seemed to be on its way, and, coincidentally, that's when we came to a tiny clearing. A brown maple log lay across the path and, off to one side, a plastic grocery bag bulging with magazines lay at its base.

"There," said Chuck, pointing to the bag.

I glanced at Lawrence and was startled to see that his face had become suddenly pasty since climbing the hill. He was shaking all over and his breathing had become rough and ragged, as though he was having some kind of asthma attack. I wasn't sure if he was having problems from climbing the hill or from the glue he'd sniffed the night before. Maybe he was all hot and bothered about those photos. Whatever it was, I wasn't in the mood to care much. I just wanted to look at the magazines and get the hell out. There was something a little off about the whole situation, something about being in Chuck's presence that suddenly made me a bit wary of being here.

At the same time, I felt a weird sense of anticipation growing inside me as I stepped over and picked up the bag. I'd never seen a girl's insides before - well, not counting the gutted bodies that fell to the earth on May 1. I'd been lucky to see maybe a girl's navel once or twice, and that was it. I lifted the bag, astonished to feel how light it was, even for it's apparent bulkiness, then opened it. I relished the crinkle noises I made, and looked inside. That's when I got my second whiff that something wasn't right.

I saw little tattered pieces of paper reeking of mildew lining the bag, and the colour of what must have been once-glossy pages was now tinted an eerie bluish-green. I grabbed one of the brittle magazines, yanked it out of the bag, and watched as the pages fell apart as they were exposed to sunlight and air. The paste along the spine had seemingly evaporated, and pages of grotesque and discoloured body parts fluttered and softly fell to the forest floor. I had a brief flashback to the alien invasion, could practically hear screams cut short as meaty bodies fell to the ground. Childish laughter soon echoed all around me, though, drowning that memory out.

"Are you happy now?" Chuck said, giggling wildly like a little girl. "D-did you get to finally see s-some pussy for the f-first time?"

I may have been little more than a kid, but I knew even then that I'd become the victim of a practical joke, the punch line to a dumb set-up. Chuck had obviously known all along that there were just tattered remnants of magazines in the bag, and this had all been a part of some stupid payback plan he'd come up with just as I was kicking him to kingdom come the day before. I just knew it. I looked at him laughing at me, pointing his finger and outright mocking me. An unbearable rage bubbled deep within my gut and I wanted to do nothing other than pound him, pound him hard. You know, give him a commanding repeat performance of the beating from the day before. I was feeling incredibly cocky - like I could get away with just about anything when I was mad.

At this precise moment, for no discernible reason, Lawrence collapsed to the ground on his knees, and started wailing. It was an outburst I wasn't expecting at all. One minute he was looking as though he might be sick to his stomach, the next he was down on his knees, crying his goddamn eyes out. The distraction annoyed me. Things were beginning to unravel again.

"What the matter with you?" I asked.

"Yeah," added Chuck, who was now laughing even harder. "W-what's the matter with your big protector? Does the little b-baby need a rattle?"

I grabbed Lawrence by the collar and ignored Chuck. I suddenly had bigger fish to fry.

"It's ... it's ...," bawled Lawrence. "Sh-sh-she took me here."

"Who took you here?" I demanded. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"A-A-Amy," replied Lawrence, shaking. "Sh-she showed me her ... showed me h-her ... ."

"Amy?" I said, feeling the bile in my stomach crawling up my throat. "Amy?"

"Y-yeah."

The earth stood still. My knees buckled and, for the second time that day, I felt like throwing up. But, as quickly as that feeling came, it suddenly vanished. It was replaced by anger, by rage, by an incredible bolt of fury coursing through me. As I stood over Lawrence, I knew there was no turning back. I had to extract that anger, let it go somewhere. I didn't want it to burn me up any longer, so I took it out on the easiest target.

"Amy's dead, you stupid retard," I said. "What's the matter with you, huh? You need your head shrunk or something? Is that it?"

"N-n-no, I," said Lawrence.

"You quit thinking about her," I yelled. "All she's ever going to lead to is a situation you can't get out of. How'd you like that, huh? A situation."

I sunk to my knees so we'd both be at face level, and I began to shake him. Somewhere behind us, Chuck kept laughing. I didn't know whom his mirth was being directed at anymore but I'd stopped caring.

"You're not even in high school yet," I continued, mimicking a familiar voice, now shaking Lawrence by his shirt collar. "You're not even supposed to even like girls. What do you have to say for yourself, huh? What do you have to say?"

Lawrence didn't say anything. He just kneeled there crying, not doing anything, just staring at me with those doe-like eyes. The crickets, the rustling leaves and even Chuck had gone eerily quiet, as though the world had stopped spinning for a moment and everything had come to a complete stop.

I only became aware of my place in the world when I, again, heard the laughter coming behind me. I turned around to find Chuck holding a stick, waving it in front of him as though it were some kind of wand that would make my sniffling buddy and I disappear.

"What's so funny, huh?" I finally asked.

"You," he said, snickering. "You and your faggot friend. I knew I should have never brought you two losers up here. See ya asswipes late-r."

He turned around and walked back the way we'd came, now using the stick like a machete as though he was clearing a new way out of the woods. I heard him laughing and crashing through the branches as he slowly descended out of eyesight. It didn't take long for him to disappear.

I looked to Lawrence, and leered at him in pathetic disgust. I let him go, shoved him to the ground, and then kicked a bit of dirt on him. He coughed like the 90-pound weakling he was as the dust flew into his face.

"Thanks a lot, eh?" I said, feeling absolutely zero contempt for him for the very first time. "Some help you were, glue-sniffer."

Lawrence blubbered and tried to say something, but, by then, I wasn't listening. I honestly didn't care. I was already headed back down the hill, wondering what the hell I was going to do with my life. I grabbed my stomach, which rumbled and reminded me it was empty. I picked up the pace on my hollow legs, feeling the compulsive urge to eat. I figured it would keep my mind from thinking about Lawrence and Chuck. Not to mention this town and how it was going nowhere - just like me.

Zachary Houle is a writer in Ottawa, Ontario. His fiction or journalism has appeared in SPIN, Chicago's Midnight Mind literary magazine and in the book, TVParty!: Television's Untold Tales (Chicago: Bonus Books, 2002).