Romeo & Jennifer

The night has a lack of definitive qualities. It isn’t very dark, one can still see their backyard if stepped out into it. To describe the night as being recurrently interrupted by crickets wouldn’t be an accurate enough portrayal. The sky doesn’t look like anything at all. A buzzing, amorphous blob.
Boyfriend, behind the wheel, is the kind of person that spends a lot of time in the bathroom. He has a tendency to clog up the toilet. When he’s frustrated with how often it clogs he’ll flush it repeatedly, only to the effect of it flooding his bathroom. Girlfriend, usually in the passenger’s seat but tonight behind the seat behind the wheel, is emotionally ambiguous. She finds pleasure in people having to guess what she’s feeling.
They are driving down a deserted back-road that will obviously only lead them to paranormal disaster. There are dozens of cows alongside them, heaving up grass, some resting on their sides, looking tragically defeated. Others sit on the ground with their legs beneath their chest like cats. Everything is immersed in a milky violet-black. The cows are encumbered by the sky. They are unsettlingly symbolic.
They are black and white spotted cows.
There is something ominous about the cows, how wistful they are. Most cows are heedlessly smug. These cows are dreary, sinking into the ground. These cows carry great burdens. They make no sound. They lie in apprehension, aware of what is about to happen. They have no reason not to believe. There is no difference between spacecrafts and roaring cars.
Girlfriend’s name: perhaps Jennifer?
Boyfriend’s name: Romeo? No, no, too codependent.
The first abduction takes place at 12:17 A.M. There is a blinding light that lowers down from the pinnacle of the sky. The ship is shaped like a flying saucer, with a glass hump on its top. These are the aliens that travel through gaps of space and time. They stage the most common human abductions, known for leaving humans stranded on highways with their clothes on inside-out and suffering temporary amnesia. They are calm, gray, and oblivious. Martian-types, curiously gentle, with bulging eyes. Their fingers are disproportionately long and nubbed. Their heads are shaped like someone squeezing a soggy football made of clay. There is a large part of the population that would be amused by such creatures; by their dramatized waddling and delayed, drugged movements.
“What a gimmick.”
In the back seat, Jennifer quivers, unable to speak. Romeo turns around and forcefully rubs her knee, still scoffing.
“Don’t worry about it.”
He tries to turn on the car, it’s completely dead. As the ship gets closer and closer to landing the light becomes paralyzing.
“I’m not sure what’s going on, but whatever happens, baby, I’ll always be there for you.” He squeezes her knee.
“Romeo, I’m really scared!”
“Don’t worry about it, honey.”
He rubs her knee.

Meh, that’s not actually what happened.

Romeo and Jennifer were having an argument, driving home from the rink. They’re both seniors and there was an ice-skating fund raiser tonight, they decided to go together. Jennifer has trouble skating and Romeo’s a natural and after awhile he got tired of her pouting in circles and thudding into the wall. Her hat made her look like a blue-berry muffin. He started skating with the spurious and courtly girls and she became jealous, feeling that being jealous over something so petty was gratuitous, making her more miserable. She crawled off the ice and ate hotdogs while Romeo searched frantically for her.
Her hands were nearly frozen; the snowflakes sparkled between her fingers. It reminded her of when she had to lube her hands to stick the suppository into Romeo when he had a stomach virus. She laughs, thinking about it. He yelped and grunted and ironically, it’s one of the happiest memories she has of them together. Afterwards he threw his arm around her and nodded his head, his eyes swelling up.
When he found her sitting on one of the benches behind a seven-foot-tall man, he dragged her to the car and started driving home. They didn’t say a word to each other. She sat in the seat behind his because she was afraid of crying if she sat next to him. When he was disgruntled or indignant like this his voice never seemed to fit into what he was saying, it was too off-pitch, it sounded like he was whining. If she was crueler, she could exploit his social bumbling. Suddenly she begins to pity him, knowing that the girls he was skating with earlier would never talk to him anywhere else.
“A car is a representation of its owner…” the radio drivels.
“What a bunch of bullshit!” Romeo exclaims.
“You think so?” Jennifer replies meekly from the back.
“Hell yes I do.” He slams his hands on the wheel. “Everything that comes out of this radio is bullshit.” He switches the channel.
“Officers shot suspect 68 times…”
“What the fuck!” He begins to laugh a discharge of helium gas, mumbling apocalyptic phrases to himself. Jennifer stares out the window. She sees herds of cows, grazing in the bruised night sky. There is something about the way they’re postured that causes her to become uneasy.
The first abduction takes place at 12:17 A.M. There being no proper way to prepare for an alien encounter, both Romeo and Jennifer are shocked/amazed/in disbelief. The car is enveloped in a beam of fluorescent photo-plasmic light. The power of everything in the vicinity shuts down. An immediate group of cows are evaporated. The rest of the herd begins to moo, and slowly start to surround the spacecraft. One by one, they begin to evaporate. The ones that resist evaporation are thrown into the sky, mooing in terror.
Romeo pulls out a pack of cigarettes, offering one to Jennifer, who’s shivering and chattering in the backseat. She’s too flabbergasted to move her hands. Somehow, despite his initial outburst, Romeo seems to be unfazed. He undoes his seatbelt and climbs into the backseat, next to Jennifer, scooting up against her.
“Don’t worry, darling, everything’s going to be okay.”
Together, they watch the Grays, the harmless pioneers described earlier, advance towards their car. A beat-up drab sedan, with untrustworthy breaks. Hopefully insurance will refund it after this. The Grays, at their arthritic pace, take nearly half-an-hour to reach the windshield. They tilt their caricatural heads and point at Romeo and Jennifer, slowly, slowly reaching their arms out. Jennifer is reminded of her cats peering at a new brand of cat food. She faints. The aliens continue to blankly stare, telepathically talking to each other. They show no response to their findings.
One of the aliens has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder (the closest disorder that translates in human terms) and is compulsively superstitious. It turns over all the books in its room before it goes to sleep at night in fear that what is drawn on the fronts of them will take place in its life. The Gray-alien culture is remarkably similar to ours, except without all the media fluff; scientists become celebrities and no one has to quibble over gay marriage because their race is asexual. They can self-produce. It’s a time consuming process, much like hibernation, but it’s far more effective than the human method of reproduction. You’d find that because of this, there are a lot less aliens that are alone on Friday nights against their will, and although their race does not reap in the pleasures of excess passion and self-loathing, they live on a world where altruism and hospitality do not need to be awarded (e.g. the Nobel Peace Prize) because they are common practice. All types of exploitation are unheard of, and when someone is killed it is immediately assumed as an accident. There is no need for law enforcement, law, or incarceration of any form.
“Are you sure I was the one that gave you gonorrhea?”
“…What?”
“I showed no symptoms until long after we started going out. And there was that guy that would always invite you for coffee…Isaac, I think his name was…”
She opens her mouth to say something, then stops, and leaves it slightly hanging open.
“So you did.”
Getting ready to faint, she flutters her eyelids, repulsed that her last thought in this life will have been contracting gonorrhea during a manic mood swing while trying to quit smoking.
“So you fucked him.”
She clasps onto his knee, desperately squeezing. He forcefully nudges it off.
“You fucked him.”
His voice is hushed and monotonous, the way it always sounds when his pride’s been wounded. The aliens are still peering into their car, taking in the view.
“I knew you did, I knew it. I knew it the second I saw you that day. I’ve known it ever since,” he grits his lip, sounding more and more guttural. Half-coherent, she can tell that the parade of insults is about to follow.
Ex-boyfriends are always imagined as gruff, vehement fellows, that swear too much and are as charismatic as legendary football coaches. They’re giants, or golems of flesh, chiseled perfectly in all the places that you feel flawed. Either that, or they’re sophisticated, over-dressed and well-groomed, flamboyantly delicate and eager to dole out oral sex. In reality, Jennifer’s ex-boyfriends were so garrulous and ironic when she met them that she could tell they were lonely, and she loved that. This one is as glorious as the rest.
“I wonder what they’re talking about,” one of the aliens says to the other, telepathically. “He seems aggravated, and I think she’s scared of us.”
“He doesn’t seem scared of us.”
“That’s a first. He must be young. I’ve researched that most of them on this planet are irritable and restless when they’re young. They call them ‘teenagers.’”
They exchange glances.
“Should we abduct them?”
“I don’t know, I’m tired.”
“Yeah, me too. And if we get caught, we’re screwed.”
“Let’s just go home.”
“Alright.”
After a minute they begin to turn around. Romeo, seconds away from having a breakdown, gets out of the car. He slams the door, growling when his jacket gets caught in it, and slams it again.
“What’s he doing?”
“Not sure, just keep walking.” Neither of the aliens look back. Romeo staggers forward, pointing and shaking his finger at them.
“Hey, hey. What are you waiting for? What the fuck are you waiting for, huh? Just get it over with already!”
The aliens glance at each other again, archaically revolving their heads.
“What do you think he’s saying?”
“I don’t know. He sounds aggravated.”
“Maybe we should calm him down.”
“I’d rather not get involved.”
“Alright.”
“Isn’t he grateful that we’re not taking him?”
“Humans are strange like that, they supposedly show the opposite of what they feel.”
“Oh. That must get frustrating. It seems so unnecessary.”
“Yes.”
Romeo trails behind them, shouting things that make sense to him. “It only logically makes sense…” he shouts. He begins to scream. His eyes clog up. His screams begin to peak and rattle, quivering when he runs out of breath. When he closes the distance between him and the aliens, he punches one in the back of the head. Its skin feels squishy and aqueous.
Realizing what he’s done, he staggers backwards. The rage instantly disappears from his face, and suddenly he can hear the ambience of his surroundings. The crickets chirping, the grass swaying, the hollow ringing of the sky. The alien he punched doesn’t move, standing eerily still. It listens to the muffled stammering of Romeo’s conscience. A thin black liquid begins to drip out of a dent in its head. The other alien turns around and faces Romeo, who’s scrambling back to the car.
“What did you do that for?” It says, talking inside of Romeo’s head. “My friend is going to die now.” Its voice sounds demandingly peaceful, perplexed.

The second abduction takes place at 1:24 A.M. The light that beams out of the ship is not blinding because it’s a deep, decadent red. The aliens that teleport onto the ground, fading in with television static, look like something out of a schizophrenic’s nightmares. They are ghastly, tangled, and huge. Their muscles ripple, sticking out of asymmetrical places. They drool. One of them lets out a belching roar. Romeo and both of the tiny gray aliens stare up at their adversaries. Romeo, having reached the limit to his shock, starts laughing hysterically.
“Hi,” the alien who roared says.
Romeo and the smaller gray aliens don’t respond.
“Don’t be alarmed, our beastliness is just a front.”
Romeo droops his head. He jolts up and down, trying to wake up from a dream, or even convince himself of hallucinating. Maybe Jennifer had drugged him, kissed something into his mouth. But Jennifer doesn’t do drugs, certainly doesn’t know where to find drugs, and hadn’t kissed him tonight. Except for clasping his knee, they hadn’t even touched. The gigantic aliens, looming over him and breathing heavily; wooly mammoths without skin.
“Please don’t be offended or frightened by our appearances, or startled that we speak both of your languages. We’ve been analyzing your races for decades now, from afar. Seeing how you were both in the same place at the same time we felt that we were inclined to drop by.”
“Drop by?” Romeo says.
“Well…” their speaking alien continues to grunt. “We’re here to ‘abduct’ you, if that’s what you want to call it. All of you.” He pauses, then blurts out: “If you don’t mind, that is.”
“…If I don’t mind?”
“Ah…” the speaking alien sighs. “I didn’t mean to say that; I become overly polite when I’m nervous.”
“Is that so,” Romeo says, holding his chin in thought. “So none of us really have a choice.”
“That’s correct.”
The gray alien that’s been bleeding this entire time falls over, having died or passed out.
“What if I run?”
“Then we’ll catch you.”
“Are you sure?”
“No doubt in my mind.”
Romeo looks over at Jennifer, who must’ve passed out a long time ago. He can see half of her head above the dashboard, lying sideways.
“Don’t worry about her, you two won’t last much longer anyway,” the alien says. “If you want, we can make it like she never existed to you.”
Taken aback by this proposal, Romeo rids his face of emotion. He thinks about his parents; how even though he’s eighteen, if they showed up right now, they could make sense of this ordeal, unaffected by otherworldly beings. He never had plans to leave home, go away to college. He hadn’t told them yet but he never saw the point of leaving when he was finally content with his life, to some extent. College was for the…handsome pre-meds, or burly law students, or party-heads, putting the “Iv” in “Ivy.” It was more enjoyable for him to be stubborn and reject what he desired, and hate everyone that was in college regardless if they were stupid. They made him feel like an idiot when he talked to them. He imagined them going to cafes and discussing European philosophers, maybe even ones that were still alive, using big words to flirt with each other. “Are you wearing spacepants, because your ass is out of this world,” he thinks. He laughs to himself.
“Well, are you ready to go?”
“No.”
Romeo stares at the little gray alien, grieving over his friend. It’s shown no fear or interest in the second set of aliens since they’ve arrived.
“I think I’m just going to go home.”
“You’re what?”
“I said I think I’m just going to go home.”