Category: Fiction Factor

The black and silver browline eyeglasses were well-worn, with bended temples, loose hinges and discolored nose pads. When held up to the light, however, the lens were perfectly clean and free of scratches.

The man put them on, gently pressing the bridge against the top of his nose with his index finger.

Across the way he saw a young child playing with a red, white and blue football, making an indention in the ground with the back of his heel before grinding one end of the ball into the makeshift kicking tee.

He took a few steps back, ran toward the ball and made contact – only to see the football skitter off to the left without ever getting airborne.

“That’s OK, kid,” said the man. “It takes a while. Back in my day footballs were rounder and fatter, but I still had trouble kicking the dang thing. I think what might help is to get you a real kicking tee, like the ones the players on TV use. I bet Howard’s Sporting Goods has some good ones for sale.”

A quick glance to the left revealed an awkward middle schooler desperately trying to juggle a soccer ball. The best he could do was keep the ball in the air for three bounces – one with his knee. However, he kept trying, and even managed to steal a quick glance at the onlooker and smile.

“You’re doing great, buddy,” the man yelled. “It’ll come … you just have to keep at it. And as long as you keep a positive attitude, then you’re halfway there. Now me, I didn’t know anything about soccer when I was your age. Couldn’t tell you the first thing about it. You’ve already done more than I ever could.”

To the right an older teen sat cross-legged on the grass, staring off into space with red eyes. He’d obviously been crying, but certainly didn’t want anyone to know it.

The man eased to the ground, let out a groan and sat next to him.

“I don’t think I ever told you about Marietta Turpin,” he said. “It was my junior year of high school and I’d had an eye on her for two years. The most I’d ever done was say hello to her … I was so shy I could just never work up the courage to ask her out. Well, finally I started to feel a little bit better about myself. I’d just gotten brand new glasses and brand new shoes, and even landed a spot on the baseball team starting in right field. So, one day right after the last bell rang at school, I decided I’d go for it and ask her if maybe she wanted to go to a show or get a milkshake or something. You know what? She told me she wished I’d asked her last year because that was before she started going steady with Johnny Tanner. Holy smokes, was I embarrassed. She was nice about it, but I wanted to crawl into a hole. Thing is, you get your heart broken. And I wish I could tell you this was the only time, but if I did, I’d be lying. Someday you’ll find the right somebody, though. And guess what? It might even be one of those situations where the right somebody finds you.”

The man stood up, took off the glasses and pulled them against his chest.

“Are those your dad’s glasses?”

“Yeah,” said the man, looking at his wife. “I was just going through his desk drawer and found them. Thought I’d put ‘em on … don’t really know why. But I don’t want them to get taken in the estate sale.”

“Oh, honey. He really loved you, and I know you loved him.”

The man smiled.

“I’m glad I tried these old things on. Kind of a nice reminder that he was always looking out for me.”

Freddy Stanhope – drunk off his ass – wasn’t sure where things went wrong as he stumbled down the side street toward his house.

The bulk of his adult life involved having long, depressing conversations with other drunks at the Will O’ The Wisp bar, a watering hole conveniently located just two blocks from where he lived.

Oh, he had one primary drinking “buddy” – a guy named Ashton – but their relationship started at beer bottles and stopped at shot glasses. He didn’t even know Ashton’s last name because friendships among sots are often confined to establishments with liquor licenses.

Plus, he knew nothing about the dude. He might’ve been a serial killer – or worse, a TikTok influencer.

Freddy didn’t even take advantage of living in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

One step into his Duck Springs backyard was like walking into the pages of an Appalachian Mountains brochure, but he had long since forgotten how to appreciate the area’s brilliantly colored falls. His labored strolls in the mountains had become less about marveling at nature’s red, orange, yellow and green palette and more about how much effort it took just to make it through another boring day.

Once he had hoped to marry, build a cabin in the woods, stock it with vodka and canned beans, and simply live a simple, happy life.

But that ship had sailed and sunk.

More likely, considering how many brain cells he’d killed, he’d wind up in “The Home.” It was not appealing to imagine himself as an old man wandering naked in the activity center, asking if anyone knew where Betty White was – and why she stole his fish sticks.

Yet, just as he was bemoaning the quiet desperation that was his uneventful and uninspired life, he found himself standing in front of an alien spacecraft and debating whether or not what he was seeing was real.

In the movies, such intergalactic vehicles were often silver and saucer-shaped. This one, however, more resembled a 1975 AMC Pacer, although the fact that the aquarium-like machine hovered more than 20 feet off the ground and emitted a hazy, orange glow suggested it was not a product of Kenosha automakers.

One thing it did have in common with cinematic close encounters, though, was the blinding white beam of light that shined from the bottom of the ship and formed a perfect circle on the ground. Freddy assumed if he walked into it, he’d be taken aboard.

Truthfully, that sounded like fun – and a great story to tell Ashton during the next “Free Hot Wings Til You Spew” Happy Hour at Will O’ The Wisp.

So, he staggered into the light and raised his arms toward the heavens.

“OK, boys,” he slurred, “take me to your leader or supervisor or head honcho or whoever runs the show up there. No need to do one of those anal probes, though. I had a colonoscopy a couple of weeks ago and they found some polyps. Trust me … you don’t wanna go there.”

The light was too bright to look at, so Freddy closed his eyes and waited. He could hear a hum coming from the craft and it gradually grew louder. Although intoxicated, he had sat through enough sci-fi films to know that this had to be the sound of a tractor beam that was pulling him aboard.

He wondered what the aliens looked like. Perhaps they’d be the standard little gray creatures with the weird heads and big, black eyes. They’d make hand gestures toward him, much like the beings in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Or maybe – just maybe – these were E.T. aliens. If so, Freddy would extend his finger and hope the alien would touch it with a glowing finger of his own.

The moment would be perfect if Neil Diamond’s Heartlight started playing over the spaceship’s sound system, but he didn’t want to over expect.

However, time seemed to drag on and Freddy was going nowhere. And then, the beam of light shifted approximately 10 feet away from him.

Freddy opened his eyes and wondered if they had done some sort of experiment on him without his knowledge. Perhaps there had been a time jump, and once he made it to his house, a week will have passed.

“Hey,” he yelled. “Did you guys do something to me? My butt feels normal. I do need to pee, but then again, I have had quite a bit to drink. Can you communicate with me? Can you read my mind?”

The beam of light disappeared and Freddy noticed that the hum had stopped. Still, the glow of the UFO Pacer remained.

He felt something touch his right shoulder and as he whipped around, he was face-to-face with the alien. It looked nothing like any “Martian” he had seen on the big or small screen. It was more mannequin-like, roughly six feet tall and translucent. There were no eyes, ears or mouth visible on its perfectly round head, and its arms and legs were sans hands or feet – like a stick figure on a road sign.

“Are you going to hurt me?” Freddy asked, hos voice trembling.

The being spoke in a Transatlantic accent, although from what orifice the words came, Freddy had no clue.

“We have no desire to harm you or anyone else, dude,” it said. “And I’m really sorry we got you involved in this mission. We try to just zip in and zip out undetected so as not to cause any disruption. As you’ve probably figured out, we’re not from here, we don’t belong here, and we don’t want to stay here.”

Freddy had begun to sober up somewhat, and the gravity of the situation was becoming apparent. Whether he had made first contact or not he couldn’t be sure, but he was most definitely in the presence of a  creature from another planet.

“You’re on a mission, but your mission isn’t to hurt anyone,” Freddy said. “So, you aren’t here to take over the world … or take over the planet … or take me as a specimen?”

The alien made a sound that mimicked human laughter.

“No, man,” it said. “Klaatu got shit-faced and lost his fuckin’ keys again. We’re just trying to help him find ‘em.”

Mount Laurel, New Jersey, would be the last stop before Ace and Shelby arrived in New York City, and the Silver Rodeo was just off I-295.

Home of the “Endless Fondue Fountain,” and, no doubt, endless stomach distress, it was a cheesy all-you-can-eat franchise but a place where Ace and Shelby could sit, talk and be ignored.

No one would care what they said or how loud they said it since the Silver Rodeo clientele consisted primarily of people seeing how much fried turkey, brisket, mac and cheese and potatoes and gravy they could stack on a plate – topped by that “Endless Fondue” abomination.

Those folks were on a mission to eat, not to eavesdrop.

“This really is gracious living,” said Shelby as they entered the restaurant, which was decorated in the style of an old west saloon – if old west saloons had steam tables, drink stations and wait staff who wore cowboy hats, chaps and name tags.

“It’s so authentic! It’s like being back in a frontier lunchroom.”

Ace snickered as the two made their way through the buffet line, trying to separate the barely edible from the inedible.

He loved a smartass and Shelby was most certainly that.

“We have one of these on the outskirts of Sevierville,” Ace said. “You don’t come to a place like this for the food … you come here for the atmosphere. And food poisoning.”

The two made their way to a booth, which featured a wooden table adorned with an oil lamp and a carving of a Native American woman holding a baby while a wolf and what appeared to be a platypus looked on.

“So,” Shelby asked, spinning her fork in a glop of what was probably (but by no means definitively) mashed potatoes. “Are you going to be straight with me? I trusted you enough to bum a ride with you, so you need to trust me enough to talk to me. Tell me the truth.”

Ace ran his left hand through his graying hair, pausing to try to find just the right words to describe how things had gotten so sideways during his four decades on the planet.

He was a desperate man, sure, but at no time did he think he was acting like one – until recently.

“It’s my family,” Ace said. “When I heard about this year’s Thanksgiving plans, the big feast and then Black Friday, something just finally clicked that this was the time for me to do something I’ve never done. I’ve never gone on vacation by myself. I’ve never gone to the Empire State Building before. I’ve sure as hell never even considered picking up a hitchhiker, and still can’t explain why I broke that rule for you. I just wanted to hit the road and now I want to see where that road leads.”

“And?”

“And just get away from my family.”

“And?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Ace said, his voice slightly raised.

“I want you to tell me what the end game is,” Shelby said. “I want you to tell me what your grand plan is. The whole time we’ve known each other – which isn’t very long, I admit – you’ve never mentioned anything beyond going to the Empire State Building. Are you gonna live there? Can you even live there?

Ace looked straight into Shelby’s eyes.

“I just want to run away and see what happens,” he said. “I might keep driving until I get to Canada. I just don’t know. I only know I can’t be part of my family anymore. I just can’t, and there’s no way I can make you understand why.”

Shelby reached over and grabbed his hand.

“Try me. What is so bad about your family that you drive thousands of miles to get away from them? Every family has issues … problems. How is yours different than any other?”

Ace leaned back and sighed.

“Trust me … you’ll just think I’m out of my mind. Look, it’s Thanksgiving. Let’s just eat this turkey-type thing and get back on the road. I enjoy your company and you seem to enjoy mine, so let’s make the best of it.”

The pair finished their meal, Ace paid the cashier, and then excused himself to wash up. He held his hands under the cold water and splashed his face, leaning close to the mirror and examining his eyes.

The full moon was still a day away, so he could safely take Shelby a bit further before putting her in danger.

He might be leaving his werewolf family behind, but he wasn’t sure if he would be able to leave the werewolf life behind.

And he was really starting to like Shelby.

“You ready?” he asked.

As Shelby and Ace slowly walked to the car, she paused to look at the sky.

“You know there’s a spell,” she said.

“What?”

“There’s a spell I can cast … one that can help control the transformation.”

“I don’t … I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ace said, unconvincingly.

“Witches have been helping lycanthropes for as long as there have been witches and lycanthropes,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “There’s a reason you picked me up and a reason I let you. No more secrets, OK?”