Category: Fiction Factor

The early Christmas morning crowd at Hotcakes Casa was a lively one.

Two tables were pushed together to accommodate a family of eight – all clad in light blue and silver snowman-themed pajamas. The mother and father were tired but smiling, while stepladder children (and a young cousin or two thrown in) combined for a joyous cacophony.

One table was occupied by boisterous industry workers who had ended their shift; another two featured couples who – based on their hand-holding and doe-eyed gazes – appeared to still be in the honeymoon phase of their relationship; and the bar was packed by regulars who started every day with a cup of Joe at “The Casa.”

Finally, the bell above the door jingled and a heavyset, olive-skinned man in a bright red Santa suit walked in and sat down at a corner table. He pulled off his stocking cap and glanced over the menu.

“Good morning, Santa,” said Bonita, pouring piping hot coffee into the thick white mug already placed on the table. “Merry Christmas.”

Santa looked at her name tag and smiled.

“Merry Christmas, and good morning, Bonita,” he said. “Looks like you guys are busy.”

“Always. It’s a good busy, though. Helps the time go by faster.”

Bonita – short and thin with a broad face framed by a braided ponytail – was in her mid-thirties and still had a hint of an accent from her native Mexico.

“So … was I good to you this year?” Santa asked.

Bonita chuckled.

“I don’t know yet. My shift doesn’t end until 11 a.m. and that’s when we’ll celebrate. Well, three of us will celebrate. My husband’s in the service and I won’t see him until he’s home on leave sometime next year. Right now, it’s just me and my son and mother-in-law at the apartment. My kid wanted one of those dinosaur gadgets and I managed to get him that, but I had to guess on a couple of other surprises. Between going to night school and this, I tend to miss a lot of the details. Anyway, what I can get for you?”

Santa ordered potatoes – sprinkled, throttled and enveloped – and a slice of apple pie. As was always the case at Hotcakes Casa, the order was served up quickly.

“There you go, Santa,” Bonita. “Come to think of it, all your work was done on Christmas Eve, right? You’re probably tired of being called Santa.”

He let out a hearty “ho, ho, ho.”

“I figured I owed you at least one jolly ol’ elf laugh,” he said. “The name’s Barry Nicholas. You can call me that, or you can call me Santa. I don’t mind.”

Santa wolfed down his food, slurped his last bit of coffee and put an envelope on the table. He then went to the register where Bonita was waiting for him.

“Bonita, I hope you and Caesar have a very, merry Christmas,” he said. “I left a little something for you on the table that might help you with your school fees. Oh, and Rod? Don’t be surprised if Rod is waiting for you when you get home. I had a talk with his commanding officer and he decided to let him spend the holidays with his family.”

Bonita’s eyes widened.

“I … I don’t remember telling you the name of my kid. Or my husband’s,” she said.

“You didn’t,” Santa said as he headed for the door. “I’m St. Nicholas … it’s my job to know these things. Merry Christmas!”

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.”