sCene 41 - ʟooᴋiɴɢ ʙaCᴋ

Thanks to recent events, Jason decided he and I needed to spend more quality time together. Once a week he and I were going to get together and talk about my experiences, but since my living room still had two broken couches in it, we decided to go to a bar. Specifically, he still wanted to try to jog my memory as to who I ate. He told me to imagine it as a sort of free therapy session to help get some anxieties off my chest. As far as I was concerned, it was more of his alien hunting bullshit from when we were kids.

Despite our excellent relationship now, Jason actually used to ruin my life most days growing up. It started around kindergarten or first grade. The naive half-alien kid in class decided to happily announce that her parents were a witch and an alien. Almost everyone, including the teachers, did not take this seriously. Mama deflected when teachers would say my “games” were disrupting class, so she taught me that normal people don’t believe in those things. Jason, apparently, was not normal.

Before he even met me, Jason had heard rumors about Mama being a witch, and would sometimes pretend to spy on her. Once Mama felt safe letting me outside on my own, I would catch him spying and call him out on it. Then when I announced my alien lineage, he made a point of bringing it up and speculating as to what types of plans I had for the invasion, or who I was planning to abduct next. To him, this was a serious threat to Earth, but to the other kids, this was a form of bullying they could latch onto.

For the rest of elementary school I was made fun of using Jason’s genuine fears of my alien attacks. Both of us being loud and outgoing kids didn’t help, and the fact we would bicker at recess or after school made it worse. Nai-bu joining Pete’s after school group helped give me someone in my corner, but she wasn’t in class with us, so she could only do so much. Everyone just thought she was being nice anyway, especially since they didn’t really believe Jason’s talk about me being a people eating alien.

I get that it sounds bad, but I’ve really moved on. Once Pete saw us “playing pretend” and got his tv show started, Jason was more often distracted by that than harassing me. And when Nai-bu was sent away, he genuinely tried to be there for me, and keep my alien identity a secret. It left me under the impression that he had given up on tracking my behavior, but that may have just been wishful thinking.

When we arrived at the bar, Jason picked an out of the way corner for us to sit, and slapped down some composition notebooks. They looked really beat up and the writing on the covers had faded. I didn’t care to make out what the grooves left from the pen marks said. This was already super taxing.

“Do you know what these are?” Jason asked, glancing between my eyes and the menu.

“Uh…old homework?” I really wanted that to be true.

“No! From the first day we met to the end of senior year, I filled notebooks like these with observations about your behaviors and the possible dangers you posed to others.”

I sighed. “Please tell me you brought these to destroy and not–”

“Because you can’t remember your wrong-doings, these will be our guide.” He was serious.

Wrong-doings? I just ate what Mama gave me. Is it wrong to listen to Mama?

Jason flipped through one of the notebooks, but it looked like the text was really faded. Was it even written in pen? That had to be pencil.

“Okay…um…” Jason didn’t seem very prepared. “You never ate anyone AT school, right?”

This wasn’t going to be easy.

A server came over to our table to ask if we wanted to order anything. Jason picked out some IPA he said his coworkers recommended. I just asked for a martini. When Jason asked about ordering shots, I stopped him because he was being way too transparent. I would try to figure out how to move alcohol in my system exclusively to my alien body before I let him think he can get info out of me by getting me drunk.

When the server left, I answered his question.

“You know I couldn’t eat anything without Mama’s permission. One day she forgot to pack a note with my sack lunch and I was starving by the time I got home!” She wasn’t even very sorry about it, even if it was when I was in high school.

“Did she ever pack you a lunch made from a person?” How would this help again?

I smiled widely. “Yes, she actually ground up some bones to make bread, and used cuts of meat to make what looked like an ordinary ham sandwich, but was actually one of our classmates. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Yes, that’s perfect information.” He said, scribbling on a fresh notepad.

I took his pen from him and put it down next to my seat.

“It was a joke, dummy. No. If I was eating people it was at home. Mama wasn’t stupid enough to risk me being caught in public with human remains.”

The server brought our drinks, but Jason looked disappointed. I promised myself in general I wouldn’t be so harsh with him, but he made it so convenient.

As he sipped his beer, Jason flipped through another notebook. This one was easier to read for sure, but the notes were shorter. Catching some of the dates suggested they were from middle school.

“How often were you eating Nai-bu when we were filming the show?” He asked in a very matter-of-fact way.

“Uh…well, again, I don’t remember eating her specifically. But I do know I had to eat human meat more often when filming, especially if I needed to transform for the show.” I could have sworn he knew this for sure. And I wasn’t going to tell him what Nai-bu told me.

We mainly filmed during one summer, and stayed in hotels or other rental places to be as close to the filming location as possible. Because Nai-bu’s parents still worked, Nai-bu would stay with me and Mama in our hotel room. Thinking back, Mama always did make sure we had a room or suite with as much of a kitchen as possible. I thought it might have been for witchy stuff, but maybe it was so she could cook Nai-bu? I tried to convey that to Jason, but he didn’t seem so surprised.

“Nai-bu and I would get in arguments, and she’d always say that if she didn’t spend time with you that you would get sick.” Jason said, looking at his notes. “She definitely could have been complicit in being fed to you if that’s how your mom explained it.”

Sick? I remembered maybe a few times where I thought I had the flu or something growing up, but that wasn’t exactly fixed by eating people. I just had to rest and get better. Why would Nai-bu worry about me getting sick?

We weren’t really getting anywhere, so I asked Jason to come prepared next time and not just flip through his old journals thinking it would help bring back my memories. He definitely brought them for his own sake, but honestly I couldn’t blame the guy. He wants to help, but doesn’t know where to start. Nai-bu and I can’t remember all of the details, and it's not like Mama is coming back any time soon to help.