"Ghost Rockets"

I kick open the outside cover of the ventilation shaft. It clangs down to the loading dock below, startling the hell out of a worker taking a late night drag. He swallows the cigarette entirely when I land onto the asphalt next to him.

“Boo!” I say, but he’s too busy dealing with the lit cigarette now in his stomach, so I guess it’s not really funny. Dr. Funny would find it funny. Seeing people hurt tickles his funny bone. One of the reasons I left the School in the first place. 

I give the worker a good ol’ heimlich, and once he’s better, I dash off, leaving the orange streetlamp shaded back lot behind me.

I rush into a nearby forest, using Bobby’s lighter like a lantern. I scramble up a heavily-wooded hill, the trees all twisting together until the moon and the stars disappear entirely. Where did suburbia go? Somehow, I'm a long way from civilization, or even mere companionship. Just me, alone. Just darkness, above, like when you’re scared at night because Ingrid held you down earlier while Dr. Funny gives ya an injected cocktail of lysergic acid diethylamide and sodium amytal, so you put the blanket over yourself while in bed, but you can still see the faces, gnashing, gnawing. It’s the same way with these trees - I can feel them staring at me…

Well, Mary Lou, Halloween isn’t just about candy and costumes. It’s also about getting the shit spooked out of you, and being in a sudden forest of faces will do that to ya. They’re all looking at me now, faces beyond the trees, Dr. Funny and other suited men, saluting men, von Braun and the boys at the soon-to-be NASA, whistling trains with loaded boxcars, dead children on the steppe…

Focus, Mary Lou. You got injected with mescaline the afternoon before your escape, so of course you’re still feeling some of the effects. There’s no faces. See? Just trees. And look-ie there. The forest is giving way to a street.

When I break free of the forest, perhaps I had been too eager. This wasn’t like one of them well-lit streets down in town with children who are very much alive. No, I’m in a cul-de-sac carved into the hills, ‘cept the whole area is overgrown and abandoned. There’s a line of suburban homes like you’d expect, but it’s a land of rotting wood and forgotten dreams. Streetlamps flicker; crows squawk. There’s movement, and I stumble back, but I’m not going back into no woods, and besides, it’s just a cat.

There’s a rusting street sign above me. MAPLE STREET. This is the street where that mother and daughter got murdered. The tallest house is at the back of the cul-de-sac. That's their house. You just know. 

Something compels me toward it, something that says - you’ve been here before, Mary Lou…

I arrive on the porch. There’s nothing but the wind.

“Trick or treat,” I say to nobody in particular. Go inside, answers the house, so I enter.

I flick Bobby’s lighter back on. I’m able to see maybe three feet in front of me. It’s deathly still, deathly dark. I’m in some sort of entranceway, a rotting living room to the left of me. I step into the darkness, heart thumping faster, ‘specially when there are creaks on hidden stairs and the front door shuts behind me. The lighter still goes on, but the flame grows weaker, as if the house doesn’t like the feeling. It's cool inside, too cool for autumn.

There’s a set of stairs going up to a second floor. The creaks, so random before, get themselves in order. I can hear them descend. There’s movement in the shadows, maybe just ghosts from the mescaline, whispers too. I can’t tell what they’re saying. Hair stands on end, mouth goes dry. There’s no blanket to hide under. 

Mary Lou, you’re scared as all hell. There’s only one thing you can do in a situation like this, one thing that’ll keep you sane, one thing you can do when Dr. Funny and Ingrid throw you into the sensory deprivation tank:

MARY LOU’S FEEL-GOOD HAWAIIAN TUNE

w/ accompaniment by the Andrews Sisters

Ohhhhhhhh I got a sweetie in Tahiti,

A real pearl down at Pearl.

Tropical maracas, tambourines-

Something something Ha-wa-ii.

Gotta work on that last bit, but you can’t feel scared while thinking of the tropics-

“Will you cut that out-”

I toss a left hook into whatever the fuck just said that. My knuckles come away bloody, ‘cept…this blood is green.

I hold the lighter up close to the dark mass sniffling at my feet. Unlike the fishman, this ain’t no costume. This is a bonafide, undeniable-

“Gee whiz, an alien?”

The silver-skinned being from another world, short like a goblin, black eyes big and pure as saucers, rubs his nose and speaks in a pained, nasally tone.

“Owww…you hit right me in QNSsn3uwq4, those I guess your species would call it the nose…and I got blood on my suit…”

I examine him closer. “Why are you wearing a suit?”

“Well, you know, suits are cool.” The grey frowns at the green splotch on his jacket. It’s too big for him, as if a child’s wearing it, but he seems to like it a lot. “In Earthling Year 1943, there was a riot in your city of Los Angeles, the targets being young men who wore zoot suits such as these. The government took them to a facility at Roswell for storage, and I happened to be in the area around a decade ago, and it’s not like anyone was wearing them, you know…”

When he stands up, I hold the lighter up defensively, even though he only comes up to my chest. “Yer not gonna, you know…abduct me, or reproduce with me-”

“Ewww. No. I’m afraid to talk to pretty girls, to be honest.”

“But yer talking to me.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“...in any case,” I cough out. “What brings you to Earth, Mister…”

“Call me JB. I’m a draft dodger,” the grey admits. “Boy, it’s good to get that off my chest. There’s a big intergalactic war going on across the Laniakea Supercluster at the moment.”

“Golly. I had no idea.”

“I got drafted, but I don’t wanna die for some imperialist government, so I took my ship and went to this backwater planet to wait out the war.”

I whistle. “Draft dodger? I guess if your government’s bad, that’s alright. We don’t draft dodge 'round here though. America only fights Good Wars.”

“Let’s hope it stays that way, kid.” JB gazes at something behind me. “In any case, this abandoned house has been super swell, I only need to kill some of your cows once in a great while for sustenance, and the cornfield out back hides my flying saucer perfectly, but uh…if you don’t mind, I got one problem I could use your help with.”

“What’s that, Jack?”

He nods with his head. I glance back and the dead mother and daughter are staring at me.