"Heartbreak Hotel"

“Uh, Jack…” JB suddenly sez. He’s glancing up at the ceiling. “We got company.”

When I listen closely, I can hear the faint sounds of car doors closing.

“Ingrid and friends,” I realize. “We gotta go, JB. These guys are bad news. They wanna take me back to the asylum for experiments.”

JB raises his grey hands. “Hey, I don’t want any part of that. I was living here peacefully until you showed up and brought your damn war here.”

I jab a finger at him. “Well, you’re only here because you fled your own war. You wanna live on Earth, then you gotta deal with Earth problems. Like it or not, these people are here at the house now, and they’re gonna be after you either way. You can help me with my war, or you can get captured and sent to the NASA base beneath Groom Lake for dissection.”

JB frowns and stares at me with those alien eyes of his, inscrutable pools of blackness. “Get lost, Jack. I’ll hide out in the basement.”

Geez…no wonder his wife left him! First he makes me exorcize the ghosts in the house he’s squatting at, and now he thinks he can stay safe by hiding his head in the sand, like some sort of ostrich!

I head for the stairs, but turn back for one last comment. “You know, JB, we got a word for people on Earth like you. It’s called Neville Chamberlain.”

“...I don’t get it.”

I groan and march up the steps. Focus, Mary Lou. He’s just an alien, he don’t know any better. And you got bigger fish to fry, ‘cuz you gotta get out of here.

Don’t worry, the house sez. I’ll keep the front door locked while you sneak out the back.

Thanks, house. I fist bump the wall and head for the back door-

A grenade blows the front door off its hinges entirely. Men in black immediately rush inside, flashlights taped to their fedoras, Tommy Guns up and at the ready.

One of them sees me and fires a blast of bullets. I scramble away, rotting wood squeaking beneath my sneakers, as I tumble towards the back door. All the while, the house offers no resistance. Thanks, house!

I’m a fucking house, the hell am I supposed to do?

I kick open the back door, only to halt in my tracks. An armed cadre of men in black guards the back door, Ingrid standing in the center. Dressed in a white medical uniform, she carries a giant rolling pin in one hand and an even giant-er syringe in the other.

“Mary Lou,” she coos. “You’re late for your appointment!”

She swings the rolling pin and then there’s wood bashing my head in and then I’m crumpling on the kitchen floor. When Ingrid steps inside, I kick her right in the shins, then get back to my feet. Between the natural darkness and that copper-tasting crimson trailing down one side of my face, I’m in a poor spot. The front door’s blocked off, so I make for the stairs, but too many men in black block my path. I deliver a sooper-dooper punch, but a big agent simply catches my scrawny fist. Another swings his Tommy Gun into the back of my neck.

Ow.

This hurts.

This hurts real bad.

The men in black pin me down, one man to a limb, while Ingrid looms over me. Her white nurse’s cap, a comically big red plus in the middle, is slightly off-center. The flashlights strapped to each man’s fedora move around her like searchlights and spotlights, as if she’s center show on the grand stage.

I really, really don’t wanna go back.

Ingrid moves closer to me, the tip of the needle awfully sharp, as she speaks gently. “Let’s put you to sleep, Mary Lou."

“Stop it!”

She kneels down next to me. “Hush, my darling. It’s okay. I’m gentle with the needle. You know that, honey. Everyone knows that. The Guatemalans never complained about my syphilis injections back in ‘46, nor did those negros at Tuskegee…”

I squirm and struggle, but then there’s that slight pinch as the needle goes in, and the sedatives mixed with psychedelics flood into the bloodstream, like traffic merging into one of Eisenhower’s new interstates. Immediately, everything starts spinning, my vision decays into darkness along the edges, I recall one of the many times I was on the operating table, Dr. Funny and Ingrid looming over me.

“You have enormous potential, Marie Louise!” Dr. Funny exclaims through his surgical mask, hands firm on my bare shoulders. “Psychic powers, the ability to bridge worlds! Out of all of my students, you’re the most promising. But you’re afraid. Because you want to be normal, and you can’t be normal if you're weird.”

Dr. Funny now paces around the table. “Why? Why would you ever want to be normal? To wake up, go work for someone else, not to advance the interests of the nation or to find self-fulfillment, but to simply increase shareholder value for Wall Street? It’s monstrous, MONSTROUS that we call this normal. It’s so monstrous, that it’s almost…funny.”

He traces a sterile finger down my cheek. “Be different. Be yourself! No great men are normal, otherwise they wouldn’t be great. Embrace your destiny! That’s what I’ve done. That’s why I’m here, leading this program, when so many of my comrades have met early demises or fallen to the siren song of that dreaded American commercialism sweeping across the globe. Use your powers, Marie Louise, use them!”

Use them, repeats the School, use them use them use them

No! the house interrupts. Don’t don’t don’t

“Just the what hell is going on?” I mumble, my mouth tasting like sand, and that’s when JB scrambles up the stairs, armed and dangerous himself.

“Hands off her!” he yells, then fires his ray gun. It’s similar to a red-colored pistol, gauges running along the side, equipped with a neon green canister filled with Zeti Reticuli goo. A bright beam of green shots from the muzzle, hitting one of the agents in the chest. He immediately turns into a silver goop resembling poop and oozes down onto the floor.

“Jesus!” Ingrid and I say in unison. But my arm’s now free, so I clock Ingrid in the face, yank the needle out of my arm, and stab a dude in the stomach. Both arms are free now, and the other agents let go of my legs to shoot JB, but now they’re poop goop too. More agents burst in, so the ghost mother and daughter rise from the floor, startling the bejesus out of them.

I rise to my feet, but a rolling pin swing knocks the needle out of my hands. JB shoots her, but Ingrid blocks it with the rolling pin. An agent arrives through the back door and pumps his shotgun.

I gasp. “JB!”

It’s too late - the shotgun puts a hole right through JB’s stomach. He immediately turns around and goop-ifies the agent, but then JB grows pale. The raygun drops from his arms.

While the ghosts distract Ingrid - they’re impervious to her rolling pin attacks, after all - I slide next to JB and hold his little grey body in my arms.

He coughs out an obscene amount of blood. “Hey, kid,” he sez weakly.

“Why?” I cry out. “Why’d you come save me?”

More blood. “‘Cuz I was tired of running away, that’s all. Take…take my raygun. My ship’s parked in the ravine…there’s some cheeseflurgers in the fridge if you want…”

The raygun feels cold in my hands. “Keep your raygun. I’ll revive you somehow! You’re gonna live!”

JB smiles weakly. “Kid, you’re an awful…liar. Thank you…for giving me the strength…to fight for something I believe in.”

And then he dies.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO JB NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

But there’s no further time to mourn - there’s a sharp yank as Ingrid grabs my hair and tosses me out the back door. I land in overgrown grass beneath the full moon. I’m woozy, my mind in a haze, ‘cuz JB died to save me, and the hallucinogens are starting to do their dirty work. I struggle to my feet, but then there’s a sharp crack as a rolling pin hits me on the temple again.

I manage to roll on my back. Ingrid stands over me, bathed in moonlight, a gust of wind blowing caramel leaves behind her. The ghosts try to stop her, but all they can do is startle and distract, and Ingrid’s laser-focused at the moment, raising the rolling pin up high.

Wood hits skull.

“I was this close,” she cries out. “This close to marrying Dr. Funny. I’ve been in love with him ever since von Braun introduced us. All these years, I’ve worked tirelessly for him, helping him with his work, but his work always came first before love. You always came first!”

Wood hits skull.

“Because he thinks you're the second coming of Jesus or something, but let me tell you, you’re nothing but some punk kid who can’t ever be normal. Why does he believe in you so much? Why is it always you who comes between us?”

Wood hits skull.

“You’re the last obstacle between our true romance, I know it. So, right now, I’m gonna remove that obstacle-”

I kick her in the shins once more. This distraction, lasting for just little more than a second, enables me to retrieve what’s pinned beneath my back and previously hidden from her view.

“Looks like you’re so lonely,” I say, squeezing the trigger. “You could die.”

A blast from the raygun reduces her to silver ooze in the grass.