Playing Cards With Aliens

by Erin Raegan

  I didn’t mind Mr. Peterson’s bad attitude so much—our town was so small, you got to know everyone intimately, so there was bound to be some friction—but if he knew I was there, he would try to rope me into working this year’s Halloween Fest, which he hosted at his estate.

  I hadn’t minded working there when I was thirteen, fifteen, even seventeen, but now, painting kids’ faces—which I had always been terrible at—running the cider donut stand, and cleaning up the corn maze every weekend night had gotten tedious.

  You might think that was terrible of me. Who wouldn’t want to help out their neighbor at his annual festival? Well, you should know, I never, ever got paid.

  No one did. He operated strictly with volunteers. And he was so dang impossible to work with that he had to guilt every volunteer into actually volunteering.

  That, and the money the festival made never went anywhere worthwhile. Last year, he used it to start a campaign to run the sheriff out of town.

  Everybody loved Sheriff Terry. But everybody loved the annual Halloween Fest too. So he got his money for his ridiculous town motives no one but the grouchy old goats at Peterson’s weekly poker night supported.

  As a grown ass woman with not one but two jobs, I was pretty much over it.

  Plus, I kind of felt like enjoying the festival this year. That hadn’t happened since before I started “volunteering.” And if my aunt wimped out and gave up my hiding spots when Peterson came calling again, which he would—likely later today—I was working on my speech to convince him to let me volunteer to dress up to scare kids this year instead.

  Peterson hadn’t let me do that since I was sixteen. I had only gotten to do it for one night. Apparently, I wasn’t very scary. I had a hard time scaring anyone without getting scared myself. But that was only because the Layton boys were so focused on jumping out after me from the dark, I nearly pissed myself every time a couple of ticket-goers came into our section.

  I had been told it wasn’t good for sales when the ghost was screaming louder than the patrons and tripping over her costume to run away.

  But that was six years ago. I was grown now.

  I could handle it. Hopefully.

  A knock came and Jeremy’s mop of curly midnight hair poked through the door. “He’s gone.”

  I jumped up from the chair mid-spin. It flipped around and skidded back, knocking into the desk with a harsh thud. Frank jolted and choked on his snore, coughing and sputtering. I grinned sheepishly as he glared through heavy eyelids.

  Jeremy shook his head and held the door for me.

  “What did he want this time?” I muttered, following him to the front lobby.

  Dusty walls and worn beige carpet overtook the bare area. The only pop of color came from the decades-old, puke-green aluminum Sal’s Salvage Yard sign on the wall behind the front desk. I sat in my chair, fixing a skewed pile of papers. My desk was the cleanest area in the entire building, but only because on the days I came in, I spent a good twenty minutes decluttering and dusting the mess Frank and Sal left there during the days I wasn’t there.

  Jeremy shook his head. “Didn’t bother stickin’ around to find out. You got the list for today?”

  I fired up my ancient desktop. When it finally was up and running, I scrolled through the day’s schedule, printed it, and circled the priority jobs. “On the other side of town.”

  Jeremy nodded and leaned against the desk to reach the box of donuts I’d brought with me this morning. They were freshly made by Aunt Bets and wouldn’t last this office longer than an hour.

  I slapped his hand when he went back for the only strawberry filled. “That’s mine.”

  He snickered and grabbed another chocolate.

  “Holden’s waitin’ on me,” he said around a big bite. “You comin’ out with us tonight?”

  I nodded. “It’s taco night.”

  Jeremy groaned. “God, you are nuts turnin’ that down.”

  I grimaced. Aunt Bets was the queen of grease. Her tacos turned my stomach, but Sal and the boys loved everything she made.

  “I need a drink.” I batted my eyes at him with a wide smile. “Or two.”

  Jeremy frowned. “Can’t we stop by for just one taco?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’ll have her pack a few for you two.”

  He winked and grinned as he devoured the second donut.

  I grabbed another and wrapped it in a napkin for Holden. “Tell your brother he’s designated driver tonight.”

  “Aye, aye, captain.” He saluted me on his way out the door.

  “And tell him to stay away from Abby tonight!” I shouted before the door shut.

  He waved, and I shook my head.

  Holden was a year younger than Jeremy, Abby, and me, but now at twenty-one, his rebellious phase was just now hitting. He and Jeremy had never had the chance to experience normal teenage angst because they had been taking care of their sick mother since they were ten and eleven. Now that she was in an assisted living facility, Holden was acting out.

  Jeremy, as the older brother, liked to give Holden that space, content to be the more mature brother of the two, but poor Abby was the one to suffer. Jeremy and Holden had been my best friends since we were toddlers, as Aunt Bets had taken me to their home when she helped their mother when the boys were younger.

  But Abby and I met in middle school. She was my first real girlfriend. After being suffocated by two boys my entire childhood, I had latched on to her girly, feminine nature like a leech.

  Jeremy tolerated her drama queen ways, but Holden started flirting with her the moment I brought her to the lake the first time.

  Now a decade later, Abby had stopped pushing the younger boy away and latched on to the man he was becoming. It hurt my heart to see him drag her around. Abby loved hard. She was loyal. Faithful. Holden was not. He had become a womanizer and a flirt. He kept Abby hanging on while he hopped from bed to bed, and it was causing a rift in our group.

  I was starting to resent my friend. I’d spent one too many nights consoling a crying Abby to be able to have a good night out with the group without lingering animosity ruining the night. And Jeremy letting it happen without saying something to his brother didn’t help.

  Lately, I felt as if it was coming to a head. Abby was fed up with Holden but unable to walk away.

  I just wanted one night of all of us together, happy like we used to be.

  In spring, Abby was graduating from the local college, then she was moving off to Ohio. I didn’t know what I was going to do without her here to drag me away from my two jobs. She wanted me to move with her, and though I wanted to travel more than anything, I knew Ohio wasn’t somewhere I would leave my family and home for, no matter how much I loved her.

  The day I left this town, it would be for somewhere amazing. Maybe Ireland or Japan.

  I hurried through my morning routine, watching Uncle Sal putter around on an old Buick in the front lot. It didn’t look like it was in too bad shape from the surface, but I didn’t know enough about cars to tell. Never really had an interest in them other than to watch when Sal crushed them into pancakes. He was either spending so much time on the Buick so he could strip it or resell it.

  Around noon, Aunt Bets stopped by with our lunches—just in time for Frank to shake off his first nap of the day. He and Sal left for a pickup, then it was just me at the office.

  I moved the front sign from open to gone for an hour for lunch and went outside to the picnic table sitting beside of the long drive to the front building. I ate my tomato sandwich and apple while flipping through my social media feeds.

  I was so engrossed in an influencer’s trip to Greece, I failed to hear the three men walk up to the front door a few feet from my table. One of them knocked loudly on the locked door, startling me. Looking up, I saw three tall men standing outside the glass door, one of their faces pressed tight to the glass.

  I blinked hard, my eyes slightly watery from staring so hard at my phone screen. Their
profiles were blurred as if a heat wave was distorting them. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t hear you drive up.”

  I rubbed my eyes when I stood. All three focused on me, their profiles now clear. I wiped the crumbs from my Sal’s Yard sweater and jeans and hopped around the bench, walking toward them.

  All three of them seemed much larger the closer I got, and they were completely unfamiliar to me. Our town was pretty small. There weren’t many people who came around here that we weren’t acquainted with in one way or another. But looking at these guys, I could tell they weren’t from around here.

  For one, it was pretty chilly out now, late into the beginning of the fall. Yet they were all wearing short sleeves. One of them had on flip-flops of all things, while the other two wore expensive brands of sneakers. Nothing about any of their outfits matched up.

  It was pretty odd.

  The one on the left had cropped blond locks. His face was golden and rough. His mouth was pressed into a frown, but his intensity was offset by his bright neon-yellow T-shirt. It didn’t quite match with his fuchsia sweatpants and sneakers.

  But the man on the right pulled my attention with his bold green Hawaiian dress shirt and white linen pants. The purple jeweled flip-flops were just as strange on his bulky frame as his blue scarf.

  I bit my lip and pasted on a nervous smile. Definitely not from around here. They were a head-to-toe fashion faux pas. Abby would be horrified. Or fascinated. It was always hard to tell with her. I was more tomboy to her fashionista.

  I avoided looking them both directly in the eyes and turned my attention to the middle guy.

  He had the same long dark hair as the Sparkly Flipflops but was more appropriately dressed for a dirty junkyard. Long black slacks with Converse and a black T-shirt with nothing but a Star Wars logo on the front. He wore more jewelry on his fingers and wrists than any man I had ever met, but he somehow pulled all the gold off with ease, giving off kind of a rocker vibe. The wicked and interested gaze he gave me pulled the look together.

  Still, I was wary. We didn’t get a lot of out-of-towners. Not before Winter. And rarely at Sal’s.

  “I was just on my lunch break,” I said, stopping a few feet from them. I kept my phone in my hand, just in case. A girl can’t be too careful, especially not in an isolated place, miles from any help that wasn’t a sixty-one-year-old woman whose hobbies included knitting and jeopardy. “How can I help you?”

  The two oddly dressed men looked at the taller man of the three, their outfits glaring in the sunlight.

  He cleared his throat and stepped a foot closer to me. He skin was a darker shade than the blond’s. Bronze with hints of gold. I found my eyes drawn to the beautiful color as he ran his thumb across his bottom lip. “We require parts.”

  I blinked, looking away from his mouth producing those silky-smooth words. His voice was both husky and lyrical. The hairs on my arms rose. “Parts?”

  He looked from me to the big sign in the air at the end of the drive. At night, the neon lights flickered in and out from years of not being serviced. It read, Sal’s Salvage Yard. You need a part, we’ve got it!

  “Oh right.” I laughed nervously, stepping around them to the door.

  He watched me closely as I unlocked the door and opened it for them. I walked to the desk and looked blankly at the wood for a second. My goose bumps prickled almost painfully as I felt the three of them stop at my back. I looked at my phone in my limp hand.

  I knew better than to invite three strangers into the office when I was there alone, but I just had. I hadn’t even thought about it. My feet came unglued with my unease and I moved around the desk to put it between the three strangers and me.

  “W-what parts were you looking for?” My throat was almost too tight to get the words out.

  “Our vehicle broke down,” was all he said.

  I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eyes again as I logged into my computer. “Uh, okay, you need a tow then?”

  When I was only met with silence, I had no choice but to look at him again. He was looking at me strangely, the other two glaring at his back. Something about the three of them had me on edge. My internal warning system was screeching and flashing bright lights. I clenched my phone tighter.

  “Tow?” He tilted his head.

  I blinked in confusion. “Yeah… where did you break down?” My eyes flicked back to the front windows, my confusion growing to peak levels.

  How had they gotten here again? I would have heard a cab or a tow truck or a frickin’ Uber dropping them off, wouldn’t I? But there was nothing outside. No cars, no trucks.

  I asked. “Did you walk here?”

  “Yes,” he seemed to mutter with intent. Like a song. Soft and alluring.

  My fingers went to my temples and I rubbed a hard circle, a headache coming on. I stared at him blankly. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  I looked at my search bar, my fingers hovering, but I couldn’t remember what for.

  “We can find what we require,” he told me in that odd voice.

  I nodded wordlessly. “Right, yeah.”

  “What are your operational hours?” he asked smoothly.

  I rubbed my temples harder, my eyes blurring slightly. “Monday through Saturday, closed Sundays. Nine to six. But Sal will open up at seven if you tell him ahead of time.” I sat down in the chair heavily, suddenly out of breath and reaching for my water. “Sorry, headache.”

  One of the men coughed sharply.

  “My apologies,” he said with feeling. Strange. “We will require your services for the foreseeable future.”

  I nodded absently, bending over to put my head between my knees. After a long moment, I grabbed an inventory list and a pen and wordlessly handed them over. “Just keep track of what you pull with this.”

  It was ten long minutes before my headache passed. I’d barely been able to concentrate on anything other than icing it. By then, the three men were already gone. I walked on wobbly feet to the back of the office and pushed the heavy metal door open. They were pretty far into the salvage yard, walking down the wide trail in the back, their eyes on all the mountains of broken-down cars. I shook my head and sighed, walking back to my desk.

  My feet slowed as I approached it. There was a form we used for customers and their information while they were in the yard sitting by my keyboard. It had the name Killian M. Falcon. My lips twisted into a weird smile. I didn’t remember him giving me his name, let alone filling out the form. But not only did I do that—it was my handwriting—I’d left the rest of the form blank.

  As soon as I thought of how strange the paper was, the thought promptly drifted away like a wisp of smoke and I went back to work, the entire unusual exchange fading from my mind.

  Dining with Strangers

  Theo

  Jeremy sat on my desk as I filed his receipts for the day. Holden was in the back, seeking out the newcomers. We were getting ready to close and the three new visitors were still out there with my uncle. Sal had been more than happy to lend them his tools and time when I told him they planned to raid the yard for a crap ton of parts.

  I had no idea what they needed them for or what exactly they were pulling, but Sal didn’t seem concerned after he met them. He came back with the same shell-shocked look I was sure I had been wearing for hours and told me, “Money is money, and those boys plan on spending a lot.”

  Jeremy was the only one of us who seemed concerned. He didn’t like that Sal had offered to host them in our spare room in the basement. But he hadn’t met them yet. They seemed nice enough. A little strange, but Uncle Sal wouldn’t invite them into our home if he’d gotten any bad vibes from them.

  It didn’t matter though. They needed a place to stay and we had the basement and an air mattress. Aunt Bets loved hosting, so I knew she would be thrilled.

  “It’s fuckin’ weird,” Jeremy said quietly.

  I rolled my eyes as I typed. “They don’t have anywhere to stay.”

  I
felt his eyes branding the side of my face. “You don’t know them!”

  “Why are you so grumpy about it?”

  Jeremy slapped his thighs sharply. “Are you fucked in the head right now? Sal won’t even let me or Holden crash on the couch, but he’s cool about letting three strange dudes around his precious Boots? Sleeping in the basement while she’s only a floor away?”

  I shot him a scathing look. “You’re overreacting. Sal’s not that bad.”

  Jeremy looked behind him in bewilderment. “How long were we gone for? This is the fuckin’ Twilight Zone right now.” He stood in a rush. “Sal, your uncle, the man with a safe as big as my closet full of guns he threatens to pull out every time you even mention you have a date. Sal, the man who tried to run down Darren with his truck when we were nine ‘cause he asked to take you to the movies with his mom. Sal—”

  “What are you tryin’ to say?” I asked in exasperation.

  He sputtered, his dark face reddening. “Christ, they’re three grown-ass men you know nothin’ about! You can’t just let them move the fuck on in!”

  I stared at him blankly. His wide eyes were glued to my face in disbelief.

  “Are you done? I gotta get back to work so we can get outta here in time,” I said, pointing at my stack of receipts.

  He stomped off, cursing and muttering to himself.

  “Just go meet them! They’re not so bad!”

  “You don’t even know all their names!” he shouted back, walking to the back door that led to the yard. “M. Falcon? What kind of Star Wars hack of a name is that?”

  I sighed and went back to work. Jeremy wasn’t a big movie fan but he did love the books. It was true I didn’t know the other two guys’ names, but I was sure Uncle Sal did by now. He hadn’t been back inside after he called Aunt Bets to tell her we would be having a few guests for the foreseeable future.

  Their phone conversation had been tense, but after her initial wariness, she got on board. She kind of danced to her own beat. I’d bet she was cooking up a feast by now.