Child's Play: A Spaceman's Story

by Guerin Zand

  Kat of course was a little put off not having been asked to join us on this “trip”. She loves a good road trip. She also typically likes people and you have to stop her from jumping all over them but this Milly was different. Kat did not appear to be buying anything this interloper was selling and wanted nothing to do with her. Plus, Milly was interrupting our daily walk and Kat simply could not abide with this behavior. So, in protest, Kat began resisting on the walk back to the house. As we walked towards the house Kat kept jumping up and down frantically, flaying her paws and barking loudly, very similar I thought to the robot in Lost in Space while declaring a state of DWR.

  “So tell me, is your ship at the port and should we take my truck?” I asked.

  “My ship is in geosynchronous orbit above the cape and I don’t think your truck will get us there. Don’t worry I’ll take care of the transportation issues.”

  “Right” I said. Ok this woman is way out there and taking advantage of this situation would not be the sort of thing a gentleman would do, right? “If your ship is in orbit then what’s the rush? Maybe we should get a bite to eat, some coffee, or maybe a couple of drinks first?”

  I also thought, for a second, that I might actually have been dressed properly for interstellar travel but I decided that I should change anyways.

  “We don’t have that much time. We have schedules to meet. Just get what you need, take care of whatever and we can get going.”

  “Well, how long will we be gone?” I asked. “If we are going to be gone for a while I need to make some arrangements so the bills get paid and the house and dogs are taken care of. I’ll have to let my brother know so he can handle things while I’m gone.”

  “A few days maybe a couple of weeks at most.” she answered.

  Ok I am back to that reality crisis thing I mentioned earlier. I sort of forgot about that for a while but things had definitely progressed a few paces past the cuckoo’s nest. My reality at the time dictated I not take this woman too seriously and I should probably grab my phone to see if there were any escaped loony tunes alerts in the area. I thought I should give the local authorities a call but that could probably wait until after a few drinks, right?

  Having arrived at the house I fed the dogs and gave them some fresh water. Even Mouse seemed a bit put off by my new friend and was staying clear of her. It didn’t stop her from eating though. I figured I would go ahead and play along with Milly, the current woman of my dreams, so I wrote a note for my brother Sam and left it on his bed. It contained all my passwords for my banking accounts and instructions on what bills need to be paid and how to access the accounts on my computer. Now I know this whole hot Hee Haw babe alien taking me to her spaceship thing was most probably a farce but a DWR could always result in serious physical harm and possibly even death. The note to my brother would have to do as my last will and testament if it came to that, and yes, I was going to play along as long as this lasted!

  I grabbed my bug out bag from my utility room, checked to make sure the FN FNP Tactical 45 was there, with three loaded magazines, and added 100 rounds to the bag. I figured this would be enough to handle a crazy woman or small band of alien ass probers if it came to that. I wasn’t going to be caught unprepared like what happened with the squirrel herd! I grabbed my towel and iPad and tossed them into the bag as well.

  The iPad of course contained my copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, all five books of the trilogy. I figured it would come in handy if I was going into space.

  The bag was already stocked with 3 MREs and a couple bottles of water, a few changes of underwear, 2 clean t-shirts, socks and 2 thousand dollars’ worth of gold and silver coins. Jeans are really an amazing invention if you think about it. One pair can actually last years and when you’re done you can go on eBay and sell them for more than you originally paid. The one pair of jeans I changed into after the walk should be good for a short trip. Shoes were a bit of an issue. Living in Florida I typically had no use for shoes outside of sandals and deck shoes. A trip to space might require something a little more rugged so I opted for my motorcycle boots. The bag was pretty full so I decided not to bring the bath robe I had been wearing on my walk. I really liked that bathrobe.

  What the fuck was I thinking, I thought to myself. I’m as likely to end up in space as married to this little hotty, but for some reason I was ignoring the obvious. Truth is, I would most likely end up dead or in jail in the very near future but that was not going to stop me.

  “Is it going to be cold where we’re going?” I asked. “If so I should probably grab a jacket. What do you think?”

  Milly just gave me one of those exasperated looks women are known for and said “You’ll be just fine. If you need anything else we can provide it. We just really need to get going.”

  “Ok. Are you sure we don’t have time for a couple of drinks first?” If I was going down, I was going down swinging.

  Milly just shook her head in frustration and said, “Let’s go.”

  “Here, take my hand Guerin.” she said as she reached out to me. Great, I thought, first contact. But I still think a couple of drinks would help speed things up. Oh well it’s her game and I was going to play along for now. Just before my hand reached hers a thought crossed my mind, how did she know my name? Then everything changed.

  Chapter 2

  Mother Warned Me About Girls Like You

  I mean everything changed. I wasn’t in my house any longer. I didn’t know where I was. Not to beat an old cliché to death but this definitely wasn’t Kansas.

  I actually grew up in a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, not Kansas City, Kansas, and as such was quite familiar with Kansas. So, when I say it definitely wasn’t Kansas, I knew this for a fact. Almost everyone else in literature, those after The Wizard of Oz was published, may say this but in fact most of them wouldn’t know Kansas if it bit them on the ass. The truth is there are so many places that do look just like Kansas that the numbers are probably too large to count.

  I was disoriented to say the least and I just about fell where I stood, if I actually was standing or falling I couldn’t really say. At this point my mind was simply racing with billions of questions and no answers. My brain was not working properly. It was simply overloaded and on the brink of failure. My normally slim grasp on reality was failing and what that left me with was nothing. The only thing I could clearly think of at the time was the whale and bowl of petunias in the Hitchhiker’s Guide, but I wasn’t sure if I was the whale or the bowl of petunias! I knew I should have insisted on those drinks before we left.

  My mother had always warned me about girls like Milly, but the truth is she was exactly the type of woman I always pursued. Yes, mother was generally right but still I did have a lot of fun regardless of the ultimate consequences. In this case I may have screwed up, screwed up big time!

  “Guerin? Guerin?” I thought I could hear someone calling my name but in my mind, I was alone in utter darkness with no one else around. I was a bowl of petunias in a void of nothingness. I never expected it to end like this. Where is the bright light, my family? I had certain expectations when it came to my ultimate demise and this was not measuring up to those expectations.

  “Guerin? Guerin? Concentrate on my voice Guerin. It will help.” Obviously my subconscious was trying to find a life line back to reality but at the moment there was no reality, just nothing except a familiar voice kept calling my name. Maybe it was my mother calling me to join here in the great beyond. It was a comforting voice and I decided to concentrate on that one thing and let it be my reality. Slowly my surroundings started to come into focus out of the darkness. It was sort of like the reaction one has after they pass out. Not that I pass out a lot but there had been a few occasions.

  When I was younger I was standing in line at the Montreal Expo and I dropped from heat exhaustion. Could I just have passed out? Maybe all this nonsense was from some sort of toxin I accidentally was exposed to in the swamp. Maybe a snake b
ite or something? It reminded me of when I woke early after my appendix was removed. The team had not used enough anesthetic and I was waking up in recovery with the tube still down my throat. I was gagging and couldn’t breathe and instantly started to panic. The nurse grabbed my hand and told me to squeeze her hand tightly and relax. Could that be it? I had gotten injured in the swamp and I was waking up in the hospital?

  “Guerin. Come on Guerin it’s not that bad.”

  “Wa, wa, what?” I think that was me talking. “What the FUCK!” Not sure exactly why those were my first words.

  I was standing in a mid-sized room. Sort of like a government building. You know the type with ugly puke green walls. The sort of décor we typically reserve for the DMV or military bases. Milly was still holding my hand, which I was gripping with all my strength as she starred into my eyes. There were other people around but I didn’t recognize any of them.

  I don’t know how to exactly explain this experience. It was like I knew where I was the whole time but the signals from my senses weren’t initially making it to my brain. Like my being wasn’t attached to my body, for a brief moment, and then all of a sudden it was again. Sort of a brain fart or a brain lag between seeing and comprehending.

  “Good your back with us. I hope that wasn’t too much of a shock to your system?” Milly inquired.

  Sure, not much of a shock. I didn’t piss or shit myself so I guess we could categorize that as a mild to mediocre shock to my system!

  “What the fuck Milly? What did you do to me and where the fuck are we?” I demanded, as I finally loosened my death grip on her hand.

  Ok, after a shock like this I tend to regress to spewing buckets of profanity and I do apologize but this isn’t exactly needless profanity. I needed it!

  “You are aboard my spaceship. Remember that’s where I said we were going.” she said, like she thought I had actually believed her.

  Now at this point I have to call another Costanza! I just saw my entire reality ripped from my brain, through my ass and discarded to that place that discarded realities go. I can’t truly explain how unhinged I felt and I didn’t want to go back there so if Milly said I was aboard some spaceship then so be it. Trust me. It beat the alternative. Maybe I was still somewhere back on Earth throwing my feces at the walls of my well-padded room, or maybe I was dead. It didn’t matter. What did matter was that I got my collective shit together and dealt with the reality that was being presented to me.

  I started to feel a little better, dare I say a little more normal?? Although I thought I still could do with a couple of drinks. I mean what kind of moron forgets to pack a bottle of whiskey in their bug out bag?

  “Are you feeling better now Guerin? It can take some time to recover the first time but believe me it gets easier once you get used to it.” Milly explained to me.

  “Oh, really Milly? Getting your reality ripped out through your ass gets easier after the first time? I’ll need to remember that. Not like I am ever doing that again!” I responded.

  Milly just gave me one of those “Oh you poor puppy” sort of looks and said “You are going to have to go through that quite a bit more before our little adventure is over. How do you think you’re going to get back home?”

  “So you never did answer my question Milly. What did you do to me? Did Scotty over there just beam me up or what?”

  “You humans really believe in that mumbo jumbo? First off, his name is Sammy, not Scotty, and he didn’t beam you up. Disassembling you down to the sub-atomic level and trying to reassemble you would kill you. Only an idiot would try something like that on a living creature. He simply opened a trans-dimensional portal connecting your living room and this room on my ship.” Milly explained.

  “Oh, why didn’t you just say so. That makes so much more sense. I’m embarrassed I didn’t think of that myself. You couldn’t have warned me first?”.

  I just want to say at this point beaming me up or sucking my sad ass through a trans-dimensional portal were pretty much the same thing from my perspective and I was going to have to agree with Dr. McCoy on this one. It was no way for human beings to travel!

  “If I had told you what was going to happen first you might not have come with me. I figured you’d rather not know until after it happened.” That was Milly’s answer.

  Now I think the girl of my dreams basically just called me a chicken shit girly man but I might be wrong about that. Just seems to me there was a bit of an insulting tone thrown in there for good measure.

  “You guys wouldn’t have anything to drink on board this pretty little space ship of yours, would you?” I asked, determined to make the best of the situation.

  “We don’t have time for that Guerin. We need to get you to medical and get you checked out.”

  “Why do I need to go to medical? Did that, what did you call it, transit portal, do something to me you’re not telling me about?”

  “Don’t worry”, Milly explained, “It’s just a routine check and we need to inoculate you for some issues that could cause your travels to be rather uncomfortable. And it’s a trans-dimensional portal not a transit portal”

  “Whatever” was my simple response. Why do women, alien space hotties or just plain old Earth women, have this overwhelming need to always correct us men? Somethings are truly universal!

  Finally it dawned on me. Luckily the effects of the transit portal had worn off and I was thinking clearly again. I knew what was going on. I’m not stupid. You read about this shit all the time in the Enquirer, even a few big movies have been made on the subject. These slimy little alien bastards. They abducted me using the hot and sexy little alien honeypot, got me to their ship and next up they’d have at my anus with their shiny little probes. I’d bet there’s booze and food at these little celebrations too. Probably the high light of these sailor’s tour!

  See, all the guys that have reported this happening to them in the past, tell you about the shiny light, some trance inducing drug or ray gun, and the tractor beam that drags their sad ass up into the alien’s ship, hovering at low altitude. They get them in the medical bay, juice ‘em up and go at it with the anal probes. When they’ve had their jollies, they’d dump them off in some remote wooded location, probably with their pants still down around their ankles, and make them look like total jerks.

  RIGHT! I called bullshit on that. Those backwoods, redneck mothers got suckered just like me in an alien honeypot. There was no alien ship hovering, dragging their sorry asses up to the space ship using a tractor beam. These guys made up that part just so everyone wouldn’t think they were some pathetic losers that got led by their dicks to their just rewards. I knew I was certainly going to make up some shit story like that if, and when, I got back home. The rest may very well be true and I needed to put a stop to that.

  I read about rude ass aliens like this in the Hitchhiker’s Guide, I knew that book would come in handy. You know the little immortal alien that spent eternity insulting every living being one at a time. Well this bunch of jokers just had a little more imagination obviously.

  Now if it were just me and Milly I might not get too upset with a little anal probing but I wasn’t taking on the whole crew!

  “Why don’t you just come out and say it Milly? You, and the rest of your merry band of ass rapers, are going to take me to medical, grab a few drinks and then let the anal probing marathon begin. All you twisted little alien pervs are going to have a good ole time at my expense and then dump me out in the woods. That’s what you do with us humans, isn’t it? Abduct us, ass rape us with your nice shiny little alien probes and then dump us in some woods and make us look like real jerks. Well I hate to disappoint the whole crew here but that ain’t happening! You guys can go off to medical and I’m going to find me a drink!”

  Now I may have been overreacting a little bit to this new reality but at least I was still hanging in there. I was thinking clearly now and watching my step.

  Milly just stood there shaking her head back
and forth but I wasn’t falling for her tricks any more. Having your reality sucked out your ass must have some sort of negative effect on one’s libido.

  “Guerin”, she started, “What are you talking about? We didn’t bring you here to “ass rape” you. We aren’t really interested in your ass at all.”

  Ok, my heart just sank. She wasn’t interested in my ass. I guess my libido did survive the transit at least. But still I’m not buying it!

  Milly continued. “We need to get you checked out in medical to make sure you don’t have any issues that could cause a problem during our travels. We’ll also inoculate you against the effects you just felt so you won’t experience the portal lag as badly next time. We can even fix some of your medical issues while we’re at it. No charge. If you’re real nice, we’ll see if we can find you a lolly pop or two when were done.”

  “Is that what you tell all the guys you abduct?”

  “You really need to relax. The transit effects were obviously more severe than we thought. If you insist, I’ll take you to get that drink first. Will that make you happy?”

  “Ok.” I finally said and I started walking with them down the hallway at the left side of the room. Anyone notice how I just got that hotty to take me for a drink. Yes, I may have been duped and I wasn’t sure I believed anything they said but I was still hoping for that happy ending.

  Milly told Sammy to go back to work and let the doctor know we would be in the med center in an hour or so. As we walked down the narrow hallway I noticed the ceilings were fairly low and I asked,

  “It’s not a very big ship, is it?”

  Milly looked a little put off by the comment. Perhaps alien ass rapers are bit sensitive on this subject? “It’s just what you would call a shuttle. We don’t take our main ships inside a solar system normally, so we use our shuttles for most of our planetary missions.”