Exiled to Iowa. Send Help. And Couture

by Chris O'Guinn

  The laps in the pool were nothing like the laps on the field. I could just lose myself in the pleasant coolness of the water and the way it parted around me. My stupid, clumsy legs were able to manage the scissoring motion that I asked of them without embarrassing me. They propelled me along much faster than anyone in the opposing lanes, but I didn’t really care. It wasn’t a race. We weren’t being tested. I just liked being able to go as fast as I could because it was nice to experience a form of motion that didn’t end up with me face down on the concrete with scraped hands and knees.

  No, in the water I was…. Well, I was going to say graceful, but that sounds kind of arrogant, so I’ll just go with normal. And in my life, believe me, that’s a precious gift. My feeling is that most people start out at normal and then some strive for exceptional. You know the sort—the football quarterback, the head cheerleader, the valedictorian, those kinds of people. Me, I’d take “normal” any day.

  Seriously, normal is fantastic. Take it from Western Valley High’s resident freak.

  I climbed out of the pool only when the coach blew his whistle and then I checked to see if there would be any lanes empty when the next and last group had their turn. Unfortunately, there weren’t, so I grabbed my towel (which hadn’t been thrown on the wet ground, so it was a great morning) and sat on the bleachers.

  And I shivered. Swimming at eight in the morning when it was sixty-five degrees out had to violate some part of the Geneva Conventions. No one was allowed to leave, though, until the whole class had finished their laps. So I just sat there and dripped and shivered and wished I was back in the water.

  Lucas, a guy I used to hang with, was talking to his friends Jojo and Kris and Luis about the new Dread Fall 3D movie and how “sick” it was. I thought about chiming in about how I’d loved the chase scene in the beginning, but then I remembered that life was better when no one knew I existed. So I kept my mouth shut.

  Behind me, I heard Tommy and Jordan bantering about some online video game tournament that Jordan had won. Tommy thought Jordan had gotten lucky, but he sounded jealous too.

  Everyone, it seemed, had their own little group to belong to. My group, the Social Misfits and Outcasts clique, had a pretty exclusive membership of one. When you have as many odd quirks as I’ve got, you tend to go through friends pretty fast. There’s the first meeting, where I’m weird and different and therefore interesting. There’s the early stage, where I’m still interesting because I talk funny and have a lot of video games (well, used to, but that’s another story). And then there’s the distancing, the unanswered calls and the eventual forgetting of who I am.

  High school, I had decided, would be different. I wouldn’t bother making friends at all. You can’t lose what you don’t have, right?

  The whistle blew and class was over. It was just in time, too, to avoid my impending hypothermia. I didn’t scramble to the locker room, because that would have been a mistake. And I still slipped in a puddle and went sprawling. Fortunately, since I was trailing behind the class, there was no one to laugh at me.

  Locker rooms—not my favorite place. I have nightmares about getting boned up around my classmates. Like, full-on, surround-sound, 3D nightmares that wake me up in a cold sweat. I think maybe it’s only that terror which keeps my dick from humiliating me.

  Of course, when you’re freezing your nuts off, it’s easier to avoid that problem. It’s actually more of the reverse situation—I don’t need to spell that out, do I? But since everyone was suffering from the same condition, no one was eager to make a joke about it. So I was mostly safe.

  A guy named Liam had the locker next to mine. Liam scared me. He wasn’t a bully. He just hung out with a really bad crowd—the ones who did drugs and listened to heavy metal and looked like they were looking forward to their careers as criminals. His shaved head made Liam look tough, like the sort of guy who might jump you and beat you to death for your ATM card. Under the bulk of his hoody and baggie jeans, though, he was even skinnier than me.

  This was the closest I’d ever been to him. He rarely showed up to class, which I figured was why he was a year behind in school. I was surprised he had come to P.E., but then I thought maybe it was a condition of his parole. And then I was very glad I didn’t say that aloud.

  My self-preservation instincts weren’t connected to my eyes, though, since they slid entirely of their own will in his direction when he shucked his swim trunks.

  Yes, I’m a terrible person. It’s just one of those quirks I mentioned. I like the way guys look and I like looking at naked guys. Sure, there’s plenty of that online (as my bookmarks will prove) but there’s a big difference between a picture on the screen and a real person. And since I was never going to get naked with a guy in the fun gay way, this was my one guilty pleasure.

  The interesting thing about Liam was that he was the least shy guy I had ever seen in real life. It’s not like “Penises on Parade” in my locker room. I’ve read it’s different with other people, but the guys at my school are really, really shy. We all do this little dance where we wrap a towel around our waist and then get our shorts and whatever off. Then we scurry to the showers, shower very fast while staying as close to the wall as possible and then quickly towel up and dress again.

  Liam was just standing next to me, confounding me with his nakedness. I’m betting you’re expecting my next statement to start with, “Of course, if I looked like him, I’d run around naked too” or something, because that would be what normally comes next—I’ve read the stories too.

  But no, it wasn’t that. I mean, he wasn’t ugly or anything, or covered in tattoos. In spite of how dangerous even looking was, I took in that he seemed average in just about every way. He was just a scrawny kid like me, though he was somehow even paler than I am. Strangely, he had almost no hair anywhere on his body. That’s weird for a sixteen-year-old, right?

  Liam gave me a sidelong look and a smile and reached up and into his locker, stretching up on the balls of his feet as he did so.

  My heart stopped. Thus far, I’d always succeeded in keeping my peeking covert. And the one time my gaze lingered a bit too long to be innocent, it had to be with Liam. Here I’d always been worried that it would be my dick that would get me into trouble. Instead, it was my eyes. Is that irony?

  I quickly looked away, as if that might possibly avoid the very bad things that were about to happen to me. I waited for the dreaded “fag” to be hissed at me. That would be awful, but maybe that would be enough to get me out of trouble. He could mock me and forget about me. If he held onto his resentment of my lingering gaze, he might get his friends to help him teach me a lesson.

  He wiggled as he tried to reach into the back of the top shelf of the locker, and I tried so hard to not notice how that made certain parts of him bounce. Really, I tried. My life is pathetic and everything, but I’m not suicidal. But he kept doing it, like he was daring me to look.

  I was just glad everyone else had slunk off to the showers so no one said anything that would make things worse. None of them would be stupid enough to mess with Liam, but I wasn’t going to be given any kind of amnesty.

  “Can you give me a hand?” Liam asked.

  What the effing Hell is going on?

  “Uh, I, uh…. Ma– Fu– What with?”

  “I tossed my briefs too far back. You’re taller than me, could you grab them?”

  I may only be fifteen, but I’m smart enough to know when I’m being screwed with. “Why?”

  Liam shrugged—and did I mention he was naked? “Dude, you’re like a foot taller than me. Come on, I promise they’re not crusty.”

  Ew, ew, God, did he just say that?

  I stepped closer to get into his locker, but he didn’t back off. It should have been hot, getting so close to a naked dude, but it was really just terrifying. The two possibilities were that either he was flirting with me or he was fucking with me, which meant there really was only one possibility. Take my word for it. Liam wasn�
��t the sort of guy to flirt with you. He’s the sort of guy who would lure you into smoking with him in the band equipment storage room where he would seduce you into doing all the things your mother told you not to do before marriage.

  I told you, I’ve read the stories. I know these things.

  So I reached in and wrapped my fingers around the soft cotton jumble of his briefs and told my dick under no circumstances was it to get any ideas as I felt the fabric that had snuggled up to Liam’s bits. I handed them to him and stepped back, embarrassed to see my hands were shaking.

  Liam was still smiling at me. It wasn’t a mean smile either, and I know what those look like, so I could tell. I was totally flustered, which may have been his whole evil scheme. Or maybe he was waiting for the guys to file back in so he could make a big announcement.

  But then, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d ever seen Liam say anything to anyone outside of his little clique of thugs and dope-heads. So I gave in to the tiny flicker of hope that he wasn’t going to rally the villagers into burning me at the stake.

  “You’re an awesome swimmer.”

  He said this as I finally got my trunks off. So I was standing there with my swimsuit in a sopping mess around my ankles and nothing but a towel covering me and he was striking up a conversation. I was beginning to think he was even more of a freak than I am. The locker room code clearly stated you didn’t chat with your fellow dudes while you were standing there naked with your briefs — that you seemed to have forgotten how to put on — bunched in one hand.

  “Uh....” Yep, that’s all I had to say.

  Liam laughed and mercifully put his bits away. “You smoked the other guys in your group.”

  “Er.” My vocabulary had not noticeably improved.

  Liam fished out his jeans and a small tin, like one for mints, fell out and popped open. Before he closed it, I saw the pills inside. That made me frown. Yes, on top of everything else, I’m a judgmental jerk. What can I say? I think drugs are stupid. As crappy as life got, I never once thought that getting high would make it better.

  For the first time, Liam looked flustered. He stuffed the pills back into his jeans and then yanked them on. His smiling face had clouded over with something that might have been anger, I wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t talking to me anymore. I was okay with that, since I’d had my fill of weirdness.

  Coming Soon!

  Hybrids: Arrival

  The night that Joaquin witnesses the fire in the sky was the last night of anything normal for him. His world of high school and football is completely upended as he comes face to face with an extraterrestrial being.

  Thrace, as the alien calls himself, seems friendly enough. However, he has abilities that are far beyond human. And he comes with word that others of his race are already on Earth.

  Joaquin's friendship with Thrace takes him into danger and chaos as he learns the terrible truth of why the aliens have come to Earth. He and his friends must find some way to help Thrace stop his people, or the human race will suffer the consequences.

  The only thing that Joaquin now knows for certain is that our world will never be the same.

  Joaquin stopped jogging and gaped in amazement. Not only had the pilot miraculously survived, he was conscious and moving under his own power. The unlikely survivor hopped down from a pile of rocks and dusted himself off as if he had just taken a tumble on his ATV.

  When he spotted Joaquin, he headed over. Joaquin turned his flashlight on the man and frowned as he took in the features of the strangest guy he had ever seen. He was tall, almost as tall as Joaquin. He was young, too. Joaquin thought he looked like a teenager, but of course that was ridiculous. What would a teenager be doing crashing to in the New Mexico desert? The object had been moving too fast to be anything a teenager might pilot.

  His broad-shouldered physique was like something out of one of the magazines Joaquin had stashed under his bed. Dirty blond curls framed a flawless, angular face. It was the eyes, though, that told Joaquin there was something odd about this stranger. At first they seemed brown, but when he got a better look he was sure they were gold.

  “Hello,” the stranger greeted him casually.

  His voice was deep and melodic. The casual tone, though, gave Joaquin pause. It really was like the man was just out for a stroll in the desert at night instead of having fallen out of the sky. Joaquin was dumbstruck.

  “Parlez-vous francais?” the man tried a second time.

  He wasn’t wearing a flight suit or uniform or anything that might suggest where he came from. Instead he wore the remnants of some dark black bodysuit that clung to him like spandex. It was torn and singed in several places, revealing glimpses of the pale skin underneath.

  “Uh….”

  Joaquin’s brain had seized up on him. No human being could have walked away from a crash like the one that had just happened. But what did that mean? Joaquin dismissed the idea that he was dealing with something other than human. He lived with the comfortable certainty that there was no such thing as aliens. The skeptical part of him was not coming up with a more plausible explanation though.

  “Me llamo Thrace.”

  Joaquin’s jaw worked futilely for a moment. Finally, he managed to say, “Uh, I speak English.”

  “That’s good. I was running out of languages to try,” Thrace said with a bright grin.

  “Uh, so, uh…. What…. Who are you? How did you...?” He couldn't even form a complete thought he was so stunned.

  “I’m an Elf.”

  It just didn’t seem possible for Joaquin to become more confused, but yet that casual announcement left him utterly bewildered. “Excuse me?”

  Thrace laughed; a merry, lilting sound. “It’s what your people call us—Extraterrestrial Life Form. But ELF is shorter.”

  Joaquin nodded numbly. “Extraterrestrial…. You’re an alien?”

  “Elf.”

  “Whatever. You’re from space?”

  Thrace laughed some more. “Certain parts of it, yes.”

  “But …. That's.... That's not possible.”

  “And yet here we are.”

  “But you look human.”

  “Actually, from what I’ve been told, it’s more that you look like us.”

  Joaquin tried to think of something profound to say, but he was too shell-shocked. “Uh, Roswell is south of here…. Maybe you’re lost?”

  Another strangely infectious laugh filled the night air. “No, I’m not one of the Cartusians. I’m actually here to—” He stopped and glanced at the rubble with a frown. “Well, that’s annoying. I’ll be right back.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just watch. You’ll love this.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  But the stranger did not answer. Instead, the impossible man did something that so totally offended Joaquin’s sense of reality that he became convinced this was all some sort of hallucination. The blond man in front of him pushed off from the ground and flew.

  The scene took a detour into the bizarre as something else emerged from the rubble. This wasn’t a person, however. It was a machine, though not like any Joaquin had seen before. It tilted and wobbled as it hovered in the air, its disk-shaped frame unsteady from the crash. A series of blue and red lights dotted its shell, blinking erratically. The surface of the robot was scored with char marks and hundreds of dents; the silvery skin was so buckled in some places that Joaquin could see the machinery underneath.

  That damage only delayed it for a few spare seconds, though. A pair of canons appeared out of its upper fuselage and targeted Thrace. The Elf looped through the air gracefully, easily avoiding the blasts of green energy that came at him.

  Joaquin knew he should run back to the mine, get his truck and get as far from this insanity as he could. A pitched battle between an alien—or Elf or whatever—and a killer robot insect was not something he should be involved in. Yet he remained rooted to the spot as surely as if his feet were stuck in cement. Th
ere were simply too many mind-boggling things occurring, depriving him of the necessary brain capacity to move his feet.

  Instead, he brought up his phone and took a quick video of the impossible scene. In seconds, he’d forwarded it to Sylvia. He did that more out of reflex than thought. He shared everything with her, after all—even things that simply couldn’t really be happening.

  Thrace retaliated against his robotic foe by dive-bombing the creature and slamming into it with both fists. The force of those massive impacts sent out shockwaves that jarred Joaquin’s teeth. How could the man—this Elf—survive such stunning collisions? How could anyone?

  The monster’s hide seemed impervious to such brute force, though. After a dozen thunderous attacks, the creature was not noticeably damaged. Thrace changed tactics. He paused in midair and held one hand over his head. His youthful face scrunched up in concentration. In moments, bright crackling energy, like lightning, gathered in his grip. It was like he was a pagan god, wielding primal forces with the ease of thought.

  Thrace danced away from another barrage of green energy blasts as if they were a mere nuisance. He then hurled a bolt of lightning from his hand like Zeus himself. It arced down, heading for one of the gaps in the monster’s armor. It would have struck true, but the robot did a barrel roll to protect itself. The arc of lightning bounced off the silver hide and grounded harmlessly.

  A strange sound filled the air as both combatants adjusted positions. It was the unmistakable sound of Thrace’s musical laughter. He was enjoying this.

  WTF? Is this some kind of joke? Sylvia texted.

  Wish it was. GTG, aliens attacking. C U later if I don’t die.

  The robot attacker produced another canon out of its underside. This one fired projectiles the size of footballs. They did not appear to be intended to hit Thrace as they exploded a few yards from him. Their concussive force batted him through the air like he was a beach ball at the mercy of a stadium crowd, though.

  The Elf’s aerial agility was completely neutralized by this new attack. He careened wildly back and forth, flailing uselessly as he tried to regain control. He didn’t get the chance, though. A devastating blast from the laser canons knocked him out of the air and hurled into another mesa.