Story+-+austin

‘Twas a cool, musty night. The dew lay thick over the lush lawn and bowed deck. Matt was sitting on her deck, reminiscing over her last nine years in prison and smoking an eight bowl for the first time in what seemed to her like forever. She remembered the cold, hard bed on which she had to sleep and the icy tin toilet into which she had to unload herself. Shuddering, she made a commitment to be extra careful to avoid a return to the Montgomery Alabama Correctional Facility. As made this tacit promise to herself, she began to involuntarily doze into a coma until her closing eyes glittered from an inexplicable light emanating from what had to be the park in which she was once arrested for cocaine use and possession, dealing and possessing heroine, stealing perkasets, smuggling drugs in bodily crevices across the border, employing and housing illegal immigrants, traveling out of the country without a valid passport, jewelry store robberies, McDonald’s and Taco Bell robberies, cutting hair without a license, stealing laptops from a high school, first through eighth degree murders, streaking at an elementary co-ed soccer game, defiling public property, peeing on the white house gate, planning (without intention to complete) a presidential assassination, refusing to participate in gym class, pimping, selling his body for money, selling toothpaste with lead in it, bribing toy regulation committees to allow the sale of Chinese children’s toys, and further which haven’t been released by the court. Marveled by something out of the ordinary and well known for not being able to ignore something interesting for the sake of safety or good decision, Matt placed her bowl under the hidden deck floorboard, smacked her face to wake up, and recited her unseen path to Benitez Mexican Park.  Breaking forcefully through the park’s weak gates, Matt was now just a short distance from the source of the light. Regardless of the fact that Matt was notorious for shouting at the horror film actors and actresses to “NOT GO TOWARDS WEIRD SHIT!” her feet carried her thoughtlessly and unwillingly thitherward. The light was, quite literally, a UFO — not so by shape, but by the sheer fact she was unable to identity it. From within the cubic orb marched a large, threatening. . . man? The being which exited rather gloriously from what Matt’s ridiculous imagination was now regarding as a spaceship was green and stout. Identifiable as roly-poly, and he had three straws protruding from his cranium. Most odd of all, but last to occur to her, s/he had only two limbs — lacking were its arms. As the oafish “man,” as we’ll call it, stumbled from its former place of residence, he took a pause to look around and take in his sublime surroundings: a rusted playground housing a broken swing; cracked pavement, adorned with graffiti and two chain basketball nets; brown, burnt grass, flooded with dandelions and other nutrient-devouring weeds; and most of all, a statue of a girl dressed in a magenta shirt a blue dress, so real that she looked as though she was breathing. Overtaken by trepidation, Matt was careful to remain very still, despite the man’s slow, inebriated movements toward her. Finally, his approach was complete as he leaned over Matt and, as he was lacking arms, bent down to grope her with the unexpected tentacles protruding from his round head. Taking part in such an experience, Matt tried to convince herself that this wasn’t the most odd thing that has ever happened to her; in an effort to do so, she rapidly recalled her various drug binges, none of which were comparable to the intensity and discomfort of the situation. She racked her brain upon the nights spent sleeping among the bums and the stories they told, her long, lonely nights in jail, her days of mockery in nursery school — nothing could relate to her feeling now to release some of the stress or make her feel slightly “OK.” Weakening in her knees, Matt fell swiftly and undesirably to the cold hard ground. The alien man stood erect at the reality that his favorite statue was not that, but a real human! He gazed toward Matt with an expression of not only gratitude for her life, but sympathy for her horrified and confused gaze. As he opened his mouth to speak Matt hoped so hard for a chance to go back and overcome the urge to scope out the interesting light. At this, the man spoke to her “Ooga booga fooga fooga Brian Williams.” [I am Brian Williams.] Matt was miraculously able to understand what he was saying! Just kidding, that’s too cliché. She had no clue what he was saying but was slightly comforted by his tone of voice and the fact that he had such a typical Anglo-Saxon name. She sat up and said to him “Gubba gubba chubba. I’m Matt!” Brian gave the closest thing he could to a smile but ended up looking more like Stephen Baldwin grimacing. Matt stood, returning the gesture with a wide grin and a renewed feeling of safety, replacing her fear and sense that she would soon be eaten. Unable to communicate with him, Matt simply grabbed his obese midsection and dragged him around to show him around town. One would expect that wandering with a large green alien named Brian through the middle of town at two or so in the morning would be a rather risky and ridiculous move, however Matt knew her way around. She spent years traveling the streets of Montgomery, Alabama unseen by all. The two had a most joyous time together, laughing, crying, taking mud baths, until the time was nearing 5:30 am and the sun would soon arise, leaving a convict and an alien in plain sight to be tortured through water boarding, just simply for the hell of it probably. Matt took Brian back to her house that evening and allowed him to reside in her father’s lavish bomb shelter in the backyard. (Matt’s father, Charlie, enlisted in the army in 1955. He was in Vietnam and while there lost his mind. Figuratively, come on, he still has a physical brain. He cam home from Vietnam after the pullout only to live in America, plagued by fears of the Cold War and nuclear bombs. I’m not going to go into how he acquired a child, however it’s a rather interesting tale. On topic however, he began constructing his bomb shelter in 1976 and lived in it from 1977 to 1997. Twenty years he ignored his home and lived day and night in a bomb shelter. After moving out he continued to maintain it because he was convinced the Cold War was still in escalation.) Well now that Matt’s dad was sleeping in his lead room, the shelter was free for Brian to use; the only problem was the small entry hole. Brian jumped in but got stuck when his hips couldn’t fit through. Matt stood on his head jumping incessantly to try to force him in through the midsized hole. Eventually his stomach stretched up, slimming him out and plopping him painfully onto the ground (into which he left quite a large dent.) Matt followed actually utilizing the ladder to climb eloquently down. She showed him around the various rooms — where the food was, the bed, the TV etc. As Brian began to grill three pounds of hamburgers on the commercial grill, Matt slipped back onto the surface and returned to the chair on her deck. She closed her eyes, and. . . Awaking to the warm sunlight beating her eyes, Matt looked up to find Brian shadowing over her. She began to smile until she saw her dad held violently to his chest as he gnawed on his patellas. “Wasn’t all those hamburgers enough for you?!” “Gum chow figgy choo bum tik tok booga gogga cow tow pie foo quack tong ricky too ta beegy bah Feeney foo,” Brian said calmly. Matt stood powerfully to intimidate Brian into releasing her father and kindly returning from wherever he came from. Instead, Brian bent as though he was going to check her out with his feelers again, but actually sucked her brain straight out and ate it slowly as she collapsed. As you may have guessed, no, they didn’t live happily ever after. Honestly, I don’t think anyone was happy: Brian spent forty-seven years eating all the people in the world. He then suffered from severe obesity, however no one was left to make him diet pills! He died slow, painfully, and worst of all, lonely.