“Can you change my life?”
There was a story Parker had been told once. Man goes to heaven, and asks God why he existed. To pass the salt, God said. Because on one very special day, that salt needed to be passed to the right man at the right time. God laughs. The devil laughs. Man laughs, and never asks a question again.
Mom had looked at Parker after this. What did we learn?
She’d left after that. Walked away. To this day, he patted himself on the back for not crying over it.
But Parker didn’t remember the answer. Watching a two pound rod of steel telekinetically inch through the air toward his midbrow with hardly an ounce of strength left to stop it, he wished he had. A joke might’ve made his death less painful.
It might’ve saved his life, even.
Another of God’s little japes.
----------------------------------------
Monday, 9:31 a.m.
“—made you breakfast.”
Parker’s eyes snapped open, his heart racing.
A hazy beige ceiling appeared in his blurry vision, and he let out a long, slow breath as little lines of mold and mildew snapped into focus. He blinked his eyes a few times, and after a long moment, his pulse finally slowed enough that it wasn’t thumping in his ears. The familiar warmth of his covers finally soaked into his chilly body. It stank faintly, and even that was comforting, pulling him further from the dream.
He fitfully tucked himself deeper into the blanket, ignoring a distant giggle he pretended he couldn’t hear, and covered his face with the thinnest, most ragged corner. Pushing his eyes up to the fabric, he stretched it thin and let the shadows of his little home flicker through.
A long black shadow wavered and danced in the center of his room, surrounded by a halo of filmy light.
He peeked his head out from under the sheets, and saw...Tiffany, Parker recalled—already dressed and wearing his apron. She seemed to have been awake for a while, and to her credit the sun was long up, piercing into his trailer through windows filthy with grime and dust. She bounced between scattered sunbeams, more cheerful than she’d been all of last night as she hummed to herself over a rasher of bacon. A few plates particularly thick with grime had been placed on the floor by the bin, and his washing machine gently rattled in its housing below the sink.
His eyes trailed down to where water and stains peppered the apron. Warm shame swirled in his mind, and he slowly sat up, shivering as he did so. “Breakfast...” he mused quietly, tasting the word. Hot. Greasy. An ache he’d felt distantly between his eyes since awakening rapped gently on the inside of his skull, and suddenly food seemed like an extremely welcoming prospect.
She stretched a little and tossed aside his worn oven mitts, party clothes rumpled on her slim form and smelling faintly of booze under one of his better shirts. He wouldn’t be getting it back, and honestly, she could have it. Breakfast was a decent trade. She self-consciously smoothed it out, and smiled. “Sorry, my head was buzzing and breakfast is a good start. Borrowed some of your bacon...” She gestured at the pan awkwardly. “This bit’s for you. Hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.”
That was kind of a lie, since those were his groceries, but most people left by now, and that she’d stayed behind for his sake...it was nice. He let the pangs of irritation in the back of his mind go. His mood rose a little, and he swept his sheets aside, letting the breeze pool against his bare chest.
She seemed far less impressed with his anemic abs in the stark light of day. He coughed loudly to hide his mounting embarrassment and tossed the sheets off entirely, working his boxers up as he slowly slid to the edge of the bed and padded towards the kitchen.
There were no plates, so he dragged a stool closer to the stove and poked at the bacon with a fork.
It was delicious.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Parker turned to look at her, and she smiled wryly, miming wiping her face. Parker’s hand shot up. His eyes were damp.
He furiously scrubbed at his face, feeling his ears redden. Fuck. He couldn’t look her in the eyes, and instead just shoved another piece of bacon into his mouth. Still delicious.
Conversation was thin, after that. She seemed bored and uncomfortable, so he politely waved goodbye after cleaning the pan and she took the hint gratefully. A waggle of painted fingers and she was out the door, screen door slamming behind her.
Damn she moved fast.
He tried not to think about what that meant.
Parker sighed heavily, crashing back on the trashy springs of his bed the second she was out.
“Made me breakfast, huh...?” His head rolled to the side where the pan was still cooling on the stove, the lingering scent warming his dusty little home.
——————————————————————————————————————————
Laughter. Why did he hear so much of it when he was on a job hunt?
“Sorry kid, I have enough help.”
An empty store on a dead end street. Another failure. His. Parker’s. Damn.
——————————————————————————————————————————
“Hey, weren’t you here last week? I’ve got something to ask you...”
Jackie may have talked him into shoplifting on a lark. Time to leave and never come back.
----------------------------------------
Tuesday, 11:30 a.m.
Fuck, that was awkward. He hated talking to strangers, so why the fuck did he keep calling them over to his place? Being the one walking out for once might be nice. He sighed and rolled out of bed forcefully, grazing his temple against his alarm clock and quickly leaning upwards onto his feet. He felt the world spin for a second, the shadow of a hangover seizing him for the barest moment—then he shook it off like a dirty cloth and the world reasserted itself. He stood there, taking in the smells and the sunlight and the stains on his thin walls, waiting for the sleepiness to dissipate.
It was hot. So humid, steam was fogging the edges of his windows. His bed was sticky with it. It clouded his thoughts, and made his head throb.
His trailer looked like shit. Stale booze cans mingled with warm ones still unopened, and lay on top of his rumpled clothes, ones he had been planning to reuse. Not anymore though, since the pasta sauce from dinner had become a larger part of his decor than intended.
He kicked some of his shit aside halfheartedly, not an ounce of energy in his limbs to bend down and toss it into a bin. Breakfast awaited him, an oddly clean kitchenette balancing a four-stack and an orange mug, Bugs Bunny’s obnoxious face plastered all over it.
That’s right, he’d found Tiffany again. It hadn’t been a stranger at all.
This time she hadn’t stayed. It hurt, just a little.
Parker rubbed the back of his head. He’d need to apologize if he saw her around again. Kicking a chair around by the leg, he grabbed the pancakes and reclined. Time to look for a job, maybe. It was about that time of the week.
Ah shit, where was his comb...?
——————————————————————————————————————————
“You didn’t go to college? Jeez kid.”
He didn’t need calculus to ring a till, please man come on.
——————————————————————————————————————————
“Bad luck, try again later?”
The patronization was worse than the condescension. This was just that part of the week.
----------------------------------------
Wednesday, 3:30 pm
“Fuck.”
The door swung quickly shut behind him, nipping at his heels, and he had to quickly jump forwards into the boiling dusk heat to prevent the bite.
“Fuck.”
This was the part of the week where he questioned himself and his decisions. What he was doing. Why he was here.
Parker sighed, pulling a pack out of his pocket. He rustled a cigarette loose of the sticky paper, nearly the last one.
I’ve earned it, his mind whispered. Dealing with all this, let me cool off before I try again.
He sighed, the first drag crawling like spiders down his throat. The omnipresent throbbing at his temples eased. He could think again.
Fuck.
He kicked over a can, smoke trailing behind him into the sunsetting sky. It was nearly as orange as the butt of his cigarette now, and for a moment he crossed his eyes until the colors blurred and pretended he was fading away. Melting into the wide open sky.
A pawn store had a TV on display, and Bob Barker was announcing a vacation to care for his child. Parker eyed the plump man and squinted a bit. He wasn’t that old, right? Not as old as the TV man, certainly. Probably. But Bob had awfully good skin, and Parker by comparison had some fairly pronounced crow's feet. It was an uncomfortable thought. Hollywood magic couldn’t make someone look young on a live broadcast right? Parker was still young right? He had time to grow up.
Parker found himself slightly short of breath, panting and perspiring a bit, a sharp pain in his gut twisting. He had time to club. He could bum a few drinks.
He had time.
——————————————————————————————————————————
It was hot. So hot. The press of bodies was making him sweat, something deep in his core heating up no matter how many layers he took off, like it was bubbling up from somewhere deeper inside. His bomber jacket was gone, slung over a chair somewhere, and the girl in front of him was looking at him with eyes so dark he was falling into them.
Maybe she’d be up for a conversation. Maybe she could talk to him instead, push his thoughts away and hold him gently. Cradle his face and whisper that it would be alright.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Her brown hair caught the light like copper, and he fell closer, blinking away something—
It was so loud that Parker couldn’t think. Perfect. This was, after all, the part of the week where he lost himself. The part where he didn’t feel like shit, not even a little.
----------------------------------------
Thursday, 6:30 pm
“It was less than 10 days before la liberté.”
The woman spoke haltingly. She was attractive, willowy and pale like a birch whip, with gleaming eyes and slim lips. She was also wildly, carelessly hirsute, strands poking out of her dress all over. She spoke with an even cadence and a thin French accent that grew stronger arbitrarily. “Ma grand-pére, he loved Clemenceu and Jaurès. He would read them, out loud to me, and often stop and repeat what he said with wonder in his eyes. ‘How clever, their words! How insightful they were!’ he would say—his eyes, they were exactly like a babies, a child’s eyes. They would—”
“—Ariana.” Came a strained voice from the back.
Ariana’s eyes narrowed at Marcy, the frumpy case-worker in charge of this session, who cleared her throat awkwardly. “Ariana...must you start with your grandfather? You know—”
But Ariana was not listening. Parker sat below, knees held together so he might not spill out of a plastic chair, watching upwards as her throat swelled like a bullfrogs and a great and terrible fury seized hold of her and made her eyes flash. Red spread like an inkstain across her high cheekbones, and her voice took on a shrill, embittered quality, as she began to shriek, “Mon grand-pére, he took to the bottle for this war! He took to it and passed it on to my father and my uncle and then to my brother and my sister and my little cousins mon dieu we did not fight for three generations for la Republique to spit on us like—”
“Ariana, we are not in France, this is—”
“Communists! Fascists! Dogs of the patriarchy!”
Parker sank into his seat as he watched her righteous indignation overtake her, and something within him seemed to shiver. A heavy stubbornness he held in his chest, something utterly detached from reality or identity.
Like a switch, something flicked and all the sound turned to static in Parker's ears, and the lamps overhead grew sharp and blinding. His pulse pounded in his ears, and he felt keenly a drop of sweat slide down his brow, and the raw itch that it left behind.
Parker felt himself detach from his senses, fly up into the air over his head, and watched with passionless eyes as the French woman pulled a slipper off and began slamming it into the wooden podium like a gavel.
Security personnel began to stream into the room, and the French lady howled with rage and hurled her slipper into the crowd. She missed entirely, and the plastic wobbled and fell uselessly behind the group, some of whom had turned to follow its path.
“My mama could’ve aimed that slipper better,” Parker said absently. “What the fuck was that?”
Something shattered behind him. Parker refused to look.
“THIS AA MEETING WILL BE RESCHEDULED,” Marcy was screaming, “PLEASE DO NOT—”
“I need a drink,” someone behind Parker muttered. “I can’t be blamed for this. Who let the nutter into here?”
Parker twisted to face the girl to his left, desperate to be anywhere but here. “Hey,” he said. “You ever hear the one about God and the salt-passer?”
She briefly looked puzzled. “You mean, like, Sodom?”
Parker opened his mouth, and slowly shut it. “Yeah,” he said instead, “Sure, that one…”
----------------------------------------
Friday, 8:48 pm
The new girl was gone the next morning. He cast a slow eye around and - yes! His jacket was still there, hung half off a metal folding chair. He could see the corner of his wallet poking out of a pocket. Thank fuck.
No breakfast this morning. That was fine, any excuse to stay in bed a little longer. He’d made the mistake of wandering a little too close to older haunts, some of the olds had nearly recognized him. The chill he’d developed after a mere 20 minutes hiding in a dumpster still made his jaw ache.
He really didn’t want attention. No risks. He wasn’t young enough to feel invincible. He sighed, and felt the aches of the previous day beat a tattoo into his feet and between his eyes..
This was the part of the week where he stayed in bed and pretended he wasn’t drowning.
----------------------------------------
Saturday, 9:55 pm
There was a scientific principle proposed by a fellow named Joseph Campbell that stated something like “Freud was right,” or something to that effect. A contentious opinion to be sure, and one that had seemed absurdly funny a few hours ago while him and Jackie had been deep deep deep in the cups, so deep he’d gone fishing in his and reeled out a baggie of tabs.
The first few hadn’t been so bad, not as bad as—
—as—
—as—
Something wet trailed down Parker’s jaw. He felt it tickle the fine hairs on his cheek, making them itch fiercely. It ran down the side of his face, and he felt it pool on his earlobe. He smacked his lips, and realized it was drool.
When had he fallen asleep?
----------------------------------------
Sunday, 11:48 p.m.
It was near midnight and cloudless on the intersection of Mayberry and Wolfe. It was a starry night, breezy with warm spring air. Parker’s fingers rapped on the wheel of Jackie’s car while the boys in the backseat slumped on each other in various states of inebriation; Jackie himself looked nearly dead in the middle seat. Snores punctuated the silence, and the smell was indescribable.
It was as cozy as his life ever got, Parker felt. A steady throbbing seemed to form between his ears, somewhere left of where his thinking usually occurred. He rubbed at his eyes and breathed deeply.
Not now.
Outside, the wind gusted, and faint strains of music penetrated from a neighboring car. The road was slick with puddles of rainwater, and a few bikers passed the car, kicking up spray onto his mirrors. To his left was a skyline dotted with the faint lights of the city, and to his right were sprawling suburbs dotted with trees and fake turf.
Parker continued to take it all in as the streetlight turned green. He tapped the accelerator firmly, not liking how the car beside him drifted closer. Parker hated driving next to wobblers, and as his car rumbled underfoot and jerked forward, he looked forward to cutting the bastard off.
A sudden CLAP of thunder shattered the silence like a gunshot.
Parker’s hands tightened reflexively on the wheel in shock, and his car lurched to a brief stop before his brain reasserted itself. Someone in the back of the car slammed their head on the roof. The signal flickered red while his car rolled forward, and the whole row down slammed the breaks. Someone faintly yelled something in the distance, but it was quickly drowned out by a wave of honks and curses.
Those better not have been for me.
“A storm…?” Someone muttered amidst the cursing being echoed from the back seats. Beside him, in shotgun and barely sober, Jay poked his head out the window to look up, only to report what Parker already knew; not a cloud in sight.
The light flipped back to green and the car jerked forward. Parker quickly accelerated while everyone else seemed frozen in place, recklessly speeding past the wobbler and everyone else. He drove like a man hunted, haunted by a sourceless irritation. He took turns at speed and ran at least two lights before he had it in him to slow down.
Parker let out a slow breath, and allowed his hands to unclench from the wheel. His mild headache had grown into something with an attitude, and it throbbed at his temples. He grit his teeth, bad mood exacerbated by the wordless conversation in the backseat—wordless, because nobody could hardly breathe from the stink of stale vomit, and it was only getting worse.
Ignoring them, he took the last few turns violently, ‘accidentally’ jostling the backseat and sending them sliding into each other. When he finally stopped the boys poured out every door amidst a sea of curses and rude gestures, either stepping out and walking with an easy confidence to the taqueria down the road, or slumping to the ground and being carried there.
This street had seen many boys just like them, and even these same boys just the other day.
Parker stayed back in the car. He kept the windows rolled down, and left the car in idle so the radio could wash over him—in a few minutes he’d follow after his friends to eat and grab a beer, and the car would be left here, for maybe one or two to sleep in, or be retrieved another day. If they were lucky, it wouldn’t have been towed. It was Jackie’s car, but Jackie had long fallen asleep in the backseat and even now Parker watched him get hoisted between two others and dragged from the backseat and carried bodily into the small restaurant. Jackie wouldn’t even remember he had a car until the bill came in, Parker drove the old bitch around more often than he did.
But Parker didn’t want to join them yet—not to be impersonable, he just wanted some time first is all. Just a little time. He’d been fighting his thoughts for a while now, heady bastards they may be en masse, but sometimes you just had to. You couldn’t let them get you down when you were with friends.
He shook out a cigarette from a crumpled carton, and placed it in his mouth, unlit. He sucked on it until the taste grew stale and the pulp grew mushy.
The city lights seemed to grow brighter as he sat and watched, and traffic seemed to accelerate as it flooded by, car after car until all he saw were lights, headlights and taillights zooming by and forming a luminous trail to match the one in the sky.
Thunder.
Thunder again.
Someone was screaming, again.
Parker blinked, feeling something stir in his chest. He leaned forward, temples throbbing.
I’m so tired.
A funny taste was on his tongue. Like copper.
Like ozone.
High above, the night sky fractured.
——————————————————————————————————————————
“You’re sweating,” Jackie noted tersely.
Parker blinked, eyes darting to the right where Jackie sat shotgun, wildeyed but evidently feeling better. “What?”
“You’re…sweating,” Jackie repeated. “You look nervous.”
“I’m not,” Parker denied, sweat visibly beading on his upper lip. He could taste it.
“Is this why we left early? Bro, I left a whole taco on the table—”
“Yep,” Parker tried to cut off the conversation
“I knew it. They didn’t believe me, they thought you had a panic attack again and….”
He went on, muttering to himself. Parker bit his tongue before the grin slipped onto his lips. He forced the smile from his face, but his chest still writhed with it. His head was going in circles, and he felt time slipping away as his thoughts crashed like waves against a single fact.
There’s a fucking alien in the trunk.
Parker giggled, and licked at some of the blood on his upper lip. Jackie cut himself off, looking disturbed. He stopped when Parker floored the accelerator, going bone white instead, a thin scream leaking from his throat.
Parker didn’t notice.
A wild frenzy swirled in his head. His hands were clenching and unclenching on the wheel, and he’d stomped on the wrong pedal thrice already. Jackie looked as winded as Parker felt, with a white-knuckle grip the grab handle.
“What the fuck is up with you?” he hissed with no small panic as Parker swerved to avoid a merging car. “You’re driving like a fucking maniac.”
“You’re drunk Jackie. I’ve gone faster before.”
“I am drunk, and that’s why I’m telling you to slow down! I can feel my guts churning! What the fuck is going on, man?!”
A laugh bubbled up in Parker’s chest before he crushed it ruthlessly. He was calm.
He slowed the car down, drifting carelessly to the side as people screamed past blaring horns and cursing vile things at the back of his head. Parker hummed a little tune, to Jackie’s visible horror, and pulled over sharply.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Jackie’s ears seemed to twitch. “Okay. Okay?” He made a little cup with his hands, and mimed blowing into it several times. “Okaaaaaay? Okay.” He shook his head like a dog and slapped his cheeks a few times, before he refocused on Parker. “Okay. Shoot.”
“Okay.” Parker let out a breath slowly. “Jackie, do you believe in motherfucking aliens.”
“Motherfucking as adjective or infixation.”
“Infixation.”
“Motherfucking aliens, like—“
“No, not the immigrants. Do you, believe, in god-damn aliens Jackie.”
Jackie thought about it. “Not the ones on TV?”
“No sir.”
“Not the ones in politics?”
“Not them either. The bugger aliens, man. The little men. Grey goopers. Them. The actual factual fuckers. Probies.”
“Ooooooooh yeah.” Jackie mouthed probies and snickered. “Fuckin’ weird. What brought this on anyway?”
Parker nearly blew an artery. “Answer the fucking question!”
“Yes! Okay! Yes, I do!” Jackie blew out his cheeks and shook his head. “Fuck, calm down! Yeah, I believe in ‘em. Christ.”
“Okay.” Parker allowed himself to relax. “Okay. That’s good.”
“It would be weird not to anyway,” Jackie added after a minute. There was a casual urgency to his explanation, like he was trying to fill a silence that didn’t exist. “Tina got me readin’ that space shit before she split. Sagan and all that, ‘we are all stardust’. It would be weird if I didn’t, after that.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
Jackie leaned forward a bit, eyes scanning Parker’s face suspiciously. There was a long silence, and Parker spent it staring straight out the window in front of him. To his right, the seat creaked as Jackie shifted on it, and he swore he could feel the bastard’s eyes narrow.
Then he sat back. “Okay,” Jackie said. “Okay.”
Parker slammed the parking brake and gunned the accelerator underfoot. Jackie screamed in shock as the car roared, and for the first time in a week, Parker cracked an honest grin. He let go of the brake, and the car shuddered as it tore out into traffic, Jackie's thin wails trailing behind.
This time, his hands were steady.