Escape From Rodeo Burger—Chapter 2

Escape is a fine word. It's a glorious, inspiring word. But it's also an elusive word. I couldn't think of how we could possibly escape, but I knew we had to, especially since I promised Esther. But since I'd likely be dead when we landed, a promise wouldn't matter much—I would be forgiven of my vow. Death tends to absolve one of promises and debt. I would be a rodeo burger before Esther would be a rodeo burger. Maybe there is a rodeo burger heaven and our souls would leave our body before they became Kalgonian excrement and mingle there. 

I held her when the gravity turned off and everyone floated around like jellyfish. The man who was electrocuted was dead, but he floated like everyone else, so everyone sort of pushed him aside like a beach ball. I held on to Esther and she clung to me. Everytime I opened my eyes her flying saucer earring taunted me. 

They brought us refreshments—donuts, of all things. We didn't see who delivered them because a slot opened on the wall and donuts simply began to appear as though on an invisible conveyor belt. It was the first time I had ever seen a donut fly. At first, no one touched them. But when the ship was full of that donut aroma (to which I was immune), they began to disappear because who knows when we would eat again and so many people are nervous eaters. They didn't know it was merely a matter of wanting to fatten us up for what we would become. Who would have known? I found no benefit in telling them and causing useless panic. What did it matter? After all, it was too late. 

It is a strange thing—I worked at a donut shop called Donut World in Kilgore, Texas and could say with certainty that these donuts came from there because they were exactly alike. I could even tell that Bob the donut baker baked them because I knew Bob's donuts. Greg was the only other donut baker and these were not Greg's. I saw Bob's donuts enough to say that they were floating by me like those stars in my eyes when I used to lie in bed and close my eyelids tight as a kid—or like the time I nearly choked to death on a butterscotch hard candy. But they were fresh and there were dozens of them for the taking. 

It occurred to me then that certain people on Pseudo were untouchable, and Bob the donut baker, was one of those people. The goth girl who worked with me called him "Bob the Slob," but I never did because I am not a dick. She said he was an asshole, but I don't know that he was. Kalgon needed donuts so Bob baked donuts, way too many donuts, to feed the chattle—the term for Pseudonese livestock—so they would get fat and be meatier.

Bob must have known where all his extra donuts were going. Maybe he even delivered them to a field where the Kalgonians uploaded them. He never said two words to me. He was heavyset and always wore a beat-up Cleveland Indians ballcap and eyeglasses that got dark in the sun. He smoked cigarettes constantly, even as he baked the donuts. What's more, he always wore white—white shirt, pants, shoes, and apron—though he always seemed covered in flour and icing. Maybe underneath it all, Bob was a little green man and the fat human-like skin and the baker's outfit was just a disguise. Maybe he unzipped it like a wetsuit. 

People in various states of panic began to grab Bob's donuts and eat them and it quickly became a feeding frenzy. I grabbed a few for Esther and broke them apart and fed her. At first, she didn't want to eat, but I coaxed her into it with a blueberry cake donut that was "out of this world."

It is by coincedence that Donut World had a flying saucer above the sign on a giant black metal pole. It lit up and everything. It did all it could do to attract people from the highway. To lure them. It was made from an old 1950's merry-go-round and hooked up to a motor so it turned and squealed because they hardly ever greased it. No one wanted to scoot up that pole to do the job. Inside the saucer there were metal cutouts of two green aliens—the stereotypical little green men—who piloted the ship. And beneath the name, the slogan read—Home of the otherworldly donut!

Inside the small adobe shop there was a giant papier-mâché green alien with enormous black pea-pod eyes. The walls were plastered with framed pictures from movies of aliens and newspaper articles of UFO sightings and abductions, many that were featured in the National Enquirer. They named the giant alien "Krash" and he was throwing up a peace sign as though to say—I come in peace—which was hilarious in what I knew. There was a contest to name him and everything. The winning entry got a free donut-a-day for life. 

So everyday for two years I went to work on my moped and heard the squeal of that flying saucer and the cowbell clang on the door behind me. I passed Krash and scooted behind the counter and waited for people to come in for a donut or a coffee. Kilgore is in the middle of what feels like nowhere—about 120 miles from Dallas—and the shop sits just out of town along Highway 135, so I'd sit at the picnic tables outside and just wait for people looking up at a perfectly blue sky wondering if Kalgon was one of those faint specs. 

Azure—that's the way I'd describe those skies. Azure is a beautiful word. I spent hours sometimes looking at those skies. But it was when I worked the nightshift that I could really appreciate the view with the endless glitter of stars and planets and shooting stars. It was an amazing sight.    

I waited there for someone to come take me away. Someone who was interesting with something to offer. I didn't require much. Maybe someone who had a job in another state for me to work. Or a country-western singer in a Cadillac in need of a driver. Or maybe a bank robber that needed a sidekick on conversation. I fancy myself a decent conversationalist.

My parents moved to Kilgore, Texas from Chicago when I was born because they said they wanted to raise me someplace safe. Chicago was not safe. It was and is a cultural cesspool. 

Maybe I'd be picked up by one of those roaming female biker gangs I read about in those cheap slutty magazines. They'd stick me in a sidecar and call me sugar. But I'd sit out there and fantasize in the dust and the heat until a car pulled up and I had to go back inside to sell someone a donut or two. They made us wear a hat that looked like the conical green head of an alien. If I had a dollar for everyone that came in and flashed the Spock sign and said, "I come in peace," I could retire.

The person who named Krash was a 9 year old-boy named Finn. He told the newspaper he wanted to be president some day. Little does he know. 

Esther had fallen asleep and I held her in my arms. I gave myself up as a pillow. We were still floating like jellyfish. We were getting close to landing on Kalgon I could tell by the change in vibration of the ship. It felt as though we were slowing down and hovering, but it was difficult to tell because I had never been on a spaceship before. It certainly didn't wobble and squeal like the flying saucer on top of the Donut World sign. 

I was right. The blue light in the ship went out and it got incredibly cold. The gravity was restored and we all fell to the ground and struggled to stand up again. I never let Esther go. I regretted I didn't talk to her more on the way to Kalgon—that I spent the majority of my time holding her, deep in thought. But in my defense, it wasn't a long trip. It was a short trip. Not long enough—like my breaks at Donut World weren't long enough. No one ever came when I was doing or thinking nothing, but they sure came when my head was full of wonderful things.  

I wondered how Pseudo's Kilgore differed from Earth's Kilgore. And if, by chance, there was a Donut World in Kilgore on Earth with someone like me at the counter—an Earth me. I once wanted to travel to Earth if it could ever be arranged. See it all for myself. See how similar and how different it was from what I knew on Pseudo. I wondered if there were the same places—like New York City, Mount Rushmore, and the Golden Gate Bridge. Do they have sports? Would the New York Yankees of Pseudo beat the New York Yankees of Earth. I wondered, but I'd never know. 

My father, for what it's worth, always wore a Yankees ballcap when he left the house. He was an avid sports fan and he could be placated with a game of some sort on TV—even women's basketball. He never showed any sort of expression while watching a game. He watched sports like a sociopath. 

Esther woke up briefly, but fell back asleep—or she passed out because of a lack of oxygen in the air. It gave me a few minutes more to think. They were likely my last few moments if everything I've been told was true as it had been thus far. The ship began to vibrate again and it turned with a groan as though to land. The gas would come and we all would be knocked out. The men would be slaughtered and the women of child-bearing age would be carried to the impregnation pens.

I thought of random things. Maybe it was due to a lack of oxygen. Would there be clouds and a sun as there was on Pseudo? What would the aliens look like? That I was never told. Would I feel the pain of being slaughtered, or would it come quickly? 

The song "Come Softly" played in my head as perfectly as though there were a jukebox inside and someone had dropped a quarter. I remember hearing it at home when I was a baby on a scratchy record on the grammophone. I remember feeling my mother holding me. The warmth of her skin against mine. The sunshine through the dining room window. The breeze that breathed in. A white-lace curtain that danced. She was humming along with the song, into my ear. The vibrations made me happy. 

"Sing," she said. "Sing." 

There were things I resigned myself to then and there. I would die a virgin. I would never kiss a girl. I would never see the sunset over the Grand Canyon or either ocean—the Atlantic or the Pacific. I'd never sail on a sailboat. Never see a whale breech the water. Never tell my parents I love them or hear them say it to me. Never get married or have a child. So many nevers. 

This was it for me. It was sayanora. But at least, I met Esther, and maybe I was something to her. I was something when all my life I had been nothing. I wished I could have met her sooner or got her away from Monday's Farm before the aliens came. Or that I would have met her at Donut World or went to school with her. I wish I knew more about her, other than that she had a fascination for aliens. 

There will be no report of us on the nightly news because the news is controlled by the same alien overlords that created the planet. Our disappearance will likely be explained to a flash flood or a terrorist attack. There never is any news of anything about aliens, other than those vague UFO sighting stories now and then to cultivate curiosity. 

I held on to her. A few people screamed. A few wept. Half were asleep. Then there was the gas as I had been told there would be, and the last thing I remember is falling backwards, still holding on to Esther like a child holding on to a stuffed bear. Like a dream I briefly could touch but refused to let go.

I suppose in the time I had I should have asked for absolution of my sins from the Lord Jesus Christ—or from God—I am not sure of the difference. My parents weren't religious people so I never went to church. But I always felt there was more to the story of life than nothing at all. That God exists and God is good. That Satan exists and Satan is evil. That God is love and Satan is hate. That sort of thing. 

I had been raised as a vegetarian, so I never had to make that moral choice for myself, but it was basic elementary humanity and I could not understand how more people were not of the same mind. We could, after all, hardly criticize Rodeo Burger and Kalgon for raising us for slaughter on a feeder planet when we do the very same thing to cows and pigs by virtue of providence or our superior intellect. 

I was in and out of consciousness. I couldn't remember what Jesus Christ looked like—Jesus Christ of Earth. Not Pseudo. Was there even a Pseudonese Christ? Pseudonese—a term I coined myself for us Pseudo-dwelling apes. That is all that we are—sophisticated amoral apes. 

For some reason, I imagined Jesus in a bathrobe. With a beard and long hair. He was calling to me. "Son, get up!"

I asked him for forgiveness. I only had one hesitation about Christianity. One minor hiccup. Why would He let this all be—so much murder, pain, and grief. So much misery, tragedy, and ruin, and all these deplorable people and aliens acting like monsters eating each other.

"Get up, son!" he urged. "Get up and run!" 

Then there were bugs. My second hiccup. We didn't have bugs on Pseudo, but I was told Earth is infested with bugs which would be a terrible nuisance. There are flies, mosquitoes, bees that don't pollinate anything, spiders that eat each other, and animals that eat other animals. In fact, many species whole reason to exist is simply to serve as a food source for something larger. No one or nothing seems to just want to live in peace and let others do the same. They just want to eat each other and live in drama and chaos. 

Humans are even worse. They want to live a life of chaos, drama, and political upheaval caused by ineptitude and malversation. Earth is plagued by incessant war. War—what a strange word. My mind was slipping away and Jesus disappeared. There is no war on Pseudo. Not really, anyway. There is pretend war, but it's all just harvesting. 

Those azure skies returned and took over my mind. My brain turned to clouds. I felt them pull Esther from me, but I clung to her and soon they were pulling me by my ankles. I couldn't see anything. I was in a listless state of euphoric emptiness and I could only see those blue skies. Then the song "Blue Skies" by Irving Berlin played in my mind as though it had become a jukebox again. And my mother's words came back to me—sing. 

And so I sung. 

Jesus is alright with me. My mind was a squealing carousel in flames. It was spinning wildly like the flying saucer on the Donut World pole in a Texas twister. I couldn't leave Esther. But they pulled me off her and dragged me to where they would slaughter me. Even as disoriented as I was, I knew this was it. That is what was going to happen. 

But then I wiggled free and got up and ran to her. I couldn't see anything besides her. She was lying down in a tunnel, being dragged by someone I couldn't see but for his large human-like silhouette. He was a milky-white blur. But I slid and  knocked him down and took her in my arms. I couldn't hear anything other than the cyclonic whoosh of air and gas. She opened her eyes and smiled. 

"Esther! Tell me one thing about you that I don't know! Please!"

Without hesitation, she replied, "I love cats, and I am a concert violinist."  

And then she kissed me. And we kissed like no one has ever kissed before. Not Romeo or Juliet or Gatsby and Daisy. Like no one has ever dreamed. A first kiss and a last kiss. The alpha and the omega. Tongues. Suction. Teeth. The entire universe seemed to stand still in that moment. But it ended too soon, when that brutish silhouette reappeared in a shroud of gray gas and clobbered me senseless. I looked up and he looked like Krash from Donut World. He looked like Bob without his fat skin, Indians hat, and baker's whites. And he was smoking a cigarette.