Janitor

Thu, 07 Dec 2017

By Dylan Burgdorf

The day started off so well… My back didn’t hurt when I woke up, I didn’t burn my mouth on my morning coffee, and after three years of asking, Clara finally agreed to go out with me this Saturday. So, of course, when the alien’s transmission blared through Mission Control and all of the scientists started screaming like 2 year olds who lost their blankies, all I could think was, “The world couldn’t have waited ‘till Monday to go all Independence Day on my ass?” My name is Hugh O’Connell and, you know what, my life has always been kinda shitty. You know that special brand of shitty that leaves you feeling like crap, but if you try to talk to anyone about it they point at a third world country, call you a whiny bitch, and tell you to shut the hell up? Yeah, that’s me. I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut, but the back injury from high school football, and the fact that I’ve never gotten better than a C- in my life, made sure that that wasn’t going to happen. The closest I could get is a janitorial position at NASA. I’ll never go to space, but sometimes I get to watch them launch something when I’m emptying the garbage, or cleaning up after Paul’s sloppy joe for the third time that week. Now, considering the fact that I’m fairly certain the piles of garbage piled around my apartment are becoming sentient, I’d never criticise someone’s cleanliness in their own home, but come on man. If a thirty something year old ROCKET SCIENTIST needs a bib and a freaking splash guard to eat his lunch, something ain’t right. My supervisor, Clara MacKenna, is the classic bonnie Irish lass. Skin pale as the moon, fiery red hair hanging long and curly, a laugh that makes you think the skylarks are singing, and the ability to drink you under the table before she even starts to slur. I was in love the first time I met her. I’ve tried everything I could think of to get her to give me a chance,( gifts, poems, songs, begging on my hands and knees, the usual),but none of it got me anywhere. Her parents are the only reason that I’m even getting a shot. Apparently, her parents both immigrated to America from Ireland, and they’ve been on her case since she was 16 about finding a, “Wholesome Irish lad to make us some granbabbies with.”. I’m sixth generation American, but she figures that if I go with her to her family reunion, my last name should get her at least a few months of peace. It didn’t bother me that she was just using me as a parental shield. If I could make it to Saturday, I just knew that I could convince her that I’m perfect for her ( or at least willing to try to be). From that expression on your face, I’m guessing you don’t care about my attempts to woo my potential first girlfriend, (yes I know how lame that makes me). You’re probably thinking, “God this is SO boring! When’s he going to get to the aliens and laser fights and stuff?”. Well, if you and your face would stop so rudely interrupting me, maybe I could get to that! ...Sorry about that. I get really nervous when I talk to new people… I was in Mission Control to scrape gum off of the undersides of people’s desks, ( What is this, middle school? ), when someone shouted in surprise. Apparently one of the orbital satellites had discovered that an asteroid had suddenly changed its trajectory and would be coming close to Earth. The reaction from the rest of us was basically, “Cool… Is that it?”. He turned back to his terminal while muttering something about us being kill joys until the sudden movement of the guy next to him caused him to fall off of his chair. Another satellite was reporting on the asteroid, which had increased its speed significantly and thus changed trajectory yet again. We kept getting alerts from different satellites for the next five minutes. By the end of it we were absolutely certain it was going to hit the earth, but the most it would do was make the surfing in Miami a bit more “Totally tubular bruh!”. That’s when the weird shit started. Phil loves to tell people that he knew all along what was about to happen, and that he was just waiting for the rest of us to figure it out. If he starts to tell you that, feel free to kick him in the shin, because he’s absolutely full of shit. Roughly forty seconds after we all breathed a sigh of relief, I noticed a noise coming from the radio on my supply cart. I reached out to smack the radio in hopes of fixing it, and promptly fell flat on my ass when the Mission Control screen decided that it wanted to play too, and started to blast the noise loud enough to shake the floor. The noise was close to what I think Peewee Herman would sound like if his trachea was a trash compactor filled with gravel, broken glass, and rotting meat. None of us would have realized that it was supposed to be some kind of language if the screen didn’t start showing a warped and bulbous monstrosity with a flapping orifice, ( Good Lord please let that be a mouth! ), wriggling and gesticulating in rhythm with the noise. Unsurprisingly, we were all more than a little freaked out. Any hope we had that this was all the work of some fourteen year old with too much time and not enough supervision was savagely torn from us when the monstrosity held up an — appendage — in order to draw our attention to a new screen. The screen was showing the Alamos Mission in San Antonio, until it was engulfed by a sickly green flame. About 4 seconds later the ground shook hard enough to dislodge bits of the ceiling. It was around that time that six people hit the floor, ten people started praying, and pretty much everyone else started looking around for clean pants. I didn’t do any of that. I was too busy thinking, “I’m not making it to Saturday, am I?”. Fear is freakin’ weird, man. It’s supposed to be some kind of primal instinct to keep you from danger, but it doesn’t always work right. Sometimes fear actively puts you in danger. Sometimes it makes you freeze up when you need to run or dodge. Sometimes it reduces your lifespan by twenty years because you’re afraid of something ridiculous that you can’t escape, (like your right knee cap, or spoons, or something), and your heart rate is constantly through the roof. And sometimes, it causes you to spend precious planning time thinking about how weird fear is because you realize that you’re more afraid of the fact that you’ll never escape your own inner loneliness than you are of the GOD DAMN SPACE ALIENS! ....And that’s just the slightest bit weird, don’t you think? Twenty-ish minutes later, I was pretty damn pissed. It wasn’t because of the aliens. It wasn’t even because I wouldn’t get my chance with Clara. It was because I was in a room with some of the smartest people on the planet, but all they could do was cry — and whine — and wipe their noses on the nearest available curtains — I HAVE TO CLEAN THOSE, DAMMIT! I decided it was time to get them to focus,( or at least shut the hell up). I started going around and handing out well deserved smackings until people were focused enough to hear me to tell them to try to figure out how to protect the world,fight back, or at least ask the aliens why the hell they were attacking us. Want to guess how much they accomplished? Screw TV, and screw movies. In practically every show or movie that has aliens, either everyone speaks English, or there’s some convenient little doodad that can magically translate every language in the universe.

And if the aliens attack, the world or the country will usually have some sort of defense grid, a team of specialists, and/or some sort of weapon system that can blow at least a ship or two out of the sky. There isn’t a single part of that that isn’t utter bullshit. We had no defenses. The government had no specialists or secret weapons. Hell, we couldn’t even be sure if we could contact the aliens, let alone get them to understand us — I wonder if I could sue the SYFY channel for false advertising?.... My inner sci-fi buff having been extremely disappointed by NASA’s inability to do anything in the face of an alien attack, I decided I might as well use the bathroom and hope that the aliens wouldn’t kill us until I was done,( I don’t care if no one would be alive to know about it, I DO NOT WANT TO BE THE GUY THAT DIED ON THE CAN! ). I was surprised by the amount of sound proofing that mission control must have, because as soon as the doors closed I couldn’t hear anything. Well I did hear one noise, but it was coming from down the hall. After twenty steps I realized that it was Clara. Ten more steps and I realized that she was screaming. Six more steps and the idea that she might be in trouble finally picked itself up and beat me over the head. Wishing that I had brought my mop so I’d have a weapon, I started sprinting to the custodial office. I’m fairly in shape, but I have never been much of a runner. That usually doesn’t affect me much, but today it meant that I wasn’t able to stop in time to open the door. Instead I tripped and tumbled through the door, landing sprawled out, breathless, and with fuzzy vision,( So much for the heroic entrance and snappy oneliner. ). As soon as I was on my feet and could see straight, I rushed over to the doorway of Clara’s office. She was inside and beating one of the aliens with her chair. I’m under no illusions, she could easily beat the crap out of three of me in a fight, with or without weapons…. The alien couldn’t have cared less. She was managing to keep its tentacles off of her, but it was clear that it wasn’t doing any damage to that thing’s pus covered, spongy hide. I knew I had to do something, so I pulled out my swiss army knife and wished that the blade was a bit sharper — and longer — and projectile — ( No time to think about this now! ). Throwing caution,( and sanity), to the wind, I jumped on the alien’s back and shoved the knife into the smallest fat-fold on its neck. Having seen that it stopped,(though without even knowing that I was there), Clara threw the chair at its head, vaulted over her desk, and was out the door in less than 3 seconds. I’d have been right behind her if the chair hadn’t missed the alien and hit me square in the face. Flat on my back and half concussed, there wasn’t much I could do as the alien slowly turned and started to roll over my body. I didn’t know if I’d be crushed, smothered, or digested, but my rapidly waning consciousness had me certain that, at the very least, I wouldn’t feel it. It could be worse. At least Clara wasn’t around to see me get run over by Jabba’s diseased, inbred cousin. I woke up to two little tykes jumping up and down on the strangely comfortable bed that I appeared to be sleeping in. They kept saying “Daddy! Get up Daddy! Breakfast time Daddy!”. As the only other person in the room, I was rather confused as to who they were talking to. That’s when Clara walked in. She was wearing a dark pink sweater, comfortable looking jeans, and an apron, and she was carrying a tray filled with eggs, bacon, and a cup of coffee. She told the kids to let their father be, because he drank too much the night before and wasn’t feeling well. They actually nodded and left the room. At this point I was worried that Clara had a secret family and that her husband would not react kindly to my being there. That was when she kissed my cheek, handed me the tray, and said,”Happy father’s day, dear.”...... That’s it! No more! I’m calling bullshit right now! Either I’m dead or I’m dreaming, this is way too good to have happened to me! My eyes shot open and I did my best to make out my surroundings. I didn’t scoff at the cliche of aliens putting a human in a tube filled with glowing green goo.I wasn’t scared by the surgical looking instruments that appeared to be made out of bone and parts of bugs. Nor was I disgusted by the scabbed , pulsating walls or the mangled bodies of creatures I couldn’t even recognize that were on dissection tables strewn about the room. I was too busy

being strangled by the depression that had appeared — Why did I have to be right?...... So…. quick checklist of my situation. Can I breath? Check. Can I move? Ceck. Can I get out? Nope….. Has the alien goo given me super powers?.... Doesn’t seem likely… Well, it doesn’t really seem like there’s much I can do. Might as well just wait for something to happen….. And wait….. And wait…..Still waiting….. You might want to go get a sandwich or something. It’s going to be a while. After what must have been at least a day and a half,( 40 minutes at most), a hole opened up in the wall,( I’m not sure if it’s even possible to describe the squelching noise it made, but I have no desire to attempt it). A group of four aliens lumbered into the room. They were carrying something, but the thing’s shape kept changing, and I’m fairly certain that it kept going between 2d and 3d. I decided that it would probably be a good idea to not look directly at it because it started to make my nose bleed, ( Don’t look at things that make you bleed kids. It’s bad for your health.). It got a bit difficult to look away from it though, because they brought it up to the tube I was in and started pushing it THROUGH. I’d like to say that I blacked out again, but you can only be that lucky once. Have you ever seen one of those Animal Planet shows where a bug paralyzes something and lays eggs in it so that the babies will have something living to eat when they hatch? Well, when the aliens put that thing inside me, I felt an awful lot like the post-hatch buffet…..but the bug were on fire. My organs shriveled, my blood vessels all burst, and every one of my bones shattered. I don’t know if they were trying to run some sort of diagnostic on me, or if they just wanted to see me in pain, but I hope that my death occurred before they got whatever it was they wanted. I hope it ruined their day even half as much as they ruined mine. You’ve got a look on your face again. What’s it about this time?... You listened to me this whole time and only call BS when I tell you I died… Seriously? How does me being here to tell you the story affect whether or not I could have died at the end? Wait. You don’t get it yet, do you?

Buddy, I’m about as alive as you are, and you’ve been rotting for a while. Well, not really rotting…. It’s kind of hard to rot when everything on the planet got burnt to cinder. No one seems to know why the aliens did that. My personal theory is that they paved the planet for an interspace highway. Well…. Good luck with the soul shattering realization of your death. I’m gonna go get some nachos.

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