A chartreuse jellybean, the size of a small egg, sat nestled firmly within a Jack Daniels shot glass. A veiny hand, dotted with liver spots resembling ground sausage on a meat-lovers pizza, quietly slipped its bony fingers around the small glass and lifted it into the early morning air. Quickly following were a pair of feminine blue eyes whose flicker of life had been snuffed out long ago, but were known to occasionally flare to a startling intensity whenever a garage sale bargain was close at hand. Not ten seconds passed and the old woman was already reaching into her oversized pink handbag. As soon as the old lady exchanged the jellybean and shot glass for fifty cents (she bargained down from a dollar), a gold-green light swept the length of the jellybean from bottom to top and exploded into infinity, completely imperceptible to any human eye.
A few galaxies to the north, a four-fingered hand jerked involuntarily, causing a glass of mint tea to splatter across the chrome floor. It was the creature’s first uncalculated movement in a thousand years.
“Shit,” it said in an alien tongue, roughly translated of course.
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“Shit,” the man breathed aloud.
He felt the bottle slipping out of the side beverage pocket of his backpack. Attempting to save the day, as well as the bottle, he twisted around to grab nothing but air, his half-assed attempt at salvaging his misstep wasted. Sighing, he pushed his sunglasses up to his forehead and looked down behind him. The rocks glistened and the shattered glass glinted as the liquid flowed down the hill, like tributaries searching in vain for an ocean never to come, while the bottle’s label flapped carelessly in the brisk breeze on a nearby rock. The label was barely held in place by a small damp spot and seemed to dance in the sun as it celebrated its freedom for the first time.
“Shit,” he repeated, looking around, hoping no one heard the shatter.
“Why do you stop?” the guide asked, walking back in the man’s direction.
“Something fell out of my bag,” the man replied, standing erect and wide as possible to shield the guide from the broken bottle. “Go on, I’ll catch up with you guys at base camp.”
The guide’s weathered-leather face stared back at him. A few seconds passed. “Why your eyes red? And why you always last in group?”
“Guess it’s just the altitude or the wind. Could be the yaks, maybe this grass?” the man said, spreading out his arm to the meadow they were standing in and grabbing the nearest thistle. “Shit just keeps getting in my eyes, ya know.”
“Half hour, you back at camp,” the guide replied without emotion.
“Will do. Thanks boss.”
“And here, some tea for your cough.” The guide deftly pulled out an old thermos from his bag and handed it to the man. A quick smile twitched across his lips as the first spark of emotion finally twinkled faintly in his one good eye.
“I wasn’t aware I was coughing,” the man said, accepting the thermos.
“Back there, twenty minutes ago, when you go off the trail for third time,” the guide shot back quickly, holding up an index fingertip pressed tightly to a thumb, while the other three digits pointed high in the sky. “Three time! In one hour! You slow us down.”
The man gave a smirk, which of course wasn’t registered in the mind of his diminutive guide and took a few gulps of the tea. It was bitter and lemon flavored-real lemon. The man wasn’t sure how the guide had made it taste so lemony, but in the past week, since his arrival, he had learned there were many things he hadn’t known.
The guide snatched the thermos back and said, “One hour, base camp, or I double your fee!” reminding the man of the deal he had given him before the trek began, after the man had first showed up in the village, sweating and red-faced.
“Alright”, the man replied with a relaxed smile. The guide put the thermos back in his bag, slung the bag across his back and began jogging to catch up with the rest of the group.
The man waited until the guide disappeared behind the group of rocks in the distance a short ways down the trail. He turned around and kneeled down, swung the backpack off his right shoulder and placed it on the ground, unzipped the largest pocket and pulled out a plastic zipper storage bag. He leaned over and rifled through the broken pieces of glass. He picked up the larger ones and placed them carefully in the bag. Next, he grabbed the label still dancing carelessly in the wind and smirked as he read out loud, “‘Gay Rum’“. “I’m drinking gay rum,” he laughed out loud. He unfolded the hidden part to reveal the full label: Mount Gay Rum. “‘Barbados, perfected by tradition, since 1703′,” he read. “What a shame, what a shame.”
He slapped the label to the outside of the bag, rolled it up and placed it length-wise in his backpack.
The man pulled out another baggie, this one’s contents displaying six or seven medium sized joints, rolled to complete perfection. “No more coughing,” the man smirked only to himself as he pulled one out along with a bottle of eye-drops from his coat pocket. He twisted the cap off the eye-drops, leaned his head back while holding his sunglasses in place upon his forehead and squeezed three or four drops into each eye. He then dropped the bottle into his pants pocket and rubbed both eyes at the same time. Sliding his sunglasses back down over his eyes, he unzipped his pants and pissed all over the grave of the Mount Gay Rum bottle.
After he shook and zipped back up, he turned back towards the trail and walked away, chuckling to himself.
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I first met the woman that would help bring about the end of the world on a slanted driveway of the local fire station where she was illegally parked. She was walking in my direction with a calm fury serenely spread across her face. Behind her a car billowed smoke and flames into the air. I had just finished a twenty minute power-nap which had doubled in length for the third straight day, and was walking it off, when I heard a commotion of loud complaints and honking horns. I quickened my pace in order to catch the action. I turned the corner and saw a pair of olive skin-toned legs swing out from beneath the opened driver’s side door, followed by a casual, dark-purple dress draped effortlessly over an exquisite hourglass of a body, which was perfectly accentuated with shoulder-length brown curls. Yeah, I know, I couldn’t believe it either.
Before she was even two feet away from the car, and moving hurriedly, a small but noticeable pop came from the beneath the hood of the car followed by a cloud of white smoke and a litany of profanities.
“What is going on here?” I asked.
“God-fucking-damnit. I swear if I ever see him again I’m going to rip his dick-bag off,” the woman said evenly.
“Dickbag? Ex-boyfriend?” I asked, a terrible attempt at humor.
“No, mechanic,” she responded as she walked past me.
I turned my head to watch her walk away, noting the brilliantly-blue tint of her eyes. It would be over a year until I saw her again.