ALIEN PISS
What happened was you became an earlier version of yourself, but the machine only worked for brief periods of time, like a week. It was initially marketed as a new kind of vacation for the rich, where they could go back to any point in their lives and do whatever they wanted. Each trip existed within its own bubble, leaving the present unchanged.
The makers of the machine made a fortune under slogans like, ‘What would you give for another moment with your deceased loved ones?’ and, ‘Re-live your first love.’
But after the invasion, they honed the machine so it could send people back Terminator-style, in their physical form, able to alter the course of what was once history.
This is what the gorgeous woman I met online said after I caught her peeing in the alley behind Applebee’s. We went inside and got a booth. I was getting drunk, she was already hammered.
‘So, what year were you born in?’
‘2088.’
‘And the world is taken over by aliens?’
She nodded emphatically and said, ‘Yeah, man. Way before I was born. Came in and all the big cities went,’ she made her hands into fists then flicked her fingers out and mouthed, ‘poof.’
‘They blew up?’
‘Nah, just gone. Disappeared.’ She lifted her glass, and I watched her throat muscles pull beer into her body, imagined tracing my finger down the length of her neck to feel the vibrations of her body. She burped and motioned for the waiter to bring another.
‘I don’t understand. They just disappeared?’
‘One day here, next day gone. No people, no buildings, no nothing.’
‘Fuck.’
‘I know. Fucking crazy, right?’
‘What do they look like? The aliens.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know what they look like? Was everyone in like, some sort of prison?’
‘Nah, it was pretty cool actually. No one’s ever seen one though.’
The waiter set a fresh beer in front of her. I ordered a refill and two shots. She nodded her approval and then winked when she saw me blush.
After the waiter left I said, ‘How do you know it’s aliens then?’
‘It’s all over the media, man.’ She sucked foam from her beer and her tongue slid along her upper lip to lick it off, her teeth gently raking her lower lip when she pulled her tongue back in.
‘Like,’ I cleared my throat, shifted, ‘like TV?’
‘Yeah, man. I gotta pee.’
She stood and headed out the front door. I stared at the empty doorway until she skipped back through it a few minutes later.
‘Did you just pee outside again?’
‘Old habits, you know?’ She snickered.
‘You have an old habit of peeing outside?’
‘Oh yeah. It’s a big-time form of rebellion, wasting your piss.’ She leaned forward and lowered her voice. I leaned forward too, inhaling her beer sweetened breath. ‘It’s what they want.’
‘Our piss?’
She leaned back. ‘Fucked up right? No one really knows why. There’s speculation and all, but no one really knows.’
‘Super fucked up.’
‘There’s these, like, receptacles everywhere, and you gotta piss in them. It’s pretty much the only law. That’s why everyone drinks so much.’
‘So they piss more?’
‘Yeah man, it’s not like here,’ she rolled her sparkling blue eyes, ‘with all this ‘know your limit’ bullshit. Fucking doctors push booze. They take that shit seriously. Bladder issues, prostate problems. Everyone takes pills to ensure their kidneys are in tip top shape. You can get in a lot of trouble pissing outside, man. You should smell the revolutionary headquarters. Fucking stinks.’
‘And that’s who sent you back, right? To stop the aliens?’
‘Yeah, but fuck that.’
‘Fuck that?’
‘Yeah, it’s way better in the future.’
‘Wait, it’s better to be under alien control?’
‘Yeah, man.’
She titled her head back to drink, smacked her lips and said, ‘Listen, man,’ then burped real loud. ‘I tried at first. I really did. But no one wants to hear about aliens taking over the world and harvesting human piss.’
I lifted my eyebrows and nodded understanding.
‘Besides,’ she said, ‘it’s super fucked up here. You don’t even know, man. There’s no murder in the future. No guns.’
‘No shit.’
‘Guns are awesome though. I shot guns for the first time last year. Guns are the fucking shit.’
‘Yeah, I don’t know about all that.’
‘I’ve got like twenty guns. They’re like, the best thing about this century.’
‘How do you get guns? Don’t you need IDs? Like birth certificates?’
She pursed her lips, looked at me like I hadn’t been paying attention. ‘Man, I’m a fucking revolutionary.’
‘Oh yeah.’
‘Plus, everyone here is stressed about money.’
‘Yep, we are.’
‘You won’t be in the future. There’s no such thing as stocks, banks. Those concepts are fucked.’
‘Fuck them.’
‘Hell yeah,’ she said, and we clinked glasses.
‘Do people work?’
‘Kind of. Technology is waaaay advanced. Those aliens know what the fuck they’re doing.’
‘I bet there’s a big procrastination problem.’
‘Problem? Man, that’s our motto.’
‘That doesn’t sound so bad.’
‘That what I’ve been saying. I’m doing the future a favor by leaving it alone. People are happier there, trust me.’
‘There’s gotta be something worth saving.’
‘Yeah man, music. Music is much better here. Probably because everyone is so fucking depressed.’
‘Ups and downs, really.’
We made out in the backseat of an Uber, then went on a few more dates. Then a few more. A bit after that, she moved into my apartment. We got married, moved out of the city to the other side of the state. We drank all the time, stockpiled guns, had some kids, some grandkids. We taught everyone to piss outside.
And when we got nice and old, our family gathered around the TV and watched images of where New York used to be.
‘Told you, man,’ she said. ‘THAT’s why we moved to fuckin’ Buffalo.’
Image generated on Canva
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Alex runs a commercial printing press outside of Buffalo NY and writes most of his stories behind the dumpster on break.
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