Space-shiap made’a ah-lou-miniaum waltzes ‘cross the sky makes trails in the wake of it takes guys up into it, swertagod. Git prodded, git dropped, take a cow, prod a cow, drop a cow, earth’s sun bright through tha winder, it’s ah-lou-miniaum but clear. Sing a bit when drunk an’ smoke an’ lis’n to a music ontha radio, got big ol eyes tasee yua. Big slug foot and got yonder ah grey hat maeda som’on’s animal fuzz. Make’a guys got prodded sick but they don’t care, don’cha, Ali’n? Gotta yellabit, I’d say, atta sky atcha, Ali’n! Lika moonshiner read’na Dead Sea’s Scrolls ya don’ git it, imma commin’ fer ya! Backwoods iz yua, say, Ali’n!? You take a soul ah just ah man, say, Ali’n?!
Yessir, its ready I’d say, yessir.
Good, yeah, that’s a loyal grey, I’d say. Fire’it.
Yessir. Its a doomsday lazer, its ’bout like a double-barreled-sort, see, mac, hangin’ offa mothership.
Blowtha’ horn o’ war, raisetha standard. Takea’ human out, I’d say.
Blowed it up, em’ Ali’ns did, took our Joe’jah offatha map, an’ Akansaw’ too. We’s screamin’ an’ hollerin’ an’ we’s got owr sawedoffs out ta’ takem’ down. Ah-lou-miniaum up yowda, inna blue sky, turnin’ it just red’rnan ol barn, I’d say. Ol barn yua Ali’n caint hit! I mocked em’ likeat, said I ain’t skert o’ yua Ali’n! AAAAAAAAeeeeeeeh, mac, yua gottem’! Yuah hit mah ol family and ah’d retha be dead, I’d say!
I say, ‘tender,’ken still hearem’ breathin’ onme froma darkness. Wy’d it beme, mac, wy’dit be? Oh, ‘tender, gimme nother shot of it, mah glass is sorta spacey likethat shiap what did do em’ in back then. Mah poor kin. I like ‘sploshans, mac, I’d say. Getta kneckerchiff outta yua back pocket an’ stickit inna ‘homebrew likeiss and lightit witha zippo- STAP, MAC! DON’ TOUCH ME! Anyway, annya BLOWITTA CRAP! HA!hahahahahahaha…. Tha’s that. Pump an’ fa’r and yua’s poolin’. Quitea blaze. Hehehehehehehehehahahahahahahahaheha.
Soen, mac, yua’s in ‘Nam, en? Prettymuch a given withtha’ rifle onna wall, itssa emsigsteen I’d say, ah can smella powder still. I eva tellya ’bouta Ali’n I seen? kiltma kin an’ ah’ve been lookin’ fer it since. Yua ain’t seena ufo, eh? Didn’t thinksa, than’ka thoa. Say, ya wanna seeya trick, mac? Yua gotta lettle bitta whisk’y… Likat, yeh, an’ ya put it onna rag fromya pocket and yua HEYH, DONTCHA STOPPMEMAN, IGOTTA DOTHIS! STOPPIT! I GOTTA GETTIT BLOWN UP LIKEM’ ALL! HAAAHAHAHAHehehehehehhahahahehe!
Sier’ns, author-it-ies, guess its time I got outta dodge. Gotta makea speck-tec-ale anna Ali’n’ll come an’ I’ll getim. Shame ta’ reckit I reckon, It’sa model a pickup wit whitewalls anna red painjob, haddit through tha’ dustbowl. She’sa larapin lady-she-is. Ah hell ah well can’ sell miteas well.
Ahem. I’m the narrator. I’ve not been in it yet. Lets see, my bit is… umm… Oh, yes, “boom”.
WHAZZAT?! Hurrp… godwherami? Isthis kain-zis? Lookit mah ol model a, like tha reckathe heas-preas I’d say. HAhahahah, ran them pigs inna the dirt, dinni? HAH! Aw, then, yua’s alive, ain’tcha, coppar? Writhin’ inna bleedin’, aintcha, but alive. Mor’n my PORE OL MA GOT, AINTIT? Weeeeell, we’ll see you offnow, mac. Let’see, how’stha’ salute goagain? Therewego, salute! They’s gonna giveya a purp’lart in hev’n fershoer, ain’t they, pig? BAM, lookit tha’ sawedoff blow! Yer missin aface, ain’tcha?!
His old face is deranged looking if you ever saw a face that was and it has a long beard that’s white and the lines of his face are so deep and many that they trap a few rogue hairs in them from his beard and he’s got liver spots all over him and the beard’s frizzy because it’s humid and his eyes are bloodshot and his smile is weak but could be weaker and his hair is thin on top except his brows which are caterpillars or cat tails maybe stuck on him. Pipe cleaners, that fits. Anyhow, he’s standing knock-kneed on the precipice of a mountain cliff and he’s brought one of the white walls to roll off it while he waits for the Ali’ns. He’s got an ancient part-gleaming part-rusty sawed off Colt coach-gun, double barreled side-by-side configured and boxlock actioned and the serial number’s been removed with a course file. Not that he knows it but the regulation on it is loose and it won’t hit the broad side of a barn for crap over more that ten feet. And he’s got a little hair in the back grown long, tied up in a little rat-tail and in his leathered thin skin old oily fists he’s got moonshine, good hard homebrew high proof brew contaminated a bit with glycol from antifreeze ’cause it was brewed in the backwoods and they used a truck radiator as a condenser. Probably there’s lead in it, too. And he sits there after he’s rolled the white-wall down and sips at the white lightning and kicks around a pebble on the ground while he sits on a dusty redish rock that’s in a sea of other dusty redish country dotted here and there with little sickly tumbleweed plants and prickly pear. It’s probably Arizona or maybe New Mexico. Colorado, even. He’s got no shirt so his shoulders are tanned and nearly burnt up and he’s got on Levi over-alls with one shiny button still left but the rest are scuffed up and some are gone all together and just left behind some hanging thread and the aged thread-bare denim pockets have an empty flask and an old faded olive-drab handkerchief in them. He’s got some spit dangling off his lips that’s a yo-yo, bobbing up and down. It reflects an image of the blue sky and the red land and the greenery that’s really, truly brownery but the image is inverted in the droplet, with the sky pointed down. Same with the sweat on his bulbous nose. His nose is red and pock-marked and it’s got scabs on it. His upper lip is shaved so his beard is just ’round his chin up to his bottom lip. He’s bored and he whispers an old folk song to himself.
The wind picks up a bit and then the sky splits and there, great mothership in the sapphire sky, towers over him and blows the wisps of fragile white hair gently ’round his head. The ship is massive, so tall that the top of it recedes from sight high into the atmosphere and into space where it opens up into a massive ship. The Soviets have got a space station up there but they don’t mess with the mothership because of it destroying Kansas and Arkansas earlier in the story, you remember that? And the ship is covered in black protrusions and buttons and pipes and lights and switches and there’s windows all along it, made of clear aluminum. He rolls back off the rock an’HAHAHAHAHAHahahah I nowed yua’d come yua suckers! wanaya born er’y minute, bailey useda say! Takis! He fires the gun and it misses because it’s old like I said and he immediately fires again and misses again. The glow surrounds him and he’s pulled upward along with a few of the pebbles on the ground, the straps of his over-alls float upwards so you can see the tan lines there. He opens the gun and the empty twenty-gauge shell casings float upward and the depressions in the metal where the firing pin struck them give a minuscule, warped image of him and the receding ground. He loads another shot hastily, he’s got his pockets stuffed full of twenty-gauges. He points it at the vessel and an aperture opens (that’s a hole, you know) and there’s one of them in there in a grey beaver fur wool-felt fedora hat like the old man was saying about in that part at the beginning of the story and the old man blows it’s wretched grey bulbous big-eyed head clean off with one shot and puts the other shot into another one as he enters the hole. In the hole the consciousness that joins the Ali’n civilization together mutters a scream of intense lament not because of two deaths, or not just ’cause that, but truly it’s a matter of perception on the part of the old man, they ain’t terrorists, the Ali’ns, and why they aughta should be perceived that way just for a few of them screwing rural America?
Anyhow, then they gang up on the old man and beat him with electric sticks because they’ve only developed ranged weapons on a world war scale for some reason, which doesn’t seem all that much like a logical progression, I mean, didn’t it start with them throwing rocks around or something? The sticks cast a greenish light on the scene and they’ve got a sort of mechanism like rubber but not quite rubber that makes it so the Ali’ns themselves don’t get shocked too much, but it’s not rubber like I said so they still get a few volts of it to be honest. Now’s the bit in the story where it’d be good to have a twist, but there’s not one. The old man’s dead. You can tell it’s a big deal because I didn’t make the sentence telling you about it three paragraphs.
Part Three: Ascension
No, sorry, I was serious. That’s really it. The end.
Shanty Town 