I stormed out in blistering, belligerent babble in some alcoholic hurricane from the barstools and ashtrays into the rainy street. All alone in Night's dark alley, tripping over cans and slip-sliding through vomit, watered down by the drizzle with little chunks and grains mudding up into the treads of my shoes.

An old black ghost sat in between a garbage can and a bag of trash that should've been in it, begging and slobbering for money in droning, wasted gibberish. He tugged on the end of my coat with fingerless, gloved hands and murmured some wet spit-talk. 'Last call is over you sonofabitch! Let go of my coat!'� I dropped some change in his lap, pulling my coat from his grubby paws.

The rain started getting harder, pounding on my shoulders and making a bird-bath in the brim of my hat. Rain, rain, go away. Come again with wine to play. All over the ground were little explosions, little geysers and bursts and splashes that would flicker under the moonlight. Sigh and walk, comrade, sigh and walk.

Before the next footstep in my drunken pace even hit the ground, the rain was gone and sobriety felt like the moment. Confusion was lurking around to tap me on the shoulder so I could turn and notice the old black man was gone and not only that, but his garbage can, too. In fact, confusion even showed me that I was in a completely different alley with different bricks and different stories. Different shit and puke smeared all over the walls and spattered in puddles and potholes in the ground. Yes, that's about the time I noticed the pain in the top of my spine like a rusty nail dripping tetanus in my bones. My nose started to bleed. Fool that I am, I almost decided to give up the bottle right then and there and throw my baby away as if liquor was some sort of a bad habit until it snuck up and hit me. POW! This was no alcoholic blackout, no siree, there was only one reasonable explanation for this: Alien Abduction! A real life, genuine, honest to God Close Encounter of the Third Kind.

The blood was all the way down to my chin now and I tried to wipe it off but only succeeded in smudging it on my lips and cheeks and I even got some on my jacket. Now this was a problem as it was my favorite coat and I'd only had to wash blood out of my clothes once before and ended up staining some socks in the process. I came to my senses and realized that all this pondering about laundry could wait. I had just been abducted by aliens and didn't need to occupy myself with whether I should use Tide or Clorox. Where's my liver? Where're my kidneys? These were the important questions. I rummaged my body for scars, stretching around to look at the lower portions of my back, hoping I wouldn't find any signs of suture. 'What an asshole,'� I thought. Of course extraterrestrials would be advanced far beyond the use of mere needles and thread to sew up a sap like me. 'They probably just remove the organs with their mind,'� I thought and became even more worried. I unzipped my pants to examine my member for bruising or stitching around my pisshole but it was too dark. As I moved towards a light, I remembered a television program I'd seen where a man explained the technique used by aliens (greys, they called them) for extracting semen. They showed a sketch of some medical instrument that seemed to resemble the kind of saw you find in a Swiss Army Knife with jagged teeth zigzagging across a long strip of steel. The aliens would insert this device into your pisshole and give you an instant, if not painful, orgasm.

I had made my way to some dim light to look at my penis. A woman, probably a prostitute, happened to pass with confusion on her face and I told her not to worry and that I was just relieving myself. In the thankful glory of God, I found no evidence of foul play on my member. Sigh, clear throat, sigh. Then there was dread, a nasty fear brought on by memories of the program I had watched and men describing the burning feeling in post saw-rape urination. I had been drinking heavily earlier in the night and desperately needed to pee. I tried to hold it in and all sorts of ugly terror ran amok in my head, bouncing around on the inside of my brain. I thought about my urine burning. I thought about passing tiny metal orbs through my urethra in a stream of yellow piss followed by drops of blood. I thought about my penis splitting open altogether and whining with rotgut, piss and blood spraying around on the brick wall before me, torn open to look like one of those horrible, giant worms from the 'Tremors'� movies and me falling on my knees to die and be found in the morning with a banana split for a penis. My death would be investigated by a Special Victims Unit headed by Christopher Meloni.

I couldn't hold it anymore. This was it. I was dead. In a couple of seconds I'd let it rip with one great, last, dying whimper of pain and then everything would be black. My soul would wander the alley in limbo for years to come with half a dick and still worry about being abducted by aliens. When our planet finally gets hit by that great asteroid, God's great, noble killer of the Rapture and is blown away into smithereens, where will all the ghosts go? With the old hospitals, hotels, and alleyways gone and the Earth just an old memory of the Sun's, will they float aimlessly in space, confused as hell? Will they still try to act out their old memories of life in repetition amidst the dark void of space? Will they go to Heaven to be judged by God or just sent straight to hell for ignoring The Light for all those years? Will they be abducted by those bastard aliens? Can aliens abduct your soul?

I became very lightheaded and the alley spun around as I stumbled backwards and began pissing up into the air before I landed, unconscious on my back, still expelling a long drunken stream all over myself.

When I woke up, there was a strange, hobo face floating right over my head. He was shaking me and saying something I couldn't understand. I smelled like piss and rain and my baby was still in one piece but hanging out of my trousers, all brave and uninhibited. The old hobo's breath was a rank combination of menthol, liquor, and morning breath. He was calling me 'Sarge'� and asking if I was okay. I struggled to zip up my pants in a haze and the old man tried to help me but I slapped his hand away. 'That's mine, buddy, I can take care of it!'� It was morning now and I felt an empty presence in the back of my pants. My wallet was missing. Old fucker probably took it before he woke me up. I didn't care. All I could do was look up at him with watery eyes and say 'Man, you're not one of them, are you?'� With this he tilted his head.

9/15/06

Want to comment on this Short Stories? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Short Stories and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...