 Peace like he couldn’t have imagined. His soul felt at rest, like all was well now. The glow whispered over his skin, soft, radiant. The luminescence had substance—light that wrapped around him, incandescence that carried him along the journey.
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 Clément Fournier clutched his small valise to his chest and walked down the gangway from the aeroplane. Though exhausted from the long flight from Paris, his nerves kept his heart beating quickly.
For the hundredth time, he patted the breast pocket of his suit jacket. Captain Joseph Davis’ letter. Written on his deathbed.  Mr. Thomas tossed his hat on the side table and slipped off his smothering coat jacket.
“Margaret, I’m home.” She came out of the kitchen wearing a ruffled apron, her face heat flushed. “You’re early, Hubert,” she said, offering her pink cheek for a kiss. “Look what I have.” She smiled. “What are those, dear?”  The old lady saw someone coming at a distance and went out in spite of the coming storm to see if her granddaughter was finally coming to visit.
Propelled up the lane by the strong wind came Mr. Wolfe, huffing and puffing at the exertion against the gusting gales. Seeing him was a balm to the letdown of it not being her granddaughter.  The students are laughing because he expressed his fear to their teacher. But the broadcasts everywhere warn disaster is coming. Even his new girlfriend laughs at him.
Racing through New Market, tearing past the merchants who curse him as usual, Bhavin runs home. He rushes inside, upending a metal pot.  Henry Commons and his wife, Evyleen, swung off the highway into a drive-through. Henry hoped the caffeine in his Red Bull would wake him up.
“Done with that?” Evyleen asked, pointing to the red fries carton balancing on the dash. “Sure. Thanks.”  Yin and Zar were rushing to make their rendezvous with the Mother Ship. They yearned to go home. But their hosts were impossible to move quickly.
Yin was in an obese female who couldn’t take ten steps without losing her breath. Her lungs wheezed. She wheeled behind her a green tank of the species’ required gases. A tube stayed on her hairy, sweaty lip to deliver puffs. She tottered forward, back and forth, her thighs so thick her legs went out at angles, her feet spread wide.
I awakened so abruptly, sucked in air so forcefully, I thought my lungs would burst. The years—perhaps decades, or more—of my immuration had left me brittle, fragile.
When I came to, the students and desks were gone. Mrs. Barry wasn’t staring down her spectacles at me. I wasn’t even in history class.
I was running—yes running—in a group of Scottish Highlanders. Scots covered in mud and blood, yelling, waving medieval weapons over their heads. I couldn’t even think of standing still or I’d be trampled by the stampede of barefooted giants around me. |
