Page 96 of Earth Girls are Easy… To Dominate
“Leave me alone! I can’t look at you, I’m so mad!” I don’t slow my strides. If our gazes meet, I might be tempted to say something awful—like how he and his mother can take their old-fashioned views and shove them up their asses.
As I walk around the building, my body drips under the extra layers of clothes. If I wore the short shorts, t-shirt, and hat of the standard uniform, I could make this trek without breaking a sweat. It’s not like the uniform is indecent to most Americans—just us chosen ones. Chosen to do what? Die of heat exhaustion?
I refuse to die smelling of sweat and hot dog grease.
“I can’t hate hot dogs and count on them to change my fate. That’s ridiculous,” I grumble to myself across the loading bays to the dumpster. “The ever-present grease and smell I can hate without becoming a hypocrite. Maybe my in-laws and the customers, too. My fight with Jimmy is just a crappy ending to a crappy day.
“A corndog is a two-dollar meal with unlimited toppings. What do the customers expect? Fine dining with cloth napkins tucked under their chin? Oh, hi, I’m Jenny, and I’ll be your processed meat sommelier for the afternoon. Would you like to smell the fryer grease before I drop your corndogs?”
As I swing the industrial-sized garbage bags over the scorching hot pavement, the frustrations of the afternoon loop in my mind like a stuck needle on a record player. Some lady threatened to get me fired when the pumps ran out of yellow mustard and splattered yellow goop on her neon green sweater. Not to mention the kids who used said mustard to paint Run-DMC lyrics on the food court floor. I should have argued that they were on the opposite side of the dining area, so it wasn’t my responsibility to mop it up. If anything, the Hong Kong King was responsible because the graffiti was in front of their stall.
However, I was raised to be sweet.
Inside, I’m as sweet as one of the Garbage Pail Kids.
“Maybe I should hide out here forever,” I say with a hollow chuckle to myself. “Would Jimmy still insist on marrying me if I required him to live in a dumpster? He wouldn’t…because he would have to stand up to his mother. Despicable, spineless, louse!”
The prophet may have bound us together in a temple betrothal arranged by God, but Jimmy’s mother is the enforcer of that union. How can I marry a man who wouldn’t dream of defending me against his mother? I doubt Jimmy would evenhear my complaints if I dared to speak against her. She might as well be ordained as our newest saint.
Blasphemous…but true.
“Am I doomed to a loveless marriage with nothing but babies to fill my days? Am I just fooling myself when I go to class—chasing dreams that will never come true?”
A rat squeaks from inside the dumpster as I toss the garbage bags onto the heaping pile on top of the metal container. Dumpster Rat has more freedom than I do. She will have multiple partners in her lifetime, and nobody will judge her. Hundreds of babies from multiple males, and not one of them attached to her. She’s free to dumpster dive behind every mall across the country…if her little legs will carry her that far. If she dreamed of doing rat things on Wall Street, nobody would stop her. She’s doing God’s work by existing—with no extra baggage.
“Why wasn’t I born a rat? What do I have to do to earn some freedom?” I yell with my face tilted toward the setting sun.
No answer. Not even a breeze.
“I didn’t think you had an answer to that one!”
The leather of my black tennis shoes creaks as it softens from the heat coming off the asphalt on my journey across the parking lot to the bike rack. Might as well rush home to soak my shirt, so it doesn’t kill the romance for Lisa and her boyfriend of the month. In a way, my roommate is as privileged as Dumpster Rat. Maybe she and her idol, Madonna, have a point, and Ineed a holiday. A lifelong holiday. I can’t believe I’m contemplating leaving the church, but…
Sigh, do I have the guts to turn my back on my destiny? It’s not like my career dreams clash with the church's views—just the views of my betrothed and future in-laws. Maybe the prophet made a mistake, and I’m meant for someone else.Okay, please don’t strike me down with lightning for that thought…the most blasphemous one of the day.I kiss my cross pendant beforeplugging my combination into my chain’s lock and releasing the bike from the metal rack.
Why is my white Schwinn bicycle tinted green? Has the whole sky turned that color? When I lift my hand to the end of my nose, my fingers glow green, too. What gives? Is this my punishment for my evil thoughts? Turning into a plant?! I run to the other end of the bike rack, knocking over the dozen bikes awaiting their owners. As they fall like dominoes, the noise startles me out of my panic.
I’m not green over here.
It’s a sparkling field of green light whose width matches the length of my bicycle. The handlebars’ swinging tassels spray green onto the pavement, so it’s not divine power. It’s just light, like the strobe lights reflecting through the doors of the disco onto the mall’s carpeted hallway. Maybe it’s a bank of lights…for…a concert!
“Tiffany? Tiffany, is that you?” I run in circles, searching for the pop princess’s stage. I sing her hit song at the top of my lungs until I reallythink I’m alone now. Curiosity replaces fear when I find the source isn’t a pop star or a shooting star miracle.
I wave my hand through the green. Nothing happens.
With an injection of confidence, I run my hand over my bicycle seat. Nothing happens.
“I’m being silly,” I say with a giggle. My pants catch on the center bar of my bicycle as I lift my leg over. “I'd better bounce, or someone will witness my freak out.”
Before I can press my weight onto the pedal, I’m lifted from my seat. The front tire lifts from the ground as I’m suspended in midair. When the bike grows too heavy, I release the handlebars. My bike, its image blurred by the tears filling my eyes, bounces on the pavement before adding itself to the pile of bikes I knocked over. The bike, the dumpsters, and the parking spacesshrink as I’m lifted to the heavens. It could be worse; I could be sucked through the Earth’s crust on my way to hell.
“Goodbye, Lisa! Goodbye family! Goodbye, Jimmy! Goodbye, Dumpster Rat!” This must be how girls get kidnapped. Not pulled into a van like on the news, but lifted into a silent helicopter or stationary plane…if those things exist. How would I know? I’m not MI-5!
When I muster the courage to look up, my eyes betray me. Maybe I fell when the bikes toppled over, and this is my Dorothy Gale moment. Yeah, that’s it. A head injury made the doors open on that UFO, not my eyesight. I just know it. The cool air rushing from inside is a figment of my imagination, not climate control for aliens. Nope, the metal closing under my feet and the little green men running around are not real—they’re figments of a busted skull. The moans of human women in rapture can’t be…wait a second.
My hands squeak on the metal floor as I scramble to my hands and knees. Fingers curl as my body clenches with arousal. I tingle from thighs to shoulders. My jaw drops at the erotic stations around the large room.
Women are strapped to metal tables with wire electrodes stuck to their heads and probes pumping their holes. The blond closest to me moans around a probe so wide, it stretches her lips thin. She grabs the collar of the one-foot-tall alien closest to her and spouts gibberish at him. At least it sounds like gibberish with the probe stuffed in her mouth. He must understand, though, because he pinches her nipples until she arches off the table. A splash of arousal sprays around the probe stuffed into her vagina as she humps the air. He grabs a hand vacuum to collect her nectar. She screams when the vacuum touches her most cherished place.
