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got to be joking.”
    â€œI have plenty of room. She’s broke and pregnant. She wants to keep the kid. She hasn’t said so, but it seems likely.”
    â€œJeez, this is your kid?”
    â€œ Right , Ollie. It’s my kid. Somehow the vasectomy and being gutted like a fish didn’t do the trick.”
    â€œI’m sorry. I was forgetting.”
    Fucking incredible. I laugh out loud, electrons dancing in the midst of the Milky Way, inconclusive evidence of intelligent life. Another call comes in. It’s Katyana.
    â€œI have to take this,” I say.
    â€œListen to me, Stan.”
    â€œLater, Ollie.”
    I answer.
    â€œCome get me,” she whispers. “I’ll be by the gate.”
    I don’t have to ask how it went. I wind back around the hill to where I left her. Avatar sits beside her like a good soldier. They get in and settle into place. I let her have a moment. Myrna showers Avatar with kisses.
    â€œAbyss or home?” I ask.
    Make no mistake. The abyss is real. It’s a new life either way.
    â€œHome,” she says, and smiles at me, almost like she’s happy. Shelter from the storm. Maybe that’s why the aliens came in the first place. It was all an accident. There was no mission. They found themselves here far from the turquoise skies of home and had to make the best of it.
    *   *   *
    This time we drive straight through, swinging by her garage apartment to pick up a few things. We want to make it home by Christmas, and we make it just in time to watch It’s a Wonderful Life and cry, the both of us. I set my phone up on the TV and we pose for a photo, the four of us, teary-eyed, smiling, and wagging, and send it to Ollie with our Christmas greetings to let him know we’re okay, to maybe cheer him up a little. He’s alone these days. Nobody wants to be alone on Christmas. We’re holding Katyana’s Paint by Number between us, lifted from her dad’s collection of alien artifacts, as a reminder of where we came from.
    The baby—she does want to keep it—is due around Independence Day. Make of that what you will. No fireworks, however. They scare the shit out of Myrna. Next week is the New Year and fifth Tuesday, a serendipitous synchronicity we plan to celebrate in the ACAB way.
    See you down by the riverside.

 
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    Copyright © 2015 by Dennis Danvers
    Art copyright © 2015 by Chris Buzelli