Peanuts

“In breaking news, the Mayor of Urgway, Mr. Sanec Barker has now officially come forth to offer his aid to Acera, as it finds itself now in turbulent and volatile times to say the least.” The news anchor spoke at a rapid-fire pace, pressing his finned hand to the side of his head while his earpiece spat him new information of the developing story.

Syl winced as the words escaped from the frog’s lips. To him, his less than riveting ribbits were little more than a nationwide news broadcast. Syl suspected it was nothing more than another day at the office for the ribbiter. Little did he know that someplace, somewhere, in a small town in Acera, he set off an atomic bomb. The very mention of that dog’s name was enough to send Syl’s mother into a tailspin. As fast as he could, Syl paused the mobile game on his smartphone (“Strongtooth Lou’s Crunch and Munch ‘Em’s”) and made a play for the remote controller that was sitting on the coffee table.

Maybe, just maybe, there was a chance he could turn it off or mute the volume before his mother heard it! Unfortunately, reality was a cruel mistress. Syl was far from an action hero and somehow even further from an athlete, and thus, he wasn’t fast enough.

“Leave it alone!” A voice yelled out from the kitchen, it was mother dearest herself, although, at her current pitch, it would be forgiven if one mistook her for a chainsaw or a garbage disposal with a fork caught in the drain.

Syl jumped, fumbling with the remote controller in his hands until succumbing to his defeat as it bungled from his hands and onto the floor. In simpler, brighter days, Syl’s mother was never much for shouting, and nearly never lost her temper around Syl or his brothers. With his heart beating fast, Syl fought to regain his composure and steady his breathing. As a growing rabbit and the runt of the litter, Syl was never a stranger to feeling small in the world. Everyone in the schoolyard made that abundantly clear to him, after all. This, however, made him feel something different entirely.

Syl peeked over the couch, staring at his mother and father from the other room with big, doughy eyes, and felt like he may as well have been the size of an ant.

“What are we going to do, Hal?” His mother asked, looking to her husband, Syl’s father, for answers.

In this refrain, his mother didn’t seem particularly angry, rather, she sounded more defeated, dejected, and disheartened than anything else. Three “D’s,” like Syl’s brother Jack’s report card.

“I, …,” Hal began, preparing to say something clever before the unfortunate realization set in that he was ill-equipped for such an undertaking. “I don’t know, sweetheart.”

“If that cane is running things in Maharris, what does that mean for us? What is the best possible outcome that can come from this? You and I both know all too well what The Canes did when they ran things. We may as well have worn muzzles and bowed down to them.

“I know,” Hal said; disillusioned (a fourth “D”).

“Our house insurance nearly doubled this year alone; the taxes are through the roof! We can barely afford groceries, and now you are telling me that he is coming to help fix things!? Give me a break!”

“I know,” Hal said again, ever the conversationalist.

Syl could hardly say he blamed him for his silence. His mother was like a boulder rolling down a cliff when she got like this, crushing anything that dared to oppose it or speak reason. It was like Syl’s brother Mikey always said, it was basic physics, what’s in motion tends to stay in motion. Syl’s dimwitted but lovable father knew better than to pick a fight with science (or Mom).

Syl’s mother stopped for a second, still ruminating. Although Syl was halfway certain it was coming from the nearby teakettle on the stove, from his vantage point, it looked like steam was coming out from his mother’s ears. Finally, she looked at Hal and said the scariest thing of all: “I’m scared, Hal.”

Hal looked back at her with tears in his eyes, “I know.”

2.

 

Syl kissed his mother goodbye as she dropped him off for school. She didn’t yell today. She didn’t put up a fuss about how slow he was getting out of bed and getting dressed. There were no harmful words, or, as his mother called them, ‘motivators’, and, peculiarly, in its absence, Syl found himself almost longing for them. What he received in its place was a foreboding silence and a glib dullness behind her eyes that made it feel like the whole world was about to come to a screeching halt.

These last few weeks, every second she wasn’t at work was spent refreshing the same poll numbers on her computer, praying with shaky hands that each district would flip and do away with her worries. It was a scary time for Syl, but he only understood the gist of it. The Doberman on the television screen was named Sanec Barker, and from what Syl saw, he was a proud and formidable person. One that didn’t appear as outwardly cruel or hateful. Rather, his words appeared to call for equality across the board, for balancing the books, and ending the starvation and homelessness that plagued all Acera, and the greater Maharris. From where Syl stood, all of that sounded pretty good. And yet, his mother was afraid of that Cane and desperately wanted him out of the city (preferably being chased out by pitchforks and flaming torches).

Truth was though, her worries about the city and financial hardship predated Sanec Barker’s involvement in Acera. Things had been scary for a while now. Although their parents did their best to hide it from the boys, Syl had gotten earfuls about the havoc being wreaked throughout the neighboring districts of Acera. He had heard stories about Logan Norms, a former media journalist turned boogeyman, as well as a hooded vigilante named Poison who was administering his own form of justice to criminals throughout the city. His justice was fatal.

Syl and his brothers, Mikey and Jack, weren’t allowed to walk home alone anymore. They weren’t even allowed to take the bus home, for that matter. Their mother was always careful to lock the doors, even when it wasn’t nighttime. She had never been like that until recently. Things were changing in Acera, and the people in charge were only the most recent problem on the docket.

Syl waved his mother off, arriving at school, and closed the car door behind him, but she didn’t drive off like he had expected her to, like she once would have. He looked at his brother Mikey and smiled weakly. She would drive off only when they safely made it through the doors.

3.

 

“Space travel is a relatively new concept in Maharris when it boils down to it,” Professor Todd explained to the classroom, pacing around the room with a large ruler in his hand.

As he walked, he smacked the ruler onto the top of his paw. Syl had some guesses for why he might have done it – for theatrics? For emphasis? To have something to fidget with during his lecture? The only effect it seemed to accomplish was making it seem like he was ready to throw down with somebody in a fight.

Syl laughed to himself at a thought that sprung into his mind – he visualized Professor Todd as a particularly lame star fighter, wielding a plasma rifle, badly trying to have a shootout with the troops from Ground Team 6, or another of Syl’s favorite science-fiction novels. What if he didn’t have a plasma rifle? Syl found himself asking. He imagined a scenario of Todd running through a battlefield like a proper warrior, swatting the bullets down in midair with his ruler. The greatest ruler-wielding polar bear to ever do it.

“Although we can hang our hats proudly by saying we have at least ventured into space, let me remind you of how miniscule we truly are in the Grand scheme of things. Imagine, if you will, a peanut. You might be thinking that this peanut is meant to represent our planet, but you’d be mistaken. You may think, next, that this peanut is meant to represent yourself, but you’d also, then, be mistaken. Rather, I want you to imagine every speck of dust you can, every small, itsy, bitsy atom that makes up this peanut, represents everything you can see in your telescope at night. That every tiny molecule has another Professor Todd speaking to you right now with his own peanut-based metaphor. That is because the universe is immeasurably big and expanding, and we are all only a teensy-weensy part of it.”

Professor Todd held his enthusiasm throughout his entire speech. It took a special type of animal to find joy in showing how insignificant everything was, but that, Syl supposed, was Professor Todd in a (pea)nut-shell.

In the meantime, Syl merely scribbled and jotted down nonsense in his notebook.

“Yes, Michael,” Professor Todd said, pointing to a student’s raised paw in the classroom – Syl’s brother.

Syl’s eyes went over to him. Mikey was a rare breed in a classroom. Not of rabbits, but of intellect. He was a curious, eager mind, always interested in taking in whatever information he could. Some other animals called him a Poindexter and made him the butt of their jokes, but they all had to deal with one of their oldest brother Jacks’ world famous knuckle sandwiches if they got caught. Toasted on both sides!

“Beyond Ex’Fi, do you believe there are other intelligent life among us?” Mikey asked.

Ex’Fi being, of course, their own planet.

“Well, I tell you, if you ask my wife, even Ex’Fi hasn’t yet met the requirement to call itself intelligent life,” Professor Todd said, before laughing at his own joke.

No one else did.

Professor Todd regained his composure and met Mikey with an arched eyebrow, “Do you believe there are aliens among us, Michael?”

“Well, …,” Mikey stopped for a moment in contemplation, “I don’t know if I do or not,” Mikey answered. After, Professor Todd began to speak again, believing Mikey would simply leave it at that, but, instead, Mikey continued: “In 1923, an unknown aircraft was reportedly cited crash landing in Jalint. Many people speculated that the aircraft could have, in theory, belonged to outside intelligent life from some other planet.”

“Or it could have been an aircraft from one of our enemies. If memory serves me well, and it sometimes does, Maharris doesn’t often abstain from creating a few conflicts here and there with our next-door neighbors. In fact, we’ve even ruffled a few feathers with ourselves from time to time. Either that, or perhaps, even, the more plausible option – that it was a tabloid scandal blown up out of proportion. Especially back then, information was not easily verified or readily available to the public. You never know what will capture the zeitgeist and take on a legacy of its own,” Professor Todd said.

“My granddaddy says that every year crop circles will show up around Old Miller’s farm without fail. How do you explain that?” Another boy, Syl forgot his name, blurted out.

“I can explain that by saying your granddaddy has a very good imagination. One that he loves to put to use. Imagination is a wonderful trait, if I do say so myself. Some of the very best minds succeeded where others failed simply because they dared to dream harder and bolder. Unfortunately, none of those best minds led credence to any story about crop circles, I am afraid.”

“So then, you can’t explain them?” Another voice called out.

Professor Todd chuckled. “Firstly, let’s try and raise our hands when we want to speak, classroom. I appreciate enthusiasm, but enthusiasm works best when met with civility. Second, what reason do you have to believe Mr. Miller doesn’t apply those crop circles himself every year as a sort of fun time tradition?”

“When have you ever known Mr. Miller to do anything, ever, for fun?”

That brought a smile to Professor Todd’s face. “That is a fair point,” He agreed. “How about this then, instead, he is a rather silly old man who sees God in his toast and aliens in his cornfield. Both things have something in common, you see, they have no actual, legitimate proof of their existence.”

Syl had come to admire Professor Todd as a teacher. he was a little blunter and more matter of fact than he likely should have been (that God comment, for instance, would likely see him as recipient of one or more angry letters from parents in the highly religious town of Silco, Acera, for instance) but he had an infectious enthusiasm and a genuine enjoyment in the sharing of knowledge.

“Don’t you believe it is a little narrow minded to disregard factual testimonies on the basis of your own preconceived notions?” Mikey shot back.

“I am not disregarding any factual evidence in the slightest.”

“But you are! If you don’t want to believe Mr. Miller’s rinky-dink story about crop circles, I can see that. However, you tell me that you think nothing at all about the 1923 aircraft discovery? Then, you will likely tell me next you think all the aircraft officials who swore, under oath, to finding non-Ex’Fi biologics at the reported crash sites were sensationalists as well? UFOs reported by airline pilots appearing, and then, abruptly disappearing on their radars!?”

Mikey, on the other hand, wasn’t as big a fan of Professor Todd. Maybe it was because he was smart enough to know when pigheaded wasn’t merely an accurate descriptor of Professor Todd’s appearance and was also representative of his belief system. Mikey was, by far, the smartest person Syl had ever met (and Syl had met a few dozen people). The sparring matches between Professor Todd and Mikey were legendary, but they always ended the same, anticlimactic way.

“I will submit and admit defeat to you on this debate, Michael, if you can provide me concrete physical evidence of alien life forms. If you can’t, however, then you will stay calm and live to fight another day as I teach my class. What will it be?”

It was a clever euphemism Professor Todd had for – pipe down, I am the adult here!

4.

 

Dodge ball was a mixed bag of emotions and rubber balls. Say what you will about the actual damage capable of a rubber ball, for some, it was the emotional scars that would be left that stayed with them. Unfortunately, you couldn’t buy “scar-be-gone” ointment for those, only therapy sessions.

“Loony,” One team’s leader called out, beckoning the burly hog over to his team, fourth to last.

“Come on, choose him,” Syl pleaded, nudging his older brother Jack.

Being picked last at dodge ball stung more than the worst rubber ball to the face, Syl knew that firsthand and Mikey knew that especially. Jack was their safety net. He was the rabbit that had all the expected traits of a rabbit – he was fast, athletic, and reflexive. He was an all-star athlete in Silco, always team leader in P.E., head of the basketball team, you name it.

“He isn’t any good,” Jack muttered back.

“But he is nice,” Mikey countered. “And he is always picked last, that isn’t fair!”

“Fine, fine,” Jack said, giving up. “Devlin? You are on my team.”

Delvin smiled, then, the sloth slowly joined them on their side of the gymnasium.

“Thanks, … Syl,” Devlin whispered while all their backs were pressed to the wall preparing for the P.E. teacher to start the match.

“No, thank you for being a part of the team. You are going to kill it, Devlin, really.” Syl said with a small smile on his face.

Delvin didn’t kill it, however. Only a short moment after the teacher blew the whistle, Delvin had already been beamed headfirst with a dodge ball. Syl winced as he hopped by him, thanking his lucky rabbit feet that it wasn’t him. A second later, a ball came hurling toward him. He ducked, narrowly dodging the round, red ball of evil.

Syl reached down and snatched the ball, immediately handing it off to his brother Jack. Jack ran point for the team, hopping to the front of the pack and chucking the ball at the nearest adversary. Down the opposition went, “You’re out!” The teacher said, directing the befuddled otter to the bleachers with the rest of the casualties of war.

“Why don’t you try and throw the ball for yourself, loser!” A voice called out from the other side of the gymnasium.

This voice belonged to a horse named Daniel that was more than double Syl’s size.

“Don’t worry about him,” Jack called out, catching a ball in midair and subsequently hurling it back at the opposition. “He isn’t worth it.”

Syl nodded his head knowingly.

Soon after, Mikey was eliminated by Daniel. The ball struck him in the chest and brought him off from his feet. Syl hopped over to him, reaching down and snatching Mikey’s glasses that had fallen onto the ground.

“Are you okay?” Syl asked, guarding him as he rose back to his feet.

Mikey nodded, clearly still reeling from the stinging sensation on his chest. Syl watched him off as Mikey went and had a seat at the bleachers. Then, looked back at the other side of the gymnasium.

“You’re next, big ears!” Daniel exclaimed, looking dead at Syl.

Syl smirked, “It would be hard to miss that long face of yours.”

One stupid remark answered back by an even stupider remark. Currently, Syl felt no regrets about it. However, by the angry look on Daniel’s face, he couldn’t help but wonder whether he would feel the same way when everything played out. If Daniel had it his way, Syl would be knocked straight out of orbit come nightfall.

And, like that, the heat was on. In no galaxy would Syl ever be mistaken as an action hero, but, at this moment in time, he was willing to put up a front and pretend.

His eyes narrowed and his attentiveness increased. He hopped out of the way of every ball that was thrown at him. He even caught a couple of them, in spite of his adversaries’ most valiant efforts.

He doubted it looked as pretty in real time as it played out compared to how he imagined it in his head, but, for that moment, no one could have stopped him.

Until, they did – Daniel’s dodge ball smacked him in the face harshly, throwing him off of his feet and down to the ground. With the wind knocked out of him, Syl could only stay there and receive punishment. A second ball met his chest. Then, a third and a fourth.

He could hear the gym teacher’s whistle sounding off, “Knock it off, knock it off!”

The whole opposite side ganged up on him. Daniel wasn’t even bothering to follow formalities anymore, crossing the black line as he struck the ball down at him repeatedly.

“Get away from him, you idiot!” Mikey yelled out from the bleachers.

“Now!” Jack exclaimed, shoving Daniel violently away from Syl.

Daniel squared his shoulders and readied his hooves, but Jack refused to back down even a hair.

“Enough,” The gym teacher said, at once, the cadence in his voice carrying a finality to it.

He stepped between them. “Now, Daniel, I know you are not about to try and pick a fight with a teacher and get yourself expelled.”

Although he held his tough guy stare for a moment longer, he soon retreated, bucking away from them. His eyes glared at Syl with a white-hot intensity behind them. Without words, he spoke volumes – Syl knew what he said, he knew what his eyes promised: Jack won’t be able to protect you forever.

5.

 

And Jack couldn’t protect him forever. That was the lesson Syl had learned very quickly. Between bells, the moment Jack was out of sight, Daniel was in sight, and he had Sylvester in his scope. The beatdown was about what Syl had imagined it would be. After all, nowadays, he had learned to take a punch or two, or twelve, here and there. It came with the territory of his own existence, he supposed. Just one of those faces.

As bad as that may have been, it was nothing compared to what came next, what Syl was most afraid of.

“I swear to the skies above, this is the last time you will step foot in that God forsaken school!” His mother Veronica yelled, looking back at her bruised and battered son from her rear-view mirror as they left the school parking lot.

“Mom,” Syl began, having thought twice over what he would say to her. “It isn’t that big of a deal!”

“Isn’t that big of a deal!?” She yelled back. “Do you understand what this world is coming to? Do you even understand how dangerous things are right now!? You could have been killed.” Her eyes had that manic, crazed expression in them, the hysteria that newfound fear had created.

“He was embarrassed. He wanted to look like a tough guy in front of his friends. He wasn’t ever planning to do any real damage.”

“I don’t know, Syl. Franklin says that he once knocked a guy’s eye clear out of his head with a single punch,” Mikey said, a casual assertion he made while thumbing through his book.

“Do you hear that, Sylvester!?” An eyeball right out of his head!” Their mother yelled.

Syl glared at Mikey. “You’re not helping!”

“If I would have been there, I would have put a stop to it.” Jack said angrily, his arms crossed.

“No, absolutely not!” Their mother fired back, her paws tightened around the wheel like she was about to turn back around and head home even though that was already where they were headed. “You wouldn’t have done any of those things! I don’t want any of you starting fights with anyone ever, nada, zilch!”

“So, we are supposed to sit there and take it anytime someone tries to pick a fight with us? How is that fair!?”

“It’s not fair,” she said at once. “Life isn’t fair. Don’t you understand?” She took one paw off the steering wheel to wipe the tears from her eyes as she spoke. “Bad things happen.” She feigned a shrug. “It doesn’t matter if you are a good person or a bad person, or anything else. Bad things happen and I don’t want them to happen to any of you.”

“You can’t control that,” Syl said.

“No, but I can damn sure not put you in the line of fire.”

6.

 

“This isn’t fair!” Syl yelled, kicking a ball around their bedroom, watching it hit the wall and come back, hit the wall and come back. “I am beat up and, for some reason only mom can figure out, I am the one who gets in trouble for it.”

“Did you hear what mom was saying on the phone earlier? She called grandma, said something about us going to stay there for a while in Italina.”

“To hell with that!” Jack yelled out. I am not staying at no Italina. I don’t care who the mayor is.”

“That’s a double-negative, Jack. So, you are effectively saying that you are staying at Italina.” Mickey corrected, pressing up his glasses to the brim of his nose while he did.

“I’m about to triple-negative you in a minute. Whose side are you on anyways?” Jack said.

“That’s a good question! What gives, telling Mom that load of crock about Daniel knocked a guy’s eye out? Where did that even come from?” Syl asked.

“It was meant to be a joke. How could a punch knock someone’s eye out, if anything, it’d go further inward! Excuse me for not realizing that mom would go ballistic about it.”

“When has she never not went ballistic!?” Jack yelled.

“That’s not true. She wasn’t always like this. All scared, all the time,” Mikey countered.

“Ever since everything because all crazy in Acera, she thinks there might be a Civil War in Maharris for crying out loud.”

“Even if there is, you can’t spend your whole life afraid. That is no way to live!” Syl shouted.

“She has to realize we aren’t stupid children who can’t do nothing!” Jack agreed.

Mikey stared at him intently.

“Anything. Can’t do anything,” Jack corrected.

“But how do we make her realize that?” Mikey asked.

“I know how,” Syl said. “We sneak out. Tonight.“

“What, and go where?” Jack asked.

“She would kill us!” Mikey interrupted.

“Maybe,” Syl agreed. “Or maybe she would see that she can’t keep us under her thumb and control us the way she does.”

“But where would we go?” Jack asked again.

Syl thought about it for a second, fidgeting with the fur on his chin like some kind of anxious detective. He looked around his surroundings in search of some kind of inspiration. On the desk across from him, he saw his brother Mikey’s science book – he thought of Professor Todd.

“Hmm, …,” Syl said.

“He looked over to his book bag and saw his copy of Ground Team 6 peeking its head out.

“I know exactly where we should go.”

7.

 

At the blink of an eye, it had been decided. Syl, Mikey, and Jack would not bend the knee to their matriarchal overlord any longer, rather, they would make a lasting statement against her tyranny. There was no pussyfooting about it (they weren’t cats, after all) – tonight, they were sneaking out.

Syl wrapped a bandana around his head and snarled meanly at the mirror as he did it. Mikey played the mimic and did the same, flexing his furry string-bean arms in the mirror like a wannabe tough guy, and Jack, well, Jack didn’t have to pretend to be tough.

Syl did a somersault through the hallway, followed by an army crawl as he made for certain the coast was clear for them. The truth was that their mother could be heard sawing logs all the way from space. If she was awake, they would know about it. Still, it fit the night’s thematic mood – so, they played the part of feeling like they were in dire jeopardy of being caught.

The bathroom light flickered on.

“Dad,” Syl mumbled to himself.

They hadn’t accounted for him.

“Abort mission,” Syl said in a shouting whisper.

“No,” Mikey said. “We’ve got this.”

And so, they continued. They hurried into the kitchen, hiding with their backs pressed against the islander at the center of the room. Behind them, they saw the bathroom light glowing overhead; a bright yellow.

They waited. At last, their father stepped out from the bathroom, and so went the beam of light that bled in from over the counter.

“Go, go,” Syl instructed.

Go, they did. They unlocked the front door and stepped outside, taking in the cool air of victory.

8.

 

Syl laid, sprawled out beneath the stars, pricked by mowed down stalks of corn. Part of him knew it was a silly concept. If aliens did exist, why would they leave crop circles around a farm in some random, no name town in Acera?

“Do you think things will change if that Barker dog takes over as Mayor of Acera?” Mikey asked.

Syl’s smile faded some.

“I don’t want to talk about that right now, Mikey. Can’t we just, … enjoy the moment? The here and now?” Jack said.

“Mom said, …,” Mikey started again.

“We know what Mom says, Mikey. She says she will ship us off to Italina, or that The Canes will take over the whole country and have us rabbits working at a mine somewhere. It is ridiculous, you know it is ridiculous. You know how she is, … how she has gotten.” Syl interrupted.

“I know I’m just, …,” Mikey started, then stopped himself: “I’m scared, Syl.”

“I know,” Syl said, looking up at the stars, so distant and far away.

“I’m scared too, Mikey,” Jack said.

It was strange, but, for some reason, in that moment, Syl felt an overwhelming feeling of peace sweep over him. It seemed that, no matter what the universe threw at them, no matter how overwhelming it may have seemed, they could overcome it, as brothers.

From afar, Syl saw a flicker of light from somewhere across the cornfield.

“What was that,” Syl asked, leaning up to a seated position. “Did you see it?”

“It was like a bolt of lightning,” Jack said, ears perked up attentively.

“Maybe a transformer fell?” Mikey said, then, without the slightest push back, disagreed with himself, “But in the middle of a cornfield, that is not likely.”

Syl shook his head, agreeing with Mikey’s disagreeing. It didn’t look like a bolt of lightning either. They pushed aside and traversed the corn stalks, pressing onward until they unveiled the perpetrator – it was a spaceship.

The very thought hit Syl like a ton of bricks – it was a spaceship. He shook his head in disagreement with his own thought. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t actually be. His brain thought up one ridiculous explanation after another, each more ridiculous than the last. And yet, none of them felt as ridiculous as it being an actual spaceship. Maybe Old Miller had gone all out this year for his charade, maybe he had built a prop aircraft this year. An ultra realistic, massive aircraft, … bigger than his house.

And, even as ridiculous as the proposition sounded, it still sounded more plausible than the concept that an alien spaceship had landed in Silco.

Syl looked at his brothers in hopes of them having an explanation. He looked to Jack to think rationally in the face of adversity. He looked to Mikey to look at things logically, to dispel the audacity of such a sight. Neither did, however. Their Jaws simply remained dropped wide open.

“Is that?” Jack asked.

“It can’t possibly be,” Mikey said.

“It is,” Syl said.

“We need to get out of here. I have read articles about this sort of thing,” Jack began.

“You read articles?” Syl asked.

“I have watched videos. Aliens aren’t all happy go lucky, ‘hey, do you want to go for a ride in my spaceship. I will drop you off before school starts, don’t worry.’ No, no, they are bad news. I have seen these things about probing, I still check the toilet before I sit down.”

Syl agreed with him, at first. Jack was the tough one after all. Judging by the panicked expression on Mikey’s face and his sense of urgency, it seemed clear that he agreed with him as well. Mikey was the smart one, after all. But, as they began to flee the scene, thoughts raced through Syl’s mind – of being struck with dodge balls when he had fallen, of his brother Jack not being around to protect him from Daniel. He thought of what Acera was turning into, what it was turning his mother into, years of her looking out the window blinds in the living room, thinking The Canes would one day come for them. It was fear and cowardice, and he didn’t want to live in fear. He didn’t want to be a coward.

“Let’s take a closer look,” Syl said at last.

“What!?” Mikey said.

“That isn’t a good idea, Syl,” Jack was next.

“Do you want to come home tonight and have our heads ripped off for sneaking out, or do you want to be the kids who discovered alien life? You’re talking about videos you have seen, but we will be the first to actually meet one, up close and in person. We have no idea what they are like – that is all nonsense science-fiction mumbo jumbo. Let’s make a memory for ourselves that no one can take away from us.”

At this point, Syl wasn’t certain whether he was trying to convince them or himself. As, even though he said the words, he found himself petrified in place, unable to make himself take that next step.

“You’re right,” Jack agreed. “Let’s do it.”

Syl nodded in agreement with his brothers. He led the way, brushing through the stalks of corn and approaching the aircraft. It looked nothing like an airplane nor a helicopter, and yet, nothing like the flying saucers he had seen in his favorite science fiction movies. It was large and intimidating to stand near, and the engine roared louder than any engine Syl had ever heard before. He hesitated for a moment. A door opened on the aircraft, unveiling a long walkway ramp that led inside. From inside, three animals walked down the ramp way.

Although Syl had nothing to compare them to, they looked scruffier than he believed they should have. They had full-body spacesuits and helmets that went over the tops of their heads like a football helmet. On the front of them, a see-through, thin sheet layered itself over the front of their faces. Was that meant to keep oxygen in their suit? Their suits were tattered and worn, with scrapes and scratches peppered across them all over. Although he only saw one of them briefly, Syl had a vague idea of the species of each – one appeared to be a shark, although he also appeared to have legs like most land animals, the other, a wolf, and the final one, a warthog. They walked forward, the brotherly trio’s presence unbeknownst to them.

Syl gulped when he saw the weaponry strapped to each ones’ waist – he wondered if they were plasma rifles or some type of laser shooter.

Neither Syl, Jack, nor Mikey said anything to one another as the alien life forms went out of sight, but Syl knew they each had the same idea circulating through their heads – they needed to see more.

Like they had done sneaking out the house earlier, they enacted the same strategy. Syl led the way and called for his brothers to join him when he realized the coast was clear. They stepped forward onto the aircraft. Syl felt a gust of cold air coming from inside the ship as they did. For a moment, Syl once again felt stunned in place, having to once more come to terms with the fact they were really doing this.

“This is amazing!” Mikey announced, running off in front of them, his own curiosity having the best of him.

Syl gritted his teeth, looking back behind them to make for certain no one heard him. They hadn’t. Syl let out a sigh of relief as Jack joined them.

The spaceship had just about everything they had expected it would. It had buttons of all sorts, none of which they recognized. It had triggers and levers, and …

“Look!” Mikey announced, pointing his finger at a large cylindrical tube in the corner corn of the room.

It was less about the tube itself and more about what lay within – an animal was shown, seemingly frozen in pace.

“I wonder if this is, … like …, some type of cryogenic sleep pod, or something,” Mikey mumbled, in complete awe of it.

On the other hand, like the men who had stepped from the aircraft, Syl couldn’t help but think the ship looked dingier and more disorganized than he had expected. In his head, he had imagined a certain ‘chrome’ aesthetic, a sort of pristine quality, even. This wasn’t that. Instead, the chairs were worn, with holes and rips, and trash was strewn around throughout the ship’s interior. I guess even space has its slobs, Syl thought to himself. For some reason, it was a comforting thought for him.

A loud bang broke them out of their mesmerized trance and sent a large shiver up Syl’s spine.

“It seems we have guests,” a voice called out, one that sounded synthesized and robotic.

Syl flinched, as did each one of his brothers. The voice came from the shark, now stepping back onto the ship. The bang had been him bringing the ramp back up – closing them in. Although that alone was enough to make Syl begin to panic, the next realization was far worse than that.

The aircraft was moving.