A streak of white light ripped through the sky and hovered above the property of Rex and Glenda Scuttleby, and they watched as the spaceship landed in their cornfield.
     Right before the spaceship appeared, Glenda had told Rex she wanted to move to the city. Demand for their crops was down. Money was short, bills were long, and they were still in their forties, which Glenda said was the perfect age for a fresh start. Rex could get a job as a welder and she could work at a home and garden retail store.
     "Just imagine," she said just moments before the spaceship arrived, "We'll have something to show for our work. We can work and know that we'll be paid at the end of the week. And there's a mall in the city, and they have two movie theaters, maybe more!"
     Rex had looked to the sky. "Can't see the stars from the city. Too many lights. Too many cars. Too many people. You always gotta depend on somebody in the city. You gotta hope your boss don't fire you, your landlord don't kick you out, and a stranger don't kill you for your wallet." Rex traced a ring around the barrel of the shotgun lying against the house, ready to fire in case he spotted a wild pig. "Here we grow the food we eat and we live in the house we built. We don't depend on nothing but sunshine and rain, and neither one are going anywhere."
     In the first decade of their marriage, Rex would say Glenda's hair was the color of an El Paso sunset. She hadn't been to a salon in over a year. The roots of her hair grew out the color of weathered cement. She called them "gray intruders" to cope with the inability to afford a visit to the hair salon. The contrast of blonde and gray reminded her of a burned out sun withering into a cold, useless moon.
     Glenda stroked her hair. "What's so bad about change, huh? Why are you so scared of it?"
     Rex didn't blink, his emotions hardened from the years of worrying about weather, debt, harvests, livestock auctions, infertility, and household repairs. "You gotta know who you are, Glenda. You gotta know and then stay that way and not change for anybody, otherwise you'll never be anyone."
     They stopped rocking in the swing and stared at the spaceship in their cornfield.
     "What the hell is that?" Rex said. "Looks like a steel Frisbee with windows on the side."
     "Oh, honey," Glenda said, "it must be a new type of airplane! I told you it'd been too long since we've been to the city. Look what we're missing!"
     Rex grunted. "I told you those city people are dangerous. They invent some fancy flying machine and they still don't have the common decency to avoid my corn crop. Don't they know what a driveway is for?"
     Twin cylinders of green light beamed from the spaceship and two bodies descended to the earth. The bodies walked to the porch and stood in front of Rex and Glenda. The beings looked human, the same as the Scuttlebys. Both appeared to be men in their late twenties, early thirties. One of them was bald, and the other's hair was neatly combed and parted on the side. They wore blue jeans and white, button-down shirts.
     "Can I help you?" Rex said.
     "Actually," said the bald one, "I was thinking that we might be able to help you."
     "Oh yeah?" Rex said. "You got some miracle cure for my corn crop you just ruined?"
     The bald one winked. His blue eyes twinkled in the front porch light and he held his palms in front of his body like a politician trying to show sincerity. "I'm sorry. Let me start from the beginning. We come from the planet Kattacon. My name is Zygotraun, spelled with A-U-N instead of O-N. This handsome fellow next to me is my brother, Nimpox. We are not really related, but we are family in the strength of The Word." "Aliens, huh? So what do you want? If you wanna meet our leader, I'll give you directions to the mayor's house."
     "Your offer is very generous, sir, but actually we'd like to talk to you."
     Rex scratched the salt and pepper hairline in the middle of his head. "What you want with us? Shouldn't you be green with antennas or something?"
     Nimpox chuckled, his smile stretched to form dimples in his cheeks. "Actually, our popular culture led us to believe you would look like that. We are quite surprised."
     Rex shifted in the swing and the boards groaned. "I don't know nothing about you. How do I know you're not going to kidnap us and do experiments? I'm thinking I should call the cops."
     Zygotraun raised his hands above his head. "Now, now we don't have any weapons, and our bodies seem so similar that I doubt we could learn much through experimenting on you. We just want to talk."
     Rex hocked a comet of mucous-filled spit and it splashed in front of Zygotraun's sneakers. "All right. Start talkin'."
     Zygotraun straightened his back. "Okay, so anyway, we come from a planet called Kattacon, and we made a special trip out here today to tell you about The Good News."
     Rex snickered. "Yeah, well what's the bad news?"
     Zygotraun's teeth glowed in the bug zapper's purple light. "That's the Good News, sir: There is no bad news!"
     Rex scoffed and looked at Linda.
     "Listen," said Zygotraun. "Do you know who created this universe?"
     Linda raised her hand and leaned forward. "Well, of course. That would be God."
     Zygotraun and Nimpox exchanged frowns. Nimpox shook his head. "Well, no, I've never heard of him, but I'm sure he's really nice. The truth is that POW designed this universe for us."
     Rex pounced to his feet and grabbed the shotgun leaning against the house. With a whip of the barrel the two young aliens stood between the ball point sights in Rex's line of vision. "Nobody pokes fun at God, calling him just a nice guy. He died on a cross for your right to be so wrong."
     Zygotraun raised his arms above his head. "I'm sorry. Nimpox means no harm. He just gets excited when he talks about POW."
     "I swear to God, I'll pull this trigger."
     "But don't you want to hear The Word that we've traveled so far to tell you?"
     Glenda stood and pushed the gun barrel toward the ground. "Rex, just calm down. Jesus didn't go around pointing guns at people. These nice men just want to talk to us, and if you don't agree with them, well you can tell them why." Glenda stroked her nails through Rex's wiry beard. "Please, honey? When do we ever get to talk to such exotic people?"
     Rex sighed, then leaned over and kissed Glenda. "Okay, you got ten minutes. But you try to pull any kind of funny business and I'll put a slug in your bald noggin."
     Zygotraun scratched his chin. "I'm not sure what a 'noggin' is, but I do know that I'd like to get to know both of you. May we come inside?"
     Rex stepped in front of the screen door. "Over my dead body."
     "Oh, that won't be necessary. We'll just follow you in the front door."
     Rex reached for the shotgun, but Glenda slapped his wrist. "They are guests, Rex. You should be an example of a model citizen from Earth." Glenda ushered the aliens inside the house, and everyone sat at the kitchen table.
     Nimpox pointed at the Scuttlebys' toaster. "No way! I have the exact same toaster back on Kattacon. It's the one that plays 'Bread and Butter' when your toast is done, right?"
     Rex snorted, unable to suppress his smile. "Yeah, that's the one. I just love that song."
     Glenda set glasses of lemonade on the table. "So, tell me more about Pow. Tell me why there's no bad news."
     Zygotraun smiled and leaned forward. "POW tells us that our bodies are a prison. He says that to understand life, a person must live a full year with their eyes closed. The darkness is terrifying at first, and then it is comforting. The world exists only in sounds and smells, and your brain detaches from the sentiments of vision. When you finally open your eyes, you see the world as you've never seen it before: you see that reality is nothing more than a brain's delusion. You realize that anything anywhere is a mass delusion. After that, a traffic jam will never bug you again."
     "So," Rex said, "how do you know that Pow even exists?"
     "We know he exists because we drink coffee with him every Thursday morning."
     "Your creator is alive?"
     "Oh...yours isn't? My condolences..."
     "Don't be sorry. He's alive, he just died on Earth so that we could live without the burden of sin. How's your creator say you should live?"
     Zygotraun shook his head. "Pow doesn't tell anybody to do anything. One of his most famous quotes is: 'The body does as the mind wants, and the mind wants what the mind wants.'"
     Rex chuckled to himself. "That's loony talk. You gotta have rules. Otherwise, what's the point of life?"
     "That's actually Pow's most famous and beloved quote: 'There is no point to life.'"
     "What? So what happens after you die? We go to Heaven and live in a paradise."
     "Pow's second most-beloved quote is: 'There's less purpose in death than there is in life.'"
     Rex slammed a fist on the table. "That doesn't make any sense!"
     "You say that because you live with your eyes open. You must close them in order to see. Then you'll be free to live your life."
     Rex turned to Glenda and said, "Can you believe this pile of horse apples they're trying to feed us?"
     Glenda didn't respond. She stared at the aliens without blinking. A meandering tear swam down her cheek.
     "Glenda, you okay?"
     "I'm ready," she said, still staring at the aliens. "Take me with you."
     Zygotraun arched an eyebrow. "Well, you don't have to go to Kattacon to live The Word. You can do it here on your own planet."
     Glenda wiped her eyes and exhaled a long breath. "I don't think that I can live with my eyes closed on Earth. There's always so much to do. The floors need to be swept and dinner needs to be cooked. People in town would look at me like I'm crazy. They'd make fun of me to the point where I'd just give up and go right back to being like them." Glenda leaned back in her chair. "I can't be around all those busy bodies, always making something out of nothing."
     Zygotraun and Nimpox smiled and looked to Rex. "Rex, how about you? Are you ready to start living your life?"
     Rex grabbed Glenda by the shoulders. "Baby, snap out of it! They're not making any sense!"
     Glenda smiled and placed her hand over Rex's arm. "I can tell you don't understand, and I can understand that. It's just...I feel like a house that's about to collapse because of a missing screw. I think that through The Word, I can make sure the house stands forever without any screws." Glenda wiped a trembling tear. "I love you, Rex, but I don't want you to talk me out of this. Even if I stayed and completed my year of darkness, we wouldn't be able to understand each other anymore."
     Fresh tears spilled from Glenda's eyes. She looked to the ceiling, tried to smile, and held Rex's hand. "When I have my eyes closed, I'll be thinking of you."
     Zygotraun said, "We need to go, sir. This is your last chance."
     Rex's voice strained. "Why do you need to go now?"
     Nimpox pointed at the microwave clock. "Pow is constantly trying to improve the efficiency of our missionary work. If we get back within thirty minutes, we both get a gift bag. Word has it there's a coupon for a free pizza inside."
     Rex looked from his wife to the aliens. All three stared without blinking. "Go to Hell," Rex said.
     Nimpox nodded. "Never been, but we'll make it a point to go there sometime."
     The green light beams carried Glenda into the spaceship. As Glenda waved goodbye, she said, "You'll understand. I love you."
     The lights around the side came to life and shone in Rex's eyes. He couldn't see as the ship rocketed into the air and vanished like a shooting star returning to its place in the sky.
     Rex closed his eyes against the warm tears. When he stopped sobbing, his farm was silent and the breeze chilled his skin. Rex realized that the throb in his chest ceased to ache, and now he didn't feel like Rex Scuttleby, didn't feel like anyone or anything. He was just a man standing alone in an empty farm.
     Rex opened his eyes and chased a star he imagined was the spaceship. His arms outstretched, his fingers grasping for the light in the sky, Rex shouted, "Come back! I believe! I believe!"



About the author:
Paul Eckert lives in Houston, Texas. His fiction has previously appeared in Nano Fiction. He is currently seeking publication for his first novel and is working on a second. He welcomes reader responses at his email: pauleckert3@yahoo.com.

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