“A Town Called Disdain”, Episode 77: up and away

Before getting back to the lovely Daphne in that runaway flying saucer, Larry Winchester returns his Technicolor gaze to Enid, sculptress and proprietor of a little café in a town called Disdain...

Enid stood and watched the glowing green thing go up, up, up, getting smaller and smaller and smaller against the starry night sky, and then it started to come down again, swerving and twirling, getting bigger and brighter.

Sometimes it would dip out of sight behind a hill or rise, but then it would swoop up and all around again.

Then it pulled a K-turn and headed in a curvy line over to the west toward the mountains, flying low, ducking in between the foothills like a football player with the ball, and then it disappeared.

Enid stood there looking out toward the dark mass of the mountains, waiting to see the green disc shoot up, but there was nothing.

Then all of a sudden it just seemed to come out of nowhere from up above, diving right toward her, and she tensed up, frozen, it came closer, getting bigger and bigger, and it whooshed right by a few feet over her head in a wave of electric heat that made her scalp tingle, and she turned and saw it veer up and over the neighboring hill and then disappear again off in the direction of the Johnstone spread.

She stood there a minute, looking up, turning all around, feeling slightly dizzy, her neck aching, her hair feeling like a cheap wig on her head.

The thing was gone and it didn’t come back. Had it crashed somewhere out there?

A big dark cloud passed overhead, blocking out the stars, and she sensed something behind her. She turned and saw a big circle in the dirt where the saucer had been. Everything on the ground within the circle was green, and glowing. Then the cloud passed by, the stars came out, the circle lost its color as if someone had thrown a switch.

She headed over to her truck, digging her keys out of her jeans pocket.

She brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes, and the hair felt funny. She held the strand out and looked at it. It was frizzy as all hell.

****

So the new spaceman on the TV gives me these instructions and I duly start punching buttons again and twirling knobs and dials but I’m so nervous and I have to pee so badly that I guess I screwed it up again because now his screen goes blank. Nothing. Blank. And not a sound. You see this ship was really very quiet, just a faint deep humming noise, but I can see on the big wraparound TV that we are still flying madly all over the place.

Okay, Daphne, I say to myself. Just get a hold of yourself. First off, you simply must pee.

So, I look around. And I see this metal grill on the floor over there. I go over to it, pull my pants and drawers down, squat down and let loose. I let it loose and I take out my cigarettes and light one up. And I can feel myself getting a grip on myself finally. I mean, what a relief. Sometimes it’s so simple, isn’t it? Just to take a good quiet pee when you really have to, and then if you have a cigarette also -- I don’t know, you just feel as if you can face the world and its travails with renewed vigor.

So, finally, I pull my pants back up and go over to this console thing. Now I see by the big TV screen that we seem to be roller-coastering down toward this town, and no, we seem to be heading for this baseball park just outside the town, a game in progress, and I’m thinking, Oh, great, crash right into the grandstands, Daphne, that’ll give everyone a great big thrill.

So, what the hell, I press this really big button that I didn’t recall having pushed yet.

Zoom.

****

(Zoom over here for our next exciting chapter. And please turn to the right-hand column of this page to find an up-to-date listing of links to many other fine episodes of Larry Winchester’s Pabst Blue Ribbon-winner A Town Called Disdain™.)