Short Stories.

Falling for an Alien.

 

One, two, three, four, AHAHAHA. One, two, three, four, five, six, AHAHAHA. Crazy clown laughter pierces the quiet, usually every four to ten seconds, but sometimes there’s a longer gap. About 30 seconds after that laugh all around me will glow neon blue and spacey music will play. Dressed as an alien from outer space, which apparently my boss decided to go with the stereotypical one; I have a silver jumpsuit, huge green hands, a green head with bug eyes and green feet that might as well be flippers. Dressed like this I’m supposed to jump out at little kids.

            The clown is two corners away from where I am in the haunted house and it tells me when I’m about to start to glow. The water around me glows a putrid brown and green because I’m supposed to look like I’m in a polluted stream. At first I was excited to get to be the alien, it was much better than being a witch or a goblin, but then my first day as actually being part of the haunted house I realized that they didn’t just make it look like a polluted stream, they made it smell like one too. Not to mention the fact that I stand in water and every day when I go home my feet are more and more sweaty from the boots I have to wear.

            I’ve started to always smell like waste and even I’m disgusted by it. I’m a walking sewer.  People have started to veer away from me when I walk by them. It’s so bad they can’t even pretend they don’t smell anything for the two seconds they are near me. I mean, if you haven’t caught on before, that’s when you know you smell bad. I’m like that guy in Slaughterhouse 5 who always smells like slaughtered pigs, only I feel that would be better than smelling like crap.

            I started this job right when I got out of high school, telling myself and others that it was just going to be for a year until I went to college. I was just going to take a year off, that’s all. That was all fine and good when my parents were rich, I could go to any school I wanted, whenever I wanted. Only during that year that I took off my dad, who is a doctor, was sued because he messed up some guy’s big toe and because of his mistake that guy no longer has a foot. I’m not even sure how something like that happens. Anyways, that pretty much took all of our money and it also took my dad’s job. Once you’re responsible for a guy losing his foot no one wants you as their surgeon. Go figure.

            So here I am, three years later trying to make enough money to go to school with, even with loans and financial aid I still need a little more. This job pays $13 an hour and as a kid who hasn’t gotten through two years of college yet that’s about the best I can do.

            I sigh as my 30 second wait is up and I jump out at a group of kids who are probably too old for this kind of thing. Three of them jump a little and this fourth girl screams her head off making us all cringe. It’s a small space and screams like that make me want to punch people. Oh, that’s another part of this job; you always go home with headaches.

            The group of friends giggles and teases the one girl who probably pee’d herself and I step back into my swamp preparing for the next group. When it comes- as always- it comes with complaints about the smell. I hate that, I stand in it all day and don’t get to complain, but they do. Frustrated about the turn my life has made I jump out at this next group. “AARRGGHHH!” I yell at them. They have about the same reaction as everyone else does. They leave quickly and just like always I climb back to my post.

            I’m not even really sure what kind of people would want to walk through something like this anyways. I know I never wanted to. They were always so stupid; it’s only on a rare occasion that I actually scare someone. Most kids walk through to show off how tough they are to the girl they’re trying to impress. She usually screams and wraps herself around him playing the damsel in distress when everyone knows that she’s not really scared. I think the girls that do that are just stupid.