Today has been a really shitty day, I thought as I took a pull of my beer.  Images of my dad in the hospice, attached to tubes and monitors and catheters, slowly withering from the cancer that the chemo didn’t seem able to stop, danced in my head, followed by my being fired from my job waiting tables for too many sick days – spent dealing with my own mental health, or being with my dad before he was taken from me.  Fuck it, I thought.  I could always find a new job.  Dad was way more important than some stupid ass service job - it’s not like Hanks BBQ Shack was the best job in the world anyway. 

 

                And what about me?  I wondered.  Here I am, 21 years old, in a go nowhere job, with dad’s medical bills mounting, drinking a bottle of hipster microbrew beer in my car in the middle of a state park.  I should go visit dad...  I knew I should.  I hadn’t gone today...  just the thought of entering that place – with all the sick and dying, smelling that godawful hospice smell – urine, baby powder, antiseptic and death mixing into a hellish scent that just reeked ‘people come here to die.’  I couldn’t do it. 

 

                I remembered standing in the hallway, looking towards my dad’s ward room, my pulse starting to race, and my breath coming in ragged gasps.  The hallway seemed to shimmer and stretch, becoming longer and longer – so that I might never reach the end of it... Like there was no escape.  And the smell!  I never wanted to smell that scent again, and I knew I would associate it with losing my dad for the rest of my life.

 

                Stage four pancreatic cancer.  He didn’t discover it until three months ago – far too late for chemo to do anything useful, but still, we tried.  Now medical bills were piling up, and we were going to lose the house, and it still might not pay off all the bills.  Dad was going to die, bankrupt – and I would be left to bury him, alone.  Needless to say, stress was my constant companion, and my nerves were so frayed I probably looked like a macramé carpet.

 

                I remember breathing raggedly, looking at that unnatural hallway, and feeling my gorge rising in my throat.  A haze of panic came over me, and I ran – I ran away from my dad and that awful hospice, and to my car, throwing up in the parking lot, spilling my guts all over the asphalt while trying to wipe the futile tears from my eyes.  For the first time in six months, I cried.  I sat in my car and I cried, banging my head on the steering wheel over and over, hoping the pain would distract me from my other troubles.

 

                I closed my eyes, and wondered if the day could get any worse.

 

                I took another pull of my beer.   It was one of those microbrews you could get that cost more than the more regular beers – and had more flavour and more alcohol to boot, but for whatever reason, at the moment it was almost tasteless.  I took another pull, and rested my head on the steering wheel.  When dad was gone, who would I have left?  A few friends in college, finishing their degrees – while I had to drop out to take care of dad – and no family to speak of, save a cousin in California I hadn’t seen since I was 16 years old.  I would be pretty much alone.   It was a frightening prospect, and I was scared.  Scared of being alone, yeah – but scared too of having no one. 

 

                Ever since mom left us when I was little, Dad and I had been constant companions – when he wasn’t working we went camping, to baseball games, and hunting or fishing.  Growing up was tough, after mom left – but Dad was able to fill in the gaps and I never felt unloved or alone... even when I left home in Chicago and went to college.  My dad was my best friend – and I was going to lose him no matter what I did, or didn’t do.  Again, for the second time in the same day, I felt tears come to my eyes.  It wasn’t fair!  It wasn’t fucking fair!  I sobbed until I couldn’t feel any more tears, and all that was left was ragged, crying, ugly gasps. 

 

                I couldn’t keep dealing with this...  It was too much.  As much as I tried, I didn’t know how I could move forward – or even keep existing.  All I could see ahead of me was endless stress, loss, and death – followed by days of paperwork, losing our home, and being alone.  What could I do?

 

                For a few moments I considered the pistol in the glove box, and turned away.  Too easy.  Dad would expect better of me.  Hell, I expected better of me.  I wouldn’t do it – it was the coward’s way out.  I guess it’s the hard way, then.  It’s always the fucking hard way.  I sighed, and leaned back – looking up at the stars in their infinite beauty.  They twinkled and sparkled, and I always loved watching them, even from back when I was a kid.  They inspired me.  They made me feel there was more out there than just what was here on Earth.  They gave me hope.  They reminded me of the stories dad used to tell me of the Bifrost bridge of the Aesir – the Norse gods of olden times, and of how the gods would use the stars to visit the lands of men – or Midgard as they called it.  Normally, looking at the stars always centered me and cheered me up...

 

                But this time, they didn’t.  I felt empty – drained utterly like a tube of toothpaste with every last bit of filling wrung out.  Empty in such a way that I felt I would never feel full again – like the energy I needed was simply leeched out of me as it came in. The stars seemed empty, forlorn of meaning... Just pricks of light on a meaningless background of blackness.  I thought again about the pistol in the glove box, and swore.  No!  Not now!  Not ever!  I won’t take the path to Hel.

 

 

                How had it come to this?  Why me?  I didn’t have an answer – but I did have more beer, and tonight I had no more fucks to give.  I finished my beer, and cracked open another one.  I’ll feel guilty later, I thought.  I just want today to end. 

 

 

 

*              *              *

 

 

I woke late in the night.  The car was still parked, and turned off – and the stars were still in the night sky.  My head was pounding, and I felt like I was going to throw up.  I crawled out of my car – a crappy 2014 Honda Accord coloured a light blue – and staggered a few steps away, and promptly threw up for the second time that day.  After spilling the contents of my stomach – a watery mix of sour beer smell mixed with stomach acid – I stood up and sighed with shame.

 

“Aaagh.”  I muttered quietly.  Dad didn’t have much time left, and here I was, wasting an entire day not visiting him because I had a panic attack and didn’t have the balls to face him.  I felt like a coward, and worse, I felt like I let him down.  I needed to be there for him – not out in the woods drinking and hiding from my life.

 

Still, It wouldn’t do to drive drunk – and I wasn’t sure if I was sober.  Better if I sleep it off in the car, and go to see him tomorrow morning.  I smiled sadly.  He would see that I looked like shit, and smelled like beer and vomit – but I bet he wouldn’t say a damn thing.  He was the best dad I could have ever had, and I was blessed that the gods saw fit to give him to me as a father. 

 

I crawled back into my seat, and looked with a measure of disgust at the pile of empty beer bottles on the floor of the passenger seat.  Shit, Jason, you can do better than this, I thought.  You should at least try.  I cleaned up the bottles of beer – although some of it had seeped into the floor mats and the car reeked of it now.  Peachy.  I hope I don’t get pulled over.   Once that annoying chore was done, I got comfortably seated, and leaned my seat back to get some rest.

 

This time, the stars looked less empty.  Huh?  Maybe my sad crying drunkenness had achieved something after all.  I leaned back for a while and watched the stars, my mind empty.  Were we alone in the universe?  I honestly didn’t think so... after all, we lived in a world where people could lift cars, or shoot lasers from their eyes – a world of superheroes and their villains.  It made sense that there would be some aliens thrown into the mix – and maybe some sorcerers or magic too.  I mean, Paragon University had a magical studies degree you could get in about six years – although I did wonder what kind of career that would get you.  Aliens just made sense.  Still, if aliens existed, the government has been able to keep them secret up until now, so I guess unless something weird happens, I’ll never know.

 

                Maybe I’ll buy another lottery ticket on the way to see dad.  Gods know it’s the only way I could afford a healer to save him.  Metahuman healers were rare – and those with the gift of healing usually sold their powers for extremely high prices to those who could afford the use of their services.  I didn’t know of anyone handing out free healing – and considering the whole of big pharma would move to kill or remove such a healer made the prospect unlikely.  No industry was going to let some do-gooder end a several hundred billion dollar industry because they were giving it away for free.  The healers that tried that path paid for it, too.   Juniper Steel had been driven off a road and drowned in her car.  Doc Gently had been found shot in the head in his hotel room in Vegas.  Lady Syren just disappeared and was never seen again.  Some people think she might be entombed in the foundations of the new football stadium in Paragon. 

 

                Either way, everyone knew – If you’re a healer, get with the program – or get dead, really quick.  That meant if you needed a healer, you needed boatloads of cash, and the only way I was going to get boatloads of cash, was by winning the lottery.  What the hell?  Dad’s going to be bankrupt soon – I’ll lose the house.  What does five bucks matter?  It was a pointless, hopeless shot in the dark – but hey?  Someone had to win, right?  If it wasn’t me, I wasn’t out any more than the price of an iced cappuccino.  I sighed, and tried to get to sleep.  Eventually, I drifted off, and sleep took me.

 

                When I woke, it was morning.  Rain pittered and pattered on my windshield, and the lightly overcast sky loomed not far overhead.  It was a bit warm, for April, but the weather wasn’t unexpected.  I hoped the roads would be good on the way back – it was a two hour drive from La Salle state forest to Orland Park, where my dad’s hospice was located.  I checked the clock on the dash – if I hurried, I could be at the hospice by ten – eleven if I got stuck in traffic.  I sighed, and tried to wipe the ugly taste of stale beer and vomit from my mouth, and realized that until I could get a shower and some food into me, it wouldn’t really matter anyway.  I buckled up, and began the long drive back to Chicago.

 

                As I drove, my mind kept wandering – thinking about my dad, worrying about my stress, and dwelling on my problems – when the air was filled with a loud whooshing noise, followed by an explosion in front of my car, the road being torn apart by the blast of whatever had just impacted with the asphalt of the country road.  I slammed on the brakes, trying to steer around the open pit that had ripped into the road a dozen yards ahead of me, and came to a stop just inches from the edge of the crater.  Something hissed and steamed from the inside of the crater, like it was really hot.

 

                “What the hell was that?”  I yelled to myself, and put the car in park, getting out to take a look.  Yeah, I know I should have known better – in a superhero world that could have been a superhero or villain in that crater, ready to blast anyone who surprised them – or it could have been a crashed killer satellite or something even worse.  What I didn’t expect to see was just a oddly shaped metal pod about three feet long, shaped like a narrow egg, scorched from re-entry and still steaming.  The strange egg was scorched along one side of its surface – by something that looked awfully like a laser burn – and the pod was covered in strange glyphs I couldn’t read or identify, although one or two glyphs looked oddly familiar.

 

                “Oh my gods!”  I muttered, looking over the crater at the strange pod.  Aliens.  Maybe it was finally aliens?   I jumped in fear as the pod door cracked open with a whoosh of escaping atmosphere and strange gasses.  It smelled a bit like methane.  Ewww.   As the pod door opened, a golden goo oozed out of the pod into a puddle on the ground – but strangely, it didn’t seep into the loose soil.

 

                *Help!  Help me!*

 

                I jumped...  I couldn’t tell if I heard a voice with my ears – or in my head.  All I knew is that someone down there was in trouble.  I scrambled down into the pit and approached the pod, trying to see if there was a creature inside – but all I could see was the puddle of viscous golden goop that had the consistency of really expensive honey. 

 

                “Who’s there?”  I called out.  “Is anyone there?”

 

                *Please!  Help me!  Inside!*

 

                I tried to look inside the pod, but couldn’t see anything clearly without touching the puddle of goop, so I gritted my teeth and stepped up to the edge of the goop, and tried to lean over the goop to see inside the pod...  Suddenly, without any warning, the goop itself moved – raising something like a pseudopod, and snaring me in its grasp.  It was strong, and although I struggled, I couldn’t stop it.  The goop moved and flowed up my torso, and into my mouth and nose, and down into me.  I choked and gagged, but couldn’t stop it – and soon I felt my vision go black.  It was sweet – like honey, but different... like nothing I had ever had.

 

                As I felt myself lose consciousness, all I heard was the voice in my head.  *I am so very sorry.* it said, and I felt the darkness overtake me.