3 Bass Ales and 2 shots of Cuervo
rounded out his fee at the bar. The month
was November. It was Thursday night, after a bleak
day full of cold drizzle.

The shoe trade that day
was slow. Or maybe it had picked up. He didn't know
and didn't care. He left the bar only because it would be wrong
to become truly drunk at work. He stepped outside the mall entrance
and smoked a cigarette. It tasted terrible, wrong. Huffing dry and hot,
toxic lint.

On TVs everywhere all over the world that night,
the ultimate surreal impossibility of their arrival
had finally come true
and was being broadcast.
Just like in the movies. Yeh.
The aliens had arrived. Undeniably.