Gangillo

            “You’re from Earth, right?”

            Gangillo was seated near the big window of the lounge overlooking the mutli-colored surface of Jupiter. He was drinking something the waitress had called beer. Despite his human form, it was a substance that was foreign to him, though not unappealing. He was on his second one when the girl walked up. He looked up from his mug at the woman who had appeared out of nowhere. He instantly noted how attractive she was. He liked women from all species, but Earth woman were especially desirable to him. This one was quite extraordinary.

            “That’s right,” he said with a smile. “How did you guess?”

            “The clothes fit what the Earthlings are wearing these days,” she said. “So does the hairstyle, but what really gave you away was the accent. I overheard you ordering your beer and it was a dead give away. You guys back on Earth just sound different from the people on Mars or even the people on their moons.”

            He smiled inwardly as he sipped his beer, taking some satisfaction. The form, the look, and the clothes had been easy, but the accent had been nothing short of a challenge. The range in the human voice was so limited compared to the Kanulean voices. It had been difficult to master is subtle nuances. The fact that he had nailed it forced a pat on the back from himself. He couldn’t wait to tell his tutors.

            “What part are you from?” she asked.

            She sat down without asking. He couldn’t be sure from Earth customs if it was rude or bold, but he didn’t care. He was going to ask her to join at the first opportunity anyway. She may not have been part of his original plans, but she was now.

            “I am from a little village just outside of Rome,” he said. “In Italy.”

            “Rome,” she said while motioning for the waitress to come over. “That was once the center of culture on Earth. Someone once said that to study Rome is to study the history of the world. We studied them and all the great cultures in college from the ancient Greeks all the way up to the United States. It was a great class.”

            The waitress came over and the young woman ordered a double shot of bourbon and a pitcher of beer. She also ordered a basket of fries with a side of pickles, also fried. She did all this while lighting a cigarette. Gangillo winced while choking on the thick smoke that suddenly drifted into his face. The diet of the Earthlings had been somewhat subdued in the early part of the twenty-first century due to the rising consciousness over health concerns. But the advancement of drugs and the stem cell research in the last part of the same century had all but wiped out disease and illness. The humans were practically impervious to death.

            That, of course, was their undoing. With the fear of death and disease gone, the humans saw it as their divine right to whatever they pleased whenever they wanted to do it. Immorality ruled. The new Rome, Gangillo thought.

            “Yes, I find the study of Rome quite interesting as well,” he said. He decided to shift gears. “You didn’t tell me your name.”

            “No,” she said twirling her black hair in her fingers. “I didn’t, did I?”

            The emotions of Earthlings, Gangillo had not quite mastered, but all species regardless of intellect, liked sex. The Kanuleans prided themselves in being able to bed any species any time anywhere. Gangillo was a master at the art of telling whether a woman was interested or not. The woman was flirting and he knew it.

            He glanced at his timepiece. He had more than enough time for some pleasure before the business of ensuring the destruction of the human race began. When the waitress came over with the beer, Gangillo poured her a large helping into a glass and smiled.

            The humans, of course, would see him as a monster for destroying their way of life, but Gangillo didn’t care. He lived a life dedicated to the betterment of the universe according to God’s greater plan. He had spanned many galaxies, taking many forms and enduring many hardships to see the undesirable elements of the universe eliminated. It was a long process. There were so many undeserving races, so many that took its existence and gifts for granted, but the work was very rewarding. Knowing that his work was making the universe a better place was enough and then some. Getting laid in the process was a just an added bonus.

He would remember to thank God for the fringe benefits.

“Well? Do I get to know your name?” he asked. “I will just bet that a pretty girl like you has an equally pretty name. I would love hear it.”

She sat there and drank and ate, but she said nothing. She smiled and licked her lips provocatively, but she said nothing.

“Is it a secret?” he asked.

“I don’t like to give out my name to strangers” she said. “A girl just can’t be too careful. There are a lot of unsavory types in the Solar System.”

Gangillo smiled. How true that was. Her idea of the universe was so small, limited to the understanding of a single solar system, that she had no idea what horrors the universe held. If she knew the totality of the universe as he did, she would understand and cringe at all the unsavory elements. He couldn’t be sure, though, if she would understand where the humans ranked as part of the problem and not the solution. He doubted she would.

But he and the Kanuleans were making it better with the elimination of one unsavory race after another. The humans were next.

“I commend you on your caution,” he said. “You are quite right. There are a lot of crazies in the universe. But I am not one of them. I am just a traveler.”

“Oh yeah?” she said. “Where are you headed?”

Outside the window, a passenger liner dropped out of light drive. One second it was just a blip of light, like a star that kept getting closer and closer, then it was this massive travel vessel, carrying thousands of passenger. It had been a tiny streak in the sky moving faster than any meteor could have ever flown. Now it began its slow descent into the dock.

Gangillo watched the maneuvers with fascination. These humans were so primitive compared to the rest of the universe it was hard to believe that they were predicted to be at the far reaches of the universe in just under a century. But they were. The projections of the Kanulean High Command were never off by very much. They would be in backyard of the entire universe long before they were socially ready. It was completely unacceptable.

“You still haven’t told me your name,” he said.

“And you haven’t told me yours, either,” she replied.

The game, in human terms, he thought was cat and mouse. He wasn’t sure if he was playing it right. He forged ahead.

“But I didn’t invite myself over to your table,” he said. “I was minding my own business and you decided that you would join me. So, as the phrase goes, you first.

She reached out and placed one on her hands on the back of his. The essential parts of his body began to tense up. He was glad that the High Command had recommended baggy pants.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said.

She paused playfully and continued stroking the back of his hand.

“Yeah?” he asked. He tried to ask casually, but he wasn’t sure if he succeeded or not.

            “You are cute as hell and I am, well, in the mood, if you know what I mean. There is a little place in the back where we can be alone, where we can get to know one another. And when we are done, you won’t even care what your name is, much less mine. What do you say?”

            “I say I can’t wait,” he said. “I say you won’t regret it.”

            “Oh, I know that,” she said. She stood up. “Follow me.”

            She moved away from him, her hips swaying back and forth as she maneuvered her way through the crowd. Her movements, like much of the rest of her, were incredible. He stood to follow her. He liked this game of cat and mouse. He thought he was very good at it.

            Now, he thought as he navigated his way through the crowd after her, it is time for the cat to devour the mouse.

Part III

            Gangillo was turned on by the seductive movements – the very well orchestrated movements – of the exciting you woman, but he was far from mesmerized. Unlike the weak human psyche, the Kanulean mind was capable of experiencing both great thought and attention to the most minor of details while the body was engaged in great physical pleasure, especially sexual pleasure. Gangillo was more than capable of providing great satisfaction to both this woman and himself while planning her demise as well. That, of course, is exactly what he was going to do.

            He checked his timepiece once more. The fleet was moving into position. Soon they would be expecting the codes he had procured from the last human female to fall to his unmatchable charms, the codes that would lower the defenses of the entire region. The governing body the Earthlings liked to call The Solar Alliance, would be defenseless. The current space station, Forward Point, would fall first. Next, Mars would be defeated and, finally, the hub of the solar system and the human race, Earth.

            There was nothing to be done that could stop it now. He only needed a few minutes of silence in some out of the way place and it would all be over. He would send the codes, seal the fate of the human race, and then get back to the business of enjoying this young woman while he had the time to do so.

            He was following through the crowd, through the maze of tables that let to wherever she was trying to take him. He paused to avoid running headlong into a young couple, a young couple who were intensely involved in one another and oblivious to their surroundings.

            “Are you coming?”

            The girl, his nameless girl, the girl he had been following was standing a few feet in front of him, stamping her foot impatiently. He couldn’t no longer tell whether he look was merely playful or something else. Her tone was a mystery as well.

            “We don’t have much time,” she said. “Let’s go.”

            He knew very well about the time. He grinned his best Earth grin and motioned to the young couple. As soon as they passed, he was on the move again through the maze, this time at double speed to make up for lost time. Once he was moving again, she turned and she was moving again, her amazing hips swaying back and forth with incredible rhythm and incredible speed. He had to really hustle to catch up to her. By the time he did catch up to her, they were heading down a long, dark corridor.

            He liked it. But, at the same time, he didn’t like it. He wasn’t scared of her to be sure, but he needed a place to transmit the codes. While the dark corridor was a perfect place, if he didn’t do it soon, before they had their rendezvous, there would be no rendezvous. He would have to kill her.

            The mission was first. That was the Kanulean way. Everything else was secondary.

            “Where are we going?” he asked.

            “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Just trust me. You will love where we are going and what we are going to do. It will be a memory that will last you a lifetime.”

            He followed on. Even in the darkness his acute Kanulean senses managed to allow him to check his timepiece once again. The numbers on the watch looked back at him accusingly. He had made an error in judgment when reading the watch. He didn’t have nearly as much time to deliver the codes as he had first thought. The Kanulean fleet would be moving into position soon. They would be visible. Having the codes to lower the humans’ defense shields just as they became visible was the key to everything. If the fleet didn’t have the codes, then Gangillo mission would be a failure.

 Any delay in the lowering of the shields and the element of surprise would be lost. Without the element of surprise, the battle would not be lost, but the prime objective would be. Victory was not the primary objective. Annihilation of the human race was. In the time it took the Kanuleans to break through the Earth defenses, it was not only possible, but likely that the humans would scatter like ants or bees whose nests had been disturbed. They would scatter and they would eventually regroup and survive.

That was unthinkable. He had to do something fast.

“How much farther?” he called to her.

“Just a minute or so,” she said.

The hall narrowed even more and, if possible became even darker. The fleet was approaching, the deadline drawing nearer. He had to act now if the mission was to be a success. The rendezvous with the girl was no longer possible. He had to take her out.

He could see back of her neck, supple and desirable, but, more importantly, fragile and unguarded. One sharp blow from his trained fist and the spinal chord would sever. She would drop to the floor in a heap. No signals from the brain would be transmitting. There would be nothing to tell the body to move, nothing to tell the diaphragm to move the lungs up and down. She would be dead the moment of the blow. It would only be a matter of her mind catching up to what her body already knew.

In the darkness, he closed in with the stealth of a cat. He tightened his fist and prepared to strike. The mission would be a success no matter what.

Part IV

“I see lights up ahead,” she called back to him. “We are almost there. Not too much longer and I can’t wait!”

            He pulled his fist down just a half-second before she turned to look at him over her shoulder. She looked at him with hungry, needy eyes. That was obvious but important at the moment. His element of surprise had been lost. The darkness of the hallway began to abate. He saw the lights she had been talking about. Where there were lights, there were often people. To kill her now might draw attention to himself, something he could not afford.

            “What are the lights?” he asked.

            The click of their heels on the tile floor kept time with the tick-tock of the clock in his head, the one that told him the fleet was drawing ever nearer, ever closer to the time when the shields needed to be lowered. He needed to transmit soon, maybe within a half-hour or so. He had to figure out a way to get away from this woman or incapacitate her long enough to transmit.

            “It is just a couple of bathrooms,” she said. She stopped, wheeled about and work her way into his face. Her hands ran down his chest, across his stomach, and continued to wander. “And beyond that are some private rooms, one of which, I have the key to. We can go there and be alone for as long as we want. How does that sound to you, Gangillo?”

            Her lips were on his now, soft and moist, her tongue, like her hands, darting and exploring. Gangillo’s whole body tensed up, every inch of him as hard as a rock. His toes curled up so tight in his shoes, he thought they might break.

            “It sounds very good,” he said, surprised at how raspy his words were coming out.

            His mind was suddenly lost in her, his senses lost in her smell, her touch, her taste. His focused waned ever so briefly and – for a split-second – he forgot the mission. It didn’t take long to recover. The click-click of their heels may have stopped, but the tick-tock in his head had not.

            Focus! You Kanulean idiot! Focus!

            Bathrooms! Privacy! Mission!

            As much as he didn’t want to, he pulled away from her. She looked at him with something between amazement and hurt. He feigned his best look of embarrassment and explained with his eyes looking away, down on the floor.

            “I…I have to use the bathroom,” he said. “I am sorry, but before anything can happen, I have to go use the bathroom.”

            It was not a total lie. This wonderful thing the humans called beer seemed to make its way through the body quite rapidly. A great pressure had built up in his groin area, a pressure that had nothing to do with his obsession for the girl.

            “Okay,” she said. She kissed him and let her hands wander once more. “But don’t you keep me waiting.”

            “Don’t worry,” he said. “I will just be a moment.”

            He was smiling as he turned away from her. The smile was not forced. He continued to smile as he made his way to the restroom. He did not feel good so much as he felt content. And why not? He was about to complete his mission. He was going to take this poor little girl for his own, reveling in her passions until his own satisfaction was achieved. All this would happen while the fleet was pulling in to begin the first stages of the eradication of the human race. But first, the business at hand.

            He stepped into the urinal and used it for what seemed like an eternity. He was both relieved and horrified at the stream of liquid that poured from this human body. He knew the human body needed water to survive. As the stream continued for what seemed to be an eternity, he began to wonder just how much water a human body could lose and still survive. He relieved a second time when the stream finally stopped.

            “I am waiting for you, Gangillo!” the girl’s voice called out from the other side of the door. “I knew you were going to be awesome the minute I laid eyes on you. Please hurry.”

            He stepped into the stall, closed the door, and unbuttoned his shirt. He reached up on his chest, past his left nipple and put his fingers on a small discoloration at the top of his ribs. It looked like a mole. That had been his superiors’ idea. No one would question a mole.

            He dug his fingernail into his and the slowly, without pain, the mole gave way. The outer skin of the mole was a fabrication of Kanulean science, designed to hide the content beneath it, which, of course, was a tiny, but very effective recorder. It was the device holding the codes.

            He pulled away the skin and held the tiny device on one finger while, with his free hand, he took a button from his shirt. It was not just any button, but the button. He turned the button over and carefully inserted the recorder into the back of the button. Then he inserted the button into his ear. The transmitter was in place.

            “Gangillo?” the girl called out. God, was she horny or what?  “Did you hear me? I am waiting for you.”

            “I’ll be right there, dear,” he said. “It is taking a little longer than I expected. But just give me a minute and I will give you all you want and then some.”

            From the other side of the door he giggle was giddy. The smile that split his head in half was once again genuine. He sat down on the commode, shoved the transmitter into his ear and closed his eyes.            

            It would soon be over. He couldn’t wait.

Please check out my book on Amazon for more stories by Tim Keen

The Dance

Fantasy surrounds reality and rules the night

Reality starts at day, spread its wings and takes to flight

This dance they have shared since the dawn of time

This dance they have shared in this mind of mine

Peel back these layers, take a peek, and share this writer’s plight

Tim Keen

1-1-2012

I was around eleven or so when I finally realized that a fat man in a red suit traveling around the world on sleigh the size of a pickup truck pulled by a team of animals delivering toys to every kid in the world in one night made no more sense than that same fat man being able to shimmy down a skinny chimney carrying a bag of toys while a fire burned underneath him. Or how he managed to get into locked houses that had no chimneys without waking up the whole house. At some point it no longer made any sense at all. I could no longer reconcile what I was being told by my parents with the science and logic that was right there in front of my eyes.

So, when I was eleven, Santa died the first time for me. It was a sad death, triggering the beginning of a higher understanding of life for me. It was the beginning of the next phase of my life where I would no longer view gifts as magical things that were just given without cost and begin to understand that all the world’s problems would  never be solved on a single night in December by a fat man in a red suit in a sleigh the size of a pickup truck pulled by a team of reindeer. The problems of the real world are much harder than that.

In short when Santa Claus died, so did innocence.

On October 3rd, 1985, Santa Claus was reborn for me in the birth of my son. If you are parents and believe in passing along Santa Claus to your kids then you know the joy I experienced in putting the milk and cookies on the counter or the coffee table the night before. You know the joy of seeing your kids eyes light up in wonder as a tree that was devoid of gifts the night before suddenly was packed with their every wish come true. It is the greatest feeling I have ever known, the most joy I have ever felt as a parent. For twenty-six magnificent Christmas mornings, I was Santa Claus.

On the night of this Christmas Day, 2011, my daughter stood in our kitchen and proclaimed to us that she believed that her mother and I were Santa Claus. She thought we put out the cookies and milk and then ate them when she went to bed.

I told my eleven year old daughter the truth. Her mother and I were indeed Santa Claus.

Upon hearing the news my tender-hearted daughter cried. I held her and part of me ached right along with her, but another part of me ached for me. My daughter has lost Santa Claus for a little while, as long as it takes for her to mature, get married, and have kids. In her kids, Santa will be reborn.

My daughter is the youngest and the last I will ever have. For me, Santa Claus is gone forever.

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas.

Tim

Gangillo

            “You’re from Earth, right?”

            Gangillo was seated near the big window of the lounge overlooking the mutli-colored surface of Jupiter. He was drinking something the waitress had called beer. Despite his human form, it was a substance that was foreign to him, though not unappealing. He was on his second one when the girl walked up. He looked up from his mug at the woman who had appeared out of nowhere. He instantly noted how attractive she was. He liked women from all species, but Earth woman were especially desirable to him. This one was quite extraordinary.

            “That’s right,” he said with a smile. “How did you guess?”

            “The clothes fit what the Earthlings are wearing these days,” she said. “So does the hairstyle, but what really gave you away was the accent. I overheard you ordering your beer and it was a dead give away. You guys back on Earth just sound different from the people on Mars or even the people on their moons.”

            He smiled inwardly as he sipped his beer, taking some satisfaction. The form, the look, and the clothes had been easy, but the accent had been nothing short of a challenge. The range in the human voice was so limited compared to the Kanulean voices. It had been difficult to master is subtle nuances. The fact that he had nailed it forced a pat on the back from himself. He couldn’t wait to tell his tutors.

            “What part are you from?” she asked.

            She sat down without asking. He couldn’t be sure from Earth customs if it was rude or bold, but he didn’t care. He was going to ask her to join at the first opportunity anyway. She may not have been part of his original plans, but she was now.

            “I am from a little village just outside of Rome,” he said. “In Italy.”

            “Rome,” she said while motioning for the waitress to come over. “That was once the center of culture on Earth. Someone once said that to study Rome is to study the history of the world. We studied them and all the great cultures in college from the ancient Greeks all the way up to the United States. It was a great class.”

            The waitress came over and the young woman ordered a double shot of bourbon and a pitcher of beer. She also ordered a basket of fries with a side of pickles, also fried. She did all this while lighting a cigarette. Gangillo winced while choking on the thick smoke that suddenly drifted into his face. The diet of the Earthlings had been somewhat subdued in the early part of the twenty-first century due to the rising consciousness over health concerns. But the advancement of drugs and the stem cell research in the last part of the same century had all but wiped out disease and illness. The humans were practically impervious to death.

            That, of course, was their undoing. With the fear of death and disease gone, the humans saw it as their divine right to whatever they pleased whenever they wanted to do it. Immorality ruled. The new Rome, Gangillo thought.

            “Yes, I find the study of Rome quite interesting as well,” he said. He decided to shift gears. “You didn’t tell me your name.”

            “No,” she said twirling her black hair in her fingers. “I didn’t, did I?”

            The emotions of Earthlings, Gangillo had not quite mastered, but all species regardless of intellect, liked sex. The Kanuleans prided themselves in being able to bed any species any time anywhere. Gangillo was a master at the art of telling whether a woman was interested or not. The woman was flirting and he knew it.

            He glanced at his timepiece. He had more than enough time for some pleasure before the business of ensuring the destruction of the human race began. When the waitress came over with the beer, Gangillo poured her a large helping into a glass and smiled.

            The humans, of course, would see him as a monster for destroying their way of life, but Gangillo didn’t care. He lived a life dedicated to the betterment of the universe according to God’s greater plan. He had spanned many galaxies, taking many forms and enduring many hardships to see the undesirable elements of the universe eliminated. It was a long process. There were so many undeserving races, so many that took its existence and gifts for granted, but the work was very rewarding. Knowing that his work was making the universe a better place was enough and then some. Getting laid in the process was a just an added bonus.

He would remember to thank God for the fringe benefits.

“Well? Do I get to know your name?” he asked. “I will just bet that a pretty girl like you has an equally pretty name. I would love hear it.”

She sat there and drank and ate, but she said nothing. She smiled and licked her lips provocatively, but she said nothing.

“Is it a secret?” he asked.

“I don’t like to give out my name to strangers” she said. “A girl just can’t be too careful. There are a lot of unsavory types in the Solar System.”

Gangillo smiled. How true that was. Her idea of the universe was so small, limited to the understanding of a single solar system, that she had no idea what horrors the universe held. If she knew the totality of the universe as he did, she would understand and cringe at all the unsavory elements. He couldn’t be sure, though, if she would understand where the humans ranked as part of the problem and not the solution. He doubted she would.

But he and the Kanuleans were making it better with the elimination of one unsavory race after another. The humans were next.

“I commend you on your caution,” he said. “You are quite right. There are a lot of crazies in the universe. But I am not one of them. I am just a traveler.”

“Oh yeah?” she said. “Where are you headed?”

Outside the window, a passenger liner dropped out of light drive. One second it was just a blip of light, like a star that kept getting closer and closer, then it was this massive travel vessel, carrying thousands of passenger. It had been a tiny streak in the sky moving faster than any meteor could have ever flown. Now it began its slow descent into the dock.

Gangillo watched the maneuvers with fascination. These humans were so primitive compared to the rest of the universe it was hard to believe that they were predicted to be at the far reaches of the universe in just under a century. But they were. The projections of the Kanulean High Command were never off by very much. They would be in backyard of the entire universe long before they were socially ready. It was completely unacceptable.

“You still haven’t told me your name,” he said.

“And you haven’t told me yours, either,” she replied.

The game, in human terms, he thought was cat and mouse. He wasn’t sure if he was playing it right. He forged ahead.

“But I didn’t invite myself over to your table,” he said. “I was minding my own business and you decided that you would join me. So, as the phrase goes, you first.

She reached out and placed one on her hands on the back of his. The essential parts of his body began to tense up. He was glad that the High Command had recommended baggy pants.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said.

She paused playfully and continued stroking the back of his hand.

“Yeah?” he asked. He tried to ask casually, but he wasn’t sure if he succeeded or not.

            “You are cute as hell and I am, well, in the mood, if you know what I mean. There is a little place in the back where we can be alone, where we can get to know one another. And when we are done, you won’t even care what your name is, much less mine. What do you say?”

            “I say I can’t wait,” he said. “I say you won’t regret it.”

            “Oh, I know that,” she said. She stood up. “Follow me.”

            She moved away from him, her hips swaying back and forth as she maneuvered her way through the crowd. Her movements, like much of the rest of her, were incredible. He stood to follow her. He liked this game of cat and mouse. He thought he was very good at it.

            Now, he thought as he navigated his way through the crowd after her, it is time for the cat to devour the mouse.

Part III

            Gangillo was turned on by the seductive movements – the very well orchestrated movements – of the exciting you woman, but he was far from mesmerized. Unlike the weak human psyche, the Kanulean mind was capable of experiencing both great thought and attention to the most minor of details while the body was engaged in great physical pleasure, especially sexual pleasure. Gangillo was more than capable of providing great satisfaction to both this woman and himself while planning her demise as well. That, of course, is exactly what he was going to do.

            He checked his timepiece once more. The fleet was moving into position. Soon they would be expecting the codes he had procured from the last human female to fall to his unmatchable charms, the codes that would lower the defenses of the entire region. The governing body the Earthlings liked to call The Solar Alliance, would be defenseless. The current space station, Forward Point, would fall first. Next, Mars would be defeated and, finally, the hub of the solar system and the human race, Earth.

            There was nothing to be done that could stop it now. He only needed a few minutes of silence in some out of the way place and it would all be over. He would send the codes, seal the fate of the human race, and then get back to the business of enjoying this young woman while he had the time to do so.

            He was following through the crowd, through the maze of tables that let to wherever she was trying to take him. He paused to avoid running headlong into a young couple, a young couple who were intensely involved in one another and oblivious to their surroundings.

            “Are you coming?”

            The girl, his nameless girl, the girl he had been following was standing a few feet in front of him, stamping her foot impatiently. He couldn’t no longer tell whether he look was merely playful or something else. Her tone was a mystery as well.

            “We don’t have much time,” she said. “Let’s go.”

            He knew very well about the time. He grinned his best Earth grin and motioned to the young couple. As soon as they passed, he was on the move again through the maze, this time at double speed to make up for lost time. Once he was moving again, she turned and she was moving again, her amazing hips swaying back and forth with incredible rhythm and incredible speed. He had to really hustle to catch up to her. By the time he did catch up to her, they were heading down a long, dark corridor.

            He liked it. But, at the same time, he didn’t like it. He wasn’t scared of her to be sure, but he needed a place to transmit the codes. While the dark corridor was a perfect place, if he didn’t do it soon, before they had their rendezvous, there would be no rendezvous. He would have to kill her.

            The mission was first. That was the Kanulean way. Everything else was secondary.

            “Where are we going?” he asked.

            “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Just trust me. You will love where we are going and what we are going to do. It will be a memory that will last you a lifetime.”

            He followed on. Even in the darkness his acute Kanulean senses managed to allow him to check his timepiece once again. The numbers on the watch looked back at him accusingly. He had made an error in judgment when reading the watch. He didn’t have nearly as much time to deliver the codes as he had first thought. The Kanulean fleet would be moving into position soon. They would be visible. Having the codes to lower the humans’ defense shields just as they became visible was the key to everything. If the fleet didn’t have the codes, then Gangillo mission would be a failure.

 Any delay in the lowering of the shields and the element of surprise would be lost. Without the element of surprise, the battle would not be lost, but the prime objective would be. Victory was not the primary objective. Annihilation of the human race was. In the time it took the Kanuleans to break through the Earth defenses, it was not only possible, but likely that the humans would scatter like ants or bees whose nests had been disturbed. They would scatter and they would eventually regroup and survive.

That was unthinkable. He had to do something fast.

“How much farther?” he called to her.

“Just a minute or so,” she said.

The hall narrowed even more and, if possible became even darker. The fleet was approaching, the deadline drawing nearer. He had to act now if the mission was to be a success. The rendezvous with the girl was no longer possible. He had to take her out.

He could see back of her neck, supple and desirable, but, more importantly, fragile and unguarded. One sharp blow from his trained fist and the spinal chord would sever. She would drop to the floor in a heap. No signals from the brain would be transmitting. There would be nothing to tell the body to move, nothing to tell the diaphragm to move the lungs up and down. She would be dead the moment of the blow. It would only be a matter of her mind catching up to what her body already knew.

In the darkness, he closed in with the stealth of a cat. He tightened his fist and prepared to strike. The mission would be a success no matter what.

Please check out my book on Amazon for more stories by Tim Keen

Tiny little drops

From puffy red orbs

There is only pain, no wipers here

Tiny little drops wash away the fear

Tim Keen

11-28-11

I have other little stories waiting for you on Amazon. I hope you will enjoy them.

Another Thunderbolt. I had no idea that I was going to write or post this evening. Gangillo is not dead to be sure, but I wanted to share this with you.

Gangillo

            “You’re from Earth, right?”

            Gangillo was seated near the big window of the lounge overlooking the mutli-colored surface of Jupiter. He was drinking something the waitress had called beer. Despite his human form, it was a substance that was foreign to him, though not unappealing. He was on his second one when the girl walked up. He looked up from his mug at the woman who had appeared out of nowhere. He instantly noted how attractive she was. He liked women from all species, but Earth woman were especially desirable to him. This one was quite extraordinary.

            “That’s right,” he said with a smile. “How did you guess?”

            “The clothes fit what the Earthlings are wearing these days,” she said. “So does the hairstyle, but what really gave you away was the accent. I overheard you ordering your beer and it was a dead give away. You guys back on Earth just sound different from the people on Mars or even the people on their moons.”

            He smiled inwardly as he sipped his beer, taking some satisfaction. The form, the look, and the clothes had been easy, but the accent had been nothing short of a challenge. The range in the human voice was so limited compared to the Kanulean voices. It had been difficult to master is subtle nuances. The fact that he had nailed it forced a pat on the back from himself. He couldn’t wait to tell his tutors.

            “What part are you from?” she asked.

            She sat down without asking. He couldn’t be sure from Earth customs if it was rude or bold, but he didn’t care. He was going to ask her to join at the first opportunity anyway. She may not have been part of his original plans, but she was now.

            “I am from a little village just outside of Rome,” he said. “In Italy.”

            “Rome,” she said while motioning for the waitress to come over. “That was once the center of culture on Earth. Someone once said that to study Rome is to study the history of the world. We studied them and all the great cultures in college from the ancient Greeks all the way up to the United States. It was a great class.”

            The waitress came over and the young woman ordered a double shot of bourbon and a pitcher of beer. She also ordered a basket of fries with a side of pickles, also fried. She did all this while lighting a cigarette. Gangillo winced while choking on the thick smoke that suddenly drifted into his face. The diet of the Earthlings had been somewhat subdued in the early part of the twenty-first century due to the rising consciousness over health concerns. But the advancement of drugs and the stem cell research in the last part of the same century had all but wiped out disease and illness. The humans were practically impervious to death.

            That, of course, was their undoing. With the fear of death and disease gone, the humans saw it as their divine right to whatever they pleased whenever they wanted to do it. Immorality ruled. The new Rome, Gangillo thought.

            “Yes, I find the study of Rome quite interesting as well,” he said. He decided to shift gears. “You didn’t tell me your name.”

            “No,” she said twirling her black hair in her fingers. “I didn’t, did I?”

            The emotions of Earthlings, Gangillo had not quite mastered, but all species regardless of intellect, liked sex. The Kanuleans prided themselves in being able to bed any species any time anywhere. Gangillo was a master at the art of telling whether a woman was interested or not. The woman was flirting and he knew it.

            He glanced at his timepiece. He had more than enough time for some pleasure before the business of ensuring the destruction of the human race began. When the waitress came over with the beer, Gangillo poured her a large helping into a glass and smiled.

PART II

            The humans, of course, would see him as a monster for destroying their way of life, but Gangillo didn’t care. He lived a life dedicated to the betterment of the universe according to God’s greater plan. He had spanned many galaxies, taking many forms and enduring many hardships to see the undesirable elements of the universe eliminated. It was a long process. There were so many undeserving races, so many that took its existence and gifts for granted, but the work was very rewarding. Knowing that his work was making the universe a better place was enough and then some. Getting laid in the process was a just an added bonus.

He would remember to thank God for the fringe benefits.

“Well? Do I get to know your name?” he asked. “I will just bet that a pretty girl like you has an equally pretty name. I would love hear it.”

She sat there and drank and ate, but she said nothing. She smiled and licked her lips provocatively, but she said nothing.

“Is it a secret?” he asked.

“I don’t like to give out my name to strangers” she said. “A girl just can’t be too careful. There are a lot of unsavory types in the Solar System.”

Gangillo smiled. How true that was. Her idea of the universe was so small, limited to the understanding of a single solar system, that she had no idea what horrors the universe held. If she knew the totality of the universe as he did, she would understand and cringe at all the unsavory elements. He couldn’t be sure, though, if she would understand where the humans ranked as part of the problem and not the solution. He doubted she would.

But he and the Kanuleans were making it better with the elimination of one unsavory race after another. The humans were next.

“I commend you on your caution,” he said. “You are quite right. There are a lot of crazies in the universe. But I am not one of them. I am just a traveler.”

“Oh yeah?” she said. “Where are you headed?”

Outside the window, a passenger liner dropped out of light drive. One second it was just a blip of light, like a star that kept getting closer and closer, then it was this massive travel vessel, carrying thousands of passenger. It had been a tiny streak in the sky moving faster than any meteor could have ever flown. Now it began its slow descent into the dock.

Gangillo watched the maneuvers with fascination. These humans were so primitive compared to the rest of the universe it was hard to believe that they were predicted to be at the far reaches of the universe in just under a century. But they were. The projections of the Kanulean High Command were never off by very much. They would be in backyard of the entire universe long before they were socially ready. It was completely unacceptable.

“You still haven’t told me your name,” he said.

“And you haven’t told me yours, either,” she replied.

The game, in human terms, he thought was cat and mouse. He wasn’t sure if he was playing it right. He forged ahead.

“But I didn’t invite myself over to your table,” he said. “I was minding my own business and you decided that you would join me. So, as the phrase goes, you first.

She reached out and placed one on her hands on the back of his. The essential parts of his body began to tense up. He was glad that the High Command had recommended baggy pants.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said.

She paused playfully and continued stroking the back of his hand.

“Yeah?” he asked. He tried to ask casually, but he wasn’t sure if he succeeded or not.

            “You are cute as hell and I am, well, in the mood, if you know what I mean. There is a little place in the back where we can be alone, where we can get to know one another. And when we are done, you won’t even care what your name is, much less mine. What do you say?”

            “I say I can’t wait,” he said. “I say you won’t regret it.”

            “Oh, I know that,” she said. She stood up. “Follow me.”

            She moved away from him, her hips swaying back and forth as she maneuvered her way through the crowd. Her movements, like much of the rest of her, were incredible. He stood to follow her. He liked this game of cat and mouse. He thought he was very good at it.

            Now, he thought as he navigated his way through the crowd after her, it is time for the cat to devour the mouse.

Please check out my book on Amazon for more stories by Tim Keen

Thanks,

Tim Keen

Gangillo

            “You’re from Earth, right?”

            Gangillo was seated near the big window of the lounge overlooking the mutli-colored surface of Jupiter. He was drinking something the waitress had called beer. Despite his human form, it was a substance that was foreign to him, though not unappealing. He was on his second one when the girl walked up. He looked up from his mug at the woman who had appeared out of nowhere. He instantly noted how attractive she was. He liked women from all species, but Earth woman were especially desirable to him. This one was quite extraordinary.

            “That’s right,” he said with a smile. “How did you guess?”

            “The clothes fit what the Earthlings are wearing these days,” she said. “So does the hairstyle, but what really gave you away was the accent. I overheard you ordering your beer and it was a dead give away. You guys back on Earth just sound different from the people on Mars or even the people on their moons.”

            He smiled inwardly as he sipped his beer, taking some satisfaction. The form, the look, and the clothes had been easy, but the accent had been nothing short of a challenge. The range in the human voice was so limited compared to the Kanulean voices. It had been difficult to master is subtle nuances. The fact that he had nailed it forced a pat on the back from himself. He couldn’t wait to tell his tutors.

            “What part are you from?” she asked.

            She sat down without asking. He couldn’t be sure from Earth customs if it was rude or bold, but he didn’t care. He was going to ask her to join at the first opportunity anyway. She may not have been part of his original plans, but she was now.

            “I am from a little village just outside of Rome,” he said. “In Italy.”

            “Rome,” she said while motioning for the waitress to come over. “That was once the center of culture on Earth. Someone once said that to study Rome is to study the history of the world. We studied them and all the great cultures in college from the ancient Greeks all the way up to the United States. It was a great class.”

            The waitress came over and the young woman ordered a double shot of bourbon and a pitcher of beer. She also ordered a basket of fries with a side of pickles, also fried. She did all this while lighting a cigarette. Gangillo winced while choking on the thick smoke that suddenly drifted into his face. The diet of the Earthlings had been somewhat subdued in the early part of the twenty-first century due to the rising consciousness over health concerns. But the advancement of drugs and the stem cell research in the last part of the same century had all but wiped out disease and illness. The humans were practically impervious to death.

            That, of course, was their undoing. With the fear of death and disease gone, the humans saw it as their divine right to whatever they pleased whenever they wanted to do it. Immorality ruled. The new Rome, Gangillo thought.

            “Yes, I find the study of Rome quite interesting as well,” he said. He decided to shift gears. “You didn’t tell me your name.”

            “No,” she said twirling her black hair in her fingers. “I didn’t, did I?”

            The emotions of Earthlings, Gangillo had not quite mastered, but all species regardless of intellect, liked sex. The Kanuleans prided themselves in being able to bed any species any time anywhere. Gangillo was a master at the art of telling whether a woman was interested or not. The woman was flirting and he knew it.

            He glanced at his timepiece. He had more than enough time for some pleasure before the business of ensuring the destruction of the human race began. When the waitress came over with the beer, Gangillo poured her a large helping into a glass and smiled.

What  Are You Afraid Of?

I lie curled up in my bed

Against the dark of the night

Tight beneath my covers

I shiver from my fright

And though it hear it, I won’t look

Afraid of what I might find

It scratches at my door

The fear that haunts my mind

Tim Keen

8-17-11

Please check out my book on Amazon.

Tim

John Boy

            I grew up just a little different than most people.

            Now, when I say that, I must also qualify that statement, because the people who know me best would say something completely different and, from their perspective, they would be right.

            I grew up on a farm in a farming community where everyone had two jobs; the job they went off to in the factories, the lumber companies, the banks, and the retail stores and the job they woke up to and went to bed with. This job was farm and family. In my world – a very good world to be a kid in – you could not separate the two. I cut my working teeth in hayfields and tobacco patches and in barns. I was making money working from on the farm from the time I was thirteen.

            As far as the other aspects of my life, they were quite normal. I went to school. I played sports. I fished and I hunted. We played backyard football, pitched horseshoes, and, in the winter, played card games until we couldn’t stand to play them any more. I did all these things and, everyone I grew up with, did these things as well. I dreamed of girls, sneaked around and chewed tobacco, smoked cigarettes and did things on a motorcycle that no one would have approved of. Just like everyone else did.

            So when I say I grew up different than everyone else, what I really mean to say is that I grew up different on the inside. For, on the inside, in the place no one could see, in the place that fueled the fire that drove the body, soul, and mind was the writer.

            In my small farming, hard working community, full of people I continue to love and admire, someone who likes to write is someone that they just don’t understand. It is something that they can not comprehend. These are people who make their living, literally, by the sweat of the brow. Hours upon hours of backbreaking, body depleting labor went into the continued assurance of their existence. They worked hard all day, watched television at night, attended church on Sunday and went to singings and revivals in the summer. It is a steady diet of work, religion, and tame entertainment. This was the life of my family and community.

            Amidst all this comes a kid who, from the time he was seven, wrote stories. Here’s a kid who has been touched by the writing gods, who can see a blank pad of paper and pen and feel his heart burn for a desk and a quiet moment where he can be alone with his thoughts. Here is a kid that had a gift that no one around him understood. I was like a sculpture being born to family of loggers or an artists being born to a family of housepainters. No one knew what to say to me or do with me.

I learned early on to just not say anything about what I did. There wasn’t any point to it. No one understood what was going through my mind. No one who is not a writer can understand what was going through my mind and, in a community of way less than five hundred people, it is not like there was a workshop or a seminar close by to discuss my ideas and feelings with. So, I just stayed silent. I read my books and wrote my stories and I kept it myself not out of fear but out of practicality. It didn’t matter whether I wanted to talk about it or not talk about it. Nobody would understand if I did talk about it. I was talking the Greek language in Italy.

Then, out of the blue, when I was preteen (between eight and twelve or so) there was John Boy. Like a Godsend, there was this young man, living in a small, rural, farming, hardworking southern community who not only wanted to be a writer but was embraced by his family as a writer. They not only went to church, prayed at the dinner table and busted their asses from dawn till dusk to make ends meet, but they also had time to encourage their writer son. I was drawn in immediately.

One episode had Santa bringing a Big Chief writing tablet to John Boy for Christmas (Santa heard you wanted to be a writer, John Walton said).

One episode had John Boy submitting a novel only to find that they didn’t accept handwritten work (he had to find and learn how to use a typewriter).

Another episode had him struggling to rewrite a novel after it had been burned up in a fire (It is easy the first time around, but it is hard to duplicate inspiration).

My favorite episode was one in which he had finally made it and his grandfather was looking a word John Boy had used to describe him. Grandpa Walton had to go through several words and interpretations to finally understand original word John Boy had used. When he finally got to the last word – and the meaning as he understood it – he spent the rest of the episode mad. (Reference my blog “It’s You”).

These things – and so many more on the show – were things that I was either feeling or would later feel as a writer that no one was talking about when I was a child. I can’t overstate this enough. No one can understand an artist but an artist. No one can understand a writer but a writer and here was this guy, through the magic of television, talking about things that no one else I knew was talking about, things that no one else got but me and others like me.

It has been a long time since The Waltons was on. I still watch from time to time in reruns. While it remained a very good show thanks to great writer and acting, for my taste, it never was the same after John Boy left the show. I don’t think it was for anyone. I think for most the loss of Richard Thomas and his ability as an actor left a void that couldn’t be filled.

For me, the fact that John Boy was no longer on the show was a bit more personal.

Who have you identified with either on television or the movies or in books?

Thanks for reading.

8-10-11

A Lesson From Grandpa

            I stood there in the hot September sun of 1982. I was lean back then, lean from my youth and also from the hard farm work that I had done my whole life. I had hauled hay, cut tobacco, hauled manure, shoveled corn, dug ditches, and cut more firewood than most people ever see. I was small at first glance, no more than a hundred and forty-five pounds, but I was also strong for my size and athletic. I could not only keep up with the big boys, but outdo the lazier ones. I had worked bigger, stronger men into the ground and was very proud of that fact.

            At sixteen, everything was a competition to me. Being small in stature, I was in a constant state of having to prove myself and, every time I got the chance, I took it. Sometimes it was on a backyard football field, playing tackle with the big boys and hanging right in. Other times it was the rough and tumble basketball world of Barnes schoolhouse, where you called your own fouls…or you didn’t. Heavy contact was the norm in those games and blood was not out of question ever. At times it was volleyball, horseshoes. Any reason to compete and win, I was there.

            On this hot and sunny day the source of the competition was a long stretch of dark tobacco that was standing out in front of me. At the front of the row was me, with a tobacco knife in hand, bandana wrapped around my head to keep the sweat out and my grandfather with the same weapons. When the cutting was done, four rows and fifty yards of tobacco would be on the ground, ready for the spikes. It was four rows and fifty yards – two rows for him and two rows for me – and I was going to get there first.

            The one thing you have to understand about his whole set up is this. It wasn’t a competition to my grandfather. It was just another field of tobacco to him, just another hot day in a farmer’s life. But when I cut my eyes around at him, I still remember feeling bold and confident. He was sixty-two years old, semi-retired and not nearly the man he used to be. There was no way he was getting there first. The look on my face was one of smugness. No, it wasn’t a competition to Grandpa. It wasn’t, that is, until he saw the cocky smirk on his grandson’s face. It had been 19 years since that happened and I will never forget the look that took over his face. It had just become a competition.

            Well, I can tell you that the competition was just fine with me. I certainly didn’t care who was on the other side of the victory. Grandpa was no slouch in the field, but he was sixty-two and couldn’t handle me.

            Well, I was very good at cutting tobacco, a fact that just wasn’t in dispute. I could fly through a tobacco patch with the grace of a mower and I did this time as well. There were six or eight of us cutting tobacco that day and I was faster than nearly all of them and, at the other end of the row, all the other cutters were amazed. When we were all standing around the water cooler, soaking up the shade, they couldn’t stop talking about it.

            Oh, they were talking about me. No, sir, they most certainly were not. They were talking about the speed of a sixty-two year old man. You see, I didn’t beat Grandpa to the end of the row. Hell, I didn’t even come close to beating him. As a matter of fact as I plowed to the end of the row far ahead of everyone else that day, Grandpa had not only finished out his row, but was coming back down mine. He was finishing up my row.

            At the end of the row, there was no look of satisfaction on his face, no aura of victory pervaded him. He acted as if nothing had happened between us. It was just another row of tobacco to him, another thirty minutes worth of work in a lifetime of hard work.

            To his grandson, it was something far more valuable. It was a lesson in humility that I will never forget. At sixty-two years old, he put me in my place. Now, he could have done it with a single word. Even though this narrative may not have left you with that impression, my respect for him was such that a single phrase of “knock it off” or “wipe that smirk off your face” would have been enough. I would have done so instantly and not had a single word of backtalk for him. But Grandpa chose a much more effective way to knock that smirk off my face. He did it in such a way has never left and never will.

            I suspect that was his intention all along.

            I want to thank you all for letting me share this with you and please forgive me if there are any typos or misspellings. I have never told this story to anyone and I wanted you to read after one telling with the emotions raw and just the way I remembered it. Frank M. Pope had as much to do with changing the stupid boy that I was into the man I became as any other person on the face of the planet. I did not want to edit or cheapen this telling in any way.

            And tonight, after nearly ninety-one years on this earth, after a lifetime of truly serving God and his family, he rests.

Frank Pope 1920-2011 Age 90.

Rest in Peace Grandpa