ANOTHER HOT SUMMER NIGHT

This hot summer night glides soundlessly toward the dawn, like the moonlit reflection of some great mythical bird over a silvery pond. Essentially, that’s all life is; no one will remember you beyond the moment when the bird disappears from view. The record of your time spent here will dissolve up into its wings with a ruffled whisper in order to create room for the next versions of yourself, already born or awaiting favorable circumstances.
I lie on my back in my room with my fingers clasped behind my head, bathed in a triangle of moonlight, my eyes tracing the cracks in the ceiling like a cartographer. My bed is an old Army surplus blanket barely covering a worn mattress on the floor. An old Rolling Stones song keeps me company on the radio.
My mind is overflowing with unanswerable riddles and pointless memories; things have occurred, things I have no control over, things I must remember, but cannot remember why. Where have all my good moods gone, and what happened to the invincible young man I thought I knew so well? Where is love, where are my friends? I wait for an answer, but receive no reply. Something has changed. My life seems to have left town in a hurry, leaving no forwarding address. I don’t sleep much anymore; I spend my nights walking the streets, scribbling the present tense into tattered notebooks crammed full of photographs and scraps of moments gone forever, and reading and rereading the dog-eared volumes that fill my modest domicile. The documentation of my time in this world lines the hallway, explodes out of the closets, spills on to the floor, suffocates the shelves, and forcibly rams itself down the throat of every available inch of space in the room. Memories. Just paper and ink.
After fixing a sandwich, I cross the room to a horizontal door supported by a pair of sawhorses which doubles as my desk. I try to write something now to document my frustration, but nothing comes to mind, so I pace the room again, studying the nicks in the woodwork and worn spots in the carpet, evidence of human occupation. I stand at my living room window, which overlooks a cheap tavern bordered by a gravel parking lot; I’ve never been inside, but it’s rumored to be the biggest crack bar in town. I could probably hit it with a rock from here.
I watched a woman get stabbed in the parking lot last summer; faster than you could say "William Shatner", my neighbors whipped out lawn furniture, and proceeded to bask in the glow of the police strobe lights, organizing a watch schedule so they wouldn’t miss a single detail.
Through the open window I can hear the sound of passing traffic, buzzing insects, and the cheap clatter of trash cans being tossed. A shimmering green light emanates from the dumpster behind the bar; extraterrestrials, eating the beer cans. They tear the aluminum open, and lap up the leftover alcohol for nutrition. This kind of thing has been in the news ever since they arrived a few years ago, and I feel like Marlon Perkins watching them graze on our waste. So much for humanity's dream of encountering higher intelligence and traveling across the heavens. They come millions of light years to answer our signals, make contact with us, and after we dissect, poke, prod, and exploit them by legion, they wind up fending for themselves out of a smelly dumpster full of empty ashtrays, slicing their soft grey mouths on the jagged glass of broken whiskey bottles just to survive. Marooned here. Just like us. Like me.
Is this how we treat our guests? Fuck. I stood there for a minute finishing my sandwich, and then I opened the fridge and headed outside to greet them with my last three bottles of McEwans.
What’s the worst that could happen?