Sad Gay Alien

by Justin Taroli

Day 118,491. Earth (Again)

I landed here 73 years ago in what is now a Bed Bath & Beyond. Back then it was just a field full of cows and teenagers doing hand stuff. I watched one of them cry afterward and thought, yes, this is the right planet. My arrival wasn’t a crash—I simply stopped. I’d been drifting for a while. Several centuries, if I’m being honest. You don’t realize how lonely the cosmos are until you hear your own thoughts echo back at you in a different accent.

At first, the humans screamed. Understandable. I have a large green head, big black glossy eyes, and a body like a stretched frog in a turtleneck. No genitals in the traditional sense, though that hasn’t stopped some from trying.

Eventually, I acclimated. Learned the languages. Got a lease. Bought a futon. People in this city will ignore anything if you seem busy and slightly depressed. I walk down the street in Crocs and a cardigan and nobody blinks. One woman once told me I looked like an “art professor who smells like hand soap and grief.” I said thank you.

Today I went to the grocery store. The cashier called me “sir,” even though I don’t identify with any of their classifications. She had eyelashes like fly legs. I bought oat milk, a single banana, and a lavender-scented candle. None of these things nourish me. I consume to perform normalcy. A man on the subway platform told me he liked my “look.” He was wearing two puffer jackets and smelled like deli meat. I think he wanted to mate. I said thank you and turned away. He asked what I “do,” and I told him I process emotional waste from the dead planets. He laughed, then asked for my number. I told him I don’t have one.

This city smells like rain and dog breath. I saw a pigeon eating the remains of another pigeon. No one noticed. I feel that way too, sometimes. My apartment is small. I keep a jar of broken earbuds on the windowsill. I don’t know why. Maybe as a reminder that even their music doesn’t help.

Tonight I’ll go to the queer bar. I’ve been there before. They say I look “camp,” which I think means I remind them of trauma and glitter. One man told me I was the hottest thing he’d ever hallucinated. I didn’t correct him.

I miss the moons of Orik. I miss the clean air. I miss my old lover, who could stretch their body around mine like a solar storm. Here, everyone just wants to be seen. Even me.

Day 118,497. Still Earth

A man followed me home today. I didn’t notice him at first. I was distracted by a sandwich on the sidewalk that appeared to be leaking ranch dressing. It reminded me of the melting dunes on Zargol-6, where I once watched a wedding ceremony end in spontaneous combustion. Beautiful place.

He caught up to me near the laundromat. Said his name was Kyle. He asked if I was “from around here.” I told him yes, technically, for about seven decades, but he didn’t seem interested in accuracy. He stared at my face like it was something he’d seen in a dream, or a graphic tee. Then he said it. “Can you take me with you?” I asked him to clarify. “Like, when you go back to your planet. Or wherever. I’m ready. I’ll do anything. You can probe me if you want. I’ve been stretching.” He said it like someone offering a spare room.

I told him I wasn’t leaving. I haven’t had the capacity for interstellar travel since 1983. The necessary materials were stolen and repurposed into a Cold War-era listening device that now sits in a museum gift shop.

Kyle looked devastated. Like he’d just been unfollowed by God. “But it’s all so awful here,” he said, gesturing to a UPS truck and a man in mesh shorts screaming at an iced coffee. He wasn’t wrong.

I told him I understood, but that leaving wouldn’t help. Misery is adaptable. It grows legs. It follows you. Even through wormholes.

Then Kyle said something that unsettled me more than his initial request. “Honestly,” he whispered, “I don’t even care if you’re lying.”

I left him standing outside my building, hands clasped like I was a priest or a raffle ticket.

Later, I looked out my window. He was still there sitting on the curb staring at the stars like they owed him something.

Day 118,504. Memory Fragment: Korr-Vel

I used to be in love with a being named Korr-Vel. Technically their name was unpronounceable to humans, but if you cough while sneezing and hiccuping at the same time, that’s close enough.

Korr-Vel had no face—just a luminous veil of shifting gases where their head should be. It was customary in their culture to offer your innermost griefs during courtship. Our first date, they wept an entire nebula into a glass sphere and handed it to me like a bouquet. I told them I once tried to photosynthesize out of boredom and passed out in a botanical garden. They said that was brave.

We used to spend long nights orbiting dead stars, playing games that involved minor gravitational manipulations. Korr-Vel would always let me win, though once they folded Saturn in half out of jealousy when I mentioned an old fling. They said it was a gesture of affection. I said it was violent. We laughed for several hours.

Eventually, Korr-Vel grew restless. Said I was “too emotionally dense.” Said I held on to pain like it was a decorative object. I told them that’s just how I am. Sentimental. Rigid. Pathetic. They left during a sleep cycle, folded themselves into a photon stream, and evaporated through the tail end of a comet. I found a note written in ultraviolet on the ceiling: “You never once said you missed me.” I didn’t even know we were allowed to say that.

I still keep the grief-sphere. It flickers sometimes when I’m hungover.

Day 118,509. Queer Knitting Circle

I joined a queer knitting circle because someone at the bar said I seemed like I needed “a hobby that involved touch.” The circle met in a co-op basement that smelled like sandalwood and mildew. Everyone brought snacks except me. I arrived with my hands folded and my yarn pre-tangled.

A trans woman named Bria said my tension was incredible. I assumed she meant emotionally. She meant the yarn. There were jokes I didn’t understand. Someone mentioned “bottoming for tax reasons,” and I laughed a full seven seconds too late. A nonbinary person in a mesh crop top complimented my scarf, even though I wasn’t making one. I said thank you. I still don’t know what I was making. Possibly a nest. Possibly a mistake.

At one point, everyone went around the circle and shared a “win” from the week. I said, “I have not vaporized myself.” Bria clapped. I think she thought I was being poetic.

Afterward, a soft man with a mustache named Dylan asked if I wanted to get coffee sometime. I said yes, because he looked like he hadn’t cried in months and I found that impressive.

Day 118,510. Date with Dylan

We met at a vegan café that used to be a slaughterhouse. Dylan ordered dandelion tea and told me about his ex-boyfriend who had once channeled “Mary Magdalene via ketamine.” I ordered water and stared at the potted plant beside our table, which I’m fairly certain was plastic and quietly judging us.

He asked what I do. I told him the truth: planetary drift, emotional residue management, failed sabbatical on Earth. He laughed. Said I was “so Scorpio-coded.”

When he asked about my past relationships, I described Korr-Vel, and he said, “I’ve totally dated someone like that.” I asked if they also bent time when upset. He said, “Emotionally, yeah.”

Eventually, we went back to his apartment. His bed was on the floor. There was a tapestry of a wolf howling at something off-frame, possibly shame. We kissed. His mouth tasted like cloves and unresolved feelings. When he reached under my shirt, he paused.

“Wait,” he said. “Is that… skin?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” he said.

Then he cried. I asked if he wanted to be held. He said no, he wanted to be understood. I left before dawn. A raccoon hissed at me near the recycling bins. I hissed back. It felt good.

Day 118,512. Curbside Revelation

Kyle was outside my building again tonight. Same spot. Sitting on the curb like it owed him rent. He had a backpack and a large soda. When I walked past, he offered me a sip like we were already in the middle of a conversation. “Bad date?” he asked.

I said yes. He said “same,” even though he had clearly not moved in hours. I sat next to him. The concrete was still warm. A fire truck passed by, sirens off, like even emergencies were too tired to announce themselves anymore. “I think you’re the only person who doesn’t scare me,” he said.

“That’s concerning,” I replied.

He laughed. It was ugly and real. Then he looked at me—not the usual awe or pleading or tragic longing—but like I was just a thing he knew, who maybe also hated everything but was too polite to say it first.

“I’m being totally serious about going with you,” he said. “If there’s any way. Like, if you find a button or a crack in the sky or a defunct shuttle under a mattress—I’m in.”

I told him the truth. My ship’s core was dismantled in 1983 and now lives inside a Cold War exhibit at the Museum of American Surveillance. “Most of it’s in the gift shop,” I said. “They turned my drive into a novelty paperweight.”

He stared ahead. Took a long sip of soda. “That’s actually amazing.” Then, softly: “Let’s steal it.”

I laughed. Really laughed. A high, unnatural sound I hadn’t made in months. Maybe years. It startled a cat nearby.

Kyle leaned back on his elbows. “I’m not saying we have to do it tonight. But like, eventually. When we’ve got a plan. Maybe ski masks.”

“I don’t have ears,” I said. “And does a ski mask look like it would fit my head?”

“Okay. We adapt.”

We sat like that for a while. Not talking. Just watching the night not happen. The lights in my apartment were still on upstairs. I wondered if the grief-sphere was flickering.

Before he left, he said, “You know what’s funny?” I said no. “I think you’re the only one here who isn’t faking it.”

Day 118,515. Attempted Contact

Tonight I climbed onto the roof of my building with a colander on my head. It’s not part of the protocol, but I read on a forum that it helps with “interdimensional alignment.” The forum also suggested cayenne in the nose and speaking in tongues, but I’ve had a sinus infection for three decades and I don’t believe in performance art. I brought a speaker, too. Played a recording of my home planet’s ambient frequency—like a whistle inside a cave full of teeth. To humans it just sounds like someone tuning a monophne during a fire.

I tried all the standard things: slow breathing, rhythmic taps to the sternum, a single word repeated until it lost meaning.

Return.

Return.

Return.

Nothing happened. Not even static.

The stars above me flickered like old signage. I couldn’t tell if that was their way of speaking or just the smog. There’s too much light here. Even the darkness glows. It’s vulgar. I waited until dawn and stared into the sky until it turned into a different kind of failure.

Once, when I was a child, I could feel space respond. It would shiver back. Now I can’t even get an echo.

I walked downstairs barefoot and made toast I didn’t want.

Day 118,518. Kyle, Expanded

Kyle came over tonight. He brought snacks shaped like dinosaurs and a small flashlight, “just in case we feel like robbing a museum later.”

We didn’t. We sat on my floor and ate the dinosaurs raw. He said they tasted like wet cardboard nostalgia. I agreed, though I’ve never had nostalgia. I remember everything exactly as it was. It’s a curse, not a feeling.

He asked if I had any furniture that wasn’t metaphorical. I gestured to the futon. He sat cross-legged and said, “Wow. Existential poverty chic.” Then he got quiet.

After a while he said, “You know what’s weird? I didn’t even grow up dreaming about aliens. I wanted to be a teacher. Or a chef. I liked making things. But then my mom got cancer, and then she got religion, and then she got worse.” He peeled a sticker off his soda bottle like it was a task. “She used to say, ‘This life is just the waiting room for the real one.’ And I’d be like, okay, but what if the waiting room has asbestos and nobody gives you water?”

I didn’t say anything right away. I just nodded. I’ve learned that’s what humans want during memory confessionals—proximity, not solutions.

Then he asked me what I thought of Earth.

I said, “It’s incoherent.”

He laughed. “Yeah. That tracks.”

I continued. “You divide yourselves by imaginary borders, skin pigments, tax brackets, genital configurations. It’s exhausting to observe. None of it would survive the physics of deep space. Not even your languages. I’ve watched entire civilizations dissolve with more dignity than the way you argue over flags.”

Kyle didn’t respond. Just looked at me like he was trying to hold still inside a thought.

I added, “But I also think you can be funny. And reckless in a way that’s sometimes beautiful. You still make art when you’re starving. You still do what you call love with people who are demonstrably bad for you. You keep naming things after dead people.”

He smiled, small and real. “I guess I’m just tired of being the punchline of my own life,” he said.

I told him I understood, because I did. Because the only thing worse than being misunderstood is being recognized too late. He looked up at me then, eyes watery but defiant. “If I have to stay here, I need a reason. But if I get to leave—if we actually pull it off—I just want to know what it feels like to be far enough away that none of this matters anymore.”

We didn’t speak for a while after that. He played with the flashlight. Made shapes on the ceiling. A bird. A middle finger. A penis. A planet, if you squinted. When he left, he said, “Tomorrow, we case the joint.” I said okay. Then I watched him walk down the street like someone still hoping to disappear.

Day 118,519. Museum Casing Attempt (Failure)

We attempted to case the museum today. Kyle insisted we wear all black. I told him I don’t have clothes that color. My ex once said I look like an expired cucumber when I wear dark tones. Kyle said that was probably racist. I didn’t disagree. We settled on navy. Technically not black. Technically just bad at blending in.

The Museum of American Surveillance sits in an old federal building with greying columns and a gift shop shaped like a panic room. Outside, a woman was taking selfies with a sculpture of a wiretap.

Kyle said, “We look normal, right?”

I said, “You’re sweating through your hoodie.”

He said, “That’s my process.”

We entered through the front like everyone else. I suggested the back, but Kyle said that’s how you “get profiled.” We paid the suggested donation and received buttons that said “I’m Being Watched.” I pinned mine directly to my collarbone. Kyle put his on his beanie and said, “We’re in.”

Immediately, we lost each other in the East Wing. I wandered through an exhibit on Cold War paranoia. A video played on loop of a man eating a newspaper while crying. I watched it three times. It felt instructional. Eventually I found Kyle near a display labeled Everyday Listening Devices (1972–1989). He pointed to a paperweight shaped like a cracked egg.

“That’s it,” he whispered. “That’s part of your ship?”

“No,” I said. “That’s just a paperweight.”

“Oh.”

We stood in silence. Then I spotted it across the room, inside a plexiglass cube: a translucent orb with a flickering core. The drive. Still active. Still mine.

Kyle whispered, “Okay. So what do we do?”

I said, “We think.”

He said, “No, like, what’s the plan?”

I stared at him. “I thought you had one.”

He blinked. “I brought snacks.”

He reached into his backpack and pulled out a bag of off-brand pretzels and a tiny pair of binoculars. The pretzels were broken. The binoculars were from a wildlife kit.

“Did you bring tools?” I asked.

“I brought hope.”

We left ten minutes later after Kyle triggered an alarm by trying to open an emergency exit “just to check.” A security woman followed us halfway down the block, muttering something about “vibes.”

We got slurpees and didn’t talk for a while. Kyle said, “Okay, so maybe we’re not great at crime.”

I said, “Maybe crime isn’t the point.”

He said, “Okay but I still want that orb.”

I didn’t tell him I do too. I didn’t tell him that just seeing it again made something inside me tighten. Like recognition. Or grief

Day 118,523. Gay Pride Parade

Kyle made me go to the parade. Said I “needed sun and stimulation.” I told him I photosynthesize poorly and dislike crowds. He said, “Exactly.”

We arrived early. People were already shouting and glittering. There was a dog wearing assless chaps. A drag queen dressed as the ghost of Susan Sontag blessed a teenager with a glitter rosary. Someone screamed, “Slay!” at a parked bus.

Kyle bought us tiny flags. Mine said “Yas, Alien.” I asked if he made it. He said no, but he wished he had.

A man in a harness asked if I was “serving lewk or just lost.” I said both. He offered me a Jell-O shot as he called me “mysterious.” Kyle told him to back off; I told Kyle to relax, then we all took a photo together and immediately forgot about it.

Later, we sat on the curb sharing a bottle of sunscreen. A shirtless person roller-skated past us holding a sign that said Queer Joy or Bust. Kyle turned to me and asked, “Okay but, like—don’t get mad—but I have to know. How do you…have sex?”

I said, “Poorly.”

He laughed. “No but really.”

I looked at the parade for a long moment. Then I said, “My species reproduces through an exchange of heat signatures and compressed sound. Intimacy involves vibration, memory projection, and—on occasion—synchronized collapse.”

Kyle blinked. “That sounds intense.”

“It is.”

“Is there, like, touching?”

“Sometimes.”

He considered that. “Do you miss it?”

“Yes,” I said. “But not because of the sex. I miss being understood without speaking. I miss being seen through.”

“Yeah,” he said, voice quieter. “That sounds nice.”

A float passed blasting a remix of Whitney Houston. Someone threw a dildo into the crowd. Kyle caught it and screamed like he’d won a scholarship. I watched the sky. It was blue, but in the wrong way.

Later, Kyle said he was glad I came. I didn’t respond. But I kept the flag.

Day 118,525. The Orb

I went back to the museum alone today. No disguise. No plan. Just a cardigan and a free pass Kyle won in a raffle for “queer trivia night.” He thought it was ironic. I didn’t tell him I intended to use it.

The woman at the entrance smiled too long. Her teeth were orderly in a way that felt performative. I nodded and moved past her. No one stops someone who walks like they belong—one of the few tricks I’ve learned here.

I didn’t look at the other exhibits. No video loops. No Cold War puppetry. I went straight to the East Wing. The orb was still there. Still inside its cube, flickering. It pulsed faintly when I got close. Like it remembered me. Or wanted me to think it did.

It’s smaller than I remember. Or maybe I’m larger now. Time does that—compresses origin stories, inflates shame. The display plaque called it “Cold War Listening Artifact: Unknown Origin.” Below that it said, Do Not Touch. I touched it anyway. Palm flat against the glass. The security camera above me blinked. I stood there for a long time. The orb didn’t move. It pulsed once—soft, almost shy. I waited for something. A signal. A memory. Even a headache. But nothing came.

No connection. No voice. Just the faint hum of a gift shop down the hall and a child in another room asking what “surveillance” means.

I thought: this is what grief becomes. Not fire. Not ache. Just... repetition.

I said, “I’m still here.” It didn’t respond. Before I left, I took a museum pencil. Tiny and useless. I don’t write with pencils. I wanted something that might mean I was there.

Day 118,527. Art Attempt

I tried to make something today. Not for Earth. Not for Kyle. Not even to “process,” which is what everyone here insists is the point of creation. Just to remember.

I took the jar of broken earbuds from my windowsill and poured them onto the floor. Untangled what I could. Aligned the cords by length, made a spiral. Then I added my expired MetroCards, the spine from a notebook, a spoon I melted in the oven last winter out of boredom. At the center I placed the grief-sphere Korr-Vel gave me. It hummed slightly as it always does when I get too close to nostalgia.

I sat in front of it for hours. No music. No lights. Just the object and me, both pretending not to need each other. At some point, I began to stack things: a comb, the tiny museum pencil, a cracked phone screen, Kyle’s forgotten flashlight shaped like a penguin. The sculpture grew upward, trembled, fell. I let it. Then built it again. Slower this time. Less stable. More honest.

I don’t know what it was. A shrine. A memory. A bad idea. Something between installation and breakdown. When it was finished—if it could be called that—I lay down beside it. Not touching. Just near. It looked like a signal or a question. I imagined someone else stumbling across it and wondering if they’d missed the instructions.

There were none. Eventually I swept everything back into a box. Not to destroy it. Just to keep it close. Sometimes art doesn’t want to be looked at. It just wants to be held together for as long as it can be.

Day 118,530. Kyle, Again

We were sitting in my apartment eating cereal out of mismatched mugs when Kyle brought up his family. It wasn’t prompted. It just arrived the way things do when you’re tired and chewing and someone else is finally quiet enough to hear you.

He said, “I used to have cousins. Like, real ones. We grew up on the same street. Played games in the woods. Had matching towels at Grandma’s house.” I nodded. “They’re gone now. Not dead. Just unreachable.”

I didn’t ask what happened. He told me anyway. “It started with politics. Or, that’s what we said it was. But that was just the language. Really it was about how we saw people. Who deserved help. Who mattered. It got mean fast.”

He paused. Stared into his cereal like it was a crystal ball.

“They’d say things like, ‘You don’t actually believe that stuff, do you?’ Meaning queer stuff. Human dignity stuff. I said I did. Then they got offended. Like I’d called them slurs by existing in front of them.” He laughed, bitter, not new. “I tried for years. Calm responses. Nuance. Thanksgiving restraint. But eventually I realized the only way to be around them was to amputate parts of myself. And I just… ran out of pieces.”

I said nothing for a while. Watched a fruit fly circle the kitchen light. It had nowhere to land. Finally I said, “From a galactic perspective, your political divisions are the most embarrassing feature of your species.”

Kyle blinked. Then snorted. “Thanks?”

I continued. “You’re arguing over lines drawn on dirt and which organs people are allowed to mention. You build entire ideologies around mythologies you barely believe in and then punish anyone who doesn’t clap hard enough.”

He laughed again. “Yeah. That sounds right.”

“And still,” I said, “you cry when your cousin unfriends you on the internet.”

He looked at me like I’d kicked him, then just nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Because it’s not about ideas. It’s about people. And what it feels like to be told you’re not worth keeping.”

I didn’t answer. There was nothing to say. These stupid creatures. I just refilled our cereal and handed him a spoon with a melted handle. He used it anyway.

Later, he asked if I ever had a family. I said yes, once, a long time ago. He didn’t press. Just leaned back and said, “So we’re both weirdly orphaned. That’s kind of hot.”

I said, “That’s bleak.”

He said, “Same thing.”

Day 118,533. Interruption

It happened during a nap, which I resent. I prefer to be conscious when the universe speaks. I’d fallen asleep on the floor next to the sculpture-box I haven’t dismantled. The air was too warm. I’d eaten an expired granola bar and watched Kyle’s favorite cartoon about an anxious octopus. The room was silent except for the occasional hum from the grief-sphere, which now pulses like a heartbeat that doesn’t belong to anyone.

Then something changed. Not a noise exactly. More like a shift. A pressure behind the eyes. My vision folded as if the room turned inside out without moving. For a moment I was not in my apartment. I was in the dark. The real kind. The kind between galaxies. Something was there. Not a being. A familiar presence. A memory not mine, or a feeling older than memory. The closest human word is yes. But it wasn’t a word. It was a tone. A color I don’t have access to anymore. I felt it pass through me like recognition. Like being scanned, or forgiven.

And then I was back. Room, light, dust in the air. The grief-sphere had stopped pulsing. I sat up and my whole body hurt from contact. A kind of ache I haven’t felt in decades. Like my cells remembering they used to belong to something larger.

Kyle came in a few minutes later holding two iced coffees and said, “You look like you just saw your therapist’s ghost.” I didn’t respond. Just took the coffee and stared at the grief-sphere, now dim and still. He asked if I was okay.

I said, “I think something is coming.”

He didn’t ask what. Just nodded, sipped, and said, “Should we clean the apartment or leave it as-is for the end of the world?”

Day 118,534. Failed Signal

I tried again tonight. The rooftop. The colander. The ambient frequency from home. This time I added salt around the perimeter. Not for any scientific reason. It just felt right. Kyle was watching a documentary about haunted libraries and didn’t notice me slip away. I took the grief-sphere and the penguin flashlight, for emotional balance.

I set everything up as before: speaker, breath, repetition.

Return.

Return.

Return.

But the air didn’t bend. The light didn’t change. The hum didn’t rise.

I whispered old codes into the wind. I pressed my hands flat against the ground like I was asking the Earth to give something back. Nothing. So I started talking. Not in Earth language, not in Kyle’s English, but in mine. The one I haven’t used aloud since 1987. It sounds like music underwater. It tastes like silver and regret. My throat burned. My body ached in familiar and unfamiliar ways. I said everything I could think of. Where I am. What I’ve become. That I tried to stay small, stay out of the way. That I miss the orbit of another’s mind. That I haven’t found anyone here who sees me without squinting. That the only one who’s come close still calls me “dude.”

Still, nothing. Not even the wrong kind of silence. Just air and city. I sat there until my legs went numb. The penguin flashlight rolled away from me and blinked once against the gravel. It looked like it was trying to leave. I whispered, “Please.”

Still nothing.

Eventually I packed up the speaker, the sphere, the flashlight. Carried them downstairs like trash I was afraid to throw out. Kyle was asleep on the couch, holding a bag of frozen peas against his head. I have no idea why. I didn’t ask.

Day 118,536. Kyle’s Dream

Kyle said he had a dream last night. He made toast, sat cross-legged on the floor, and said it like it was a normal sentence: “I think something talked to me in my sleep.” I looked up from my tea. He continued, “Not like God. Or my dad. But, like, something big and weird, and kind of hot?”

I raised an eyebrow. He ignored it. He said the dream wasn’t visual. More like a sound inside his head. A feeling, too. Like standing too close to a microwave. It didn’t say words, it just made him understand things, and then forget them instantly. “It was like it knew everything about me,” he said. “Like it was... cataloguing me. Not in a creepy way. More like it was just curious. Like, Oh. This one’s damaged.”

I asked what he felt afterward.

Kyle shrugged. “Lonely. But not alone. Like I got pinged. Like it said, ‘We see you, babe,’ and then peaced out.” He paused. Bit his toast. “I’ve also been off my meds for two days. Could be that.”

I didn’t respond right away. Just watched him chew. Finally I said, “It’s possible you were contacted.”

He froze. “Seriously?

I nodded. “It’s unlikely. But not impossible.”

He blinked. “Should I be worried?”

“No,” I said. “Just stay open. The universe generally doesn’t waste its breath.”

He looked at me like he was trying not to care. Then muttered, “Okay, but if I start speaking in tongues, or if my piss glows, I’m calling you first.”

“You always do.”

Day 118,538. Practice Heist (7-Eleven Edition)

Kyle said we needed to build “heist confidence.” He called it a “dry run,” which I misunderstood as a desert mission. He meant convenience store theft. “Low stakes,” he said. “Just to see if we’ve got the chops.”

I said, “We don’t.”

He said, “Exactly. That’s why it’s practice.”

We chose a 7-Eleven two neighborhoods over so the shame wouldn’t follow us home. Kyle wore sunglasses at night. I wore a hoodie I made for myself with ears on the hood. It made me look like a frog who’d given up.

Inside, we separated. Kyle said this was called “divide and observe.” I pretended to browse nasal sprays. He loitered near the Slurpee machine, nervously adjusting his belt.

The cashier watched us the whole time. She had the gaze of someone who’d seen three shopliftings already that day and wouldn’t stop the fourth unless it physically set fire to the Hot Pockets.

I palmed a pack of gum, then put it back. Then I picked it up again. Kyle walked past me holding a single banana like he was smuggling potassium. He whispered, “Abort?”

I whispered, “We haven’t started.”

Then I panicked and bought three beef jerkies I don’t eat and dropped a roll of quarters on the floor. Kyle slipped the banana into his sleeve and immediately dropped it. It rolled under a metal rack. The cashier sighed audibly. I felt my molecules tighten. We left without stealing anything. Kyle apologized to the banana.

Outside, we sat on the curb in silence, sipping sodas we paid for. “Well,” Kyle said. “I think it’s safe to say we’re not criminal masterminds.”

I said, “You tried to steal fruit.”

“It felt symbolic.”

We didn’t talk for a while. Just watched the cars go by, headlights flashing like small, personal failures. Eventually Kyle said, “You know what? I don’t think we need to be good at this. I think we just have to be dumb enough to try anyway.”

I said, “That explains most of Earth.”

Day 118,541. Queer Karaoke Night

Kyle said we needed a “vibe reset.” I asked if that was a procedure or a form of protest. He said no, it was karaoke night at a queer dive called The Thirst Trap and I had no choice.

I wore my least-wrinkled shirt. Kyle wore glitter eyeliner and a jacket made of something that rustled when he moved. On the way there, he told me I had to sing something. I said I didn’t know Earth lyrics. He said to just moan meaningfully and sway.

Inside, it smelled like gin and mechanical failure. The ceiling had water damage and character. A disco ball hung on by one visible wire. A drag queen named Malpractice took the stage in full nurse attire. She called everyone “doll” and told us to hydrate or perish. Then she did a six-minute power ballad while kicking her heels into the drywall.

Kyle looked starstruck. “She’s who I want to be when I stop being afraid.”

When it was his turn, he sang an off-key version of “Fast Car” and cried a little in the middle. No one booed. Two strangers held up lighters. I clapped even though I hated the sound of it.

Then Malpractice called me up. I said no. She said, “Doll, you look like a haunted zucchini with secrets—get up here.”

I didn’t sing. I made a sound, long and low, almost melodic. A tone from home. I didn’t mean to. It just happened. The room didn’t go quiet, exactly, but it shifted. People tilted their heads. One man started to cry. A dog outside howled once.

When I finished, no one clapped. I handed Malpractice the mic and she said, “Weird flex, but I’m into it.”

Kyle said, “That was either very hot or deeply spiritual. Maybe both.”

Later, Malpractice found us by the bathrooms and gave me a sticker that said ALWAYS BE THE WEIRDEST ONE HERE. I didn’t peel it. I just kept it in my pocket where it now lives next to the museum pencil and two loose almonds.

Day 118,543. Employment Attempt

Today I got a job. Kyle said I needed a “routine.” I said I already had one: wake up, remember nothing matters, observe pigeons, think about space, eat a banana out of spite. He said, “Right. And now imagine that, but with a uniform.”

We walked to a juice bar called Juicy Bitch. He knew someone who worked there. I didn’t ask questions. I filled out an application under the name “Quin,” which Kyle said sounded both millennial and untraceable. I listed my skills as: “absorption, regret, mild telepathy.”

The manager was a woman with half an eyebrow and a neck tattoo that said Be Normal. She hired me instantly. Said I had “quiet rage energy” and the “kind of face people trust in cults.” My job was to take orders and not ruin anything.

First customer: a man who asked if we had “vitality wheat.” I said, “No one truly has vitality.” He laughed and tipped $2.17.

Second customer asked if our kale was sourced. I said, “Everything is sourced from somewhere eventually.” She asked to speak to someone else.

Third customer was Kyle. He ordered a juice called Euphoric Summer. I handed him a beetroot disaster and said, “This is the best I could do.” He said, “That’s also the title of my memoir.”

By hour three, I had learned the register, the bathroom code, and how to lie about wait times. By hour four, I was exhausted in the bones I don’t have. I took my break and sat on a crate near the dumpster. The air smelled like ginger and despair. I watched a child cry over a smoothie. A bird flew into a window and shrugged it off. I thought: maybe this is it. Maybe this is what people do. Get tired. Make things. Break things. Try again.

When I went back inside, the manager nodded at me without smiling. “You’re doing fine,” she said, as if it were a warning.

Day 118,546. The Call

Kyle got a phone call today from someone he used to call his cousin. He was on the couch, curled into a position he refers to as “defensive shrimp,” watching reality TV where straight people cry in kitchens. His phone rang. He looked at it like it was a spider.

“Shit,” he said. “It’s Lisa.” He didn’t answer. He let it ring out. Then stared at the screen for a long time like it might say something else. Eventually he tossed the phone onto the floor—not violently, just decisively.

I said, “You knew this would happen eventually.”

He said, “Yeah. But I thought I’d want it more.”

He told me Lisa used to be his favorite. She’d braid his hair in elementary school and once punched a boy in the face for calling him weird. Then she married a very rich man and had a kid and got different. The change wasn’t sudden, just steady like rot. “She thinks I’m bitter. Or brainwashed. Or that I joined some ‘agenda.’” He made air quotes. “She’s the one who said I was confused,” he said, voice muffled now. “Said I was throwing away everything good in my life. What she meant was: her version of me. The one who kept his mouth shut and came to baptisms. I used to wish she’d call and apologize, admit she was wrong. But now I don’t know. I just don’t care.” He looked at me then, eyes glassy but dry. “Is that bad? That I don’t miss her anymore?”

I shook my head. “No. It just means you’ve healed in ways she didn’t notice.”

He nodded. Then: “Okay, but that was, like, weirdly poetic. Did you rehearse that?”

“No.”

“Well,” he said, “I’m stealing it.”

Later, while he made toast, he said, “I still love her, you know. In the way you love a place you can’t live in anymore.”

I said, “That’s the only kind of love that lasts.” He didn’t argue.

Day 118,549. The Fading

It happened at dusk. The kind of in-between light that makes everything look softer, older, less interested in accuracy. Kyle was asleep on the couch again, wrapped in the same blanket from the phone call. He’d fallen asleep mid-sentence while trying to explain to me why the show Chopped is “actually deeply philosophical.”

I was sitting by the window with the grief-sphere in my lap. I hadn’t touched it in days. It had been quiet. I assumed it was done speaking. I assumed I was done listening. And then it pulsed faintly. Just once. Not like before. Not urgent. Not a call or a beacon. More like acknowledgment. Like a nod from someone across a crowded room who used to love you. Not an invitation. Just recognition.

I held it tighter but it didn’t respond. But something in the room shifted. I could feel it deep in the parts of me that haven’t belonged to Earth in decades. A change in pressure. A brief drop in temperature. A smell I hadn’t smelled since the interior of Korr-Vel’s vessel, the coppery sweetness of charged air and regret.

And then it passed. No voice. No message. No pain. Just a feeling: It’s moving on. Not out of cruelty. Not out of punishment. Just movement. Because that’s what the cosmos does. It goes on. It doesn’t wait. It doesn’t check in.

I sat there a long time. The grief-sphere went still in my hands. Across the room, Kyle snored once, softly, and muttered something about rosemary. I looked out the window and tried to feel sad, but I didn’t. I just felt here. Not quite home. But not entirely lost either.

Day 118,552. Museum, One Last Time

We returned to the museum without any plan. No disguises, no maps, no whispered codes between the juice bar and the Slurpee aisle. Just the two of us, quiet and unhurried, each wearing a fresh I’m Being Watched sticker like it meant something new.

The woman at the front desk didn’t recognize us. Or if she did, she didn’t care. She handed us pamphlets and gestured vaguely toward the exhibits, already turning her attention to the next transaction before we even moved.

We didn’t bother with the other wings. We knew where we were going. The orb was still there sealed in its cube, lit from below in that soft museum way that makes everything look significant even when it no longer is. The plaque still called it a Cold War artifact. The little sign still asked us not to touch. I didn’t touch it this time. I didn’t even get that close.

Instead, I stood at a small distance and just looked at it. The way you might look at a photograph of someone who left long before you were ready. I waited for something, a flicker, a shift, a whisper, but it didn’t come. The orb didn’t pulse. It didn’t glow. It just sat there, dim and still, the way things do when they’ve finally let go of you.

Kyle hovered beside me a few steps back. He was holding a bag of chips and trying to eat them quietly, as if crunching too loudly might interrupt the gravity of the moment. I appreciated the effort. After a while, he stepped closer and offered me one. I took it without speaking. It tasted like sour cream and artificial lime.

He asked if I still wanted it. The orb, he meant. I shook my head. “I think I just wanted to know it remembered me.”

He didn’t say anything right away. Then, softly, “Did it?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think it forgot.”

We stayed a few minutes longer, not because there was anything left to see, but because it felt wrong to walk away too quickly. When we finally turned to leave, Kyle took one of the museum pamphlets and folded it into quarters, then tucked it into his jacket pocket like it might be useful later. “For the scrapbook we’ll never make,” he said.

I didn’t laugh. But I smiled. And that felt like enough.

Day 118,556. Final Message

The apartment was quiet. Kyle had fallen asleep on the couch again, this time with one sock half-off and his arm draped dramatically over his forehead like someone playing dead in a high school play. The television had gone to a static screensaver. A cartoon animal floated endlessly across the screen.

I sat by the window with the grief-sphere in my lap. I hadn’t picked it up in days. Not out of resentment. I’d just stopped needing it to mean something every time I touched it. Tonight, though, it was warm. Not hot. Not glowing. Just warm. Like something breathing back. I didn’t speak. I didn’t chant or press any of the old pressure points. I just held it, and it responded.

No light. No sound. No sensation of time folding in on itself like it had the first time. Just a stillness that moved in me like water in a glass too full.

I knew then that it wasn’t coming back. That nothing was. No ship. No beacon. No storm of energy to lift me from this city like a chosen thing. But I also knew, absolutely, that I had not been forgotten. Something still saw me and knew me. Knew where I was and what I had become. And even though it would not reach for me yet, it was there. Still moving. Still alive. Still somewhere.

The warmth faded slowly. Not like an ending. Like a hand being lowered. A door left open, just not for me. I placed the sphere on the windowsill. The city below made its usual noises. A siren in the distance. A bottle breaking. Laughter, then silence. I stood and looked out into the dark. There were no stars. Just the glow of too many apartment lights left on too late.

And I said it out loud, not to anyone. Just because it needed to be said. “I’ve been here for so long. I’ve always been here.”

Behind me, Kyle stirred. He muttered my name, slurred by sleep. “You there?”

I didn’t turn around. I didn’t have to. “I’m here,” I said.