CHAPTER 4

Mervin was silent all through lunch and I felt bad for my part in his misfortune. When we began working again, with the radio tuned to a rock station, I noticed that Mervin kept glancing at it from time to time. He seemed to be getting more and more agitated all the time. Finally, he slammed down the cup of sprouts he had just weighed and put his hands over his ears. He made something between a groan and a wail. It was high pitched and eerie. When he finished, he put together a string of profanities.

“Lon, can I move that thing?” Mervin asked, pointing at the radio.

“I suppose so,” Lon replied. “What for?”

“Aliens are coming through,” Mervin said matter of fact.

“Sure go ahead,” Lon replied, as if that was a perfectly legitimate reason.

I was a little concerned about my new workplace and my two work companions. Mervin unplugged the radio and took it to a table across the room. As he was plugging it in, Lon looked at me and rolled his eyes. I felt some relief that they both weren’t crazy. Mervin came back over and went to work as if nothing strange had just transpired.

“Aren’t the aliens still getting in?” I asked.

Mervin looked at me as if I was an absolute moron.

“The aliens are everywhere,” he said waving his arms somewhat frantically. “I just don’t want them seeping into my brain.” He tapped both index fingers against both of his temples.

“How far away does it have to be?” I asked. Lon looked at me as if to say ‘please don’t go there because I’ve been down this road before.’

“A minimum of five feet,” he said.

“What’s so special about the radio?” I asked.

He laughed and shook his head like I was just a complete and utter idiot.

“Radio waves are like their highway, man. That’s how they got here in the first place.”

“I see,” I said.

He stared at me with this sinister grin and his eyes looked bizarre, like he was possessed.

“You’re one of them,” he said in almost a whisper. I felt a chill up and down my spine.

I tried to be lighthearted, but it came across as guilty, I think.

“No, I’m not,” I said with a nervous chuckle.

The malevolent, psycho expression he wore disappeared into a somewhat fearful paranoid demeanor. Strangely this change helped me relax a little. It also seemed to put Mervin back in place, and we finished the day as if everything were normal.

The next day began the same way the previous left off, by that I mean the usual. Later, Mervin and I ended up packing alone because they were shorthanded in the tomato room.  It wasn’t a comfortable feeling, but we did have an interesting yet bizarre conversation.

“Have you ever noticed,” Mervin asked, “that no matter where you are at, there you are?”

I glanced at him as we worked side by side. He said it like you might say it looks like rain today.

“I have noticed that,” I said, “unless you happen to be two places at once.”

He stopped working and looked at me, completely serious and earnest. Then a crazy, slightly wild look came into his eyes as he smirked a little. I felt a creepy tingle in my spine.

“It happens you know,” Mervin said, sounding a bit like Hannibal Lector.

I admit I was curious, but my better sense didn’t want to go where he was going. I just nodded and kept working. Hannibal, I mean Mervin, continued to stare and I could feel his eyes boring into the side of my head. It made me wonder if psychic energy was a real thing and if I was in some sort of danger.

“I said that it happens you know,” Mervin said, sounding even more like Hannibal the Cannibal and his eyes seemed to jitter in their sockets.

“How’s that?” I ventured, reluctantly.

“I’ve actually been two places at once.”

I cleared my throat. “Have you?”

“I have,” Mervin replied rather soothingly, considering the menacing look in his eyes. He continued to stare at me and I almost yelled for help. But I also felt like I needed to reply.

“How did you do that, Mervin?” I asked, sounding like Mr. Rogers.

“That’s just it,” Hannibal/Mervin said. “I didn’t do it.”

“I thought you just said that you did?”

Hannibal/Mervin shook his head. “They did it.”

“They who?”

He shook his head and chuckled as if I was the biggest idiot on the planet.

“The aliens,” Hannibal/Mervin said.

Mervin’s face returned to normal, for him anyway, and he went back to work as if that ended the topic of conversation.

“So you were abducted?” I heard my moronic self ask.

Mervin just nodded and worked a little faster.

“How did that make you two places at once?” I asked wondering if curiosity killed more than just cats.

“When they took me, it was an out of body experience,” he said quickly and casually without even looking at me. I was relieved that the maniacal demeanor seemed to have left his multi personal self, so I pressed on.

“What exactly do you mean by out of the body?”

“I saw myself lying in bed when they took me to their Zoltar.”

“What’s a Zoltar?”

“Oh, it’s their space craft,” he said, as if I asked him what a Plymouth was and he said ‘oh a car.’

“So it’s a UFO?” 

“No,” he said with irritation. “It wasn’t an unidentified flying object. I just told you the identity. It was a Zoltar.”

“Right,” I replied, as if what we were talking about was something totally reasonable. “So how was it?”

“Good,” he said, “they treated me very well.”

Mervin didn’t say any more.  He just continued to work. I didn’t know if he didn’t want to say any more or if he wanted me to probe him for more information.

“So what was the Zoltar like?” I inquired.

“Indescribable, their technology is far superior to ours.”

“How many were there?”

“I’m not sure. I personally dealt with only three, but I could tell that there were others around.”

“Were they little green fellows?”

Mervin stopped working and glared at me, the crazy look reappearing in his eyes. I instantly regretted being flippant as well as inquisitive.

“I mean that’s how I’ve seen them depicted,” I said.

“Actually, they were very human,” he said, looking thoughtfully at the ceiling. “Only a little more reptile like than our species.”

“Both human and reptile, how does that work?”

“They had big lizard like tails.” He paused and rubbed his thumbs back and forth across his fingers and grimaced. “Their skin was scaly and gray.”

“Were they like, male and female?”

“Actually they were asexual or androgynous.”

“What did they do with you?”

“Just a bunch of tests, not unlike getting a physical from a doctor. Plus they took a bunch of samples.”

“Samples of what?”

 “Basically fluids like blood, urine, saliva, and semen,” Mervin said, shrugging.

“Semen, how did they get your semen?” I inquired.

Mervin looked startled with the question. His face colored a bit and he began to work faster, ignoring my question. I didn’t want to press him on it and I didn’t know what to say.  We worked in silence for several minutes before he spoke.

“So do you believe me?” He wanted to know.

“I believe you’re being honest,” I said.

He stopped working and turned to face me, wearing a sarcastic smirk.

“You believe I’m being honest, but you don’t believe in aliens, do you?” he said, his Hannibal voice returning, causing the hair on my neck to prickle.

“I believe you experienced what you told me you did, Mervin,” I said sincerely.

“You know, there are countless others who have seen UFO’s and have been abducted like me. What about that?”

“Just like you, I believe people are seeing unexplainable things and experiencing them.”

“So you do believe in beings from other worlds and dimensions?” he asked.

I regretted that I couldn’t help grimacing and shrugging. He slammed his hand on the table.

“What then, if not aliens?” Mervin demanded.

My fear was instantly replaced with anger at Mervin’s crazy manipulative ways.

“Demons,” I said more forcefully than I intended. “I believe that alien activity is demonic deception.  I’m sorry, but that’s my opinion.”

I expected Mervin to respond with anger and hostility.  But he just stared at me wide eyed for a moment, and then nodded.

“I see,” he said quietly. “Well, we’re all entitled to our opinions.”

We worked in silence for a good five minutes before Mervin spoke, seemingly changing our previous topic of conversation.

“Did you and your dad get along?” he asked me.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “My dad’s an awesome father.”

“Well, you’re lucky,” Mervin said, part maniacal and part nonchalant.

“Am I?” I asked.

“Yeah, you are,” he replied, his voice rising a bit.

“Did you get along with your dad?” I asked with some regret. 

“I got along with him just fine,” he said, brimming with hostility. “On the rare occasion he participated in my life.”

“Were he and your mother divorced?”

“No, but they probably should have been since they were little more than roommates. He treated my sister and me like we were burdens he had to endure. I think he liked the family dog better than us. At least he didn’t beat us so I guess I should be grateful.”

“Sorry to hear that,” I said.

“What, that he didn’t beat us?”

“No, no, of course not.  I meant that he wasn’t there for you.”

“When I was in high school, I went through a phase where I was really depressed and lacked direction. I asked my dad what the meaning of life was.  Without even looking away from his newspaper, do you know what he said?”

“No clue.”

“He asked, the magazine or the cereal?”

I couldn’t help laughing. Mervin didn’t crack smile, he even seemed to get a little more hostile.

“Oh, you think I’m joking?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, but you have to admit that it’s a little funny.”

“Maybe if he was joking,” Mervin said, using a profanity before each word. “But the sad reality was that he wasn’t joking.”

I think we all have had a moment or moments in our life when we couldn’t help laughing at inappropriate times, and the fact that you shouldn’t be laughing makes you laugh harder for some reason. I was facing that situation with Mervin.  I had it under control, but I was on the verge of losing it completely. Unfortunately Mervin continued to speak.

“I know that might sound trivial.  But if you add it all together, day after day growing up, it warps a guy.”

“I see,” I said, my whole torso quivering and tense from suppressed laughter when I should have been feeling, I don’t know, compassion. Then I had a saved by the bell moment. Right before Mervin and I began our strange conversation, I had just applied K-19, a fertilizer that made bean sprouts plump instead of skinny. After applying K-19, it needed to set for a time before being watered. Mervin said something that broke the damn of laughter being suppressed within my body right when the water system kicked on prematurely in the bean room.

“It leads a guy to believe,” Mervin said, whimsically, “what if the Hokey Pokey really is what it’s all about?”

“I need to shut the water off in the bean room,” I said as I dashed away, laughter spewing forth from my mouth as I quickly moved away from him. Once inside the semi darkness of the bean room, laughter came so hard and intense, my gut hurt and tears sprang from my eyes.

“Is everything alright in there?” I heard Mervin ask.

“Yeah,” I said trying to compose myself.

When I came out, my eyes must have showed evidence of the tears that had exuded from my eye sockets.

“Hey,” Mervin said with surprising compassion. “It wasn’t that big of a deal. People grew up with far worse situations than mine. It’s touching how much you care, though.”

I thought that I was all laughed out, but I convulsed a couple more times.

“Easy buddy,” Mervin said, patting and rubbing my shoulder. “There, there.”

That evening when Mary Gold and I went for a walk, I told her about my encounter with Mervin. Then we sat on a park bench and watched a beautiful sunset develop. She looked adorable as she pressed her hands between her knees, aimed her big eyes at me, and with a coy little smile told me it was exactly one month since we actually met for the first time.

A slight misfortune with her car turned out to be a blessing in disguise. For it was a flat tire that brought us together for the first time. Although awkward at first, it finally broke the ice, and put me up close and personal with the “pretty gal.” I had only been admiring her from a far up to that point.