by Dan Allison

I’ve never been to Canada. In fact, I’ve never even had a desire to go to Canada. I’ve never had a single ounce of curiosity about what it’s like to be in Canada. I’m perfectly content with the good ol’ US of A, thank you very much. And yet, here I am, on a plane destined for Calgary. How did I get here?

Well, it all started when I met Aleister. Aleister was a British chap who had also never been to Canada, but nonetheless knew a great deal about the country and its culture due to the fact that his brother-in-law grew up in Canada. Aleister was very fond of his brother-in-law. You see, Aleister had no brothers, no male relatives, and no male friends. He had a father, but even he wasn’t really fond of Aleister, called him a mistake. I wasn’t very fond of him either, frankly. He was a nag. It’s no wonder to me why he didn’t have any friends. I suspected that his brother-in-law didn’t like him either. However, despite my dislike for him, he and I had a strikingly similar appearance. He used to say that we should go out to bars and hit on women together, telling them that we’re twins. Our coworkers would sometimes get us mixed up. Oh yes, I forgot to mention, Aleister and I worked the hooks together at a small meatpacking plant. That’s how I came to know him. I don’t know how he ended up there. I killed him before he got a chance to tell me.

Now, before you go getting your hanging rope on me, let me explain. It’s not my fault that I killed him. I had no intention of killing him. I’m not that kind of person. What happened was this (and I know you’re not going to believe me, but I’m telling you anyway): About nine hours ago, I was lying in bed, drifting off to sleep, when I suddenly realized that there was someone standing at the foot of my bed. I lived alone, so this was very disconcerting. I jerked up, eyes wide open, heart pounding. The person appeared to be a naked woman, fairly attractive actually, with the exception of a few peculiar characteristics. Firstly, her skin was a light shade of grey, with a kind of glossy sheen to it. The hair on her head was straight, shoulder length, and ink black, but she had no pubic hair or eyebrows. Her breasts were slightly higher on her torso than a normal woman’s would be, almost on her collarbone. And finally, her eyes were significantly larger than any human being’s I’ve ever seen, staring me down with unsettling tranquility.

“Who are you?” I said, voice cracking.

She telepathically conveyed to me that she was an extraterrestrial from 79 billion years ago, when Mars was roughly in the stage of life that Earth is in now. As the Sun became too weak to sustain a life supporting climate on Mars, but still too strong to sustain a similar climate on Earth, she and the few remaining members of her species traveled forward in time billions of years to Earth and have been living in a bunker at the bottom of Lake Michigan for the past 97 years. But in the past year, all the males have lost interest in reproducing. So she has come to reproduce with me. I slapped myself as hard as I could to wake myself up (though in hindsight, why would I ever want to wake myself up from a dream like that?). It didn’t wake me up from any dream because it was as real as me sitting here in this plane to Calgary, eating these crappy pretzel sticks. All it did was make my face hurt.

And apparently, it offended her, offended her quite a bit. The tranquility in her eyes turned to rage, and I suddenly became paralyzed in what felt like a full body migraine. She telepathically conveyed to me a message that I can only roughly translate as something like, “Fine! Be that way! Here, why don’t you go kill your stupid friend from your stupid meatpacking job, you stupid human! I wasn’t really that attracted to you anyway!” I was instantly transported to Aleister’s bedroom where I - under the control of the alien lady - took his life using one of his dirty socks.

After the deed was done, the alien woman’s presence vanished, and I was left alone with Aleister’s dead body. I freaked out for an hour or two, trying to comprehend what had just happened. Finally, realizing no one would ever believe my story, I decided it was time to get out of the country. So I dug through Aleister’s stuff, taking his passport and wallet. I took out as much cash from my bank account as the nearest ATM would give me, threw away anything that could potentially be used to identify me as me, and headed to the airport. I made up a story about my mother dying in a hospital in Calgary to explain why I was freaking out at the airport in my pajamas, trying to leave the country at three in the morning. I didn’t think they were going to buy it, yet here I am.

You know, I didn’t really think this thing through.

Oh well. At least I’ll finally get to see Canada.