Alien Dick Pic
By Mario Aliberto III
Sloan met him at Janice’s party, a little divorce celebration her coworker at the city pension office threw for herself at a wine bar downtown. There’d been no plan to meet anyone. The only plan had been to get in and get out without a panic attack. Teetering nervously around the crowded bar in heels, her sparkly cocktail dress riding up, a starfield of glitter coating her bare arms where the fabric rubbed against her, it was impossible to tell who was there for Janice and who was just there. Too many people, too much talking, too much wine.
Sloan only attended the party because whispers around the office about her antisocial behavior were no longer whispers. The same story her whole life. Because she was quiet. Because people made her nervous. So, there she was, slightly buzzed, overwhelmed with anxiety, awkwardly avoiding eye-contact in a bar full of coworkers and strangers. All so Monday at the pension office she could say, Hey, look at me. I can function in society. I’m one of you.
Unfortunately, she found herself cornered, scrunching her nose at the Merlot-breath of a fidgety man whom she recognized from city planning, listening politely as he pontificated on his preference for the views in Sonoma over Napa, the beautiful expanse of night skies over vineyards. Breathtaking stargazing. He spoke of planets and comets. The universe and its mysteries. What was the strangest thing she’d ever seen in the cosmos, he wanted to know.
She entered his name into her phone as Mark, though she wasn’t sure that was right. She didn’t really care. He pushed to exchange numbers after Janice had stumbled over and made a drunken show of asking, Darling, how do you survive being single? Never married? Crazy. No long-term relationships? Unbelievable. What do you do on Friday nights? Saturday nights? What the hell do you do for the holidays? What’s the plan for, gasp, the rest of your life?
Mark, or whatever his name was, must have sensed how uncomfortable the exchange made her, as obvious as if Janice had thrown a glass of wine in her face. He consoled her, as if he could read her mind, saying choosing to remain partnerless or wanting to no-show a stupid divorce party didn’t make her inhuman.
He continued, unprompted, explaining he often felt like the human equivalent of Pluto at parties, as if he were composed primarily of ice, downgraded from planet status, exiled from the group. He gazed at her in the way she imagined he marveled at the night sky, a way that left her feeling exposed. With a saucy wink, he promised to text her a photo of something she’d like. She dry-heaved at the thought of his penis. She franticly excused herself and escaped to the bathroom, locking herself inside the tiny room where she breathed deep through her nose and blew slowly out of her mouth.
Her phone thrummed abruptly on her thighs as she sat on the toilet. A text notification. An image. Not unexpected, but definitely unsolicited. A belch tasting of spoiled Moscato. She was in no rush to see a dick pic. A phallic nightmare. A mess of pubes and a beet-red tip as if ashamed of its owner.
Of course, Sloan didn’t have to open the image, but isn’t that what people did? Would Janice? Sloan didn’t know. Exhausting, constantly performing to meet others’ expectations. Well, all her social interactions were performative. She opened the image and readied herself, except, nothing could have prepared her for what she saw, which was most definitely not a dick pic. Still, she couldn’t say the image was any less shocking.
A picture taken from the ground looking up at a black canvas of sky, dark clouds silvered at their edges, and peeking through the clouds…what? A metal ball? An eerie light encircling it, an ethereal glow. Some sort of blimp or drone? No. Instinctively, she knew the ball wasn’t either of those things.
Another text followed. What do you think?
The silver ball could be a UFO. That’s what she thought it was supposed to be. It looked small, as far as she could tell, without more perspective. If aliens were human size, it probably accommodated a single traveler. A tiny world unto itself.
Thunderous banging on the bathroom door and several voices begging her to hurry up.
What do you think?
Here’s what Sloan thought:
She thought she would like nothing more than to sail solo across the universe in that little silver ball. Past crab nebulas and spiral galaxies, supernovas and black holes. Drink in all the wonders of space unfiltered. And how satisfying it would feel after traveling billions of light years in complete and utter solitude, to at last come upon an inhabited planet, hover above that blue-green world, hide in a cloud, look down on all those people, their neediness, their judgement, all their bullshit, and decide with the utmost surety and confidence, No, no, I’m good up here.
About the Author
Mario Aliberto III is a Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions nominated writer whose work appears in Fractured Lit, trampset, Tahoma Literary Review, and others. He is a SmokeLong Quarterly Workshop Prize runner-up and author of the upcoming chapbook, All the Dead We Have Yet to Bury, published with Chestnut Review. He lives in Tampa Bay with his wife and daughters, and yet the dog still runs the house. Twitter: @marioaliberto3
