Just to start off, here is the first thousand words of Welcome to Earth.
The ringing phone pierces through the fog of alcohol that’s misting up your mind and drags you kicking and screaming out of your sleep. Without the protection of unconsciousness your head instantly starts pounding, your throat begins to lather itself up with sandpaper and every muscle in your body competes over which aches the most.
Deciding to open your eyes, you quickly realise that your decision-making process isn’t very good. The blinding light of a gloomy room stabs into your vampirically sensitive eyes. Screwing your lids shut, you let out a little groan of pain.
The phone carries on ringing relentlessly.
Letting out a little sigh, you swing your feet over the edge of the bed and, trying not to trip over the small elephant sleeping on your floor, stumble across the room to where you dropped your mobile last night. You look at it curiously. A phone number has been painted on the back in purple, next to a small sticker of a banana.
You try to figure out exactly what happened last night, but it’s all lost in a mist of drunkenness.
You’re snapped out of your reverie by the sudden silence of the phone stopping ringing. You glare at it angrily, before returning to your bed, stepping gingerly over the snoring pachyderm.
Just as your head hits the pillow, the phone starts ringing again. You pick it up. “Stop ringing!” you yell at it, before putting it back down again.
It doesn’t listen, and carries on with its relentless racket. You lie there for a moment longer before giving in and answering the phone. “What?”
“Dude, CIA activity is off the charts!”
“Fuck off Terrance.” You’ve heard Terry’s conspiracy theories a million times already. It’s enough to send you to sleep, not that you need much encouragement for that at this moment in time.
“No man I’m serious, do you have any idea how many men in suits and sunglasses I’ve seen walk outside my window this morning? Three! I’ve consulted my notebook, and there’s only meant to be one on Saturdays, and he doesn’t normally walk past my house until five past eight. This is clearly suspicious activity.”
You blink slowly. “Are you telling me its not even eight o’clock yet?”
“No, its three minutes past now.”
“Goodbye Terry.”
“Wait, please just hear me out man. I know you don’t understand just how dangerous the government can be, but they’re clearly up to something at the moment. You need to open your eyes dude.”
You do as he says, not even remembering closing them. You’re clearly much too hungover to be dealing with this. “The CIA aren’t even our shitting government Terry. We’re not American. Even if we were, why the fuck would they be interested in a stoner like you?”
“Do you really think countries keep their secret services to themselves? You’re even more naïve than I thought.” He barks out an annoying fake laugh. “Besides, they’re not interested in me, they’re interested in the spaceship that landed in your garden last night.”
The line goes silent for a moment as you process what he said. “You might need to repeat that.”
“Don’t you remember? You’d just finished vomiting on the church down the end of the street when it came flying out from a cloud and crashed behind your house. You said I was just imagining things because I’d taken a shit tonne of MD, but Hanno saw it too, ask him.”
“You probably were imagining things, you do way too many drugs Terry. And I don’t trust Hanno, he’s fucking nuts. There’s no such thing as spaceships dude.”
“Just go check your back garden, I bet you there will be a smoking spaceship wreck out there. I’ve got to go, I can see a woman with a pram out my window reading a newspaper. Something fishy is clearly going on here.” The line goes dead.
Not wasting any time with getting back to sleep, you shut your eyes. Terry and his spaceship can wait a little longer, you think.
“What was that about me being nuts?”
Your eyes snap open. With a groan, you force yourself up into a sitting position. It doesn’t look like you’re getting back to sleep this morning. The elephant is looking at you expectantly. “Apparently you saw a spaceship last night.”
“I did. It crashed into the garden. Why does that make me nuts?” Hanno glares at you angrily.
“Well it would hardly be the first time you convinced yourself you saw something stupid. Remember that time you were at the grocery store and thought you saw a zombie in the vegetable aisle?”
“Its not my fault if people go around covered in blood and torn clothes.”
“She’d just escaped a rapist! She’d managed to get away and hide in the store, and then you tried to bash her head in with a shopping basket.”
Hanno harrumphs at you and looks at the floor sheepishly.
“Look, you’re not going to get offended at me for calling you nuts, are you?” With a horrendous hangover and a supposed CIA insurgency going on, an angry elephant would be enough to make this day a living nightmare for you.
“Don’t worry,” says Hanno, much to your relief. “Us elephants are famously thick skinned. But let me remind you, we never forget. If I ever hear you call me nuts again I will stick my tusk so far up your arse you’ll choke on it.”
You’re not too worried about his threat. As famed as an elephant’s mind may be, Hanno had the memory of an amnesiac with Alzheimer’s. Besides, you’ve known Hanno for years. He’s threatened to impale you with his tusks multiple times, and its yet to happen.
