Copyright © 2022 Johann Tienhaara
I hate kids.
When I was maybe 8 or 9 and my old man explained that the best place to slit your wrists is in the shower, so's the blood'll flow quicker. I always knew I'd never raise kids.
Too bad. Me and Caitlin got on famously. I always thought she was the one.
Bla bla bla. I talk too much. I have a job to do.
Look up. See?
The hull of the hope trawler hangs through the bellies of the clouds, glimmering in the afternoon light like otherworldly fish scales. An ethereal net unfurls, cascading a quarter mile to the earth's surface. It passes through cars, trees, houses, that hideously ugly statue of Winston Churchill. As the hope trawler drifts, the ethereal net drags, slow and relentless, toward the Duc d'Anville French immersion elementary school.
The classroom is crammed with half-pint desks and bent, wobbly children. Walls spattered with ugly kid art, characters from comic books and violent video games and Disney Studio Ghibli My Little Pony saccharine movies and a few happy smiley nuclear family dessins.
A corner bookshelf; coat hangered pegs on one wall; a poster dissecting the intergalactic hope trawlers and explaining to children the dangers (red) and virtues (green) of these alien visitors. A wall of windows, the top of a heat pump compressor obscuring the suburban vista, gravel trail and woods and houses, and the great shimmering cloud boat, drifting in the sky currents toward l'écôle, dreadful ethereal mesh drawn along the surface of the planet toward us, passing through trees and buildings.
"Putain de merde!" A youngish woman in a pleated skirt and dress blouse froths at my abrupt entrance.
Oh gods, a French chick. I hate French chicks. Almost as much as I hate kids.
Genevieve crashes into my head. Gods, those hips... Hips don't lie. But French chicks do. Oh, Genevieve. I hope you're happy with other people, Genevieve.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est, poisson de folle?"
"Sorry, miss." I try not to get my back up at that French arrogance. Yeah, yeah, lady, you're directly descended from Louis the whatever'th, I don't care. We saved your ass in two world wars. We bombed your ass in two world wars! And now I'm here to save you and your brats from that big fat alien fishing boat in the sky. So do me a favour and spare me the nose salad, okay?
"Ma'am, I'm Lulu. Do you speak American? I need you to follow some instructions. We're going to save your children, and you, okay?"
"Americain? Do you know where you are, fat lady? Go back to your country, we don't need you to save us from the poltergeists you brought here."
I've never been good at the explanation. My brain doesn't work on the same plane as these suburbanites. I'm a woman of action. Words are -- words are a pain in my ass.
"See that couple?" I point at a young man and a young woman out for a nice stroll on the gravel trail. Wait. Maybe the man is not so young. But I can see his glances -- what do you call it? -- furtive glances. "Watch the man," I instruct the teacher.
She huffs, but she obeys the command, turning to face the window. The brats all follow her there, lining up and peering and jostling, each wanting to make their point of view. I don't know if she can see the net. Even I strain my eyes to see the pale fibrous glow from here, like light-twine. And I have an extraordinary gift for seeing the net for what it is.
The man on the gravel path crumples.
The young woman carries on a few paces, then looks behind her. The man, on his knees, puts his hands to his chest. He holds his hands before him, as though holding his own beating heart, though his hands are empty. He looks up from his hands, to the young woman; back down to his hands. He folds his arms over his chest, hugs himself. He folds further, head on the ground. She cocks her head.
"That is what will happen to you and all your kids," I tell the teacher.
She turns to look at me. The net draws closer by the second.
Something flashes through her eyes, I know not what. She straightens the pleats in her skirt. She pounds her sternum.
"Enfants!" she bellows. "Rapprochez-vous! Tout de suite!"
She understands. Fourteen years of fighting stupid idealogues to save them from themselves, and here, in this backwater suburban school, some condescending French broad gets it.
She's even practiced it.
"Missus, have you done this before?"
A cluster of grade school runts has agglomerated into a group hug.
"Non, this is the first."
"But you have practiced?"
She looks back out the windows. The young woman has disappeared. The not-young man is on his belly, clutching gravel, chewing it.
The ethereal mesh will reach the windows of this classroom in four seconds.
Three.
The French teacher turns back toward me, her beige eyes grotesquely moist, like something out of a 1950s comic book. She extends her hand. What is this? I have no hope left to lose, why the hell should I join this circle? But she gives me no choice. My sweaty fat palm is in her slender delicate French thing. She squeezes my fingers. She draws me into the swarm-clump of brats.
"Serrez," she instructs. "Hug."
Gods I will hate myself in the morning. I close my eyes.
Hmmmm.
I open my eyes.
She does have nice hips.
I hug the little bastards.
She squeezes my hand tighter. Sweat squirts out.
The mesh encircles us.
The children begin their chant. They're well-rehearsed in this sentimental rubbish.
"Je t'aime! Je t'aime!"
The net squeezes. I feel the light-fibres against my back and limbs, tightening. The aliens have found their catch.
The teacher squeezes my fingers one last time before sprawling on top of her students, all four limbs embracing the little devils.
Oh gods, those hips!
I won't say that the form emerging from this child clump of hope looks like a whale. I'm not one of them fish biologists, I ain't never seen a whale, I don't know what a whale looks like.
But something else I ain't never seen before emerges from that great scrum piled up full of children, and it's gotta be about the size of a whale.
It tugs at the net like I've never seen. It pulls.
And it pulls and it pulls and it pulls.
It flails and it yanks and it pulls.
I'm not watching it as the great glimmering hope trawler submerges through the clouds and comes crashing to the earth, whipped and bullied by the great whale thing. The world shakes.
There will be great loss of life -- homes crushed under the buoyant but massive vessel -- cataclysmic grinding of alien material on concrete, metal, wood, asphalt, flesh.
The children are not to be contained. They explode from the heap, wearing victory in their eyes as they run to the spacewrecked trawler. I mop my brow and watch them disappearing through the classroom doorway, then running across the gravel path where the hopeless man has stopped moving. They run through the woods and disappear into the dust plume in the distance.
"Lulu," says the French chick. "Merci. Thank you."
Is that a smile on those French lips?
I wipe my nose on the back of my sleeve and gargle phlegm at the back of my throat. What the hell, I've got five minutes before I have to get on with filling out all the gods-forsaken paperwork.
We stand at the windows and watch the children explore the capsized hope trawler.