donutsweeper

Transcription:

Maurice is pushing an empty dolly at work, where he's an assistant manager at a beer and liquor wholesaler. The manager, Vinny, is saying to an employee there, "Damion, you're riding with Moe today. Go load the truck. Hurry; yer late."

Damion and Maurice stand in the warehouse in front of stacks of cases labeled "Bud" and "Coors." Damion says, "Can you handle the dolly if I stack it?"

"Course!" replies Maurice. "I do it all the time."

When the dolly is full, Maurice tips it back to begin pushing it. But it keeps tipping back, and he lets go of it. He stares at it as the cases begin to slide off.

The alien appears in the background and we can no longer see Damion surrounded by cases of beer. Maurice is pulling his right arm away from the falling dolly, and implores her, "Stop. Make it stop."

"what happened?" she asks. Maurice looks at his right arm. He's turning so that his left side will meet the dolly as it continues to fall toward him.

"My arm gave way. The broken one. It went crack. That can't be good."

"Oh," the alien exclaims. "Oh no."

Maurice's shoulder is near the left handle of the dolly now, and his left hand has almost grabbed it. He continues. "I told Vinny when he hired me that..."

He pauses.

"...I wouldn't do heavy lifting. I wouldn't injure myself. Aaaaaand there goes my back. Take it back."

The alien continues to hover in the background, keeping her distance. The dolly is nearly at the floor now, and Maurice has gotten his shoulder under it and it's weighing on him hard. "This is my own fault. I need a second chance," he reasons with her, then pleads, "Rewind! Rewind!"

"What?!" says the alien. "I can't rewind TIME!"

"But I need it," Maurice pleads.

***

There's a whole other level of fictional characters, or imaginary friends in some cases, that wasn't originally part of the story. I added them after I finished Draft 1 because I kind of wanted there to be an alien in Alien Romance who was an alien, and not just an immigrant. The title of my book actually refers to immigrants, and it's a callback to the old cheesy shows and movies popular in the 1980's about an attractive alien coming to earth and having a romantic subplot with a cute human while the FBI tries to chase them down. Those shows were, to a degree, allegories for immigration and intercultural relationships. So I bypassed the allegory part.

The bones of this story popped into my head in 1987, so you can't really be surprised, right?