Playing Fair and Being Kind

EARTH’S SIXTH MASS EXTINCTION EVENT IS UNDERWAY

But Fred is O.K.
He sat out in the sun drinking from a water bottle. What a nice day he thought and smiled a little smile. He was facing the screen door with his back to the South and the heat from the sun felt oh, so good! Fred adjusted the oxygen bottle under his Hudson Bay blanket and settled lower into the lawn chair that was cradling him. Tucked inside the L.L. Bean sub-zero sleeping bag and wrapped in the Hudson Bay blanket, Fred was nearly mummified. He inhaled through his nose and tasted the oxygen, the oxygen that kept him breathing through the crap that lined his blackened lungs. Fred had been a long-term smoker. He didn’t give a rat’s ass. He was never worried about cigarettes or emphysema or lung cancer or any of that shit. His motto was simply, “fuck it”. Here he was in the sixth decade of his life and he was happy as a clam sitting in the mound of Eider down and wool tucked into the pocket of a plastic lawn chair with his E cylinder enjoying the warmth of the sun hitting his back while listening to birds and an occasional automobile whisper past his house here in the beautiful state of Maine next to a picturesque cove between islands in Boothbay. Fred could hear the far-off thunder of a jet-liner probably headed to New York City from someplace in the EU. He squeezed the oxygen bottle a bit tighter and let his eyes close. He dozed.

Fred was startled awake by a loud roar and thundering impact under his chair. He felt the earth lift. He instinctively pulled his head into his shoulder and he disappeared further into the mound of sleeping bag and blanket. He clutched the E cylinder to keep from losing it. He gasped and sucked more oxygen through his nose and he felt the earth pushing him further skyward. Fred no longer heard anything. He breathed harder and held the chair against himself with his elbows. The chair was now a projectile. He could see the ground below him rushing away and toward him. He didn’t dare look. He held his head down against his chest and clutched the chair to his body. He was airborne. What Fred didn’t know is that a meteorite had slammed into the earth less than ten miles away from him and the impact wave had launched him and millions of tons of earth skyward. Fred was on the leading edge of the rock and dirt and earth hurtling toward outer space! Fred took another deep suck on the E tank and pulled his head deeper into the L. L. Bean mummy sleeping bag. The blanket was still with him as was the oxygen bottle. Fred came to realize he was way up in the air but he didn’t realize he was nearly in orbit with the dust cloud. Fred was an astronaut for the next four hours until his tank ran dry. That made Fred the last living earthling. Yay, Fred.

G. M. Goodwin
26 May 2019