Craig Brownlie 

She discovered she had turned into the wrong person.

Tamsin motioned to her lady in waiting and ordered her to bring the mirror from her bedchamber. “Don’t look at me like that. Get one of the pageboys to help you if you can’t handle a simple task.”

While she waited, Tamsin listened to the knights continue their endless debating with her husband. She hated the king for his indecisiveness and pandering.

Across the oversized table dominating the throne room, Tamsin watched her attendant struggle with the floor length mirror along the walls. The young woman had chosen a new page to carry the other end.

Eventually, they placed the gold-framed looking glass beside Tamsin.

“Bring it closer, within arm’s reach.”

She admired the biceps on the burly lad. When she arrived in the kingdom, Tamsin found herself in the middle of an affair with one of the knights, who proved inattentive and dull. She sampled a quarter of the round table and a similar number of pages before seeing the futility. They were either drunk or rushed.

Tamsin gave the room a final survey and found it unchanged from her arrival. She licked the tip of her finger. She winked at the page who looked terrified. Then, she traced her reflection with her moist index finger.

#

She discovered she had turned into the wrong person.

“Excuse me? Are you going to give me the rest of my change or not?”

Tamsin pulled back from her abyss and refocused on the customer in front of her. “Yes, sorry. Three, four, five dollars.” She gave the man in the Blink 182 shirt a professional nod and looked to the girl behind him.

“A pack of Marlboros,” demanded the adolescent.

“I don’t think you’re old enough.”

“They’re for my mom.”

Tamsin considered the four impatient people behind the girl and reached up for the pack.

“Could you make it a carton?” The girl smirked.

“No.”

“Fine.”

Six customers later, Tamsin saw her opportunity and made a dash for the restroom. Inside, she stood before the mirror, licked her finger, and…

---

Tamsin heard the librarian approach. She looked over the top of the study carousel.

“You can’t keep staying in the library,” said Cynthia.

They had been roommates their first two years at university, only ending when Tamsin moved off campus to live in her boyfriend’s studio apartment. Tamsin did not want to get into a whole thing, so she kept her voice flat and unequivocal.

“I have a big project due Monday first thing. It’s not like I’m the only person that ever gets locked in.”

“You are the only person we’ve locked in for five nights running.”

“Give me until Monday to sort something out. I need this.”

Cynthia made the dramatic sigh she had perfected their freshman year and nodded.

Tamsin waited for the dimming of the overhead lights before taking the mirror out of her backpack. She touched up the concealer on her face. She licked the tip of her index finger.

---

She discovered she had turned into the wrong people: a girl chatting with a hookah-smoking caterpillar; a pregnant gunfighter; a suburban soccer mom; a tomb raider; an unexpected guest.

---

She discovered she had turned into the wrong person.

The stench of drunken pirates hit Tamsin first. Men littered the deck of the sloop William. Somewhere in that mass, she would find her lover, Captain “Calico Jack” Rackham. Mary Read stood beside her, the pair being the sober exceptions. Tamsin followed Mary’s eyes out to sea and watched an English privateer draw closer. They both drew their pistols.

“We are doomed,” said Mary.

“They are bound to find us out.”

“Damn Jack Rackham.”

“I’m pregnant,” hissed Tamsin.

“So am I.”

“Damn Jack Rackham.”

Mary shifted her pistol and took her friend’s hand. As the first cannonball flew overhead, Tamsin lost her nerve.

“Does Jack still have that mirror in his cabin?”

---

Tamsin shifted books about in her carousel until she located her mobile.

“Cynthia, I’m sorry for calling so late, but you were right. I don’t want to spend another night or even minute here. Can you come and let me out? And maybe I can stay at your place?”

 

---

CRAIG BROWNLIE was born in East Orange, New Jersey, and grew up in Youngstown, Ohio. Among other endeavors, he has washed dishes, spun records on the radio, directed and designed stage shows, joined the Pennsylvania and Federal Bar Associations, and managed software development projects. His first published book was 1987’s Financial Commercial Loan Handbook from Financial Publishing Company (uncredited). In addition, he has written numerous plays, books, short stories, poems, and non-fiction pieces.

Craig Holt

Me and Jerry sit poolside at the Chester Court Apartments, sharing some good purple kush. Still wearing our blue Amazon tee shirts with the stupid eyeless smile on the front and the word FULFILLMENT on the back, we’re listing all the crap holding us back from stardom: no acting experience, absence of formal training, what you might call major deficiencies in talent and good looks. Jerry’s waving the joint, explaining that the real problem is our lack of industry contacts (“Who in the for-real fuck gets discovered at the El Monte fulfillment center, bro-stein?”) when a shooting star crashes into the pool.

That concrete puddle is a pool the way me and Jerry are actors; in, like, name only. Calling it a pool is, as mom might say, like calling a dog tick a tweety bird. Shaped like a lima bean, a bit bigger than a hot tub but without the benefit of heat or the fun of bubbles. Mostly, it’s a boggy hole where cigarette butts, candy wrappers and Starbucks cups go to die. 

Whoomp! Boom! Hot water and steam everywhere. The blast knocks me and Jer-bear ass over teakettle off our lawn chairs, soaked and scalded. Our joint dies a wet death in Jerry’s hand. 

Not a single neighbor appears to investigate the crash—the Chester Court being the kind of place where you run away from loud noises, not toward them—so me and Jerry are the only witnesses as a tiny alien rises out of the pool, all shimmery and weird looking in the billowing mist. 

I whisper to Jerry, “Dude! We’re totally getting abducted!” Our Big Break has arrived. Seriously, you can’t buy the kind of press that comes with being taken by aliens. We’ll have podcasts and blogs. We’ll be influencers, sharing our experience with aliens and our opinions about music, politics, and science. Mom, wherever she is, will see my face on the cover of one of those magazines at the Walmart checkout and maybe try to contact me through my agent—which I’ll totally have the minute the little golden alien dumps us back on earth. Me and the Jerry-nator will be seen at last.

Jerry totally gets it. He swallows the drowned roach and fist bumps me. “Adios, Chester.” 

“Fuck you, Bezos.” (Fulfillment Center my ass; I’m an actor not a robot, Jeff.)

Jerry wrings out his hair. I brace myself for first contact. Will they run experiments on us? Make us breed with their species? I clench my butt cheeks, worried about anal probes. I take a deep, calming breath and catch a whiff of a nasty spicey-sweet smell that’s just like the old lady perfume my mom wore when she was still climbing the pole to pay rent. Obsession.

Are we heading into the cosmos with a race of hyper-intelligent strippers? 

Weird thing is, the alien moving toward us through the mist looks like, well, an old lady. Short hair, mean eyes, lots of makeup. Her otherworldly shimmer is just a long, drapey, gold sequin dress. Not a drop of water on her, though. No blood or bruises from smashing the shit out of our pool. She’s unscathed except for a grape Laffy Taffy wrapper hanging off the glittery fringe above her ankles. I could swear I’ve seen her before.

She follows my gaze down her dress and curls her lip, mad as if she’d stepped in dog shit instead of taking a scrap of rogue packaging to the ankle. She leans down, flicks the wrapper at me and Jerry. 

Straightening up, she looks at us all pinched and judgmental, and juts her chin at me. “Young man,” she says in a sniffy accent, “Where am I?” 

Here it is, my big break. 

I open my mouth and just… freeze up. My brain short-circuits, fuses blown by too much ganja and the sheer what-the-fuckness of an alien encounter. I flub my lines. Total choke show. 

Good old Jerry bails me out as always. Steps forward with his hand over his heart. “Uh, welcome, friend! You have arrived on earth. I am Gerald Hoiland, and this,” he pats my back and leaves his hand there, “is my best friend, Finn Calvert.” It mellows me out; his hand on my back, him saying I’m his best friend. 

He bows so low his long hair drags on the wet cement and snags the ET’s candy wrapper. 

“For God’s sake,” she says, “what neighborhood?” 

Being propped up by Jerry and talked to like I’m an idiot by everyone else is totally my comfort zone. I find my voice. “Like, Burbank.” 

“‘Like’ Burbank?” She scowls.

Geez. Are all space people dicks?

She snaps her fingers at me. “Spit it out.” 

Fast track to stardom or not, I no longer want to be abducted by this alien. I get all the attitude I need from my corporate overlords, I don’t need to fly into the black void of space for this shit. 

Jerry smiles, impervious to assholery, a purple candy wrapper and a cigarette butt stuck in his hair. “This is the heart of the City of Angels, space friend. Burbank is all around you.” He sweeps his arm in a wide arc, presenting the Chester and the smoggy San Fernando Valley like he’s showing the snotty alien the Garden of Eden or the grand prize on Wheel of Fortune. 

She checks her dainty gold watch, scrunches up her nose. “Damn it. Stupid drones.” The alien buzzkill crouches, arms drawn back like she’s about to go full Wonder Woman. 

It hits me. Where I’ve seen her. “M!” 

Still squatting, she turns to me like she would to a dog puking up grass. “Excuse me?” 

“James Bond. You’re his boss, dude. In the old movies.” 

She draws herself up, comes at me with her finger in the air, “Young man, I have been Ophelia, Juliet, Lady MacBeth. I played Queen Elizabeth. I won Oscars, BAFTAs, SAGs. I—”

Jerry giggles. “Sag.”

She glares at him so hard I worry she’ll laser his brain out. I swear poor Jer shrinks like half a foot under that stare. 

She turns her blue death ray eyes on me again, leans in so close I gag on the peppermint and raw meat smell of her breath. “I am an actress. I am not,” she pokes my forehead with a cold, bony finger, “a dude.”

She blasts off, knocking me and Jerry on our asses again, and shoots across the sky toward Beverly Hills trailing glitter. All that remains of our visitation from Dame Judy Dench is a ruined pool and a whiff of broccoli farts. 

There will be no podcasts, no anal probes, no journey through the heavens. I’ll get up every morning and go to the warehouse to pack TV remotes, dog toys, and dildos for same-day shipment to the greater Los Angeles area. To make quota, I’ll piss in a Gatorade bottle instead of taking breaks. On the ride home, I’ll get high with Jerry. Every night, me and Jerry will sit by the empty pool, sharing a joint while we wait for our next big break, for another star to crash land in our courtyard.

 

---

CRAIG HOLT’s fiction has appeared in Psychopomp Magazine, Exit 7, Defenestration and elsewhere. His first novel, Hard Dog to Kill, won the Independent Publisher Book Award gold medal in 2018. He is a former (recovering?) standup comedian, and he is represented by Chip MacGregor at MacGregor and Luedeke Literary. The two things he fears most in this world are sharks and clowns.