Mercy for Aliens

Inside the mind of a teenager that feels like he doesn't belong

Every morning before going to school, I watch Dad as he sleeps in his medical bed at home, breathing through the BIPAP machine. His ALS has progressed so far that he cannot breathe on his own very well through the night. As I listen to the rhythmic hum of the machine, I feel like Elliot when E.T. is dying in the movie, both of them withering through a sympathetic bond. My own throat feels hoarse and I gasp for air, as if I too need the oxygen mask. It should be me, not him, lying in that narrow gurney; I’m the alien, not him. Not long ago, I’d overheard Grandpa promising Dad he would “pull the plug” on him before it got this bad so he could die with dignity, but I think Grandpa lied.

Everyone lies to make you feel better and they tell you only half truths so you don’t get scared. Maybe they really don’t care how you feel but are afraid of what you might do if you knew the real story. Nothing the doctors told us was very accurate about what Dad was going to endure. First, they told us we had five to ten years from the time of his diagnosis, but it’s been less than one year, and now they say he’s the fastest progressing patient they’ve ever seen. The doctors advised him to bulk up because ALS would burn so many calories trying to use his atrophying muscles. Like a boxer getting ready for the big fight, Dad put on weight, but the disease never melted his fat, so now he just lays there on the bed like a beached whale.

People make up stories of a loving God who comforts humans when they are sad and rescues them from tragedies no human could recover from on their own. They say if you have enough faith, you will be healed. They say God would never give a man more than he could handle. They say everything happens for a reason. What lies! If there is a God, he is not a loving one. I think he gets a kick out of human suffering.

Two years ago, I couldn’t understand as the credits rolled at the end of some movie why everyone cried when the dad with terminal cancer died. I mean, I could understand why the characters in the movie cried, but it made no sense why my dad and my sister had tears streaming down their cheeks. The people were just characters on a TV screen. Even in real life, when those kids on the news were killed in that school shooting, I wondered how the other kids in my class could feel so sad about people they didn’t even know.

I am accused of having no emotions and lacking empathy. But just because I speak and feel in a different language than most humans does not mean I am a robot. I sit in class every day, my mind wandering to Dad slowly dying, and I wonder how these human beings can worry about such unimportant things as which girls like which boys at school or what tragedy happened on the other side of the country. I listen to these morons say the dumbest things, and I think the kid who killed those students in that shooting must have been the smartest of them all. The world could use a cleansing of imbeciles. I have fantasized about the satisfaction of being that guy who pulled the trigger.

Calculus is super easy, but somehow I kept getting all the answers wrong, so I decided to drop the class. I think it was a pretty slick move, because now I am an office assistant that period and can just roam the halls. I am sure I herald from a superior origin, and I smirk when I interrupt class for my important errands, feeling somewhat sorry for the humans suffering in their cells.

* * *

As an errand boy, I enjoy the solitude of empty halls, but when they are crowded between classes, the students run into me and tell me to watch it, as if it’s my fault. When I talked to a teacher about it, she told me it’s accidental, that nobody is watching where they are going and everyone gets shoved in the halls by each other. I think she’s lying. I know they do it on purpose. They always say to ignore bullies, but last year I hit my breaking point, and after someone nudged me in the cafeteria and I dropped my lunch tray on the floor, I roared and lunged at the human. I clobbered him and punched him over and over till his nose bled. A teacher pulled me off him and I got expelled because the student said it was an accident, even though I knew he was lying. I learned that I had to hold in my rage, and that taking things into my own hands only earned me more punishment. I despise the humans and the monster grew inside of me.

I’m horrified what I’m capable of, and even more scared that pummeling someone like that could feel so good. Even worse was what happened over the summer. I was in a Capoeira class with people of all ages, little kids and old people. At the end of every class we had a roda, where we’d all get in a circle and take turns mock-sparring in the middle. We would practice our movements without making actual physical contact, more like a dance than a fight.

As the Mestre strummed the string of the berimbau, I felt the rush of adrenaline as I entered the circle. I greeted my 6-year-old opponent by opening up with the basic ginga movement. We took turns with kicks and esquiva, dodging each other’s advances. I tried to be patient with my miniature rival who was so much slower and uncoordinated than me. But the drum beat infused with my heart beat, sounding hard in my chest, my blood rushing in my head. Nothing felt so invigorating than flowing through the fluid movements. I felt powerful and moved faster and faster, getting out of sync with the beat. I didn’t notice my little roda companion was backing further and further away and the only moves he could muster were the basic ginga and esquivas as I advanced with gancho kicks and rasteira sweeps. I didn’t hear the gasps or notice the group had ceased clapping to the music. I was in a world of my own, single-mindedly executing potent and precise movements. It wasn’t until the little kid flew backward into the ring of spectators that I saw what I had been doing.

The Mestre dropped the berimbau and rushed to the child who was gasping for air. I thought I’d killed him, realizing I’d kicked him square in the chest. Everyone’s eyes went from the collapsed kid to me, their hands to their mouths. I crumpled to the floor, sick and crying, feeling the piercing stares boring into me, a monster who’d attacked a defenseless little earthling.

The gasping earthling I learned had just gotten the wind knocked out of him, but it reminds me of an astronaut who breathes convulsively without his helmet, suffocating from lack of oxygen, like Dad does when he tries to talk too much. He lays there in front of me now sounding like Darth Vadar, and I see myself in the reflection of his mask. I am the creature who steals oxygen from humans.

* * *

Mom tells me that I didn’t say my first word until I was four. My first word was “cookie.” She had held out the cookie till I said the word and then gave it to me, and we repeated the process till I finished the entire box! Maybe that’s how I learned that I could just act like a parrot and my puppet-mother would do my bidding.

I became an observer. It was what I was taught by my mom anyway, to integrate myself into the social norms of society. My family tried to teach me by playing charades and a mirroring game, copying and identifying body positions and expressions of each other, winning when we identified the emotion. My mom read a book of scenarios and asked me to predict how the characters would react. I learned to say polite phrases that went with specific situations. I was trained how to learn about people and how to adapt to their ways. I might be from another planet but I figured out how to conform, though I never did succeed in blending in. The humans just assumed I couldn’t speak and I decided it was to my advantage to let them believe that.

I envy Dad whose ALS stole his ability to speak. I wonder if he secretly enjoys the relief from having to communicate with other mortals.

* * *

I have a little brother and sister, Alan and Amy. Sometimes I wonder if we are really related. They are twins, five years younger than me. They are like best friends and I’ve always envied them that they have each other. I’m a loner, which I prefer, but I don’t really belong in this family. Maybe I am actually another species and God miraculously put his seed into my mom and gave birth to an alien. I mean, if it could happen to Mary, why not other humans?

Just like the kids at school, my siblings talk about me behind my back. I am weird because I rock back and forth when I tell a story, and sometimes they mimic me. I often feel like an idiot because they are so much younger than me but can easily handle tasks that cause me so much anxiety.

Mom is a perfectionist and a neat freak, and I can never live up to her standards. I always get nervous when she gives me a task that requires multiple steps. She breaks them down for me, but she gives them to me all at once and I can’t keep track of what comes next.

It was my job to clean the bathroom and I scrubbed the sink and shower with comet, shook out the rugs and cleaned the floor, but I still cowered when Mom came back to see my progress.

“You did a great job but the comet residue needs to be rinsed off,” Mom reported.

I heard my siblings snicker down the hallway. “I told you he’d forget to rinse the comet off,” Alan whispered to Amy. “Even with the kiddie chart Mom made for him, he sill forgets how to do it.”

I slumped my shoulders and hung my head. “They’re right. I shouldn’t need a kiddie chart when I’m a teenager. I’m so stupid.”

Mom’s head swiveled around and spotted the snoopers. “Mind your own business,” she growled at them. “Your chores better be perfect.”

Then she swiveled her head back to me and I was afraid of her wrath. Instead, she lifted my head with her hand to look in my eyes and said “No Son. You’re not stupid. You’re just different. You have other gifts.”

I flinched at her touch and panicked as her eyes met mine. I pulled away and looked down. Touching me and making eye contact were threatening. Yeah, I’m different alright. Aliens can’t stand human contact. I started to cry.

Faltering, Mom said, “how about we take you off of bathroom duty. All your AP classes are pretty demanding and that should take precedence over household chores.”

That’s when I discovered the gift my mom said I had. After Mom lightened my load, I broke down more and more and feigned greater incompetence. I did things wrong on purpose so she wouldn’t want to keep giving me tasks. She thought I was stressed over my classes but with my brains, they weren’t actually very challenging. I didn’t even need to do the homework to pass the tests. Well, not at first. But when I started failing, I learned I could get out of that too.

To activate my super power, I only had to say the magic words “I want to kill myself.” That made everyone jump. Mom spent hours and hours giving me pep talks and telling me how great I was. The more I started saying I wanted to die, the more true it felt even though everyone tried to cheer me up by constantly telling me that I was brilliant and had great potential. Teachers sometimes warned me that I would fail my classes and have to retake them, but all I had to do was have an anxiety attack in class and I was excused and allowed to hide in the counselor’s office. Their threats had no teeth and they manipulated my grades because they felt sorry for me. Everyone lies. Even the teachers lied about consequences. I could play the lying game too.

Now, not only do the kids treat me like I’m retarded, but the adults believe I’m incapable of doing anything, too. It’s a double-edged sword. I’m playing the idiots like puppets to do everything for me, but the puppets think I’m stupid. Alan and Amy know my game and resent me. They tattle every time I sneak extra computer time when I’m supposed to be doing homework or pretend to forget it is my turn to cook dinner. This is my revenge. I am a genius and I just have to keep my siblings from revealing my identity. But like Jekyll and Hyde, sometimes I am not sure which identity is the real one. I want people to like me, but since I’m not really one of them, it’s more to my advantage to embrace my darkness and let the creature out. Maybe I am from a different planet and only appear to be a teenager.

I wasn’t always like this though. My game works so well because society believes that people like me can’t lie, and for a long time, I was no exception. Since facts either are or are not, it doesn’t make sense to lie. Not only did it defy logic, but it also made me feel guilty to lie. The discomfort was so intense that to relieve it, I went so far as to incriminate myself even if there was no suspicion of wrongdoing.

When I was younger, I was left in charge when Mom went to the store and left us kids at home. Alan and Amy were mischievous. They raided the pantry for candy and jumped on the beds.

“You guys need to stop. We’re going to get in trouble!” I said.

“Mom won’t even know. We left enough candy in the jar she won’t notice we took some.”

“That’s not the point,” I shrieked. I started to rock back and forth because I was flustered. “It’s against the rules.”

“Ugh! You are such a rule follower!” Amy said, rolling her eyes.

“Watch this!” Alan announced.

Getting a running start, he leaped over a chair, rebounded off the wall, and landed on his back on his bed.

“Bet you can’t do that!” Alan challenged me.

“I can too, but Mom says no parkour in the house.”

“You’re just scared I’m better than you.”

I rocked from side to side. It looked like fun, and if he could do it, I could too. So I ran and jumped over the chair, pushed off the wall, and did a backflip like I’d learned in Capoeira and landed on my butt on the bed. We heard a tremendous crack as I sank in the middle of the mattress.

Just then, we heard mom open the front door.

“Quick, help me stuff blankets under the bed to prop up the mattress,” Alan said, running to the closet to get blankets. We started shoving them under the bed and Amy straightened the blankets on top just in time for Mom to walk into the bedroom.

Mom hadn’t even said a word and I hung my head and blurted out our crime. “We were practicing parkour and I broke the bed.”

I was raised in a strict religious household where honesty and choosing the right was highly stressed. Not only did we go to church every Sunday and pray together at dinner and bedtime, but my parents were highly involved in teaching Sunday school and fellowshipping midweek, and they carted us to youth group more than once a week. I love rules and structure because it provides security and predictability; change and undependability caused me great anxiety. I liked the idea that God was absolute and people were either good or bad. It was solid.

But something didn’t sit well with me. The questions they posed at church with their patented answers drilled into me from birth started to show through like fabric that had been worn threadbare. Who was I really? I mean other than a child of God? What was my purpose? To do as I was told? But sometimes things asked of me didn’t make sense and made me uncomfortable. How could I pray to this being I couldn’t see? Why was it wrong to say no when asked to give the prayer in Sunday school? Why didn’t this protective power do anything about the boys at church that laughed at me? The pressure to always be good was so strong, the very idea of deviating induced shame.

Mom said I didn’t have to believe everything they taught me. Instead she said I should try to decide for myself if it felt right. That was even more confusing. Why would they teach us stuff at church if it wasn’t true? That’s lying. You can’t just “decide” if something is true or not. It either is or isn’t. At school, they don’t tell you that you can choose to believe things are true or not. They require you to believe it.

Unlike Mom, Dad insisted everything our church taught was true and that we should be obedient so we could be blessed. Blessed with what? Rewards in heaven? Had he been to this heaven? How did he know it was there and what was in it that was so desirable that we should hurt ourselves by “turning the other cheek” and “forgiving seven times seventy?” The logic didn’t make sense.

My Sunday school teacher asked me to say the prayer again at church and I hesitated. I always faltered whenever I tried to speak. Having to come up with something to say to a being I couldn’t see in front of kids who laughed at me, I was terrified. I remembered what Mom said about choosing what to believe, and for the first time, I decided to say no.

“You can’t say no. That is disrespectful to God,” Brother Thomas said. “When you are asked to do something at church, it is not a request.”

I got up and walked out. I found Dad sitting in the foyer, chatting with some of the other men. He was always complaining about people skipping class… I didn’t want him to catch me skipping. I backed up before he saw me and headed outside.

Wait. Dad wasn’t in class either. He wasn’t following the rules.

As we enjoyed eating dessert that night, Mom asked about our experiences at church and I mumbled something about learning about Jesus dying for our sins. When it was Dad’s turn to talk about what he learned, he gave a long sermon about obedience. I sat there looking at him, stunned. He was playing the lying game too.

Things weren’t as black and white as I thought. I took a bite of my apple pie and felt my eyes had been opened. Things seemed different after that.

Before Dad ever got sick, I asked him, “Do you ever worry about your soul?”

“Son,” he said to me. “I don’t believe in God.”

“Then what is the point of going to church?” I asked, more confused than ever.

“Sometimes you do what people think you are supposed to do so people will like you and leave you alone.”

“So what do you think happens when you die?”

“I don’t know, Son. Maybe nothing happens.”

* * *

This morning, I come to Dad’s room to say goodbye before leaving for my bus. I sit and listen to the sound of an alien breathing and watch his chest rise and fall. I know what it’s like to be an alien. I know what it’s like to wish to be dead. If the afterlife is a lie like everything else I’ve ever been told, maybe the way to peace is the end of existence.

I reach over and unplug the cord from the wall. The whirring of Dad’s BiPAP stops. His chest still rises and falls. I tell him goodbye and I close the door behind me, thinking how lucky he is to soon be dead.