“Weirder by the second,” I mumbled.
At that, Mark’s eyes lit up. “You want to see something really weird?” he asked.
“Uh . . . I don’t know,” I said reluctantly.
But Mark smiled and nodded. “Trust me, I think you want to hear this.” And with that, he took me by the elbow and pulled me away. The feel of his fingers wrapping around my arm made me flinch a little, but not in an unpleasant way.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
He gave me a slow, conspiratorial smile. “Wait and see.”
“See what?” I asked, a bit alarmed.
“Shhhhh.” He put his finger over his lips and gave me a wink, before he pulled up to someone. He tapped the man on the shoulder and when he turned, I tried not to stare. He was old and weather-beaten and wearing a cap that read “The Truth is Still Out There,” clearly a reference to that old nineties TV show where those two agents ran around chasing little green men with bad hair. They had the bad hair, not the green men. He was also wearing these strange glasses that were sitting askew on his nose and taking up most of his face. The glass was encased in a thin, gold rim that was buckled and bent and were something a serial predator would wear. Most strange of all, though, were the flip-up dark lenses that were attached to the top of the frame. His clothing too was very questionable. His T-shirt had a huge radioactive print on it with the words “Fight Big Pharma” on it—I wasn’t sure what it all meant—and on his feet—I tried not to gasp out loud—Crocs. Yellow Crocs. Old, worn, yellow Crocs.
“Frankie, this is your almost namesake, Frank,” Mark said, with a little too much glee in his voice, which made me think he was up to something.
“Hi.” I extended my hand for him to shake. He looked down at it, almost disgusted, and that’s when I noticed that he was wearing silver gloves on both his hands.
“I don’t shake,” he said, and put his hands behind his back. It was awkward.
“Tell Frankie what you saw last night, Frank,” Mark said and then poked me in the back a few times. Why was he poking me?
“Right,” Frank said and then dug into his old jeans pocket and pulled out a very well-thumbed notepad and pencil that had been almost sharpened to death. He flipped the page open and started reading, while Mark continued to poke me in the back.
“At approximately 2:04 this morning, I was awoken by a loud rumbling sound.” He cleared his throat.
“Frank lives at the end of town, just as you drive onto the dust road to get to me,” Mark leaned over and said, a little quiver of excitement in his voice.
Frank looked confused. “I didn’t think mentioning my whereabouts was necessary,” he said to Mark almost angrily.
Mark nodded. “Sorry. Please, carry on.”
Frank cleared his throat again. “Because the noise was unfamiliar to me, I went to the window to investigate further, and that’s when I saw the UHO.”
“The what?” I asked.
“Unidentified hovering object.” He said it like it was a fact.
Mark turned and looked at me. “You hear that, Frankie? He saw an unidentified hovering object last night at two in the morning.” He was smiling from ear to ear now.
I shook my head. “Sorry, I don’t follow.”
“Frank, why don’t you tell Frankie what color the UHO was.”
“It was blue,” Frank stated.
I felt an extra-large poke in my back.
“Blue!” Mark said. “Imagine that, Frankie, a blue unidentified hovering object.”
I finally got it, and when I did, it was so hard not to smile.
“The unidentified object was only visible for approximately two seconds before it disappeared around the bend in the road. It was traveling at a very slow speed, which makes me think it was here on an observation mission.”
“Observation mission?” I asked.
Frank stopped talking and then looked around the room, to check if anyone was watching us, I presume. He leaned in conspiratorially. He was so close now and I could smell a strange smell coming off him, which if I’m not mistaken, was weed. This sort of explained a few things, although no drugs on the planet could explain, or excuse, yellow Crocs.
