Frankentown (7 page)

At this, Frank shuddered and decided not to go there. There was nothing he could do now; not go to the hospital, not take any medication, he could only take his samples and isolate himself. Without delay, he collected all the samples and some arbitrary things he could use at home: testing strips, acid tests, petri dishes. The weight of the cooler he brought the samples in had now tripled, forcing him to carry it under arm. Fortunately it was already dark outside and there was almost nobody wandering about. When he got to his car, he discovered a small white envelope under the windshield wiper. It was a ticket for exceeding parking time. On a sunday, when the meters are not enforced. Apparently a meter-maid disguising him or herself simply as “officer Carrey” who had been notorious around the east bay for going to drastic measures to fill the quota. Goddamn bully.

At home, the answering machine had a missed call from Allen. He had called to check up on Frank. The events from the night before, however, now seemed like a distant and unimportant memory. The situation now transcended lights coming out the water.

Now he had other things to worry about.

Like maybe dying.

There was plenty of room for the samples in the fridge among the condiments and moldy lemon halves.
Once everything was stacked on the top shelf, Frank opted for a whiskey flavored pick-me-up.
Turning around to get to the pantry he stocked his liquors for the past decade, he recognized the remains of the torn suit he pulled off the carcass, haphazardly thrown over the barstool the night before.

Remembering procedure, Frank once again put on the rubber gloves to avoid direct contact.
Even if it was now too late, he thought,
there’s no such thing as ‘too careful’.
The suit, light in color the night before had now turned a dark shade of violet. Velvety on the outside and smooth on the inside. It appeared that the material didn’t require refrigeration, though something must have
 
happened to it since it changed colors.
 

He covered the counter with black compost trash bags and laid the suit out on the surface. After half hour of setting up a lab in his kitchen, and using his father’s microscope, he was ready to examine the evidence further and record his findings. By now, the samples that were in vacuum tubes changed only in color while the other samples were liquid and emitted a sharp-smelling gas, that induced chlorine-like heaeedaches. The next 45 minutes were spent vomiting in cold sweat, but there was no way he’d call an ambulance.

His house was now hosting a contagion of unknown origin, and he better quarantine.

It was all his fault. Nobody else deserved this.

Soon it became much harder to think and Frank started blacking out into pillowy slumber.

Cold water bounced off the shower corner tiles, with a promise of body temperature decrease. Tunnel vision and nausea set in quickly once his skin got wet and nothing was grounded in reality anymore.
 

The fever decreased shortly before it increased as Frank put on his bathrobe, made it up the stairs before he fell to the bed, unconscious, not sleeping.

The last thought to run through his head before blacking out completely was;

The alien burst with pressure.

Chapter Sevem

Ventilated

The alarm clock stated 4:13am when Frank finally awoke, feeling worse than he had the night before. As soon as he tried to sit up he started dry-heaving. There was nothing left for his body to get rid of except stomach acids, which quickly got acquainted with the oakwood floor of his bedroom. Few minutes later Frank finally managed to get up and put his bathrobe on. He had fainted, naked and wet in the bed and lied still
 
for several hours, gradually freezing his ass off in nothing but his bathrobe and birthday suit.

He made way down the stairs and sat at the coffee table with his laptop. Personally, he had absolutely no clue as to what may have been the matter with him, but surely the internet would hint. Even thought he felt like crap, he had to call the PB&J cable company to sort out the connection. According to the rude lady on the phone, he hadn’t paid his bill, so he ok’d a payment with the card they had on file. When a few minutes later the router was remotely restarted and the connection came right back up.
He soon remembered what he had to search for in the first place.According to the search engine-

he might’ve had a food poisoning.

He didn’t eat any alien meat.

Mucking around didn’t make him feel more at ease.

The TV, too, was a small nugget of comfort.

The conditions seem to have stabilized but his head still throbbed and generally, Frank felt like shit. Flipping channels, though, Frank came upon a special on 1945 Hiroshima and its victims.

As he hazed in and out of attention, the show described all the cancers and radiation poisoning deaths occurred. The gory daytime TV showed the bloody boils and rug-red skin of the poor souls, not failing to mention any of the symptoms of heavy radiation poisoning.

Finally- he put the two and two together.

A quick search for radiation poisoning and UFOs quickly revealed a connection. No further convincing needed to be dispensed, he was sure he was radioactive.
With everything that has been going on, his thinking kind of had to go out on a limb. Anything was as likely as nothing.

Convenient television programming.

Another search revealed that if symptoms were in fact as such, his dosage may not yet have been lethal. Several articles listed ways to help relieve the short-term effects.

He picked up the phone and called Allen.

“This is the Curtis residence,“ said a little voice on the other end of the line, “Tommy Curtis speaking.”

 
Tommy was Allen’s younger son.

“Hey
…
hi - Tommy. This is Frank.“

“Hi Frank, you want to talk to dad?”

“Yes please.”

It took only a little beyond a ten-seconds
 
of explaining for Allen to start sounding squirrely, worried and agitated in exactly that order.

“Have you taken off your clothes?”

Frank was silently struck by the question, but decided to give Allen the benefit of the doubt. Allen interjected.

“No, I mean, you should’ve taken the clothes you had on when you got sick and put them in a plastic bag. If you got radiation poisoning, they are probably contaminated too.
I’m gonna bring you some pills to make you feel better. Be there in 15 minutes.”

Before Frank could react, Allen already hung up and was on his way. There was no way to call it off.
That was kind of a good thing.

But- Allen could see this.

All the nonsense he had lined up for the kitchen alien autopsy were still conspicuously lined up on the counter, and the sheet of plastic that once used to be a bag were now growing some manner of a bizarre fungus.
He managed to put it all away before Allen arrived.

What a crap friend am I?

Sure enough, Allen arrived twelve minutes later.
On his way up to the house he picked up a little white envelope from behind the windshield of Frank’s car.

“You look like hell!” was Allen’s greeting when Frank opened the front door.

“I feel like hell, too.” He concurred.

“I brought you some iodine pills we had from our earthquake box, and some iodine heavy protein bars. And some terracotta.”

“Hey-you really are a good friend.

Thanks for-“

Allen cut in by placing a curled up brown paper bag in his hand, which had Frank lost for words. When he unrolled it, he started smelling its contents and immediately knew.

“You brought pot? What the hell for? I’m not going to prom, I have radiation poisoning.” He shot Allen a mocking but subversive look. Allen took off his shoes.

“Jen’s nana had cancer
…
she smoked it after her radiation treatment to relieve the symptoms. Frank was in disbelief of Allen’s shamelessness, but his college-born curiosity got the best of him. This was where they usually got together and drank a row of shots before going out on nights like these. Allen made for the kitchen.
“Don’t go there! I think that’s where the—”

Allen
 
quickly turned on his heel and ran toward the living room. There he took the iodine pills he brought out of a plastic bag and handed two to Frank to drink down. As he did, he pulled out a stereotypical joint out of a film canister and went outside.

“Where’s the radiation from?”
“Allen, I
…
”
“Yes?” AllenAllen was ecstatically eagle-eyed.

“
…
..I wasn’t being careful in the Lab last night.”

They sat on an old bench behind the house. Allen lit the skewedly rolled cone and handed it to Frank.
“You wanna tell me what the hell’s going on?”
Frank looked at him with a guilty smirk while holding his breath, trying not to burst out with laughter over the absurdity of it all.

“I do. But let’s wait a few minutes.”
The smoke struck them without warning.
The best thing to do was to break it to Allen easy. Now that Allen facilitated such an option, he felt he could tell him everything.

“Do you believe in the possibility of extraterrestrial life?
 
He toked a several more times and handed it to Allen.

“Well
…
what
…
like
…
ET?”

The both looked to the sky, expecting a UFO. All they saw was one bright star that stood out on its own, low in the sky.
 

“Yeah, basically.” Frank agreed after a while.
“You know
…
it might be a planet.
 
It’s pretty bright.” Allen said.

The star started flashing and they both sighed, disappointed. Frank bore the bad news.

“It’s just a plane.”

“Too bad.”
The ‘plane’ moved sideways quickly, then faded and sped off upwards, then vanished.

They both sat, all frozen, mouths open.
There was no point in hiding it all from Allen.

“Okay, so where do I begin?”
Fifteen minutes later, when Allen had heard all Frank had to say without saying so much as a word himself he finally pronounced his thoughts.
“You WHAT? You had the fucking alien in your coat the whole way from the beach?”
His voice went from surprise to coarse disbelief.
“
…
Then how come “I” didn’t get sick?”
“It was wrapped in a coat. That might’ve shielded the radiation from getting too far out.”

Allen was starting to get a bit annoyed.

“What, do you have a lead coat?”

When Frank looked him in the eyes

they could only burst out laughing.
Little did they know that when new Lab equipment came in, the suits that arrived were dark gray. The company just sent a replacement free of charge.
Frank ’borrowed’ the lead coat from the lab home without anyone’s particular permission or intention of returning it, and started wearing it around as his downtown-jacket, which afforded him a shield from the rays from his cellphone in a dose of healthy paranoia.
“By the way, Steve called me this morning.
He sounded fine.”

This sentence brought some relief.

At least he was the only one who was sick.

He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he got either of them sick.

“Wait. So you have an alien in your fridge.” Allen, momentarily forgetting that his friend has radiation sickness, sounded like a boy who’s just discovered frogs for the first time.

Frank didn’t dare speak, but nodded.

“But it’s radioactive
…
?” Allen continued. Frank nodded again.

They both burst out in laughter.

“This is so surreal.” Allen understood why Frank hadn’t told them about it. He still thought Frank was an idiot for taking on the risk himself.
“It’s getting a little chilly, do you wanna go back inside?”

“Inside with the alien?”
 

”I’m cold.”
His nausea had not subsided but he did feel like he could deal with it.
 

Soon it started diminishing.

Allen felt around in his jacket’s hand-warmer pockets and discovered the small white envelope he found on his car.

“Hey, this was on your windshield.”

He handed the envelope to Frank.

“Oh yeah, a bullshit ticket. If I survive this, I’ll call the police department.”
 
Frank brawled exclusively over the phone.

“No, I don’t think this is a ticket-“

“Well what is it?”
The envelope felt slightly too thick for a ticket.
“Something round.”

Frank took the envelope from Allen and opened it. Indeed, there was a note and two blue capsules in a blister pack. He unfolded the note.

This should help with the radiation.

Frank ducked as if he was being watched.

“Somebody saw me.

 
Somebody must have seen me.”
 

“Relax, relax.

Is there a phone number or something?”

Frank searched the note and the envelope and found a blank business card with a handwritten number on it. Then he inspected the blister pack.

It read ‘Prussian Blue’ on the back.

“Oh yeah, those help flush radiation out your system. You should totally take those."

Frank did as he was told.
"Anyone see you while you were on campus?”
“Weiss
…
" Weiss was where the list began and ended.
He only saw a few students and a few drunken as hell freshmen, who were trying to 'keep it cool'.
Just like when he was a kid.
 

"You have his number?” Frank asked.

Allen pointed to the card.

“No, but you might.”

Frank picked up the phone and dialed the number on the card. A deep, masculine and crackly voice picked up.

“I was expecting your call a bit sooner.”

“Hey.

Is this Weiss?

Who is this??

Hector?”

“So, this is Cabella Jr!

 
Great to finally talk to you.

 
I hear you have radiation poisoning?”

wait--- “Bingo."

How did he know?
"What clued you in?”