Compass Points

In a small town twenty minutes North of where you live an alien looks in a mirror and studies your face. You don’t know it, but he has taken over the life that you no longer use. While you were sleeping your life leaked back into the cosmos to be re-engineered into a vehicle that will travel further than just the end of your arms. The extraterrestrial combs' your hair grumbling about the thinness. He is about to leave a rented apartment, a place psychically ingrained with traits and characteristics - your personal underwear. Meticulously he has borrowed you while you strove to be unique among the children of Adam. You go out to eat. Plans do not go well. You stop at a Wendy’s. You like cheeseburger ‘mini’s,’ they are better than the ‘Baconnater,’ which you have to crouch over, your fingers and lips splattered with karmic chow. The alien chooses this moment to stop by for a chicken salad. From behind his chair, you watch him as he picks at the food. Last week you went to the barber the visual memory of the back of your head is still fresh. You begin to suspect your life is being gradually usurped. A scream, a pack of your personal peccadilloes are running amok in the restaurant, in the resulting chaos, the alien departs. Fast food attains the speed of light. A grill cook has come out from the back, he looks like the Swedish chef from the Muppet Show, but in reality, he is a messenger from the future. In the hubbub and furor, and despite his heavily accented English, he demands that you get going anywhere. You don’t know it yet, but the alien has made off with your grease-stained napkin, a document that cannot be disposed of until you are far South of your last known position.