A man named India felt like a voodoo doll the morning of his electric birthday. The pinpricks stabbed at him like tiny little swords. He wasn’t feeling right in the head. Something about turmoil and fissures cracking open like in the Earth itself. The steam and liquid magma were leaking out inch by inch and India was just ready to explode.
India went over to his neighbor’s house. He had been having a terrible itch. He knocked. The girl who stinks answered the door. “Yes?”
“Is your mother here? I want to see if she can check if I have a tick.”
She opened the door wider so he could step inside. “Mom!” the girl yelled louder than she needed to. “India’s here.”
The mother came and gave him a gritted half-smile. “Hello, India,” she said. “What can we do for you?”
“I was hoping you could check to see if I have a tick. I have a terrible itch on my backside, but I can’t see there.”
The mother grimaced. “Madison, go get the tweezers, please.” The girl ran off. “Well, go on. Drop your shorts and let me have a look… There it is.” The girl returned with the tweezers and the mother went to work to pull the tick out of his skin. “Got it.” She went to the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet.
India pulled his shorts back up and smiled when the mother returned. “Thank you so much,” he said.
“It’s fine,” she said. “That’s what neighbors are for. To help out in little emergencies. But it is too bad that you don’t have a wife for these such things.”
“I’m married to my work,” India replied. “I’m an astrophysicist.”
“Oh, yes I know. I see you out in your backyard with your big telescope.”
“I just find space so fascinating. Perhaps you and your daughter would like to come over on a clear night and look through my telescope. It’s a very good one.”
“That sounds like fun, but I’ve already seen Uranus.” The mother laughed out loud. Madison began to chuckle as well.
India frowned. He was so sick of that joke. “It’s pronounced YURR-A-NISS, and has nothing to do with human anatomy,” he gruffly pointed out.
The mother and the girl stopped laughing when they realized how serious he was. “Yes. Of course,” the mother said. “We would love to come over and stargaze.”
India managed a smile. “Good. It will be fun. I’ll have snacks.” He pulled out his phone and checked his weather app. “How about tomorrow night? Should be nice.”
“Sure,” the mother answered.
“I’ll see you two tomorrow at dark. Thanks again for removing the tick. Goodbye.”
He ached over the maddening world as he finished up the last of his dinner dishes. He stared out the window. He could see Madison across the way jumping on her trampoline in the coming dusk. “That’s much too dangerous,” India whispered aloud. She did a backflip and then her mother called her inside. An hour later they were at his back yard gate.
They gathered in the manicured yard and took turns peering through the telescope.
“Wow. That’s so cool,” Madison said as she gazed at the craters on the moon. “It doesn’t even seem real.”
“Oh, it’s all very real I assure you,” India said. “Would either of you care for a hard-boiled egg or some banana pudding?”
“No thanks,” the girl and her mother said in unison, looking at each other funny.
India stepped back and watched the mother and daughter enjoy space. “I’m falling down the stairwell of my brain,” he said out of the blue.
The mother turned from the telescope and looked at him. “What’s that you said?”
“I walked through a forest of sugar cane.”
“I’m afraid you’re not making much sense. Are you feeling okay?” the mother wanted to know.
“I suppose it’s been because I’ve been so lonely. My thoughts are kind of weird,” India told her.
The mother reached out her hand and touched his arm. “But you’re not lonely now.”
“But I’m going to end up a lot lonelier… But you know what? I don’t care because I have to do what I have to do.”
“What do you have to do?” Madison asked.
India smiled proudly. “I’m going to space. I’m leaving this shitty planet once and for all.”
“What? Why?” the mother asked.
“Because I’m sick of this diseased world full of horrible people doing horrible things, that’s why. I can’t take it anymore.”
“Where will you go?” Madison wanted to know.
“I’m going to Kapteyn b, an exoplanet twice as old as Earth.”
“What? What? What?” the mother said, laughing and totally confused by India’s seemingly ridiculous joke.
“That sounds impossible,” Madison pointed out.
“It’s not impossible. Nothing is impossible as long as you don’t give up,” India said. “And I never gave up. I built my own spaceship and I’m going to blast off soon and leave this terrible world forever.”
“But we can’t even live on Mars,” Madison said. “How are you going to live way out there?”
“We can live on Mars,” India stressed. “In fact there are human beings living there right now.”
“Then why not just go live on Mars?” Madison wanted to know.
“Because of the people. They’ll just fuck up Mars, too. Human beings are incapable of caring for a planet.”
The mother spoke up. “But, what if you don’t make it. Won’t you die?”
India took a deep breath and looked up toward the heavens. “I don’t care if I die out there. At least I would have tried. And besides, I’d much rather die out there than down here on Earth.”
“But what about your friends and family?” the mother asked. “You wouldn’t want to leave them behind, would you?”
India scoffed at that question. “I have no friends or family… But you two could be my family. You could come with me, and we could breed and together we could create a much better world 13 light years away.”
The mother pulled Madison close to her. “We could never do that. We have a life here on Earth. Madison has school and soccer practice. I have a job. We have a home, and things, and a cat. And besides, this all sounds made up. We don’t have the technology for such a feat.”
India chuckled. “And how would you know about the technology we possess? There is so much going on behind your sleeping backs that you are so completely unaware of. Why, your heads would explode if you really knew what was happening. Remember, I’m an astrophysicist and I work at a top-secret laboratory. I assure you, my spaceship is real, and my plans are real. This is going to happen with or without you… But I’d really like you to come with me.”
“We have to go,” the mother abruptly said. “Thank you for letting us use your telescope.”
India watched them disappear through the gate in the wooden fence. They went inside like shadow boxers, and he spied on them through their uncovered windows, living life exasperated. He missed them but didn’t. He felt lonely again, but alive.
Even as it absorbed him, space was unaware of him as India plowed his way through the stars on his way to Kapteyn b. He felt much more relaxed now as the universe cradled him. “Look at all this life out here,” he said aloud to himself. “I refuse to be imprisoned on that hell rock called Earth. They’ll completely destroy it in no time. I wasn’t born to suffer alongside a horde of idiots.”
He looked at the instrument panel before him. A cluster of warm lights, breathing and flowing, letting him know everything was fine with the ship, that he was on the right path, and that his remaining years would be spent in peace and harmony.
“No one trying to rip me off every day. That will be nice,” he said. “All those greedy thieves and scam artists will never find me now. No more heartbreak or worry or emotional pain. No more money and the lack of it dictating how I live. No more having to do without because I don’t have enough green paper. How could we have devised such a hideous world? Oh, the things people do to one another. Barbaric.”
He held his hand over the control panel. “MATADOR?”
“Hello, Captain India,” the synthetic voice said. “What can I do for you today?”
“How are our guests holding up?”
“One moment… All life signs are normal.”
“Thank you. That is all.”
“Goodbye.”
India got up and walked through the ship to the area where Madison and her mother were being kept in tubes. He peered in through the face shields and watched them both artificially sleep. He ran his hand over the shining chambers. Green lights were gently blinking. India gently tapped on the barrier between him and the mother’s face. Her eyes were wide open. Her mouth slightly parted. “I’m so glad you both changed your minds,” he said. “Well, I suppose you could say I forced you to change your minds. But out here, it really doesn’t matter what happened back on Earth. No law can touch us. We are all free of our sins now. And even at this very moment, the stars are scrubbing us clean of our most innately human indiscretions. Even I can be forgiven.”
India returned to the bridge and sat in his captain’s chair. “MATADOR,” he said aloud.
“Yes, Captain?”
“I had a dream last night where I was attacked by a rabid boar. What do you make of that?”
“You will soon meet a merciless examiner,” MATADOR answered.
“What does that mean?”
“You will be judged by a god, a universal being, or a spiritual authority. In essence, to answer for your sins and plead for the sanctity of your soul.”
“That sounds pretty heavy,” India said.
“If I were you, captain. I would hide.”
“Hide? In the vastness of space? Why, I’m already hidden. And besides, I have left the Earthly realm and so matters of sins and judgment have no bearing on me any longer.”
“I suggest thinking otherwise, captain.”
“Thanks, MATADOR, but I think I can handle this on my own. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, captain.”
The hypnotic pastel pendulum of space lulled India to sleep. And in that sleep he had a dream of a planet the color of an earthly forest mixed with Irish cream. The sky was green; the air was heavy and smelled like a health food store. On this planet, on this Kapteyn b, India had a strange purple house on a mound that overlooked a vast valley and in this house he lived with a woman and a young girl. They spent their days flying like trapeze artists, spreading arms and pointing legs as they soared over the plasma jelly spread of trees and space sauce. It gave them an incredible sense of power and freedom. But then India began to fall. He flailed his arms and legs in an effort to regain flight, but it did no good. He was plummeting to the surface of the planet. As soon as he hit the ground he awoke with a heart-pounding startle. He sat up in his chair and looked out the window. Space was still flowing like fluid.
“MATADOR?”
“I can’t help you anymore.”
“Hello,” came a voice from behind him.
India whipped around and saw Madison standing there.
“How did you… Get out?” India wanted to know.
“Someone let me out. I thought it was you,” the girl said. Then her eyes went to the window and for the first time in her life she saw deep space, infinite life, time in flight. “Are we almost there?”
India grew serious. “Someday.” But deep inside he had growing doubts. Perhaps he had been too ambitious. But the calculations. The calculations as a crystal ball told a story of success. Maybe India was destined to fail after all. He grew sad over that thought. “What about your mother?” he asked the girl.
“She’s still sleeping. Is there anything I can do?”
“Let her rest. We can sit here and enjoy the wonders of space together. You know, I had a dream that we were living on Kapteyn b and that we could fly. All three of us.”
“I would love to be able to fly,” Madison said with a soft smile.
“Perhaps one day you will.”
It was several years later, and India sat out on one of the verandas of his purple house sipping blue coffee. He looked out over the wonderful landscape of Kapteyn b and then up to the sky where Madison, a grown woman now, was doing acrobatics in the air. The mother emerged from the house and stood behind him. Her hands fell to his old shoulders.
“What will we do when you die?” she asked him.
“Do you want to go back to Earth?” India wondered aloud.
The mother hesitated to answer. “It will be awfully lonely here without you,” she said. She gestured with her head. “And then what of her? What will she do when I am gone?”
It was then that a massive dinosaur-like bird came into view. It opened its large beak lined with jagged teeth and snatched Madison out of the sky before sailing out of sight, horrible screams trailing behind.
“Oh, my god!” the mother cried out. “No!”
“It ate her!” India screamed as he stood up and pointed. “It ate her!”
The mother suddenly clutched her chest and collapsed. Dead of a heart attack.
Years later, India crawled into his homemade casket and closed the lid. He listened with halfway horror, halfway peace as the seal hissed shut. He got comfortable and looked out into the solid blackness. The place he chose as his final resting place was in a small, lush garden near the house. This is also the place the Mother was eternally resting and a memorial to Madison had been made.
India pressed a small remote and the casket began to lower into the ground. Once six feet down, mindful machines up above filled it in with dirt. The clumps began to rain down and thumped against the exterior of the casket. India began to panic. Claustrophobic. He pushed on the lid to try to open it. Impossible. It took him a few minutes to catch his breath and calm himself. He closed his eyes and began to mediate. The sound of the dirt coming down grew softer and softer until it disappeared entirely. He reached into his pocket and fondled the pill that would send him to infinity. He glanced over his life from beginning to end. Most of it was good, he thought. He could have done better at many things, and in many situations with others, but he didn’t. No going back. It is what it is. Was what it was.
He felt a tear slip into his mouth and then the pill fell upon his tongue, and it wasn’t long before he was beneath the sun again, wandering like a lost soul, looking up, and searching for the night.
CEREAL AFTER SEX 
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