There’s the smell of something sweet coming from the kitchen. Corn dogs. Corn bread. Corn Flakes. Cornmeal. Corn on the cob. Corn chowder. Corn pie. Corn on the moon. Corn in space. Corn of the aliens.
It was a hot, burning day. One of those days that feels like one walked into a blast furnace at the moment of stepping outside. Hot like Georgia asphalt in July.
Weird little Harold was playing with corn on the sidewalk. His mother opened a can for him and dumped the corn into a bowl. “Go play outside,” she said, and she shook her head with disappointment behind his back as he walked toward the kitchen door and out to the walkway that ran from the house to the garage through the back yard.
Weird Harold sat down and laid out the kernels onto the sidewalk one by one. He looked up at the sun, squinted. He prayed to the gods. “Popcorn,” he commanded. “Right here and now.” There was a flurry of little puffs and pops. The corn came to life and did gymnastics in the air. The kernels changed from a moist yellow like bad teeth to a pearl white that squeaked.
And in the strange quiet moments that followed is when a spaceship from another world suddenly appeared and hovered high above the boy and his home. There was a strange sound and an odd, static electric feeling in the air. His hair went up from his head like magical levitation. A beam shot down from beneath the ship and weird Harold began floating upward in the air. His mother came flying out the kitchen door, looked up and screamed, “No!”
But it was too late. Weird little Harold had been swallowed by the ship and in an instant the craft was gone and the air returned to normal. His mother was panting, holding her chest. She looked down at the bowl of corn on the walkway and began to cry. She fell to her knees and wept more deeply, her head craned to the heavens, a fist pounding the ground.
A few days prior to his abduction, weird little Harold was being weird. But it wasn’t a funny weird. It was the sort of weird that should be cause for concern. He was sitting inside a stall in the boy’s bathroom at school. He had soiled himself during art class and Mrs. Heinz had excused him to go to the restroom. Harold wasn’t sure what to do. He was a mess. He smelled bad. He was frozen with fear and embarrassment. How could he ever return to that classroom ever again?
Harold then decided that the best thing to do was to remove his underwear and flush them down the toilet. It didn’t work and Harold began to panic even more. He went out of the stall and into another, leaving the mess behind. He cleaned himself up as best he could and pulled up his pants. He still felt dirty. He then decided it was time to leave the school. But just as he was about to bust a window and climb out, the principal barged in and caught him. He grabbed Harold by the arm and yanked on him. “What are you doing and why do you smell like that… Did you? Mess your pants? I received a message from your teacher to find you.”
Harold looked up at his scowling face. Principal Duppard was notorious for being mean. “Come on now, you’re going back to class.”
Harold howled. “I just want to go home. Why are you so eager to torture me?”
“Torture,” the principal grinned. “Why, that’s our favorite thing to do in school. Do you find it cruel or soothing?”
“Cruel!” Harold cried out. And it was then that Harold realized that Principal Duppard was gently shaking him and saying his name: “Harold. Harold. Are you all right. I think we better call your parents.”
“I only have a mom,” Harold mumbled.
Weird little Harold started squirming on the nurse’s examination table. “I want to explore a fantastic realm,” he said to the bright lights in the ceiling. A face suddenly appeared before his own.
It was the nurse. She smelled clean. “What’s that about a fantastic realm?” she said as she held a small flashlight and aimed the beam into his eyes. “Hold still now…Okay…Good.”
It was then that his mother burst into the room. “Harold,” she exclaimed. “What did you do now?”
He sat up and looked at her, heartbroken and ashamed. “I made a mess in my pants.”
His mother slapped him across the face. “Are you a baby?! Do you need to wear diapers again?”
The nurse stepped in between Harold and his mother. “There’s no need to hit the boy,” she said sternly.
“Mind your own business,” Harold’s mother snapped. And then she grabbed Harold by the arm and took him out to the car.
Harold’s mother had a strange man over and so Harold was confined to his bedroom. He sat on the floor with his back to the door and listened to them talk and laugh downstairs. “What a shyster,” he said aloud to no one except a tall toy robot that sat on a table near the window.
Some red lights flickered on the robot, and it began to speak: “Perhaps you should kill him.”
Harold got up and went to the robot and stared at it with deep fascination. “What did you say?”
Again, some red lights flickered, and the voice said, “I think you should kill him.”
“How should I kill him?” Harold asked.
“With an ice pick.”
Harold made a face of confusion. “What’s an ice pick.”
“It’s an instrument used to pick at ice.”
“Why would someone need to pick at ice,” Harold wondered aloud.
“Refrigeration,” the robot answered. “Back in ancient times. Before you were born. An ice box was a box with ice in it.”
“But where will I find an ice pick?”
“Look in the basement. The dark, dirty, dusty basement. On your father’s old workbench. It’s there. Silver with a wooden handle. It’s waiting for you.”
Harold stood in the middle of the living room and stared at them sitting close together on the couch.
“What is it, dear?” his mother asked, flustered and annoyed.
“I’m going down to the basement.”
“Hey there, sport. My name is Ted,” and he stuck out his hand to shake.
Harold reluctantly stuck out his hand as well. The man’s large hand felt cold and rough in his. “Hello. What do you do?”
“Why, I’m an architect. Do you know what an architect is?”
Harold took offense. “Of course I know what an architect is. I’m not an idiot.”
Ted strangely laughed at that, but deep inside he wanted to slug the annoying kid. “Sure, sure. You’re not an idiot. But just to be safe… Tell me what an architect is.”
Harold sighed. “An architect is someone who designs houses and other buildings. You draw out on paper how they are going to look.”
“Computers.”
“Huh?”
“We don’t use paper anymore. We design with the aid of computers and special software. It’s all very complex.”
“Congratulations on all your success,” young Harold snarked.
Ted turned to Harold’s mother and made a motion with his head indicating he wanted her to get rid of the kid.
“So, what’s in the basement?” she asked the boy to prod him along.
Harold grinned at Ted. “Something special that’s going to change someone’s life… Or lack thereof.”
Ted grew uncomfortable and shifted on the couch. “Maybe I should go,” he said.
“Aren’t you going to stay for dinner?” Harold wanted to know.
“Would you like me to?”
“Yes, sir. I’d like to see how an architect eats without a face.”
“What do you mean by that?” Ted asked.
Harold laughed. “Nothing. I’m just messing around.”
Harold crept down the wooden stairs into the musty smelling basement. He went to the workbench on the far wall and there it sat, glistening in a dome of magical yellow light. He picked up the ice pick and studied it’s deadly point. “Wow, he said. He thrust the pick down as hard as he could into the top of the wooden workbench and it stuck. “Brutal,” he chimed.
And the young boy’s eyes began to spin in his head and the images in his mind fluttered like someone quickly running their thumb through a book. Then it stopped and he was shown a picture of Ted with an ice pick sticking out from the side of his neck. The next picture was a of a canyon waterfall of blood all over the kitchen. Then it showed himself standing over Ted and grinning, his teeth stained red.
“Stop!” young Harold suddenly yelled. “That’s too much.”
It was then that the robot from his room floated into sight from some dark corner of the basement. It’s red flashing lights were going haywire. “Do not squirm,” it said. “Do not let your heart and soul ruin your mind. Go up those stairs and do it! Kill him before he destroys your life!”
Harold suddenly pulled the ice pick from the workbench and began swinging it in the air at the robot until it firmly stuck in the plastic body which quickly crashed to the floor and fizzled out.
Harold released the pick and let it fall to the basement floor. “Is any of this real?” he questioned. Then he looked at the dimly lit stairs leading up to the kitchen. He turned and looked down. He grabbed up the ice pick once more and held it firmly in his hand.
When he opened the door to the kitchen, he saw his mother on her back and pinned to the table by Ted’s naked body. He was thrusting into her full force. The table slightly shifted on the floor and made an aching noise. His mother had her hands on his sweaty back and was moaning as he moved in and out of her. Young Harold threw the ice pick down and slapped his hands over his eyes and then ran into a wall in a desperate attempt to escape the room. He managed to make his way through the living room and into the foyer where he fell down on the hard floor near the front door. He rolled onto his back and looked at the ceiling as his mother’s cries of sexual passion floated through the house like a song that would never end. Now he clamped his hands over his ears and started screaming and kicking. Then the front door slowly opened on its own, and the late day sun came crawling in.
CEREAL AFTER SEX 
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