Tag Archives: JANUARY 2026

Dudley Stone, JANUARY 2026, POETRY

Suburban Walking Blues

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Suburban Walking Blues

by Dudley Stone

1.

Heavy bag on my back

Ain’t lookin’ for no job

No job lookin’ for me

Walk down Corporate, walk down Industry,

anonymous as yellow brick, red brick, stucco.

Space available, will build to suit.

Left lane must turn left.

Black walking stick holding up a wall.

Did your owner crawl home?

Curbside sentinels — blue mailbox, Fed Ex box, newspaper,

apartment finder, employment finder, cars, pets.

Oaks regular as streetlights. Acorns, sidewalks gouged

by the claws of some nocturnal beast.

2.

Sing to myself

Ain’t lookin’ for no place

No place lookin’ for me

Under construction, wooden sticks, yellow tape, red tape,

yellow flag, red flag, dig, don’t dig.

Flattened plastic bottles — beer, water, soda.

Slim Jim package peeled like a banana.

Sunshine stops between buildings. Half expect

to find something raw and dismembered among the leaves.

A Genesis sky darkening — last prayer before color bars — 

yellow cyan green magenta red blue black.

Rows of clips perched like blackbirds along the power lines.

Sidewalk a UPC code, dark dark light, thin, thin, thicker

Yellow and green fireplugs. Gnomes? Trolls?

A streetlight ignites as I walk by: Must have been waiting for me.

3.

Home is the sailor, home from the sea.

Some is the hailer, some from the he.

I never said I was okay. Never said you could count on me.

This was my school after it was my construction site

after it was my backyard after it was my wilderness

and the only thing that could fix whatever was wrong with me.

Under construction we chased each other

through breezeways, climbed the corrugated

exoskeleton. No sonnets in this neighborhood,

just the occasional three-bed-one-and-a-half-bath

haiku. Sails flap on the clothesline. A woman calls

her kids home, banging pans that ring like church bells.

The moon rises, tethered to telephone lines, supported

by utility poles. Look — a shopping cart in a tree,

a stone staircase in an otherwise empty field.

Never knew I’d love it so much

or leave so soon

4.

Walking just to keep warm

Ain’t lookin’ for no home

no home lookin’ for me

No outlet

Exit ONLY

Black cane against the wall.

If we’re both still here tomorrow, you’re coming with me.

Dr Ahmad Al-Khamisi, Dr Huwaida Issa, FICTION, JANUARY 2026

Two Escapees

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Two Escapees

By Dr Ahmad Al-Khamisi

translated from Arabic by 

Dr Huwaida Issa

In one of the narrow rooms in the newspaper’s headquarter, Khaled Lam’y, the Arts section editor, sat at his desk, nervously fiddling with the lighter on his desk as he listened attentively to the phone pressed against his ear. In front of him, on the only other chair  in the room, sat the cartoonist Ayman, with a folder of paper on his lap—occasionally tugging at its corner. 

An anxious expression grew over Khaled’s face after he finished the call and stood up. He skimmed the surface of the desk and said: “We must leave this story immediately.”

 Ayman’s anxiety became restless and pinched a touch of astonishment into his voice: “What happened?” Khaled responded while gathering his papers toward him with the edge of his palm: “I just learnt that they attacked Jamal’s house, the author of the story, in which we are part. Then, they dragged him down the building’s steps, threatening him to execute the story along with all its ideas and characters.

 This way, you and I will be at risk of death if we stay inside the story.

Either that or we spend years in the censorship warehouse. We need to gather our descriptions right away and immediately escape from this story, so they won’t find any trace of us when they arrive.

 Ayman said in surprise: “But the dialogue that the author placed in my mouth—and in yours—did not touch upon the well-known red lines?” Khaled responded, “Yes, the dialogue did not  contain any explicit phrases; but overall, it suggests that everything has become forbidden and prohibited, even whispering. You, as the author portrayed you in the story—the cartoonist, and I am the editor in charge of the art page in the newspaper.”

 You suggested a caricature idea for me— a prisoner, asking for a book. Then, the jailer said to him: “The book is unavailable in the prison library right now; but we have the author himself.” In your opinion, don’t you think that this means something? The authority can distinguish between the good citizen and the bad one from a distance. Ayman asked: “And how do they differentiate between them?” Khaled sarcastically responded: “This is simple. If a citizen sits and puts his left leg over his right leg, he is a leftist; and it’s necessary to arrest him. If a citizen sits and places his right leg over his left leg, he is a right wing; and it’s necessary to arrest him. And if he hasn’t crossed his legs at all, he is cunning and mean —hiding his beliefs; and of course, it’s necessary to arrest him. However, the good citizen spends his lifetime building a new, happy society.

 Ayman said: “But is it believable that they started to chase even the literary characters, like you and me?” Khaled responded: “Literary thoughts and literature are dangerous, because words can turn into action. Therefore, you shouldn’t under-estimate a poem, a novel, or even a literary idea.” Ayman sighed sadly, saying: “It’s unfortunate that the author who created us is deeply preoccupied with the struggle for liberty.” If we were created by an author of entertaining plays, we would have been guaranteed a dignified life, in stead of being chased. 

Khaled responded: “No character chooses its own author. Whatever happens to us, it’s the result of a decent intellectual flashing thought, through which the writer has not compelled us to lie or deceive.” Khaled added, saying: “I think we must hurry and escape from between the lines of the story before they raid us.”

 Khaled,  inhaling a deep breath of the essence of  true life, asked: “Have you overlooked erasing any traces that might reveal our presence in the story?” Ayman replied: “Rest assured, I’ve erased both our names and gathered all our descriptions, but I haven’t had enough time to review all our details there.” Khaled gazed vacantly and squealed: “Oh my God! I left my lighter on the desk! Go back to the story quickly and bring it to me— the lighter has my fingerprints. You will find it on the second line, where the author mentioned that my fingers were fiddling with it.” 

Ayman turned around and climbed the last letter in the story, ascending to the top of the text. When he reached the first paragraph, he swiftly snatched the lighter from the first line. As he was about to descend , his eye caught the author’s description of him as “a cartoonist—reflecting honesty on his features.” So, he erased that sentence, and continued descending. When his foot reached the sidewalk, he dusted off his trousers  and said to Khaled: “Here is your lighter. We’re no longer present in the story—not even in a single word. 

They both exchanged a look of encouragement—each pressing his hand tightly against the other’s. They gazed at the long, open-ended route as they started walking in vigorous steps, glancing over their shoulders. They crossed the vast square and ran like the wind, touching the ground and flying  with a light push—soaring above the domes of the city and its castles; fluttering through the sky. Whenever they felt tired, they would descend to the cafes—sitting among the people for a little while. Then, they would ascend with their artistic musings, to the literary figurers and the ideas that take refuge in the sky.

FICTION, JANUARY 2026, Jon Fain

The Exchange

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The Exchange

by Jon Fain

One family had twins, and wanted two Americans. In the German home, Pinkham and Scalzilli kept it simple. If Frau Mueller asked them if they wanted another Wurst, more Kartoffeln, or a piece of Kase, they’d tell her ein bischen. A little. If one of the blonde-haired brothers asked them if they wanted to play a game, or go see the statue of Frederick der Grosse, they’d say vielliecht später. Maybe later. That was all there was to it.

They hadn’t known each other well in their high school language class before the trip, but sharing a room in the German family’s home brought Pinkham under Scalzilli’s spell. He was there with Scalzilli when they found their way to the top floor of the Gymnasium and started throwing their American change off the balcony at the German kids as they left for the day, both to try to hit them, and laugh at the ones scrambling to get the coins. Scalzilli pulled him into the sex shops downtown after school, live shows in the back, where like the bars you only had to be sixteen. And every day, Scalzilli talked about jumping the trip—he had an older brother in London, but where he really wanted to go was Italy of course, and he wanted Pinkham to come.

They were older than the twins, who were the youngest kids in the class, and who were always teased by the other German students. They kept wanting to practice their English, and Pinkham indulged them more than Scalzilli. Scalzilli spent more time buttering up the mother. He’d pretend to be interested in all the family photographs on display, or the ingredients of the meals she prepared. Scalzilli had a way of enticing people to do things that you’d never think about without him. 

Frau Mueller gave them a key to the apartment and most nights Pinkham and Scalzilli met up with some of the other American kids on the exchange program. They hung in a club where long-haired Germans in black leather screamed out weirdo rock. The last time, a trio of American soldiers stationed at the local base came in. One of them was just back from Iraq. They sat with the students and started coming on to the girls. Becky Hawkins was one of them. 

She was one of the few girls who hadn’t yet gotten with another kid from home or a German boy. Pinkham had known her since first grade. They’d been in some of the same classes anyway, some years, same homeroom.

Pinkham was an under-encouraged only child, with strict parents. He was still a virgin, had never even kissed a girl. He had matured late; before that, was a small kid with big dreams of being a sports star, fantasies bullied out of him on every court and field. 

One of the soldiers started dancing with dark-haired Becky. Pinkham, watching from a nearby table, could tell she didn’t like it. Then she looked right at him and it was clear what she needed. Behind him, Scalzilli, sitting with the other two soldiers, laughed, and the beers and his new friend being literally at his back gave him confidence. He willed himself into believing he was Superman to the rescue.

Pinkham went onto the dance floor.

He tapped the soldier on the uniformed shoulder, expecting he’d be punched. But Becky stepped away from the soldier, who was shorter than Pinkham, and when he turned, Pinkham moved in.

As she came into his arms, she whispered that he’d saved her and that kept him bold. He thought about what to do next. 

Someone slapped his back.

Scalzilli, so drunk he swayed, managed to stay upright, a sturdy tree in a gale. 

“Man, we’re going to France! We’re driving…tonight!” 

Becky Hawkins tugged at him. When he saw what was happening, Scalzilli gave him a tongue-wagging grin, and went back to the table with the soldiers and more Bier.

After dancing, Becky said she had to leave. She asked Pinkham to walk her the few blocks to the Bahnhof so she could get a train out to where her host family lived. They talked about what they’d learned on the six week exchange, where they’d applied to college, how they weren’t ready to go back home. As the train pulled in, he did what he assumed he should. “Oh, he kissed me!’ Becky laughed. 

Scalzilli always had the key. After the taxi let him off, Pinkham stood in the driveway, looking at the house where he’d been staying. He threw pebbles against the window of their room, but if Scalzilli was in there, he didn’t hear. Pinkham went back to the front and rang the doorbell. Sleepy-eyed Frau Mueller came finally, holding her robe tight at her neck. She saw he was alone.

“Wo ist er? Wo ist Tommy!”

“He’s coming later,” Pinkham told her, not knowing if he was speaking English or German. “Vielliecht später.” He went to the room they shared.

He woke up once. He thought he heard something outside, but when he got out of bed and went to the window, he saw nothing. He opened it and let cold air seep in.

He woke up next with Frau Mueller shaking him. He’d been dreaming, in the warmth of the down comforter.

“Er ist tot!”

Pinkham got dressed and came out to find his German family—the mother, the tall bald father and the twins—and standing with them, just as serious, were his American teacher Frau Skoda, Herr Löffler from the Gymnasium, and two big men in uniforms, der Polizei.  As Frau Skoda told him about the accident, Pinkham knew that his new friend had worked his magic on someone else, talked the soldiers into letting him drive their Jeep. 

Scalzilli always had the key.

There was heavy turbulence on the plane back to New York. Becky sat with him, her head on his shoulder. When he thought she was asleep, he ran his fingers back and forth against the side of her breast, and then knew she was awake because she dropped her hand down onto his thigh.

But it turned out she was involved with someone, an older boy from another town. She didn’t dump Pinkham herself, she had a friend of hers do it, someone else on the German trip. A big girl with a boy’s name, Sidney, who told him how it was. Like usual, he couldn’t compete. And he hated that he felt relieved—not have to prove himself in something he didn’t feel ready for. 

The last time Pinkham saw Becky, it was at their graduation in the school’s fieldhouse, the boys in red gowns and tasseled hats, the girls in white. He almost hadn’t made it to the ceremony, almost flunked out after they got back from Germany. It was Frau Skoda, in spite of what she knew had happened, Scalzilli and all that; it was Frau Skoda who threatened to fail him, who sent the note to his parents about how Pinkham had stopped doing the assigned work. 

Pinkham only got in to his safe school, nearby Stony Brook, the only place he’d applied to that wasn’t 500 miles away, where he majored in business like everyone else. His freshmen year he finally slept with a girl, another first timer, but not until late spring. It ended before they left for the summer. He had another experience his sophomore year, with the same end result. In his junior year he met Natalie. It wasn’t until almost two years later, when they were out of school and living together that she told Pinkham she’d gotten pregnant from one of the first times. After they married, they had the child they’d delayed unbeknownst to him.

Three years later, combining an experience he’d long imagined with an opportunity he was too stupid to avoid, he got involved with a neighbor, the mother of his son Tommy’s best friend. He knew she didn’t even like him much, that he was a fulcrum for some phase she was in, that she wanted to be lifted free from. She proved that she liked his wife even less, by telling Natalie what happened. After the separation from his wife, Pinkham went back the twenty miles to his hometown. 

He supposed it was good that he was there when his parents had medical appointments, or needed things done around the house. They were still in the ratty ranch he grew up in, but it didn’t look much worse, at least from the outside. He’d tried to stay as close as he could to Tommy, but his wife got a boyfriend, and their son took to him right away. Pinkham and his son might as well have been 500 miles apart.

He assumed some people from his school were still around town, no doubt the ones who tortured him when they were kids. In spite of that, Pinkham went to his tenth reunion. The music was too loud, it was a cash bar, and the chicken was dry. One classmate looked the same as he had at recess in the first grade, but everyone else, including Pinkham, he suspected, looked like their parents. He heard some guy keep saying to everyone, “Less hair… more stomach!”

He talked near the end with a couple who had been on the Germany exchange, who’d gotten together on that trip and lasted. They remembered him as being much shorter. Not long after they asked what he did and he told them underwriting, property and casualty, business clientele, Happauge regional office, they spotted another couple that they knew better and hurried away.

Before that they’d told him about what had happened to other kids who’d been on the Germany trip but weren’t at the reunion. That Cash, the football star, took over his father’s roofing business and that Morgan, the class valedictorian, had gotten skin cancer and died at 26. Cayo, the musician who wanted to be a jazz trumpeter, became a lawyer instead. And Becky Hawkins had married, had a family, got divorced—moved to Maine, they said, in a second marriage, to a woman.

Pinkham sat at a table by himself, and watched kids grown old dance to one last old song.

If Becky was there—maybe he could have, would have danced with her. He could have, would have told her that that first time they danced, she saved his life. Gave him a life, such as it was. Kept him from Scalzilli’s last ride.

He might have asked her: Could she, would she? Work her magic again?

That night, no one talked about Scalzilli; he didn’t hear anyone say Scalzilli’s name. Maybe they remembered that Scalzilli and Pinkham were friends, and didn’t want to upset him. Or maybe they knew that Pinkham preferred not to share his memory with anyone else.

Pinkham over the years had shared his name, though. 

“Scalzilli!” he’d go, instead of “Shit!” 

His wife thought he did it, and he didn’t tell her otherwise, because he didn’t want to swear in front of their son.

The morning after the reunion, sleeping in his boyhood bedroom, Pinkham had a dream in which everyone—but no one he knew—spoke German. He turned the key of the car he was in, drove the strangers toward somewhere, somewhere they, but he, didn’t want to go. Coming awake, he thought he understood what had been said, but it wasn’t so, not even a little bit. 

He heard his parents as they worked at their breakfast in the kitchen down the hall. They’d be at it for a while, bickering, louder than they used to do it; neither one heard very well anymore.

By now, he had forgotten all of the dream, and remembered details from the reunion the night before, instead.

“Scalzilli!” Pinkham shouted to the stained, peeling ceiling. 

Probably not for the last time.

###

FICTION, Fiona Sinclair, JANUARY 2026

Exorcising Mother

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Exorcising Mother

 Fiona Sinclair

In the taxi from the station, Emily hugged her freedom as if it was an expensive handbag. At twenty-nine, she was returning from her first ever weekend away from home.

London had meant an orgy of sightseeing that her old friend Hannah was happy to accommodate. Like a time poor tourist, Emily had galloped through St Pauls, The Tower of London and Westminster Abbey until her friend had begged for a sit down and some food. “These buildings have been here hundreds of years” she panted, not understanding that Emily’s default setting was playing catch up.

Now Emily trotted up the bungalow’s short driveway, a suitcase in one hand and, in the other, shopping bags ripe with new clothes. ‘No more hand me downs’ she thought with a smile.

It was an exceptionally warm Spring that year, as if the weather, too, was in cahoots with her. Inserting the key into the front door, Emily knew from experience that the pokey bungalow trapped extremes of weather. So, with windows and doors shut up for four days, she knew it would be like entering a forge.

But, stepping into the hall, she was struck by an uncanny chill, as if an air conditioner had been switched to its maximum setting and left unchecked for many hours. It did not provide a welcome contrast to the unseasonable spring weather outside. Instead, she began to shiver, the hairs on her arms raised like hackles and a rash of tiny goose pimples spread across her skin.

Emily instinctively pulled on a cardigan and wrapped it around her. She waited for the chill to dial down. It did not. In fact, if anything, it intensified. Her next response was to move into the small kitchen to see if the freezer door had swung open, reasoning that in a place little more than a bedsit, the chill from the freezer might well have filled the place with cold air. But the door was secure. She then went methodically room by room, trying to find some other source for the cold. She found no answers, but the bedrooms, bathroom and sitting room, were all equally as chilled as meat lockers.

This frosty atmosphere did not frighten her. Emily was accustomed to weird and little phased her now. Standing with her hands on her hips in the sitting room she suddenly recognised the atmosphere as the brooding anger that was her late mother’s trademark. Since childhood, she had been familiar with this withdrawal of affection for some minor misdemeanour, anything from ripping her jeans in some tomboy escapade to playing out with friends, ignoring her parent’s curfew. At these times, her mother’s beautiful features became an ice queen mask as maternal love was switched off, a punishment that stung far more than a slap or being confined to her bedroom.

Now the adult Emily, suspecting that death did not dissolve a person’s worst traits, knew that the house was overwhelmed by her mother’s disapproval of her daughter’s behaviour in the aftermath of her death. From her Mum’s perspective, she had betrayed her on many counts. So, this was, Emily suspected, a sort of supernatural sulk.

Decades before, her mother’s life of delicious domesticity was ruptured by Dad’s sudden death at 40. Now there were bills to settle, a living to be earned and a daughter to raise. But mum was unable to face the challenges. She was proactive only in seeking a replacement for Dad, a knight on a charger who would solve her troubles. However, she soon found that she was considered more mistress material than wife. Her beauty was too showy for a rural backwater. And millionaires with money to purchase shiny things were in short supply.

She had begun drinking just to take the edge off her problems, in the days following her husband’s death. Failure to find a new man sent her mother’s moral compass spinning off its course. Liaisons with a series of rogues paid the bills. Sex was anaesthetised by copious amounts of booze then. It also helped to blur the truth of herself in the dressing table mirror.

For Emily, her dad’s death was the death of her childhood. As family and friends peeled off with mother’s plunging reputation, at eleven she was promoted to confidante. By eighteen, when her own life was becoming fecund with opportunity, her mother’s needy ‘You won’t leave me too’ tethered Emily to her and the bungalow. She procured her wine in the morning and put her to bed when it finally overwhelmed her.

Emily did this because she adored her mother. She was absolutely partisan, saw her as a beautiful victim relentlessly kicked by fate. Decades passed in this dreary routine. Mother and daughter’s lives contracting to the parameters of the tiny bungalow. Even the rogues fell away, except one who visited weekly, left money discreetly on the sideboard, claiming he expected nothing in return. However, his eyes constantly alighted on Emily like a fly, suggesting he was, in fact, watching an investment develop.

Then, in her mid-fifties, the knight she had always sought rode in to save mother. Sadly, it was more black than white and arrived in the guise of a tumour. Turning her back on treatment and determined that cancer would not run riot in her body as it done with her husband, she decided that suicide would be the cleanest exit.

The finding of the lump winded Emily. She crawled like an invalid through those early days of diagnosis, all the while mother insisted there would be no discussion and life would default to their version of normal. Emily’s shock was compounded when she understood that her mother expected her to facilitate death. Sick to her stomach, she nevertheless agreed, thereby giving her mother peace of mind. But she secretly offered up desperate prayers that it would not come to it.

The origins of the suicide pact were hazy. Looking back, it was like trying to accurately recall a nightmare. Had her mum suggested it? Or had Emily been unable to contemplate life without her? Either way, mother’s relief was evident. In her addled mind it was an elegant solution to an ugly problem.

From her contracted perspective Emily could not envisage a future for herself. She was isolated as a heroine in a Victorian novel, having had no contact with her family since she was eleven. In a sense she had grown up supernumerary to her mother who took precedence even in something as basic as clothes. Emily had not had her own new garments since childhood. As she grew into a young woman, mother would rummage in her own chest of drawers to provide underwear, jeans, and tops. Largely because all surplus money must go on alcohol.

Mother had also guessed that the one remaining rogue who kept a seemingly friendly eye on them, in fact had an agenda. Whilst Emily lacked her mother’s beauty she had the asset of youth. Some residual maternal instinct must have kicked in here. She knew that her protection was finite now. The rogue was playing a not so long game for the prize of a vulnerable young woman. In retrospect, Emily thought mother’s advocacy for the suicide pact was a blur of all these factors, with perhaps a jigger of jealousy as well for her daughter’s youth and health.

In the months before the cancer overwhelmed, Emily basked in her mother’s praise ‘You are so brave.’ Even at 28, she still craved the approval that was dealt out so meagrely. Of course, mother had no idea that it was all bravado, but it helped ameliorate the prospect of the pact and almost made her decision worth it.

But in truth Emily was horrified. It was as if the cancer had invaded both their bodies, decided both their fates. At times she was able to park her terror by bingeing on classic literature and junk food. Other times, at night, she lay awake, horrifying images running riot in her mind. Silently screaming ‘I don’t want to.’ At these times, her love of life fought with love for her mother.

Mum sensed when the cancer was making its final move. Laying claim to her brain, it was gradually stealing her mobility and reducing her voice to a whisper. That day, Emily downed a bottle of wine herself to take the edge off proceedings. Unaccustomed to alcohol, she worked in a haze. The afternoon took on a ‘down the rabbit hole’ unreality. She talked her way through the preparations. This served to focus her mind and subdue fear. But there were still moments when she felt like a prison warder forcing her petrified body towards the noose.

A lack of basic physics saved her. The water in the bath merely rippled like a mini tide. The breaker had tripped. There was an element of dark humour about the botched attempt, but neither laughed. Emily took the failure as an intervention by fate. As she clambered from the bath the truth tumbled from her mouth. ‘No, I don’t want to.’

In contrast, her mother sobbed at the abortion. Having lost all agency to cancer, she could not now determine her own death. Her daughter, with strength gained from years of practice, now supported Mum back to bed.

And then her mum performed the only selfless act of the past twenty years. She instructed Emily to phone her estranged grandmother. As is often the case, the two hit it off. Whilst Emily had never resembled her mother, she now saw her genes were gifted from this woman. They shared the same brown hair and eyes. Their temperament was similar, too. The granddaughter inheriting her indomitable spirit.

Of course, Emily knew there would be a reckoning in the future. At some stage she would have to make peace with the guilt she had stashed away in a corner of her mind. The broken promise of living on after her mother. The disloyalty of accepting her grandmother’s protection. The process of carving out a future for herself. But, at the moment, Emily was distracted by the sheer novelty of living.

And now, suddenly, she began to throw open all the windows and doors. The heat waiting outside burst into the bungalow, seeing off the cold from every corner, melting the ice of her mother’s anger until, standing bathed in sunlight, Emily smiled, knowing that, for now, her mum was routed.

FICTION, JANUARY 2026, Yurii Tokar

The Aliens

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The Aliens

Yurii Tokar

A cold autumn evening was sadly spreading across the quiet village with the mysterious name of Byshev. It was located not far from Kyiv. It was there that I taught mathematics after graduating from university. Why was the evening sad? Perhaps autumn is never conducive to optimism, and November 1992, marked by a premonition of changes in the country, seemed surprisingly unfriendly for some reason. What will they be like, the coming changes? Everyone tried to answer this question for themselves, but people cannot predict the future. 

Many claim that it is during times of change in the state that a huge number of magicians appear. It is then that people begin to believe in the yeti, various monsters, and talking stones; that is, they start to believe in something unusual. Perhaps they want to escape from reality in this way, although they themselves do not realize it. In 1992, talk about alien creatures was present on all television channels, radio programs, and in newspapers.

That chilly evening, I could have sat by the fireplace, which was warming me with a kind fire, and leafed through some illustrated magazines or read an article about aliens. However, I only had an electric fireplace, which meant that the wood in it did not crackle or create a flame. Additionally, in the morning, during a math lesson, I promised a seventh-grader that I would come to his house in the evening to talk to the boy’s parents. This seventh-grader had not done his homework for two weeks in a row, and there were no mobile phones at that time, so I could only complain to the parents about the careless student in person.

The seventh grader’s name was Andrey. The walk to his house took forty minutes. Of course, I was wet, and when Andrey opened the door to my knock, he looked at his math teacher sympathetically and invited me into the house.

“Where are your parents?” I asked Andrey.  

“They are staying late at work, but they will be back soon. You can sit down in the armchair and watch TV for now, and I will make some tea and treat you.”  

The boy was embarrassed and felt guilty. I thanked him and settled into the armchair because I had definitely decided to wait for Andrey’s parents. Suddenly, someone knocked on the door. Vladik entered the house, or rather burst in. This boy was Andrey’s neighbor and was in the sixth grade. Vladik didn’t even say hello but immediately began to speak excitedly.

“There’s something going on in the street… There’s something… There’s something incredible!”

The boy accompanied his confused phrases with incomprehensible gestures, trying to emphasize the significance of what was happening. 

“First of all, good evening! Secondly, please calm down and explain what you’re talking about,” I asked the sixth grader. 

But he was so worried that he had no time for the rules of decency.

“Everything is glowing there,” he finally said in a trembling voice.

“What else could there be outside besides wind and wet snow?” I thought, getting up from my chair.”

‘Let’s go and see if you’re not making this up!” 

“No, no,” he shouted excitedly.

We went outside together. What we saw was truly impressive. The village was bathed in a shimmering blue color. It looked completely different from a few minutes ago when I was walking down the street.  

“Look,” Andrey shouted, pointing to the north, “the glow is the brightest there!”  

And indeed, it seemed that the source of the mysterious light was in the northern part of the village.  

“Do you have bicycles?” I asked Andrey decisively.  

“I have two; they are in the barn, but the chain sometimes slips on both bikes. It is difficult to control them.”  

“It’s okay. Let’s go and see what it could be!”  

The boys were delighted with this proposal. Andrey went to the barn for the bicycles, and Vladik ran for his bike, and a couple of minutes later, we were riding in a northern direction.

The bike chain was indeed slipping, and wet snow was aiming at our eyes, but none of this mattered because the mysterious flickering glow was becoming brighter and brighter as we approached its source.

It was hard to ride, but the bikes moved slowly forward. There were no people on the street. It seemed to us that all the villagers had disappeared somewhere, and we were on the set of a science fiction film. Each of us wanted to be the first to see the source of the mysterious light. However, I did not notice the pothole in the road in front of me, so my bike ended up in a puddle, and I fell. The boys were luckier because they lagged behind me a little. But the mud-spattered clothes did not cause concern because we were approaching the mystical flashes.

“Maybe these are space aliens?” shouted Andrey, who was riding behind. 

In another situation, I would have joked in response, but then I kept silent and thought to myself, “Why not? Maybe a spaceship really did fly to Earth from another planet!” 

We saw the source of light as soon as we passed the last house in the village. The situation turned out to be much more prosaic than our fantasies. There was an accident on a high-voltage power line, and periodic short circuits in the wires caused a bright glow. An emergency electrician’s car was already parked nearby, but we did not notice any space aliens. One of the electricians, who was standing about ten meters away from us, for some reason looked at me very attentively and somewhat surprised. At first, I did not understand what had aroused his interest in me, but then I lowered my head and saw myself in the bright light from the car’s spotlights. My raincoat, ironed trousers, and boots were splashed with mud.

Andrey came up to me from behind and gently tugged my sleeve.  

“That’s my dad.” he pointed at the surprised electrician, “Are you going to talk to him now?”  

“No. Some other time,” I answered, and the boys and I slowly headed back towards the village.  

In fact, I no longer had the desire to talk to Andrey’s parents, but I will note that after that incident, he always came to class with his homework done. Perhaps the space aliens had an effect on him.