Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Maybe Ma and her crew had seen something weird. If I were a vast, hidden conspiracy believer, I might suspect secret government experiments gone rogue from Area 51. As I muse, I can almost hear Twilight Zone music pulsating in my head like annoying audio hail. I am definitely too domesticated, or too addicted to retro television.

Ma is nattering on. “I stationed the crew to stay here to keep the rats off the evidence. And bag a few for snacks.”

“Please. I do not do sushi.” I am afraid my palate at least has become totally domesticated. Which makes me wonder how suitable for survival I am these days, should it become necessary.

“Well,” I say, “while I am willing to bet that these skittish flying tinfoil doughnuts are a scam, the scenario you have just described is genuine Las Vegas legerdemain from days of old, all right. It is a favorite game among the old mobs called ‘bury the body.’ Lead me to the remains. I am not a coroner, but I have played one on TV news cameras now and then.”

Ma gives me the sssst hiss of reproval and heads to the darkest corner of the property. The scene certainly looks deserted now. The edifice-in-waiting is like the halted construction on a lot of Vegas sites, a skeletal hulk. Any light hitting the dirt around here is referred from distant sources.

We are talking a dead planet in the midst of one hyperactive, glitzy galaxy.

Come to think of it, we are talking prime body-dumping ground.

I start to feel like a Mars rover, churning up dust as I clamber over fallen cement blocks disrupting acres of sand. I will take a long, careful tongue-bath to restore my shiny black suit coat to prime condition.

The scene is a bit eerie, I think, looking up and seeing only a full moon above, an object not about to make a close encounter with Earth any eon soon. If that supposed mother ship swoops down tonight, I will have to swallow of lot of words as well as all this dust.

I am glad Ma’s gang is backing me up.

A feature on the deserted landscape grows bigger by the second. It is too lumpy to be concrete. The meager light brings into focus a legendary feature of the planet Mars: the Mysterious Face.

Only I spot those facial features dead and on the ground on Paradise Road. They seem more ugly than mysterious, but that is how it often happens when one gets to the bottom of things.