David Ohle - The Devil in Kansas

The E-train stops. Passengers de-board. They stretch, they smoke, they mill around in the dim subway station.

Sherry leans against a wall, killing time. She hears an oozy, sloshing sound and walks down the tunnel to have a look. In a cul-de-sac she finds a pile of steaming grasshopper/alien eggs. They undulate actively, about to hatch. She recoils in disgust, backpedals to the train.

Once back on board, she says, “Let’s go. Hurry up. Pedal! We’re running late.”

As the train slowly pulls out of the station, the eggs hatch crossbred human/alien organisms.

An operating room in an alien hospital lit by kerosene lamps. Moe lies etherized on a metal drain table. Breast transplant surgery is being performed on him by gloved alien hands.

Another set of alien hands performs some sort of indeterminate surgery in Moe’s groin area.

The sound of bleating sheep distantly, then closer.

Moe comes out of the anesthetic. When he looks at the heaving female breasts on his chest and his heavily bandaged groin, he’s mystified.

He hears laughter from an inner courtyard below his window. He props himself up with great effort and looks out.

The courtyard, Eden-like, lush with alien vegetation, features an old swimming pool teeming with alien fish.

Whole sheep, wool and all, roast over a pit of coals.

Alien doctors in surgical garb stand around with buckets.

A new arrival hacks open the stomach of a sheep. When the steaming hot entrails spill out, the aliens catch what they can in the buckets and eat it hungrily.

In Moe’s hospital room, he looks again at his breasts, then at the place where his pudenda should be. He looks into a wall mirror and pales with horror.

Behind the mirror, in a small, dark room, an alien watches a screen displaying a three-dimensional X-ray image of Moe’s now-female pelvic region.

In an empty lot behind a derelict Holiday Inn building, sheep graze.

A pedal bus arrives. Passengers get off. Some walk or hobble, or are carried, toward the hospital entrance, Kenny and Joe among them.

The sound of sheep bleating is audible in the background.

In another alien hospital room, Joe looks out the window. He sees sheep roasting over open coals and aliens in surgical garb eating entrails.

The Terranova seating area at the end of the day. Joe, Kenny and Sherry, in their work clothes, sleep sitting up. Kenny has a City Moon partially covering his face, the headline reading: MONEY THOUGHT WORTHLESS!

A tall, gaunt figure in a rumpled black suit sits in front of them and removes his wide-brim black hat. There are small patches of green mold on the hat and suit, even on the back of his hairless, liver spotted head. Suddenly, he turns around. “Good mooooorning. The name’s Baker. I don’t mean any harm.” Joe is the first to awaken from a weary slumber, followed by Sherry and Kenny. “Morning, folks. The name’s Baker. Hope you slept well. Looks like you’ve all had your surgeries and your job assignments. That’s good. Listen, I’m working for the Department of Antiquities and I need volunteers for a dig. Just outside of town. They’ve found something very interesting there and I need help getting it out of the ground.”

Kenny says, “We already got jobs.”

Joe says, “If we don’t show up for work, we’re fucked.”

“They’ll be spanking us at the Ice Palace,” Sherry adds. “Or maybe we’ll end up in the sewer.”

Baker leans over his chair-back. “No, no. Volunteers are exempt from all that. You get a work waiver. Come with me. Come on. It’s easy work. Let’s go. The sooner the better.”

A desolate stretch of land, the wreckage of the Hey Abbott distantly visible.

Joe, Sherry and Kenny stand over a partially dug, grave-like excavation. Baker lets down the handles of a wheelbarrow full of shovels and picks. “Start digging. Be done by dark.”

Later, about sundown, the hole is about six feet deep when Joe’s shovel strikes the metal lid of a coffin.

Baker jumps with joy. “Eureka!” He pries open the coffin with a chisel and a crowbar. Bright sun enters on a desiccated corpse encased in a wicker-like cage of overgrown fingernails and tangled hair.

Sherry gasps. “Oh, my God.”

Parting the nail-growth, Baker removes a still-ticking watch from the corpse’s skeletal wrist, listens to the ticking a moment, then removes a rusted identification bracelet from the other wrist. Rust has obscured some of the letters. What remains is — arvey . “The ‘H’ is missing,” Baker says. “This is Harvey. He’s worth real money on the alien market.” He peels away the tatters of a suit and shirt. A bullet hole can be seen in the leathery flesh of the stomach area. “The famous gut shot right where it should be. I know who this is. Thank you for your help. We’ll be in touch.”

Kenny holds out his fisted hand, then opens it. “Wait a minute, man. Don’t we get paid something for all this digging?”

“I asked for volunteers, not partners,” Baker says. “You’ll each get fifty yellows.”

Kenny closes his fist again. “The paper says it’s worthless.”

Frightened by Kenny’s aggressive stance, Baker relents. “All right. Fair is fair. We’ll take Harvey to the antiquities office and I’ll pay you in real money, alien money.”

On the outskirts of Witchy Toe, Joe and Sherry carry the front end of the coffin by its handles. Kenny bears the weight of the rear end. Baker walks beside them, but his advanced age begins to slow him down, then stops him altogether. He struggles for breath. “This is killing me.”

They set the coffin down on the shoulder of the road to rest.

Some time later, Baker lies dying on the road, flies crawling on his face, lips parched. “I can’t go on. Take him in and get the money. I’m done for.”

Kenny says, “What I’m wondering is, who’s in this coffin? Whose bones are those and what makes them so fucking valuable?”

Baker doesn’t answer. He’s dead.

A ways from the road is a rickety wooden cistern on rusty steel pilings. From its bottom dangle two alien legs in flight suit and boots, water dripping from them. Atop the topless tower is a parachute waving in the wind.

Joe, Sherry, and Kenny drag the coffin along, exhausted. They don’t notice the dead alien pilot in the cistern.

When they reach the outskirts of Witchy Toe, a sign appears: DEPARTMENT OF ANTIQUITIES, followed by an arrow.

A pedal wagon with three coffins stacked in its bed passes them. The pedalers are exhausted.

A new arrival pushing a handcart with a coffin in it nods with a smile as he passes by. “Who you got? I got Sinatra! He’s worth a gazillion.”

“We don’t know,” Joe says. “Somebody named Harvey.”

“Oh, yeah. That’ll get you some green.”

The Antiquities Department is housed in the gymnasium of an abandoned school.

The gym’s original entry doors have been replaced by a solid steel plate.

A long queue of new arrivals, each with at least one coffin in tow, has formed.

Kenny, Joe and Sherry are at the very end of the queue.

A news boy comes by selling City Moons . “Read it and weep. Money plane in fiery crash. Pilot found missing. President cancels money drops. Chaos predicted.”

Joe, Kenny and Sherry have finally reached the head of the line. They lift their coffin onto a conveyor belt that carries it into the building through a second-story window. They wait, listening to the sound of an old-fashioned adding machine. A cellophane-wrapped roll of green money tumbles down a chute like something from a candy dispenser. Sherry scoops it up.

In the lobby of the Terranova, Joe plays his saw to a small crowd, his hat a mere third full.