Young Writers Society

“That weird boy who hangs around John Walker and Hank Young,” that was Glen in a nutshell at high school. Nobody bothered to learn his name back then. Not that anyone could blame them for it. Glen McLain was chubby, wore glasses and braces and dressed himself in orange pants. If it weren’t for the fact that he had a seriously good personality, John and Hank would never have hung out with him.

They laughed at him when he first came up to them and started talking, they actually told him to go hang himself – this they claimed, was “Glen’s own world of random bullshit” later on – but Glen just laughed at them, thinking they were joking, and shook their hands intensively while introducing himself. John and Hank found him amusing and decided to look past their first impression of him, finding him a great guy.

After that they spent a lot of time together, and Glen never seemed to mind the fact that everyone but John and Hank found him so weird and stupid. He just kept on smiling, like he was living in this bubble of his own all through high school.

At the age of twenty-one, Glen got his first kiss. Some drunken girl called Emily somehow found his orange pants cool, and three hours and a bottle of tequila later she stuck her tongue down his throat and told him he was cute in a “kind of repulsive sort of way…” She disappeared into a taxi ten minutes later, and forgot the incident by the next morning.

Glen on the other hand, had discovered the love of his life that evening, and had no plans of letting her go. He eagerly told John and Hank about his plans of winning her heart. The plans were so unrealistic they never once took him seriously. Two weeks later, Glen was condemned to eight months of prison for having kidnapped a five-year-old girl in four days.

“I just wanted to show you that I could be a good father, Em,” he told Emily in a letter,” and in seven months and twenty-five days, I can, because I’ll be out of here by then, and we can be a family. You know it’s true, the girl is still alive, because I took care of her.” The rest of the letter was filled with joy over orange suit they had to wear and his mother’s phone number, written twice in case she forgot it, “I think you should get to know her, seeing she is your future mother in law.”

Glen lived happily behind bars the next seven months, until he got out early for good behaviour. John and Hank sent him to a psychologist, who gave him some pills and told him to take one day at the time.

Glen took the doctors advice about taking one day at the time, and one of them he decided to take a trip up on the mountain. He never should have.

As he was walking up in God’s free nature, feeling the wind in his face and smiling at the feeling of being outside the four depressing walls of his mother’s house, he couldn’t help to notice how the sky suddenly turned dark, and the birds stopped singing. He stopped for a few seconds, listening, but couldn’t hear anything, so he kept on going. And then, completely out of nowhere, an UFO whirled down at Glen. It all just took a couple of seconds, a flash of light and a bang, then both the UFO and Glen was gone, the sky was blue and the sound of birds singing filled the air like nothing had ever happened.

Glen opened his eyes, and a couple of big black ones were staring back at him. The eyes were sitting on the face of a man with four arms, three fingers on each hand and bluish skin. The black eyes blinked with surprise when Glen’s opened, and he turned around and walked away. As he got to the pint where Glen could see his legs, Glen wanted to scream when he saw that instead of two normal legs, he had a thousand strings hanging down from his stomach, only they weren’t hanging. His stomach was sitting on them, and they were walking around, making a funny noise as they hit the floor a hundred times every second.

The creature said something, but Glen couldn’t understand it, he had never been good at languages, and this was probably not even spoken anywhere on the earth.

A minute later, five more of them came in. Glen was terrified, and sat up in the bed he was laying on. One of them, the tallest one, walked against him. He said something over his shoulder before he turned to Glen.

“Hi, what’s your name?” he asked.

“Uhm, it’s Glen,” Glen answered, wondering why they weren’t pulling out his guts.

“Oh, well, hi Glen. I’m Krkl. Terrible sorry about this, we try not to interfere with earthlings to much,” he said friendly.

“Well, good try… Uhm, Kirkel, would you mind terrible much if I just left then?” Glen tried.

“It’s Krkl,” Krkl said grumpily, “You see, we sort of had a bet, with some people back at our planet, that if they made it to earth first they could, you know, blow it up,” he laughed a little, but Glen didn’t seem to be up for a friendly joke now, so he stopped. “And now you see, they sort of won, but we can’t let them blow it up, we would get in a lot of trouble, lots of costs and boring trials, you know how it goes. So we need you to just… Stop them. Deal?”

Glen stared at him, “You want me to stop a bunch of crazy aliens from blowing up the earth?” he said weak.

“Well, first of all, they’re not crazy; one of them is my cousin. And secondly, it’s no biggy. C’mon, the bomb is placed on that big tower over in Paris. All you have to do is get up there and turn it off. The code is 39627051,” Krkl wrote down the code and handed it over to Glen. “Once you’ve set it, there will appear one red, and one green button. If you push the red one, the earth will explode, please don’t do that, I already have a spot on my record. Push the green button, the bomb will disappear, and everyone’s happy, especially my mum. Krkl smiled big at Glen, showing some small, yellow teeth, “Will you do it? Please?”

“What happens if I say no?” Glen asked.

“I told you, we get in a lot of trouble and my mum gets mad as hell,” Krkl snapped impatiently at Glen.

“To the earth and me, you idiot!” Glen snapped back.

“Oh, the earth explodes, and I guess you die,” Krkl answered.

“Fine, I’ll do it, but next time, bet on Jupiter, will you?” Glen said madly.

“I promise,” Krkl shook his hand eagerly and his big smile came back, “You have seven hours before it explodes, so long Glen, it was nice meeting you!” Krkl said, and the first creature Glen had seen pushed a big purple button. There was another big flash of light and a bang, and then Glen stood on the ground, watching the UFO disappear into the sky.

Glen ran down the path and down to the city. He found a phone booth and called John. He explained everything that had happened and John said he would be there in five minutes. Ten minutes later Glen was arguing with John.

“I’m telling you, it’s true all of I, it’s not my pills and the earth will explode damn it!” he said.

“Glen, calm down, I swear to you it’s not true. I’m taking you to the doctor.”

Glen was terrified for what he knew he had to do. He counted to three in his head before he opened the door and jumped out. Only he had forgotten his seatbelt, and didn’t quite get the James Bond look he was going for as he was halfway hanging out of the car, struggling to get the belt off, and eventually falling to the ground. John screamed and stopped the car. Glen crawled over to it and hid in front of it as John ran away to find him. He went inside it, screamed “I’m sorry John, I’ll pay you back for the taxi later! You should call one!” And then he drove off, leaving John in the street looking after his car.

He went to the airport and checked the time. He didn’t know how much of the seven hours he had used, but he guessed that it had that it had taken him two to get there, which meant he had five left to save the earth. He looked in John’s wallet; his credit card was there. Great.

“One person, next plane to Paris, thanks,” Glen said nervously to the lady behind the counter.

“That’ll be 149 pounds, thank you,” the lady answered, “the plane leaves in two hours, any baggage?”

“No, I’m a light traveller,” Glen said, and pulled the card.

Two hours later, the plane was leaving ground, with Glen on it. He had three hours left, one and a half if he counted how long it would be until he landed. The next one and a half hours were the most nervous hours of Glen’s life, what if he didn’t make it? Why did Krkl have to pick up him? An idiot that were on pills and supposed to take one day at the time?

The plane landed and Glen asked for directions to the Eiffel tower, he ran as fast as he could, again trying to get the James Bond look. He didn’t though, and stopped a taxi. Fifteen minutes the taxi was there, and for the first time of his life, Glen saw the Eiffel tower. Also for the first time of his life, he saw the huge line at the Eiffel tower. It would take forever to get up there. And he only had about one and a half hour before the earth would explode. Then he got a brilliant idea, and stopped the first English speaking kid he saw who were running around. And with big eyes, the kid listened to Glen’s story, and he said he would help him save the earth. The kid ran into the front of the line, without anyone caring about him, and then he started crying.

A chubby lady asked him what was wrong.

“My dad’s gone!” he cried.

Glen was standing a couple of meters behind them, and then he started asking people if they had seen a little kid, describing him to everyone as he walked forwards in the line until he got there.

“Thomas! Where have you been? You were far behind when I left!” he said loudly when he saw the kid, unsure if it was Tommy or Thomas he had said before.

“Dad!” The kid called Tommy yelled back, and gave him a hug, “Well, the line is actually moving you idiot, and you took so long in the bathroom.”

“I’m sorry,” Glen said, and whispered in his ear that he was doing a great job. And there it was, he was right in front of the Eiffel tower, and ten minutes later, he, Tommy, the chubby lady and seven other people were on the elevator on their way up. Glen asked Tommy what the time was, twenty minutes left.

When they got up, Glen couldn’t see a bomb, but Tommy found it, he said it was undercover – he had read about it in detective books. It was a game boy. Glen found the note with the code, and read it to Tommy, who wrote it in. the “a” button turned green, and the “b” button turned red.

“Push the green button, Thomas,” Glen said happily.

Tommy pushed the green button, and the game boy disappeared.

A week later, Glen was back in prison. Tommy’s mother had pressed charges against him for taking Tommy. Tommy didn’t get a say in it, so all the jury had was a history of kidnapping and a boy disappearing up to the Eiffel tower.

He got two years, and lived them happily, one day at the time, in his orange suit in the prison.