The Twiller
by David Derrico

Free Excerpt (Part III)

    Dusting himself off, Ian saw his bizarre traveling companion strolling leisurely through the forest they had not crashed in. Ian looked to the Twiller, who shrugged uselessly. Unsure of what else to do, Ian followed Cheez through the foliage. “Where are we going?” he asked.
    Cheez ignored the question. “You know, I think I’ve been here before.”
    Ian sighed. “Where, exactly, is ‘here?’”
    The alien continued walking. “It’s right through here somewhere.” Just then, the two travelers emerged from the forest, stepping from the ground onto a slab of concrete.
    What stretched before Ian boggled his feeble mind. Towering buildings rose before him as far as the eye could see, their tops disappearing into a gray, smoggy haze. Thousands of people milled about the sidewalks, and aircars were jammed bumper-to-bumper, taking up every cubic inch of free space from ground level until they disappeared up into the smog banks. None of them appeared to be moving, although every few seconds the shriek of a horn assailed Ian’s ears. Over the din, Ian thought he heard the Twiller cough.
    Before him was a large sign, which read:

WELCOME TO EL LEIGH
The Biggest Damn City in the Galaxy

    For an uncertain moment, Ian wondered why the sign would possibly be in English, or in fact why he had been able to understand the myriad aliens he had met on his travels. He quickly resolved not to think about the matter again, and you really should do the same.
    Cheez continued into the morass of milling aliens, walking aimlessly as he stared at his surroundings. Ian struggled to keep up, a high-pitched voice in the back of his head urging him not to lose his alien guide, who was – just barely – better than nothing. Ian knew he did not want to be lost, alone, in a city like El Leigh.
    Within only a few moments, however, lost was precisely what he was. There was no sign of Cheez, no sign, in fact, of the forest he had emerged from minutes earlier. His visibility was reduced to a few feet by a mass of people and the omnipresent haze, which he could feel settling thickly in his lungs. He let himself be carried away by the moving mass of aliens, and gave up looking for Cheez in a few minutes. Ian could not help but think that it was a rather crappy and ignominious way to get written out of a story.
    Ian struggled out of the flow of people and into the street, where things were moving much more slowly, if at all. Rows of aircars were stacked from the paved ground up into the gloom. The aircars, all of which were running, were only inches from each other. In some cases, they actually touched the cars ahead of or behind them. Ian ambled over to a driver whose window was down.
   “Hello,” Ian began. He was rewarded by a long blast of the vehicle’s horn.
   “Let’s move it, here!” the alien inside shouted. “I don’t have all year.”
    Ian tried again. “Excuse me, sir. How long have you been stuck in this mess?”
    The alien swiveled one of its heads to face Ian, while the other continued shouting obscenities at other drivers. “Oh, about a year and a half.” Ian’s mouth dropped open. “Well,” the driver explained, “I haven’t exactly been stuck in this exact spot that long.”
    Ian was relieved. “About six months ago,” the driver continued, “the car in front of me inched up and hit the guy in front of him. So I was able to move two, maybe three inches.” Both heads swiveled to look at the car in front of him. “Those guys have been going at it since then.”
    Sure enough, the drivers of the two cars in front of the alien were vociferously exchanging unpleasantries with each other.
   “But,” Ian stammered, “how could you be stuck here for over a year?”
    The alien shrugged all four of its shoulders. “Well, the traffic was always pretty bad, and then I guess one day there was just one car too many on the road.” He sighed. “That’s what they say on the radio, anyway. That last car was like the last jigsaw puzzle piece, or like filling in the empty square on one of those games where you rearrange the tiles.” The alien turned both heads to regard Ian. “Do you have those games on your planet?”
   “I… I think so,” Ian stammered, and ran, screaming, from the street as fast as he could.

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