I languished all the way home.

No legs. No arms. Muscles, bones, veins and all that human biology I was supposed to have, had melted.

I just jellied back, floating like a numb, limbless creature, vaguely pondering in between my exhaustion if I was advancing into the higher form of life – body losing mass and turning into a gaseous state like Omni-potent spiritual beings of Galaxian fables.

Then I was rudely forced to properly re-assess my situation and current fatigue when I crashed abruptly, facing down upon dirt and grime on pavements that were never maintained. I groaned like an ancient Serpentarian on its deathbed where their vocal cords stiffened, and hence their hiss comes out forced and deepened from its usual airy hiss.

I pried myself up slowly, and inspected the damage on my stinky skin. Great, the abrasion was only mild and shouldn’t leave a scar – if it did, I’d have to go for skin grafting because I ain’t gonna risk any chance of my value lowering because of a few scars. Perfect skin is one of the top assessments for a man-eater to decide whether one was worth to lay down his tongue on. Imagine shopping for meat stock at the wet market – you’d avoid the ones marred too, won’t you?

Because shopping for a lover was like shopping for meat. Only scrumptious looking ones sell. The rest go into the bio-recycling trash. Which also meant one needed to be careful how many times they let themselves be eaten. The more they allow themselves to be sampled, the more their value degrades. You wouldn’t take a bite of an apple already bitten right? Same rationale.

Which was what I once told the folks at Open Coffee shop* on an unwise, ambitious trip to the drunkard playground by the river in one of the adventurous moods in my youth. Needless to say, I was chased out with my friends by the snakes they unzipped from their pants and the mop they grabbed with their hands, threatening to make sure our shit will forever need to exit via a different method than the one we were biologically born with. Terrified of wrecked up anuses, we high tailed the hell out of there and duh, never went back again.

Despite the scare, I still stand firm on my belief to this day. I just made sure I keep the word vomit to myself least my butt hole gets a similar threat. I certainly do want to be messed up, just not messed up, if you know what I mean.

A sudden honk at my back startled me, rudely interrupting my deep, philosophical musings and recollections. I glanced back and offered the alien a snare and made no effort to dodge because as a pedestrian on the sidewalk, I had every right to be on this lane without needing to give way to him.

He’s on one of those fucking annoying plasma powered hover-scooters that killed one in a hundred folks whilst speeding down sidewalks. Until traffic authority slapped a new rule that arrowed all cause of accidents, be it the fault of the pedestrian, as theirs. Same thing they’ve done to car drivers for a millennium. Doesn’t stop the accidents from happening, but at least the numbers reduced.

The Huamassur eyeballed me with the three eyes on his wide, saucepan like face, waiting impatiently as I snailed across the pavement. I dragged on as long as I could till his aerial wheels bumped my backside. I hissed like a true Serpentarian as I scampered all the way to the inner side like a pathetic mouse, glaring at his back on the scooter that quickly decreased in size down the lane.

Then I bumped heads with someone also down on his knees and arms, and when I looked up, a toothy blackish, greenish grin which hadn’t seen a toothbrush or toothpaste for years, met me. I screamed and jumped up, strength passably restored.

Wasn’t a Slimedian, but the way he looked like, caked in layers of… I don’t want to know what, clinging over his form in a dried yet slimy mush that pulsed and gleamed like a grotesque, horror beacon under the neon lights spilling from the cluttered, sporadic signboards above – hell, he could have passed on for one.

I’m not even sure what he is underneath all that gunk. I don’t even know when was the last time he had a bath.

I for one – having soaked in the smell of fried fish and bits of alien parts battered in oil – am glad I have a shower room for myself. I am so grateful for my parent’s considerate thinking. I’d be in so much trouble if I was forced to use a public bath.

I have no desire to dip into the same pool as zillions of invisible microscopic bacterial fallen into the waters, from the thousands of grimy bodies entering it. Also, I do not want to be caught with a boner ogling at an Adonis or Herculean-like figure. I prefer to ogle at them within private confines, behind a video image.

Speaking of which, I just passed by a couple shamelessly fucking against a shop front, tentacles and sexual organs (I suppose?) hanging all over and going in and out of each other. Public acts of sexual misconducts like this was outlawed, but the police couldn’t be bothered to give a shit. Dad often said they were too busy chasing down bigger fish.

Besides, the diners behind the transparent glass couldn’t give a shit. Half of them barely cast a glance and some stunned expressions, but they returned to their meal without so much as a fanfare.

I too, am not particularly surprised, having seen my neighbours both left and right side of me having sex orgy parties. The only thing that made me raise my brows was the number of long thingies entering the plentiful orifices. Hmmm….was there one for every hole?

I kinda slowed down a bit, might have stopped in my tracks, focusing on trying to count how many pairs were there. Wasn't everyday one got to see sex education in the flesh, might as well take the chance. At least it will make for a good sharing session with my squeamish buddies. Then I realized I earned a dozen pairs, no, make than two dozen pairs of glassy, liquid black eyes glaring at me.

Oops, so they didn’t want me staring. The irony. Whatever, I went on my way.

I was careful to side step and cross over every lump of thrash I spied with flies hanging around their form. And at darkened parts of the streets I would scurry along as fast as my aching feet could take me, least I get taken by the figures I couldn’t see, but knew were lurking within the shadowed alleyways.

Really, the nickname City of Thrash couldn’t be more better named with vagrants and despots littering the streets like abandoned garbage that the State Union couldn’t be bothered to clean up. And up above, the blocks down the line were a sorry sight, fetid, coarse walls with the outer surfaces badly eaten by acid rain after eons of unhealthy pollution.

The towering masses plastered in a jumble of heights, no thanks to a combination of a shortage of land space and bad housing planning. I attribute it more to lazy thinking, since newer blocks were just stacked atop the old ones, forcing the bottom foundations to sink inches into the ground, hence causing the streets to be uneven.

It was a good thing vehicles ran on levitation tech. Because if was by wheels as how it was in the ancient past, many butts would be screaming murder over the bumpy ground.

You really wouldn’t think this was once called ‘The Garden City’, famed for being clean, green and efficient.

Well, that was eons ago in a history that was as unreal as myth. We don’t have any flora now. Only plasma pipes that excreted faintly pungent gases through vent holes along the streets. It was the unavoidable output from converting the raw materials collected from outer space into a usable energy source. That’s probably why folks here are choked up with irritable moods and scowls permanently on for half the day.

Well, at least I could avoid walking into the mini mushroom clouds of darkish maroon and pinkish gases that puffed out at intermediate timings. Everyone does, because everyone knows one direct hit will force one to stand under the showers for three hours because the smell sticks. Something about most of the mass of vapour molecules sticking to the body rather than dispersing first into the air. And those who didn’t know, are tourists.

Because a country will never allow its bad points to be publicized. The State Union goes to great and shameless lengths of peppering sweet lies about this god forsaken nation, sending many a tourist packing within ten minutes of touch down, just to earn the entry tariff. Funny thing, for being such a failure at upkeeping the nation’s fabled mystical status, the scumbag organization has been so efficient in wiping out any compliant about the nation from blogs, forums and any other commercial press or personal releases across all types of media platforms.

But well, at least they were good for something – earning outsiders’ money. Too bad they pocketed most of it, leaving only just enough so the ship wouldn’t sink.

I’m not in the political know, nor an economic guru, but I know. Don’t ask me how. I just do. The entire population does. Just like the classic, age-old timeless song ‘Everybody knows’, sung by the name of a Norse woman who is as wise as she is beautiful – everybody knows how the planets really spin. And it’s not covered in science textbooks.

I think the big hint came during the fateful years around the range of 20XX (I think), where there were multiple breakdowns in the public system called a ‘train’, that inconvenienced hundreds of passengers per cargo freight breakdown. Obviously it should shed light that the then ruling party paid for cheap operators, systems and trains that had a lifespan of perfect function for the first twenty years, before it started to rapidly derail and breakdown faster than flicking a switch.

Oh and the same happened for everything else. Maintenance failing everywhere, which should have been a dead ringer that cheap isn’t necessary good. But they continued being stingy anyway, and just covered up their mistakes with papers.

So that’s why this stinking dump is the place it is, thanks to the mis-managements by generations of cows who just want to sit prettily on green pastures, mooing nonchalantly and mowing grass without putting any work.

The ones who actually did the work and milked the teat of the cows, were not from the motherland.

They were aliens.