Captain Briggs went below to check on the alien scientist from Planet NP372/pi3. The being (Zam'm'leen'b) possessed the knowledge to help Earth regenerate its dying atmosphere--but a tiny errant asteroid had damaged the creature's atmospheric module and soon it would die. Unless, that is, Captain Briggs altered the ship's Earth atmosphere into a chemical mix approximating the alien's. Then Zam'm;leen'b could leave his damaged module and survive the remainder of the trip in the ship's new, altered atmosphere. That would mean, of course, that Captain Briggs would have to sacrifice his own life for the alien--and for the benefit of all Mankind left on Earth.

The captain did not hesitate; he changed the ships internal atmosphere, and promptly and excruciatingly died.

"Such a noble deed," thought Zam'm'leen'b. "Out of respect for Captain Briggs' sacrifice, I must honor our spiritual custom and lay down my life in homage."

​Whereupon the alien opened the ship's airlock and let himself be sucked out into the vacuum of space. Thus died the alien Zam'm'leen'b, Captain Briggs, and eventually the last remnants of Humankind on Earth.

Apparently this year (2015) Muslims celebrate the birth of the Prophet Jesus on the 24th December.​

It’s the dead of night in Bethlehem. Maria’s in labour, Giuseppe’s holding her hand and desperately trying to fend off a few donkeys, cattle and sheep that are showing an interest. Eventually, a healthy baby boy is born, whom they decide to call Jesus. Common enough, not Pocohantas or anything daft like that.
 
Soon, some not-so-wise visitors appear carrying gifts: nappies, baby oil, onesies, the usual stuff.
 
Soon, one of them asks Giuseppe the critical question. “So, was he born before before or after midnight?”
 
Giuseppe shrugs. “Haven’t a clue. Around midnight. Didn’t check my watch, sor-reee.”
 
This starts an argument amongst the visitors: if the baby’s born on the 24th it must be a Muslim, but if it was born after midnight then a Christian it is. The argument threatens to wake the baby up.
 
Giuseppe cuts in.
 
“Listen, guys, does it really matter? He’s healthy and he’s going to help us be better people. Two thousand years from now no one will give a hoot whether he’s a Christian or a Muslim.”
 
There’s a moment’s silence then he adds, “Will they?”

It was heavily raining, the roads were waterlogged and like lakes. The sun had disappeared from the sky and only black clouds threatened the people facing natural disaster in near future. This was how it was in Chennai, India.

​Like others, Doctor Rajan's family in Chennai suffered a lot from this catastrophe. Their only daughter Sara, together with their beloved doggy Scooby, lost their way when they went out – the ground floor was submerged with water and there was no way to reach their roof-top. Their parents were out of reach, and no one came to help them as others too were blocked with the same trouble.

They found a big bamboo-made basket to keep themselves floating on water. Sara was brave enough, she was twelve years old, fond of gazing at the night sky filled with stars but now with only thunder and lightning to scare them.

She’d lost all the household belongings and clutched only an electronic transmitter in her hand. It was her birthday gift from her parents. She’d modified it and often liked to dream of another world where she could try to send a message through this transmitter!

On that fateful day, she tried the transmitter again but she shook her head in dismay because the reception was not strong enough. Scooby became afraid, looking forlornly at Sara as he too was familiar with the device.

All of a sudden, a thrashing lightning appeared in front of them and a strange, giant creature appeared! Closing their eyes, they heard a splash, then they realised, that a huge being had taken them into its palm and blown them away within in no time. When they opened their eyes they found themselves on a safe roof top with others who had taken shelter there. All were waiting for dry food and water to be thrown by helicopters. Soon ‘copters came and took them gradually to relief centres.

Later when they met their parents, Sara told them about this miracle. They took it as the "Almighty's Hand" but Sara kissed her lovely transmitter and prayed for the alien who saved her and Scooby's life. To her, it was not a dream, simply an auspicious entity from another world who had helped her.

Ah, such a wonderful morning! I have just come from Royal Court where good King Rudgeland bestowed upon me the highest honor. I am blessed beyond words! It is Christmas Time, and outside there are splendid partridges in the pear trees, and score of maids are milking merrily away to the tune of a lively Christmas Carol. My heart is filled with happiness!

What brings all this about?, you ask. A month ago almost all the faucets in the Royal Castle began to leak. As the good King had had a falling out with the Royal Plumber (who, incidentally, promptly lost his head!), and vowed never to let another such person touch the Royal Plumbing, there was a very real threat that the Royal Castle would be royally flooded if something were not done about the leaks. The Royal Plumbing Corps had been abolished, but good King Rudgeland promptly created the Royal Commode Brigade and drafted one hundred subjects into its ranks. I was one of the first to enter Royal Commode Brigade Boot Camp, I am proud to say. Well, our job was--and is--to run about and fetch the golden Royal Water Catching Pots, which hang beneath the leaking faucets, and rush them to all the forty-nine Royal Bathrooms and pour them into the Royal Commodes. This flushes the commodes and renders Royally Useful the water which would have otherwise flowed down the drain. There are many who would like to tell the good King it would be a lot less expensive to call in a plumber from a nearby kingdom, but who would dare risk His Royal Wrath!?!

​So this morning I found that I was no longer to be a Royal Water Catching Pot handler--nay, I have been promoted to Captain of the entire Royal Commode Brigade. I am over all the privates, corporals, sergeants and lieutenants; and on this happiest of holidays they must all bow when meeting me, and respectfully address me with the greeting, "Merry Christmas, SIR!" For a commoner like myself, this is as close as one can come to being Royalty itself!

Some years me and Mazie spend Christmas night snuggling in front of the fireplace. Then, other times, we chose to go visit with friends, or have friends over to visit with us. We never had kids of our own, so we never got to entertain Santa much!

​This year, just a few nights ago, we rode out to Netter's Pond, where Mazie had never been before, and I parked the pickup a ways back from the water's edge and we just sat looking up at the clear, star-filled Christmas night sky.

"Look at that star!" Mazie said, pointing. Of a sudden a bright new light appeared in the sky, and I said, "I don't think that's a star, least not one I know. And it's too bright for Venus. Might be one of them satellites."

"It's hovering just above that little old shed over there at the edge of the field," Mazie said.

"That's where old Will Buckler used to feed his animals," I said. "Before he passed away and before I met you and we got hitched. I'm surprised the shed is still standing after all these years."

As we watched, the "star" seemed to grow bigger and glow brighter. There was a strange sound from the distance, and Mazie said, "What's that?"

"I think it's cattle," I said. "Lowing out in the fields. And it sounds like they're coming this way."

And then the night was filled with all manner of animal sounds and movements. A hundred or more shadows crept through the darkness around us, closing in on the little shed.

"This is Christmas night. Do you think--?" Mazie said, but choked up so she couldn't finish.

"I think we oughta follow the animals and the cattle and see where they're going. Though it's pretty plain where that's going to be."

​And so we did. And when Mazie and me and all the animals got to the little old dilapidated feeding shed we found Something more Holy than Holy, and our lives have been changed forever.

​"Whatcha reading?"
"Moby Dick."
"Yeah, I like that one... read his others?"
"Melville? oh yeah... none have the poetry of Moby Dick, naturally... not much does."
"Fuck poetry."
"Yeah, totally... except for Bukowski."
"Yep, totally. Let me get a hit of that?"
"Sure, thought you'd never ask."
"Hey want to head over to the Post Office?"
"Top steps?"
"Absolutely – check out the human carnival ."
"Why the fuck not... this is spent anyway."
The two friends crossed the street and climbed up the steps of the Federal Post Office.
"Liking the early shift?"
"A job's a job.
"And a horse is a horse"
"See that new intern?"
"Hard not to."
"How hot is she?"
"So hot that when she bent over my desk to talk about a news story and I smelled her nasty morning breath – I still started camping in the newsroom."
"Camping?"
"You know – pitching a tent – dude."
"Nice one."
Without a warning, a man in a red stained t-shirt staggered down the stairs. In his hand was a shiny object. No one was screaming.
"Dude – check this guy out."
The two friends watched the bloody man with interest but not with the level of concern they probably would have, if they had been closer to him.
"Drop it... Drop it right now! Lay the weapon on the ground! You are under arrest..."
Descending the stairs was a Postal Worker with a gun aimed straight at the confused and bleeding man who dropped the knife and then was summarily handcuffed.
A small crowd applauded.
"Check out Clint Eastwood!"
"Yeah man, he was like, ‘I work at the Post Office bitch!’"
"Who knew they even had guns?"
"Makes you think, huh?"
"Sure does."
"Time to get going?"
"Yup, show's over."
"Rasta manana."
"Later gator."

Jody, a body man and mechanic, and his wife and three kids spilled out of a black 1948 Buick with a split windshield and clumped onto our screened-in front porch. They threw themselves into scattered lawn chairs, ready for the picnic—barbeque, rolls, potato salad, slaw, apple pie, lemonade.

When my wife, Judy, finished fixing their plates she emerged onto the porch and squealed, “When did you get that great car?” I could tell she wanted me to ask Jody if it was for sale and how much he’d want for it. We were still talking about the Buick when a cherry 1957 Ford pickup with a man and woman in it stopped in front of the house. The man jumped out, leaving the truck, engine running, in the road with his wife or girlfriend still behind the wheel.

The guy from the pickup, long-legged with wet black hair combed straight back, walked fast up to the Buick and started yelling at us.

“Whose car is this? That ain’t the original front-end in this car. Fact, that ain’t even a Buick front-end in it.” The guy, was hot about it.

Jody left his food on our porch table and walked, slow, out the front door. “That’s mine.”

“Then how come you didn’t put the ’48 Buick front-end into it?”

“That’s the right front-end. You can be sure of that.”

“You sayin’ I’m wrong, buddy?”

Since it was my house I was thinking I should go out there too, but I figured Jody could handle that joker. He had sleeve tattoos on both arms and looked like you could blow him over. Then his old lady started leaning on the horn in his truck. She was shouting for him to shut up and get back in the truck. He never turned around, but kept yelling at Jody about the front-end. Jody insisted, but not loud, that it was the right front-end.

I jumped when I heard the shotgun. The guy who’d been yelling at Jody stopped talking—he had a funny look on his face, his knees buckled, and he fell forward in our yard.

I heard the Ford pickup door slam. Then it peeled out and headed up the road. The rest of us stared at the guy with the black hair and tattoos lying face down. He wasn’t moving.

​I went in the house to call 9-1-1. When I came back Jody, his wife, and his kids stood around looking down at the black-haired guy. I guessed that was the end of our picnic.

Porcelain cat faces stared out at Elaine from the shelves in which they rested on. Elaine cut into her chicken fried steak with a knife and fork and slid a bite into her mouth. The electric hum of the television held the elderly woman in a trance.

Jasper, Elaine’s black and white cat, slept, curled up on the sofa. He opened one eye and spoke to her telepathically. ‘’Are you going to feed me soon?’’

‘’After supper, five more minutes. Okay?’’ Elaine said, forcing a small smile to her lips.
‘’Wake me up when you do,’’ Jasper answered, closing his eye again.

The snow fell outside. Tick, tick, tick went the clock. The lights overhead began to flicker. ‘’Stupid electricity.''

Someone started knocking on the front door. When Elaine answered the door, she found her long lost son Jeremy standing before her. ‘’Jeremy?’’ Her eyes moistened.

‘’Yeah, mom. It’s me,’’ Jeremy replied.

‘’Come in, so I can get a better look at you,’’ Elaine said.

Her son did so. Shutting the door behind her boy, she admired her son. ‘’It’s been eight years. Where have you been?’’

‘’I was abducted by aliens,’’ Jeremy admitted.

Elaine was taken aback. ‘’What?’’ 

‘’Aliens abducted me,’’ Jeremy stated.

‘’You must be joking,’’ Elaine bit her lower lip nervously.

Jeremy’s green eyes bore into his mother’s own. ‘’Eight years ago, I was kidnapped and taken on an alien space craft. I was probed, experimented on and eventually dissected.’’

‘’But you’re still alive,’’ Elaine answered. ‘’That’s impossible.’’
​
He grinned, ripping his face off. Underneath he was a green creature with tentacles. Wrapping his slimy appendage around her neck and squeezing it until she went limp. 

June’s first child, Rusty, had no father—at least no father she knew—more precisely, no father she could identify. She sometimes thought of the father as an artificial insemination donor, only he wasn’t. He was one of several serial rapists. She never knew how many. As many as twelve young men claimed to have participated in the gang rape that resulted in her impregnation. None of them ever claimed this to her face; it got around through gossip, and she wrote each name in her diary as she heard it to maintain control and order within her life. She also thought she might someday discover the father’s identity.

Then again, since she was unconscious during the sex that night, it’s possible they were all lying and a single person, someone other than those who claimed to have pulled the train, might have been the father. She never knew. She also considered that the gang rape meant nothing, that she only had sex with a single person that night since the others were superfluous--first in terms of her pregnancy and then the motherhood that continued for so many years.

Thereafter, though, whenever she began a physical relationship with a new man, she tried to control it by marking the change in her life. She accomplished this by switching her brand of cigarette whenever she changed sex partners. In this way, she felt she could keep track of the total number of lovers she’d had, monitor how long her liaisons lasted, and impose some design on her love life by choosing a brand of cigarette that corresponded or related in some way to the new man’s personality or the way he changed her life or made her feel. More often than not, the relationship between the branding and each new man’s personality expressed itself in the cigarette’s packaging, the way it was marketed, and its target audience.

​She’d laugh inwardly when a current boyfriend, if he was a smoker, bummed one from her. When she was feeling cynical, particularly in the morning just after she awoke, she regarded the man lying next to her as nothing more than another brand of cigarette.