EAR WORM By Lena Ng
Elmer, for the sixty-third time that day, hummed that stupid song in his head out loud.
“Tooda do, tooda dee, tooda doodle do,” he sang. He hummed it as he filled the coffee machine. He hummed it as he took a shower. He aggravated everyone around him on the bus and while waiting in line at the Value Mart. Damn earworm, as his mother would say, for a snippet of song stuck in a mental loop. It played over and over in his mind. In some faint way, Elmer knew how annoying he was. But he couldn’t get it out of his head. He was humming that blasted song later that evening as he was emptying the dishwasher. In the middle of the refrain— CRASH Something big had banged against the house. It rattled the aluminum siding. A discharge of blue light filled his country-style kitchen. Cautiously, he peered out the kitchen window. Squinting against the blue light, Elmer stared at the smoking hole in his yard, the grass flattened and burnt. A large rock, glowing a faint blue with a surface pocked with craters and larger than his head, indented the centre of his carefully manicured yard. A meteorite with an interesting, radiation-blue glow. Elmer’s heart leapt with excitement. A gift from the cosmos. And it could hold aliens. Aliens! All his life he had awaited their arrival. He had the tinfoil hats (which he shaped into antennae, all the better to hear them with), the bug-eyed, big-headed plastic models, and the complete series of The X-Files on DVD, lovingly watched and re-watched as he had developed—as most fans had—a fierce crush on Dana Scully. Wouldn’t it be amazing if he—Elmer P. Elmsdale— discovered extraterrestrial life? He threw off his apron as he raced from the house. Elmer stood at the edge of the smoking hole and stooped to examine his find. A beautiful, smoking, glowing rock. As the smoke dissipated and the glow slowly dampened, Elmer extended a hand and cautiously touched the rock. Warm, but not hot. Rough. He placed a hand on either side of the rock and loosened it from his yard. It wasn’t too heavy when he picked it up and brought it back into the house. On the coffee table, the blue light faded away at last. “Hello?” Elmer called out to the rock. Hybrid Fiction February 2020
