Drowning in Orange Juice

This morning started like any other morning in the life of a distraught, middle-aged man recently laid off. As has been the case since January, a bloated orange, smirking from within the greedy fingers of a pale, buggish alien, headlined each article as I doom-scrolled in avoidance of the encroaching day. The task of putting life back together for a distraught, middle-aged man recently laid off – after 15 years of service, no less – can be daunting, even torturous.

Perhaps some TV would offer more comfort, I had thought (as I always do). But today all of the streaming services seemed to have called in sick – or were they fired too? – and in every shot instead there was the same white alien, his fingers spindled around the same wrinkled old fruit. Only worse, now I had to hear the orange as well, blabbering on through its cheerio mouth as the alien, eyes bulging, smiled out across his ovate room. Was he smiling – no, laughing – at me?

I need to get out of here for a while, I decided. A drive should do the trick. And perhaps through the car radio I could at least find some reprieve from the alien and his orange. But no matter how stringent my efforts to find something else, the same citrusy voice came through, emitting with it the feeling of that same baleful grin, laughing – scoffing at me – as my car dragged itself down the pavement.

Oh well, perhaps I could at least take my favorite road, the one I so often take in avoidance, with mothering trees that caress the roof in consolation as you drive past (better yet, there’s a fantastic breakfast spot at its end where you can get fresh-squeezed juice). But apparently even my car had other plans. It seemed to drink in the nauseating voice of the orange, pivoting left at the high notes and right at the low notes, this even despite my car being a foreign model…shouldn’t it have hated the orange back? Then again, I guess I had even believed the orange once or twice, late into a couple falls.

No matter how hard I clinched, the steering wheel continued to slither through my hands. Defeated, I ended up at the fairgrounds outside of town. People were filing from their cars, some bewildered as I was – their cars apparently having been similarly disobedient – but some trembling with excitement, their cars apparently better-behaved.

I cast my eyes, searching for a reason, and saw a stage, grey and enormous, seemingly scraping the sky but reachable too, as a thumb is reachable to the ants it is about to smash. And, to my vast disappointment, on the stage was the alien, ever-holding his orange and looming over the now massive crowd. From his opposite hand, an unearthly finger pointed this way and that, directing each person to one side or the other: I and the bewildered and distraught being directed to the left, the joyful of the crowd instructed to go right. As I followed, I noticed that we were splitting into two separate enclosures engulfed by towering, transparent but impenetrable walls.

Overlooking from his heights, a smirk grew across the alien’s face to match the chuckle in his eyes, which were bulging with new fervor as he observed the sealing off of any means of our escape from the corrals. The orange widened its abyss too, as if to laugh itself, but instead it surrendered to the harshening squeeze of the alien’s hand, unleashing a frothing, tawny torrent upon us. The vomit, relentless and absent all pity, began to transform our pens into pools of saccharine syrup, its viscosity shattering any hope of eventually swimming free.

It felt like mere seconds before the fluid had clawed its way up to my face, but it must have taken some time: blurred moments – or was it hours, or days, or even years? In the cacophony now flooding the air, choking gargles began to replace the panicked screams of those of less height.

It’s the funniest thing though – there were moans of joy coming through as well. In one final effort before succumbing, I glanced over at the other enclosure. A few of its occupants had finally conceded to alarm as their faces vanished into the marmalade fray, but most held praiseful hands above their heads, swaying them back and forth in grateful adoration toward the stage. Their eyes bulged through orgasmic expressions, just like the alien safe above them, as they too were extinguished.