Free How to Find Peace at the End of the World by Saro Yen

my pockets and leave them on the ground, right near the reach of their red tongues wriggling through the chain link. I slowly back away until I’m in the front of the house again. I throw the door open wide. Even the six pits, trusting and loyal as they are will be able to figure it out. So the wind doesn’t slam the door shut again, I prop the door open with the umbrella stand near his front door. Then I head back to the chain links where the doggies are just licking up the last bits of jerky, their tongue prints dark on the pavement. I give each dog a rub on the head and get in return a generous slathering of thick doggie drool. They’ll find their way out soon enough. That, or Westly will be back. Either way, I’m not doing anything bad here, I tell myself. I’m not sentencing them to a slow painful death. Of course not. I keep telling myself this as I climb back into the Beast and start it up and tear out of Westley’s cul-de-sac without looking back.
     
4 PM I can’t wait. I stop when I am clear of the neighborhood and with the engine idling I roll myself a blunt and light it. I lift it up to the rear view mirror. Cheers Wes.
    Honestly, Westley was the closest damn thing to a friend I had in this two town.
 
    I sit back into that seat of the Beast and take a deep drag. I’m really trying to get my groove on this thing, but each distant dog bark makes me sit up and check the mirrors. I’d already told myself if I see Wes’ crew tumbling down the empty street that I would just open my doors and take them all with me. I’m a sucker like that. But they don’t come and the street behind remains empty. It’s the strong bud. It’s making me paranoid. That’s what it is. Strong bud.
    I start the car up again and maneuver with one hand, the other holding the blunt. I start to think about all this messed up shit. I think deeply but it’s always hard to tell with the state I’m in. Like all potheads I’d once tried writing down all these deep philosophical and pragmatic concepts that I had when high, thinking that they would change the world, but they always turned out to be something like the wonderings of a fourth grader on pain medication.
    What if the whole world is like this? What if I’m the only one left? What would I do then? Would I go crazy? I’m pretty sure that I will go crazy, maybe even as early as when I get into Dallas and find the streets deserted. Or maybe sooner. When I get to Conroe? To the other side of town even? What is it? What can make everyone disappear? Should I get on the ground right now and start praying? Believe in the God I’ve never really believed in all that much?
    Whatever. I’m still too damn hopeful. This is a localized phenomenon. Like the alien dome lowered over the city. Or what if great alien chompers came down one day and clamped down on the city and lifted it up and now I’m really travelling through deep space to some alien world? Like in that movie I saw once and I can’t name right now. There are no other people because they’ve all been beamed onto the alien ship for testing and the only reason I wasn’t was that my brain lacks a certain special brain wave that makes me susceptible to the alien’s beaming ray. I elaborate on this fiction, piling on different caveats and even backgrounds for the aliens (they are from a planet orbiting the far star of the trio of Centauris and the reason for their apparent transgression is that they are basically huge nerd xenobiologists who want to study their quarry in very precise conditions, but only after properly tagging all of them with anal probes). And then, when everybody is finally returned to the little dome city cage thing, I will be the only one among them that is any the wiser and I will lead a test subject uprising, breaking through the shell of the dome and travelling through the various tunnels of the arm holding my fair city into the massive alien space ship and within the space ship I will conquer the