Rays and Whey

Flash Fiction | 4 minute read

This week’s story was written earlier this year for an NYC Midnight Flash Fiction contest (fellow writers, NYC Midnight is my favorite contest to enter for the feedback they provide for your stories every time). I was inspired to share it this week after watching the parody song “Walking in Staten” on SNL last week (if you haven’t seen it yet, and you are curious about where I come from, this might be the best answer ever created). This story was my own little form of homage to some of the truths I grew up with here on Staten Island while weaving in the prompts from the contest.

It should take about four minutes to read.

Created by Nicole Rivera using CanvaPro

Something skittered across the floor. Anthony reached for the light closest to him: the home tanning lamp his Uncle Nicky gave him during the 2020 lock-down. As the blue gleam filled the dark room, he heard a screech and threw his 5lb. jar of whey powder at the figure. He jumped on it as his mom turned on the lights and screamed like she saw a spider.

“Ant-nee! What is it?” she gasped, wide-eyed.

He looked down at the knocked out, ivory-fleshed being and whispered, “What da fuck?”

His mother started crying. He vomited.

It took the police an hour to arrive, an hour and fifteen minutes for the CIA to arrive, and two hours for Anthony to be on a Zoom call with NASA. Anthony’s mom served pasta to every person who came to the house, and told NASA that her “Ant-nee” was a real good boy, a hero.

She wasn’t totally wrong, evidently all of Staten Island had been invaded by alien creatures — they were calling it Staten Island Space Invaders, or SISI — and while Anthony wasn’t the first person to capture a space invader, he was the only one to scar one. Most residents were abducted.  Everyone wanted to know how Anthony left a scar on the creature. The world agreed, the red, bubbling line on the space invader’s skin held the secret to the Earth’s future defenses.

“Everything happened so fast, bro. I turned on the light. I threw my whey at it. My mom spider-screamed. That’s it. No lie.” He said it over and over again. The police were directed to replicate the moves on the unconscious creature they held in a containment cell, but nothing left anything like the red striped scar.

“You were a god-damned stunad for going to the government,” Uncle Nicky said the next morning. “We take care of our own, Anthony, capiche?” Uncle Nicky biffed Anthony in the head like he was still ten years old. “We’ve got five of them Il Biancos at the salon. We’re doin experiments, you know what I mean?”

Anthony’s mom biffed her little brother. “Chiudi la bocca! You leave your nephew outta your shit, Nicky! He’s a good boy.”

Nicky shut up, but didn’t take his eyes off of Anthony until he got up, kissed him on his head and whispered, “Never forget your famiglia, bambino.”

In the days that followed, the aliens began to abduct people from other cities. As the nightly invasions increased, Anthony found himself on more television shows. His story continued to be the singularity of hope, even though he hadn’t figured out what he’d done that had worked.

Anthony was as puzzled as the rest of the world, but the online demand for whey powder increased. People started throwing it at the invaders as they arrived. Whey to Weigh, the brand of whey powder Anthony used as his weapon of choice, contacted him to be a spokesperson. Anthony took the offer and went to the one place he needed to go to prepare: Sunsational. Anthony returned to the tanning salon to prep for filming and to see if his new-found fame could help him land the hottie, Jeannine, behind the counter. She knew him mostly as the nephew of the owner, but he was ready to be his own man.

“I missed you, girl,” he said to Jeannine hoping to pick up the flirting that had escalated before the shit hit the fan back in 2020. The pandemic had thrown ice onto all that and the SISI was another downer on the mood. He could only hope Jeannine had heard about — and had been impressed by — his accidental heroism.

She reached her hand across the counter, grabbed Anthony’s bicep, letting her long, hot pink nails tickle his flesh as she batted her freshly applied lashes. “Ant, you been finding another salon? Or are all them TV shows payin’ for your color now?”

She noticed. “I ain’t cheatin on you, babe.” Anthony leaned over the counter. “I’da come back once the fugazi lockdown was lifted, but then them Space Invaders came and, well…” He let it hang there. He shrugged and smirked, looking down at his arm where her hand still stood. 

Jeannine sipped her iced coffee and then said, “Okay, yeah, you tough shit and all that, but you ain’t said hows you got that color yet.” She poked his arm playfully. 

Anthony laughed. “Nicky got the whole family home lamps during covid. Just to hold us over —”

He was about to describe how the light was the same color blue as the Sunsation tanning beds when something finally clicked. Anthony was about to call his NASA connection when he remembered what his uncle had said. “Yo, is my uncle in the back?” 

Jeannine smiled. “Of course.” She had always been more enamored with Uncle Nicky’s lifestyle than Anthony was. 

The two of them went to the back. Jeannine grabbed Anthony’s hand just before the door opened.

“Uncle Nicky,” Anthony said. “I think I got something for the famiglia. I think I figured something out. It’s not really a scar… it’s like a sunburn or some shit!” 

Uncle Nicky punched Anthony in the arm, “Atta boy, Anthony!” 

Cousin Macrina was the one who broke the news worldwide with a TikTok video showing her Sunsational portable sun lamp burning the Space Invader from her dorm room. Then Uncle Gino got on CNN for defending his nursing home from abduction using his lamp. Every family member that was gifted a sun lamp had their own tale. Everyone always said, “Thanks Ant-nee and thanks Sunsational!” at the end of their videos. Anthony became the spokesperson for Whey to Weigh and Sunsational, promoting his “Rays and Whey” at home defense system. Uncle Nicky not only had the opportunity to go clean, he had no choice. 

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