California Madness

James Owens was walking along the edge of the beach as the waves hit his feet and receded back into the ocean. As James was strolling through the beach, he had thought about things with questions. He wanted to enjoy his life with gratitude, but things never change for him.

Why were moments so quick? Why are challenges difficult? Why were modern times more competitive than when they were starting to boom? A somewhat philosophical moment for James as questions plagued him. He even wondered why closing a door was easier than opening one. Letting the past go in hopes of finding himself was not achieving any progress. He was stuck, and yet eventually wanting to gain faith that something could overturn and open a new path for him.

A flock of seagulls flies overhead as he walks past an old beach house that no one has lived in for years. The real estate market won’t even claim the property to put up for sale. Its features were dirty with paint peeling off different sections of the building.

As James makes his way toward the grand pier, he climbs up a sandy hill which has a walkway across, next to the Pacific Coast highway. The pier had a large entrance to the business ventures built on wooden support stilts attached to the main section. Dinghies, fisherman boats, and classic parasail boats for sport and sailing were in smaller sections at the far end.

Business owners started up their shops and unlocked their doors for early customers. The sun had risen enough to flash everyone in the eyes with bright yellow rays, casting across the boats and inner parts of the coastal homes near the beach.

James enters a restaurant called Joe’s Marine Dining, that serves seafood and breakfast early morning, and appetizers and dinners with exotic seafood. He walked up to the counter and rang a service bell; he met a waitress in a blue uniform lined with an apron.

“Hello, welcome to Joe’s Marine Dining, my name is Neomi and I’ll be your waitress this morning. How may I serve you?”, she said.

“I’ll take a coffee, two sugars with cream. Eggs and a side order of hashbrowns.”, James said.

Neomi wrote everything down in her flip book with the quick use of her pen.

“Coffee with two sugars and cream, and eggs with pieces of hashbrowns. Alright, we’ll get that ready for you, sir. Please have a seat at one of the barstools or at the table booths, okay? Make yourself comfortable!”, Neomi said.

James sat down on the barstool and slouched over. He was thinking about the questions he had thought earlier back at the beach. The truth was, he wanted to move away from this place as soon as possible. He wanted to get away from the state of California as far as he could before the place further eluded him to insanity.

He was exasperated. He looked out to the window with blinds and saw some beachgoers entering the docks. Women dressing up in only bikinis with shirtless men in shorts as they walk with their colorful flip flops.

Moments later as he observed the surroundings at the front of the docks, Neomi carries his coffee and sets it on the counter for him.

“Thank you, ma’am.”, James said.

“No problem, sugar. Enjoy!”, Neomi said with a smile.

As the day hadn’t even passed morning yet, boat owners from their beach houses emerged and went straight towards the docks to start up their boats. It became a little more than sparsely crowded, and the tides were now coming in with bigger waves. Californians like to start off early with an “unhitched plan” as some supposedly said.

Neomi came back from the kitchen after swerving the kitchen door outwards with a bump of her shoulder, handling his plate of eggs and hashbrowns underside with one hand and setting it down right in front of him as his attention span was unguarded. He turned back and saw the steam come off the food as it was placed, hot and ready from the stove top.

“Here ya go, sweetie. Will that be everything today?”, Neomi asked sincerely.

“No, that’ll be alright, Neomi. Thank you.”, James said. As he was about to eat, a new customer came in through the door, to which the bell above rings. A gentleman wearing a Hawaiian button-down shirt and baggy shorts as he stood in the entrance doorway, removing his sunglasses and hanging them on his shirt collar. He looks around and only sees one other customer besides just him, which was James.

His name was Manny Rodriguez, a sales broker who stationed outside of Hollwood’s residential estates where celebrities triumphed their fame through sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. Hollywood fans over the years have decreased as the icons to Hollywood’s A-list were becoming either laughable or pitiful through social media.

Manny was looking for a job. He had the job of being a telemarketer, targeting listed phone numbers and convincing people to buy products on their company line. Turns out, due to one of the unsuspected employees exploiting the company’s finances exchanged with a local, money was withdrawn from their company’s bank account.

He ended up being laid off as the other employee got fired. They couldn’t take chances to keep him unfortunately, as he was the last person to log into the database and was only shown to update credentials from reviewing clients.

It infuriated Manny, but he didn’t keep it stuck in his mind. He continued applying for another job he could train in and pass the interview without worrying about the layoff. When Manny’s own revelations came to fruition, James was now finishing up breakfast as it was nearly lunch hour.

He checked his phone for the weather. It announces that it will be sunny for the rest of the afternoon, but after it will be overcast with cloudy skies with a slight chance of rain. He cursed under his breath as he would’ve hoped he would go surfing in the ocean later, but he must now change his plans for something else for the rest of the day.

Everyone was all caught up in their moments alone, when a booming quake like thunder rolled through the area, shaking the windows of the restaurant and alarming beachgoers from where it came from.

Coming from the road going in-land, distant honking and screaming can be heard as a huge metallic ball was heading towards the pier. James had only seen part of the commotion coming from outside as everyone was running off the pier and onto separate sides of the road. Manny got up and walked slowly towards the windows as Neomi watched from the counter. A local quickly swung the doors of the restaurant open. He looked terrified and in a panic.

“GO! GET OUT NOW! A GIANT BOULDER IS HEADING STRAIGHT TOWARDS THE PIER! GO!”, as he screamed as he left to run. Three of them quickly went outside and only had a few seconds to move out of the way.

The line chef, Monty, walked out of the bathroom after they left, he went to the front to investigate all the noise he heard. The panicky stumbling of people frantically crying or yelling confused him as they passed the windows since he didn’t know what was announced behind the thick walls of the back room.

The rumbling quake of this metal monstrosity came closer to the pier and was rolling down the hill faster, flattening abandoned cars and almost crushing people by God knows what of many tons of weight it held.

The pier was now vacant other than Monty. Neomi watched as the metal ball, other people thinking it was made of rock, came rushing onto the pier. The wooden boards cracked under pressure as it was failing to hold strong and yield against the weight of the anomaly.

As Monty walked outside through the double entrance, he saw it. He screamed as it was about to pancake him. He turned to run, but the only timing window he had was to jump off the edge of the platform and into the shallow waters near the sand. As the wood bowed and broke into two, each one consecutively as it was taking effort to catch up and break underneath the giant object, the buildings on the support beams made contact and walls were knocked in as glass ruptured inward with such force.

The metalloid structure then slowed and collapsed into the floorboards and fell where it sat in the depth of the water, sticking out like a shiny dome around the pathway. Onlookers clamored and looked on in disbelief. Some even got out their phones and recorded the devastation that damaged the grand pier, taking pictures and commenting that they saw it drop from the sky.

James did not expect his day to turn out like this. He would’ve thought something else could turn out as usual in California; like a druggie being chased by police, a shootout with a local store owner nearby, or a couple finding out that they had an affair and there was a fist fight between two men. But this? This was beyond different.

Everyone, as usual, with something they had not even seen before, began to approach the object and acted like a curious bunch of children for show and tell. The “ball” had glyphs carved around its shell. They looked like runes but looked foreign in nature. Everyone gawked at it, but James stood back and thought to not get near the thing.

Monty was already out of the water and drying off on the sand with no injuries sustained, but he was still a little shaken up. The businesses were now redeemed unsafe as there is no point entering to claim loss of property without the risk of having the roof cave onto someone’s head.

Sirens wailed off in the distance as more people gathered to wonder why it happened. Neomi called her parents and let them know that a weird accident caused the restaurant to be destroyed, but that she was safe and unharmed. As for Manny, he didn’t know what to think of it, as he figured something like this would happen straight out of movies. But there were no actors on the scene, no cameras, and no film crew.

The police arrived on the scene. As they all started to exit their vehicles, they were confused as to what the call in dispatch referred to as ‘a giant ball’ heading down Shelby Street across from the coastal highway. They broke up the crowd and dispersed many of them out of the view of the alien object that matched description.

The sphere hummed as if it functioned like a machine. Many of them were confused as they backed away. They didn’t know if it was still dangerous after being immobilized in between the docking platform. The shell split open with a hiss as a seamless door hatch opens. Inside, it was not what they were expecting, but a foreign visitor with a weapon attached to their arm.

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