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It would seem obvious in hindsight that autopilot for an alien spacecraft you didn’t know how to drive could only get you so far. The landing was rough. But landing mostly upright and in the approximate area of where their car had been abandoned was good enough for them. The ship had nosedived, leaving a long trail of upturned dirt and flattened corn stalks behind it before it came shaking to a stop. With unsteady hands Pim and Charlie both grasped for their seatbelt latches, trying to keep their balance as they stood in the tilted hull.
Charlie took a look at the dashboard. A blinking dot to the lower right corner of the ship’s position icon let them know that they had overshot their destination. And the only fix for that was to hike the rest of the way back.
Wordlessly, with shared exhausted understanding, the two of them got to it. The craft’s door opened with a struggle. Whatever mechanics that allowed for it to open smoothly must have been busted up in the landing, meaning that Pim and Charlie had to use any arm strength they had left to yank it upwards enough for it to sputter to life and pitifully lift the rest of the way. They hopped down from the open door ungracefully. Charlie went first, hanging onto the floor of the ship as his feet scrambled for purchase below. Even doing this, he was still a solid three feet above the ground. He let go and dropped down, which also didn’t go as planned—rather than landing upright he slipped and fell right on his back. The stars in the night sky spun dizzyingly above him. Pim opted to jump. His knees took the brunt of the impact, and he knew that he would be feeling that for the next week.
“You alright, Charlie?” he said. Charlie had shut his eyes, and looked all around miserable.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. The car’s that way.” He pointed. “I think.”
The next twenty or so minutes passed in a total blur of pushing their way through the corn stalks by the light of both their phones. More than once the ground under Pim’s feet and the stalks in his path looked like they were shifting, and he shook his head, blinking hard, to try and stop the sensation. It was an extreme relief to finally stumble out into the clearing. The fire had smoldered out by now, but everything else looked essentially undisturbed. If you had come across this spot, nothing at all would’ve betrayed what had happened.
Pim grabbed for the car keys in his pocket that he hoped were still there. It was a miracle that they were , but as he held them in his hands, he turned to Charlie.
“I don’t think I’m sober.”
“I don’t doubt it, dude. I saw how hard you went.”
“What now?”
Charlie seemed to earnestly consider the options, and then gave up. “Honestly I - I don’t really care where I lay down, I just have to lay down.”
Pim pressed the unlock button. “I hear you. You take the back seat.”
It wasn’t the comfiest place ever, but seeing as it met the criteria for “on Earth” and “feasible to fall asleep in,” they were both quickly out. Pim in the driver’s seat leaning up against the side window and feet kicked up onto the center console, Charlie laying belly-down across the back two seats.
At some point in the painfully early hours of the morning, still pitch-black out, Charlie blearily woke up aware of one thing: he was absolutely about to puke. In a hurry he threw open the backside door and got out of the car, taking a few half-assed steps away to throw up in a better spot. He had his hands on his knees as he mostly dry-heaved and gagged; they hadn’t exactly eaten much. What he did get up was frighteningly black in color, with flecks of shiny who-knows-what-else in it that made it appear as if he’d just hucked up a bit of the universe.
Gross.
He wiped his mouth off with the sleeve of his already disgusting hoodie, because why not. It had gotten colder out, and dew was starting to form on the plants. He knew this because he was down a shoe—lost somewhere on an alien spacecraft light years away that was probably now in some alien spacecraft impound belonging to alien cops—and his sock was now wet. This is such bullshit , he thought, and part of him hoped Pim was having a better night.
He seemed alright, from what Charlie could tell. Just slack in the driver’s seat. As quietly as possible Charlie shuffled back into the car and shut the door, laying flat down as he waited for the wooziness to stop.
He didn’t remember falling asleep, but at some point, he was jolted awake again to the sound of an unfamiliar alarm going off. It was bright out now, and it absolutely hurt to be awake. Pim, for his part, startled upright and winced, grabbing for the phone to shut it off. He hit the cancel button as fast as possible.
“Auugh,” he said, putting his head on the steering wheel.
Charlie’s hand was at his temple. “Dude, why do you have that? An alarm for Sunday morning ?”
“Usually I like to try and get the day started early,” Pim mumbled.
Pretty much every part of his body hurt, in every way imaginable. It had sort of hit him all at once, sitting here, head against the wheel. He looked down to see that his left arm was already getting a splotchy bruise.
“Let’s go home.” He said, mustering up the energy to put the keys in the ignition and finally get the fuck out of that field.