(Response to the second Carrot Ranch Flash Fiction Rodeo: Humor) 

“Thanks for the ride!”

“There’s a payphone in town. We’ll take you there,” the farmer nodded from under his straw hat as his wife peeked around the edge of her bonnet.

***

So how’d I land here, sharing the back of an Amish wagon with two piglets, a smelly sheep, and a drooling farm dog?

I know, humans should never mess with aliens from the 42^nd  galaxy. I usually don’t, except that Braddom is so fine, and he loves me too. Kassandroma was jealous. We knew she’d come after me, so we made a plan.

She’d snatched me with her Cruzership and locked me in the engine block to die. My only hope was to dismantle the ship’s crystal drive, and divert its power to transport me to a safe place on 1980’s Earth, where Braddom awaited my phone call. The key was to convince Kassandrom’s bilge drone, Couscous, to give me the right tool.

“Dude, it’s pretty hot in here.” I’m soaked in sweat.

“Not to me!” Couscous rolls over to me, spinning circles and waving his mechanical arms gleefully.

“Thing is, my Snickers bar is melting.”

He stops. “You have Snickers?”

I nod. “Trade you for the Thjalusian crystal?”

“Without the crystal, Kassandrom spins out to deep space.”

I shrug, pull out and peel open the melting candy bar.

“And then she’s dead.”

“Well, yes,” I consider the scent of the melting chocolate and gooey caramel. “The price of freedom?”

“Easy peasy,” He tosses me a crescent wrench. “I’ll do that for half a Snickers. She’s a bitch anyway.”

***

“And that’s how I wound up in the middle of an Iowa corn field, with a Thjalusian crystal, a crescent wrench, half a Snickers, and a dime taped in my bra.”

The farmer glanced at his wife, “You English really do live in a different world.”

 

© Liz Husebye Hartmann (2017)

Carrot Ranch Rodeo#2(10/13/2017) Little and Laugh:  You have 299 words, give or take 9, to make us chortle.