Short story: Space aliens ate my car

Every so often, it is the privilege of a publication, even so meagre an online one as this, to introduce the work of a promising new talent. And so it is with great pride that Mothers with Attitude presents the first work of fiction produced by ... well, by my son, age 7.

To be more accurate, he is creating works of fiction constantly, sometimes to amuse himself, sometimes to get out of trouble. This is the first to be recorded in print and, significantly, the first not to be merely a creative recycling of the normal, everyday activities of his family and friends. It is entitled, simply, "Outer Space People."

An alien from outer space took our engine and he never brought it back. He ate it for lunch yesterday. It's in his tummy. He will never show anybody the engine. I looked under the hood and there's no engine.


The alien is big. He's red and the alien has a big car on his head. He has a big long tail that can go around the world. My grandma saw it and she said "Whoa!"


I told my mom when I was playing with my big red car. And I told my dad too after he came home from work. And my sister saw the engine was missing and she cried. And I'm sad too. And that's it.

Agents, publishers, please send your queries directly to this Web site.

The story has already had its first public reading, in my son's special-ed class, and I am told the audience enjoyed it very much. It's all quite heartening because it's been apparent to me for some time that although my boy will never be able to be in the world in an ordinary way, he may be able to find an extraordinary one. Unless we start medicating him with horse tranquilizers, he's never going to be a desk-job kind of guy, but I feel (and his teacher agrees, God bless her) that he might be just fine in a creative field, one where energy and lack of discipline and following your impulses are not necessarily detriments. He could be an artist, an author, an actor, a comedian, a composer, a computer visionary. Anything where somebody serious handles your day-to-day details and you just get to be your own special spontaneous self.