What Goes Around, Comes Around
by Charles Moulton
Dear Mr. President,
Here is a copy of the mail Chao Guangxi sent to Mrs. Li.
Maybe it can shed some light upon how we deal with this newer
situation.
Official regards,
B.H.
*****
Yang-Tze Environmental Clinic Research Centre
March 11th, 2019
Dear Mrs. Li,
How serious the situation actually was must’ve become obvious to Xiang
only at the very end. Why he reacted the way he did is hard to say. He
had been guiltier of more brutality than his colleagues. By now, the
Pacific Ocean overflowed with dead sharks, dying slowly because he had
cut off their fins for profit. After all, the wealthy Chinese
landowners needed their shark fin soup to get the potency of the
bridegrooms to soar sky high.
There was no sight of anything unusual at all at first. Neither Xiang
nor the colleagues had thought it might be wrong until they saw the
wounded and dying man floating up toward the ship, mutilated just like
one of his sharks.
At first, the UFO was nowhere in sight. What caught Xiang’s attention
was only the body itself. It lacked arms, floating like debree on a
lonesome wave. I think he realized he knew the man, a short and rough
sea captain north of Shanghai. Strange thing, though. Xiang mumbled in
my presence that he had met him a week before at the airport on his way
to Singapore. He could impossibly be floating without arms somewhere in
the Pacific Ocean. And yet, here he was, thrown away like garbage -
just like a shark.
An unbearable silence hit the deck, the crewmen all dropping their
knives with loud metallic clangs, the sharks slipping back into the
ocean and disappearing happily into the deep.
From where we stood, Xiang and I both heard the mumblings and cries of
the colleagues as they helped the armless man up upon the boat, shaking
him, trying to find out how he could be found alive floating in the
Pacific without arms.
When the spaceship landed on the water – I shall repeat that: on the
water – the silence on the deck turned into a painful gasping awe. We
all felt the atmosphere change from shock to terror, I think. Illegal
types, trained fishermen, mafia mediators, unemployed guys, all of them
now trained animal killers, all of them afraid and desperate, fearing
they would be punished, not by the law. By alien visitors.
I grabbed Xiang by his shirt, pulling him away, almost ripping the
cloth in the process, telling him we should run to safety on the lower
deck. He pushed me away, calling me a coward, insisting on facing the
situation. Immediately after that, he ran over to the other sailors and
started screaming at them that they were criminals and bloody
murderers. “Give up, you morons,” he yelled. “Admit everything.”
The aliens would’ve found him regardless of where he went.
Instinctively, he knew that.
This time, there was no escape to speak of.
It might’ve been getting caught, as it were, punished by having one of
his own kind mutilated like an animal by creatures higher than him,
that transformed him. It was something he couldn’t escape. So far, he
had always escaped the law. I know how much you suffered through the
years through his behavior, Mrs. Li.
When the spaceship doors opened, I pulled Xiang back, embraced him,
pleaded for us to hide, wait it out, admit everything, change,
whatever, for us to move with me back to Beijing and open a bookshop
like we had originally planned. Xiang didn’t listen. He clutched that
knife so hard, pointing it at his own stomach.
The spaceship started vomiting out all these dead sharks without fins.
It really looked like vomit, Mrs. Li. All of these dead sharks
appearing out of nowhere, falling out of that thing. No one knew how so
many sharks could fit into such a small UFO. In fact, there were so
many that I feared that we would never be able to leave the region at
all. The waves alone threatened to capsize us.
Xiang started screaming that judgment day had arrived and when I tried
to hold him back, he just shouted at me to fuck off, that he should
have listened to you. For the first time in his life, he realized that
his actions had had serious and lasting side-effects.
It’s hard for me to tell you this, Miss Li, but your son’s last words
were to tell you that he tried to be a good person after all, just like
you wanted him to be. He regretted killing so many sharks, so he killed
himself, shoving his bowie-knife into his own belly.
The aliens, big amphibian beasts with oversized foreheads and big
fish-like eyes, told us to stop our shark- and whale-hunting or more
people would suffer.
Of course we stopped. We have told other hunters to give it up, as
well, but they won’t listen. The Chinese mafia won’t, either.
Please forward my greetings to our friend, the sea captain. Maybe he
can help us convince other poachers to stop. The aliens mean business,
I think. Is the captain still in hospital? If he reveals the secrets of
what really happened to him that day, please tell me about it. I
believe you told me he has refused to speak, only uttering one word
again and again: “Payback!”
We will see each other at the cemetery tomorrow to lay flowers on your
son’s grave. I look foward to speaking with you about my developments.
I have no contact with my former criminal companions. The police have
insured my safety under the “Witness Protection Programme”. It seems my
former criminal companions are not a threat, not anymore.
I have been interrogated numerously by the law at the Yang-Tze
Environmental Clinic Research Centre. They will not tell me why they
brought me here and not to a prison and are very tight lipped about
what they call “the alien problem”. I have heard the words “our aquatic
origin” being mentioned.
Obviously, the earthly-alien negotiations aren’t going that well.
They’re punishing the whale poachers now. I have heard stories of
floating sea captains without eyes.
To the aliens, it does not seem to matter if you were or are a poacher.
Former criminals have been punished just as severely as active whale-
and shark-killers. I have not asked my interrogators, but from what I
understand the aliens returned after a long absence and were shocked to
find what they found.
I will be arriving at the cemetary tomorrow with three bodyguards.
Please have the package ready. I will foreward it to the chief
interrogator, who seems to be the one who communicates with the aliens
from time to time. We need to show the aliens a poacher with a big
heart, his childhood love for the sea, his early stories about marine
life and his diaries about being lured into becoming a poacher.
Maybe we can convince the visitors there’s hope for humanity after all.
I will sign off for tonight. Until tomorrow, Mrs. Li.
Chao Guangxi
Former Poacher
chaoguangxi@redflag.org
*****
Administrator’s note:
Mr. Chao Guangxi was responsible for a serious negotiation with the
alien visitors the following week, on March 19th, 2019, which caused
the aliens to stop their murderings of humans.
These first alien visitors have not been seen again, for a while at
least, although other sightings over slaughter factories worry the
population anew. Two slaughter factory CEOs were found hanging on
spikes in their fridges yesterday. Are these new deeds committed by the
same creatures or new ones?
156 billion animals are slaughtered yearly on our planet for mass consumption.
The aliens seem to be serious about protecting the animals.
How do we react?
Boqin Hui
Speaker of the Houses of Parliament
Beijing, China
THE END
© 2019 Charles Mounlton
Bio: Charles E.J. Moulton has been a stage performer since age
eleven, growing up triligually as the son of opera singer Gun Kronzell
and actor, author, singer and playwright Herbert Eyre Moulton. He has
138 productions, 700 concerts, 16 books, 165 published pieces to his
credit and is a chorus master, drama- and vocal coach and the
editor-in-chief of the theme-based, bimonthly journal “The Creativity
Webzine.” He is a steadily working actor, opera-, jazz- and pop-singer
and an Elvis-impersonator. He has also worked as a tourguide and as a
translator. He is married and has a daughter.
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