It started out on the trajectory of being a normal Tuesday. Stan clocked in at his job at the photomat, put on his smock, mixed up the morning’s chemistry, pulled the rolls of undeveloped film and job tickets from the basket. Birthday parties, vacations at Yosemite, smiles in front yards. Then a cold gaze struck like lightning; Stan, frozen, laid eyes on the porcine face of the Alien, locked into the stare, the glossy print a two-way window, a one-way door. The Alien the sentry, standing guard, gaging Stan’s soul, evaluating the weight of Stan’s anima, judging Stan’s fate with regards to crossing over the rubicon to the place for women only. Denied. “All men are pigs, all men are pigs.” The second shift replacement found Stan curled in the corner of the lab, trembling hands clutching his face, a wilted phallus of gray, smoken ash jutting from between yellowed fingers, breaths broken by stuttered sobbing. “Pigs. Pigs.” Waylaid on the border between here and neverwhere, Stan never came back.
(Thanks, and blame, to Josh Hultberg for posting this image to his Facebook stream; when I went to comment, this vignette came out.)