Page 8 - Extraterrestrials, Foreign and Domestic

Mrs. Whittle’s Call to Judgement
(Fantastic Transactions 1, 1990)

Having disgraced himself on the society beat, Perry O’Donnell had
become the court of last resort for kooks and oddballs wanting to see
their stories in print. Not one to throw his bread-and-butter face
down on the floor, he humored those few flat-Earth proponents,
two-headed calf breeders, and suddenly impotent telekineticists who
managed to run the rabbit-warren gauntlet of the Bridgetown Gazette
offices and catch him at his battered desk.
One memorable afternoon, as he hunted-and-pecked out a
column headed Prophecy Merely Racial Memory Recited Backwards,
Claims Dyslexic Seer, the crumbling span of his attention fell upon a
figure wending tentatively toward him. He sized her up as an elderly
hick, dressed for town the same as for a church social. He also noted,
with some relief, that her handbag was too small to carry any
elaborate apparatus demonstrating perpetual motion or transmutation
of elements.
“Mr. O’Donnell?” she asked, overlooking the monolithic wedge of
brass and mahogany bearing his name sans-serif in front of the
typewriter.
“Yes, that’s me,” he admitted cheerfully, and made a brief attempt
to rise from his chair. His formalities concluded, he indicated the
scarred Naugahyde-covered chair alongside his desk. “Please be
seated, Miss, ah—”
“Mrs. Warren Whittle,” she replied primly, and took the proffered
seat. “Mr. O’Donnell: I am a decent, God-fearing woman. Nothing
like this has ever happened to me before.”
The reporter, as might be expected, opened a thick green
notepad and applied the business end of a pencil to the top of a
blank page.
“Well, let me get a few facts first, Mrs. Whittle. Your address?”
“Box 237, R.F.D., Braxville. It’s a small place. Since my husband
was called to Jesus, I’ve left all the farming to hired hands. I’m all
alone there at night, so nobody else saw it when it landed.”
The pencil paused, then executed three majuscules.

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