Now, as a general point of reference, I should mention that I like my house and I still haven’t completely paid off the mortgage for it yet. And I’m not quite sure how much the insurance company would cover for an attempted murder attempt via bombing. All of this flashed through my mind at the precise moment I saw my house go up flames. Normally, I wouldn’t have felt anything looking at a house burning down, but watching it explode like a particularly old and flammable piñata had a big emotional impact on me because, well, it’s my fucking house and goddamn that came as a hard blow to nuts and—way more importantly—probably my wallet.

I slowly turned around to face Albest, carefully trying my best to not think about the pathetic collection of tacky medals given to me by my boss for ’the most boring office cubicle of the year’ for three years running, my manly dreams (read: fetish porn) stored on the now-unrecoverable hard drives of my computer or the ironic Mother’s Day present that I still haven’t wrapped for my mom stashed under my bed because I ran out of space to stash it because of the many boxes of instant noodles taking up the space.

Then I punch him in the face.

"You asshole!" I said loudly, consciously aware of the sleeping neighbors that are sleeping nearby. I don’t want to disturb them, and the fact that one of them owns a gun and was a war veteran isn’t exactly going to make me want to wake these types of people up. "If you’re going to involve me in such a bullshitty conspiracy; send an email first! If you knew my house was going to be destroyed, tell me beforehand. I could’ve at least had the chance to back up my PC."

He flinched. An obvious expression of guilt flashed across his face before he quickly suppressed it. "Listen, I only recently found out that aliens are after your life. Like, four hours ago. Even if I had sent an email, it probably would’ve landed in the spam folder anyway. There’s really no better way than follow me for a few weeks and hope it blows over really quickly. When this whole mess is cleared up, I promise I’ll do something compensate the loss of your shitty house that hadn’t been repaired for the better part of three years and the weird fetish porn that’s on your laptop."

"Hey!" I said, a bit annoyed. "Don’t talk fetish porn out loud, I would never live it down if someone overhears, you know?"

"Peter, it’s literally three in the morning. The kind of people that are still awake in this fucking time of the day in this neighborhood are currently too drunk to even remember how to properly tie their shoelaces, much less remembering the weird conversations of two strange guys in front a pathetic heap of ashes and hunks of furniture that is what’s left of your house."

"Point taken. But I assure you I’m perfectly normal. Thirteen hours ago, I was still worrying over contacting Bob from marketing to talk about the latest project that I was in charge of."

At this point Albest grinned. "And tell me, precisely what kind of normal person ventures out at the dead of the night to his deceased friend’s apartment just because of a vague phone call?"

My fists are begging me to sock Albest in the face again, but my saner side prevailed and reasoned that I’ll only look that much more of an idiot if I had to resort to violence to prove a point. "Well what kind of normal person would browse conspiracy theory websites when they’re supposed to look for a job and the drag their best friend into multiple life-threatening situations without even properly explaining things?"

He grunted. Obviously not wanting to pursue that train of thought and said, "Look, I have a place to stay right now that isn’t burnt ashes and are pretty safe. So do you mind being quiet for a while and follow me to my car? Distracting the driver would really not be beneficial to the passenger."

I snorted, but kept my mouth shut and continued to follow him. A friend of mine had once gave me a piece of advice that had led me through so many stressful company interviews and similarly stressful situations: when you don’t know shit, follow the people that actually knows what they’re doing. This piece of advice has thus far never failed me. I don’t see any reason for it to fail me in the near future either.

As I got into the car and started buckle in the seat belt, Albest decided to start the car without any warning or consideration to the passenger (me). Now, common logic would tell you that if you expected things to be smooth sailing from now on even though a few bullets had nearly killed you, your house exploded and you had gotten dragged into a grand conspiracy that will very likely take your life...then you’re an idiot that is about to be sorely disappointed.

Ten minutes after I had gotten into Albest’s car, gunshots started firing from behind me. Reflexively, I had dodged down and started shouting at Albest. "Remind me again, why is it that there is always people that wants to kill you behind us and why don’t they have futuristic ray guns? According to the pattern here, wouldn’t it make more sense that if aliens are pursuing us, wouldn’t they be holding ray guns or some futuristic shit?"

"Well, aliens use technology as a bartering chip to gain political power here. Since no one in their right mind would want to follow a group of mysterious aliens and hand them control over the world if they don’t have something to gain from it. Because of that, they don’t hand out stupidly advanced technology willy-nilly, or else they lose a very valuable bargaining chip." Albest grunted, completely ignoring the gunshots behind us. Swerving dangerously every now and then. "The gentlemen behind us will give up soon enough. Unlike what movie would tell you, high speed car chases are never practical and while this isn’t a bullet-proof car, unless they can hit a moving target properly, being shot at isn’t very dangerous at all...especially when it’s pretty obvious they can’t aim for shit."

He said this while maintaining a calm air of indifference, as if he is an experienced veteran of running for his life and relatively fast car chases. Then, there was a red light...and he stopped the car.

"Uh, why did you stop the car?"

"Because there’s a red light." Albest explained calmly, completely ignoring the fact that there is a car of armed and dangerous people chasing after us, "Don’t worry about the people chasing us, they are two streets behind us and we’ll be outta here before the sun’s up. I know a place where we can go."

"That wasn’t what I was asking." I said, with a slight feeling of irritation building up in my chest. Denial brings out different things in different people, after all.

Suddenly, Albest laughed, and a dark sense of foreboding slapped me in the face. Whenever he laughs like that, somebody is about to get screwed over. That had been something consistent throughout the years that I had known him. "Peter, are you perhaps a bit disappointed that you didn’t get to experience a movie-like car chase? Well then, it’s as they say: there’s no time like the present."

Then I started screaming.