The Day Two Curators Abducted Me

My Adventures in Hitchhiking

The starry sky offered little light to break the soupy darkness created by the overhanging tree line along Norrisville Road. Something in those woods paced my every crunching step on the gravelly shoulder.

My imagination began to stir. The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention. I paused to listen carefully for any rustling movement in the bush — nothing. When I resumed my journey, my invisible foe continued at my pace.

My nerves frayed, I turned toward the woods and yelled at the top of my lungs, “Cut the crap. This prank is not funny. Is that you, Gainer?”

The response — dead silence.

I wondered what sinister beast lurked mere feet away. Coywolves? Black bear? Rabid fox? Deranged human? I picked up my pace. So did the creature only out of my sight beyond the brush.

After an hour of this mockery to my senses, I concluded the noise was my footsteps echoing off the trees. I breathed a sigh, then the mother of all madness revealed itself.

Let me back up to give you the context for my story.

June 1979, on a beautiful sunny Friday, exactly one week and one day before my high school graduation, the senior class skipped school to commemorate our jubilee.

After thirteen years of psychological conditioning, mental anguish, and brainwashing — at least this is how my radical teenage mind perceived it at the time — my class, the class of 1979, headed for Macomb Park, a state park not far from the burgeoning metropolis of Plattsburgh, NY.

I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and my spirit animal consumed too much booze and reefer earlier in the day. At some point, I passed out. Several hours later, I woke up to find the party had left me. I arrived with around 200 people. I awakened from my drug-induced coma to find only three people remaining — me, myself, and I.

Dragging my butt off the ground, I looked around. Where did everyone go? Those anally distinctive people I call friends have left me high and dry.

With no time for self-pity, I started walking. The dusk rapidly turned to dark.

I had a twelve-mile hike home. My drug clouded brain didn’t think to look for a payphone or go to the park office.

How the hell did we survive without cell phones?

Anyway, the darkness prevailed upon me as I trudged along. I did thumb-ups to prepare for a potential ride. Who knows. Maybe a passing philanthropist will give a ride to a stranded kid hitchhiking on this dark and desolate road.

These were the days of foolish ignorance before the serial killer craze. As a teen, I hitchhiked all over the North Country of Upstate New York. No such luck this time. Not even a passing aeroplane overhead.

I had slept off most of my buzz before leaving the park. So, I could not accept the possibility the reefer and alcohol were the cause of my paranoia. Instead, someone or something had to be tracking me and waiting for the perfect opportunity to attack.

My spi… senses were. I won’t use the “s” word just in case SHE reads this. Somewhere in the 21st century, I am married, and she, Mi Amore, is an arachnophobe. My Murder Hornet senses were on high alert.

After an hour of walking, I accepted maybe, just maybe, my paranoia and overactive imagination resulted from my activity earlier in the day. Immediately, I decided to give up recreational drug use. During my epiphany, a Delorean drove up with two dudes in it. I think they were dressed for a costume party.

The guy on the passenger side rolled his window down. In unison, they asked, “Do you need a ride?”

My buzz crushed by the cortisol release and a developing headache from dehydration, I thought, What is the worst they can do, reject this fictional masterpiece? I struggled to believe it myself.

They looked at each other, smiled, then turned to me, “We wish you know harm.” For the record, I thought they meant “no harm.” Boy, was I wrong!

With me in the backseat, the Delorean took off vertically and disappeared into the cosmos. The guy in the passenger seat turned around and said, “Hello, my name is Syntax Correctus, and this is my twin brother Oxycomma Correctus. We are curators who have come from the future to review this story for curatable-ness. If we deem it thus, your story — though not likely — could be seen by millions.”

Note: Curatable-ness entered the English lexicon on September 1, 2020.

I slapped myself several times across the face, but the earth continued to get smaller. “Where in the hell are you taking me? Hey, you are not going to do weird experiments on me? I suffer from IBS as it is.”

Again they looked at each other and laughed. The laugh sounded too sinister for my liking.

Oxycomma, the driver, spoke up. “Not there. We shan’t tell you the specific name of the web platform. If we told you, we would have to kill your story; then, this literary mess would get kicked to the dark web.”

Sweat began to pour off my head faster than a writer sitting in front of a panel of ninth-grade English teachers. What in the hell are they talking about? As a character in a story, I don’t even know if I exist, or do I?

Oxycomma laughed so hard; he almost ran into a Putinik III class spy satellite, “We can divulge this. Our destination is to the future on the Information Superhighway. Once published, your story might sit in the queue for minutes to weeks. It will depend on our workload and how much coffee we the Curators drank that day.”

Syntax handed me what looked like a white elixir and said, “Drink this.”

I looked at the white milky substance, “What is this? For a hangover?”

He reached over and backspaced me across the face, “Correction fluid. It won’t help your headache, but it will correct your gross abuse of English grammar, your atrocious spelling, egregious misapplication of punctuation. And, yes, your passive-aggressive use of the passive voice.”

They verbally edited me with a red marker until my fractured ego lay bare, sucking its thumb in the fetal position. I raised my head. “I will have you know I use Grammarly Premium.”

Syntax and Oxycomma shook their heads in disgust and glanced over their shoulders. In harmony, they said, “You dysgraphic buffoon, this is 1979. Grammarly hasn’t been invented yet.

I couldn’t take their literary assault any longer and passed out.

I woke up. “WOW! What a weird but lucid dream. Did I astral project or time travel? ” A woman turned over next to me. Immediately, I recognized her. She was Mi Amore, the mother of my children, and fondly called Grammy by the grandkids. She said to me, “I told you to lay off those brownies your highschool buddy gave to us. I think they were laced with something.”

She was right. John never grew up. At 59 years old, he still smokes pot every day and lives in his 80-year-old mother’s basement.