Late for the UFO by Natalie Wallington

I overslept and made the kids late for the UFO. Only after jolting awake did I remember you kissing my cheek as you left for work, saying Don’t forget! And my reply: I won’t, darling. Not that I knew who you were in that moment, or who I was, or what we were talking about. I was still waterlogged with sleep, barely capable of language. Of course, I thought, as I watched myself run through the house barely dressed, grabbing shoes, snapping at Tommy and Frances to get in the car, of course you were trying to prevent exactly this. They were such good sports about it, too — my heart ached seeing how they rushed for me, how they pushed through their confusion and didn’t complain that we hadn’t eaten breakfast or sung the Morning Song, that I didn’t even buckle them in before screeching backwards out of the driveway. The boulevard was packed with cars driving away from the stadium, back to their quiet houses, but our side of the street was empty. No one was as late as we were and still trying to make it. When I asked Tommy to please do Frances’ seatbelt for her, he said he already had and I wanted to cry but I was busy running red lights. I passed back my purse so the kids could dig out their lanyards, and gave them the spiel about staying together and being patient and copying what the older kids do. I was having Tommy repeat it all back to me as we careened around the corner onto Stadium Drive, lined with palm trees that framed the perfect blue sky. And the UFO, rising into the air. I took my foot off the gas and we rolled for a long time before the car stopped. You could see the little silhouettes of all these kids, hundreds of them, looking out the saucer’s windows. A wall of air rushed past us and tossed the palm trees’ heads around. Volunteers were already walking back to their cars, and some of them turned to watch the liftoff. I hated how they saw us idling in the road and could tell exactly what happened. Do you remember the news segment we saw about the couple in Nepal who carried their babies down a mountain? How it took a month to reach the city on foot, their savings spent on a single hostel bed where they slept all tucked together, just so they could get the children to their UFO on time? I thought about those parents as I drove us home from the stadium. The kids’ silent judgement was my only comfort, and even that didn’t last. By the time we pulled back into the driveway, Frances had fallen asleep in her car seat and Tommy was telling me something about his video game. I could almost pretend the whole morning had never happened. As we went inside to make our preparations, the UFO was no bigger than a glittering coin in the sky.

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NATALIE WALLINGTON — Natalie is a journalist and fiction writer living in Memphis, Tennessee. Her flash fiction has appeared in Wigleaf, Okay Donkey, Ellipsis and 101 Words. She is a cofounder of the Kansas-Missouri Writers’ Collective, and was a finalist for the 2025 Mythic Picnic Postcard Prize. Find her on Bluesky at @narwhallington.bsky.social.

Art by JARED VARNADO — Jared is a Portland, Oregon based artist and horror movie enthusiast. In his free time he enjoys long walks through cemeteries with his wife Janice. He is @jaredvarnado on instagram.