The CuisinArt

Home, or what was home, was crushed by a space rock and is now a crater of smoking rubble.

For billions and trillions of years - from God knows when - dust slowly gravitated together and traveled through the cosmos - from God knows where – until it reached our solar system, rocketed toward this planet and crashed through this atmosphere to land square on my house and, subsequently, crush the body of my twenty-something girlfriend.

It could’ve landed anywhere. Out in a field. In the ocean. On my neighbors house. Point is, it had to land. Even lightning has to hit something. Just bad luck if it ends up in your body. Or your girlfriends’.

Certain things survived the blow: A pair of trousers here, some silverware there, the remote to the TV. You know, all the important stuff.

And the ringing from deep in the pit lets me know, somehow, a phone endured.

Digging through the sizzling wallpaper, the ruined centerpieces, the smoldering appliances, I find it. My cell.

Because of the smoking rock next to me, instead of saying ‘Hello,’ I just wheeze.

On the other end is my brother. “I’m getting married!” He yells.

And all I can do is cough.

“What’s going on?” He asks. “Aren’t you psyched for me?”

Through the rock’s toxic smell, I dry heave, “Who’s the girl?”

“Kim.” He sings her name.

“Kim’s the…” - more coughing here - “…the dancer?” My foot gets stuck in the icebox of a melting refrigerator.

“No, dude. Riley’s the dancer. Kim’s the one with the huge ass. Dude, you interested in Riley? I can hook you up. Or, no, you’re with whatshername?”

My foot sinks deeper into the sticky puddle of aluminum and I gag, “My house got flattened by a meteor. Her too.”

And my newly engaged brother, he says, “Again?”

Yes. Again. This has happened a few times before. Not an asteroid, necessarily. Doesn’t have to be. Traffic accident. Brain parasites. Could be anything.

Disney Land could destroy life as we know it. We’re still the ones paying the entrance fee.

Sorry, but how many times can you be surprised by a freak occurrence?

Not saying the whole world is out to get me, just the piece that landed on my girl.

I hack a long one.

“Three ways I see it,” my brother’s voice says through the phone, “One is chance. Two is freewill. Three is fate.”

So this rock came all this way specifically to find me and obliterate my new girlfriend’s bones?

I guess these things happen.

“The universe works in billions and trillions,” my brother says. “Scary, dude. The precision of it all.”

He said that last time.