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Angel Hair
by Zvi A. Sesling

Ugly Alice Crucknagel is pregnant there is no doubt. What is in doubt, who the father is. Charlie Neppets, the neighborhood’s homeliest male is immediately ruled out and my wife, Carla, is nominated to ask her who had gotten her in this predicament. Alice is neither married nor known to be dating since her former husband Pierce Crucknagel moved to California.

Rumors fly until Carla finally approaches Alice on the way to the supermarket and says, “I hear you are pregnant. I want to congratulate you.”

“Yes, I am pregnant,” Alice answers glumly,

“And may I ask who is the father?’

“It is an alien,” Alice whispers.

“What?”

“It is an alien,” Alice repeats.

“What is?”

“The ones who got me pregnant. They kidnapped me and injected me with their sperm so I would produce a child for them since they can’t reproduce. Their world is dying because they are sterile, so they are planning to repopulate their world with these hybrids,” Alice says patting her tummy.

The two of them stop walking. face each other. They can feel the eyes of a nosy neighbor peering out the window from behind a single slat of Venetian blinds lifted by a single finger.

Carla only tells four people what Alice has confessed and in less than hour the whole neighborhood knows.

Three months later Alice gives birth to a boy. Everyone who sees her walk the baby in a carriage acknowledges it is as ugly as its mother and perhaps its father too.

A few of us sit around at lunch at the coffee shop on a Saturday afternoon discussing it when Betsy says, “It has funny stringy white hair, like spaghetti.”

“Like angel hair,” someone says.