Tena StetlerAuthor of Paranormal Romance/Suspense & Cozy Mysteries With Magic Spark!

A Peek Between the Pages of Holy Crap! The World is Ending! How a Trip to the Bookstore Led to Sex with an Alien and the Destruction of Earth.

What if…

Ever since I was a kid I’ve been fascinated by the unimaginable. I used to gaze at the night sky and contemplate a series of what ifs. But I’m not talking about the boring typical what ifs such as:

What if I won the lotto?

What if I quit my job and moved to Tanzania?

I’m talking about those outlandish ones:

What if I ran across a herd of three-inch pigmy cows capable of producing solid gold milk, but each ounce I extracted took a month off my life? Would I still do it?

What if we could suddenly have intellectual conversations with all animals? Would we continue to eat them?

What if the whole world went blind and deaf all at the same time? Would we survive as a species?

Another favorite childhood pastime of mine was observing ants clambering atop one another to locate food or gather leaves, like inhabitants of a metropolis bustling to work. Ants are innately oblivious to the threat of a gargantuan foot looming over them. I’ve often wondered if humans would behave the same way if the tables were turned.

What if a jumbo foot came down on us and squashed a city block on a regular basis? After a while, would we just shrug it off and alter course to go around it like ants do?

Some people go out of their way to squish any and all bugs that come across their path. Not me. I have a strict “no kill” policy with every type of animal.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I have an exception for animals I buy in a grocery store. I know: this is incredibly hypocritical. But dammit, I love me some cow. Perhaps I should define my “no kill” policy as “not slaying a creature simply because it annoys you—or simply because you can.”

For example, I can’t help but wonder:

What if I were reincarnated as a fly in my next life? Would I appreciate getting stuck on a glue trap?

Put yourself in the fly’s place. You’re ambling along, minding your own business, when out of nowhere the glorious aroma of In-N-Out Burger wafts in your direction. Those freshly cooked fries and juicy burgers fill your senses with food ecstasy. Just when you can’t take it anymore, a sign pops up out of thin air that reads: All You Can Eat! Free In-N-Out Burgers All Day.

Salivating, you charge toward the smell all excited. Then—BAM!—you step onto a glue pad, unable to break free. Not only are you doomed to a lengthy, torturous death of dehydration and starvation, but your last days are filled with the constant aroma of those heavenly cheeseburgers you can never have.

Not the way I’d want to kick the bucket, that’s for sure.

My fixation over these what ifs is why I was so into UFOs, ancient aliens, near-death experiences, ghosts, and really, anything paranormal. Truth be told, I’m not sure if deep down I believed in all these things, or if I just wanted them to be real, so I’d have something to hope for beyond the monotony of human life. I mean, think about it. What would be more entertaining: cleaning a toilet, or cleaning a toilet haunted by a ghost? (Well, a friendly one. It might get messy if your bowl were possessed by a demon.) Phantom commodes win hands down.

I’ll never forget the day this whole obsession got started. When I was six, I asked my mom what life was going to be like when I grew up. She was always one for blunt honesty, and she said, “Well, you’ll go to school for a really long time, marry a guy who will lose all his hair, get a job you’ll probably hate, have kids, get old, poop your pants, and then die.”

I broke down in tears.

My mom ended up regretting having told me all that, because at the age of seven, I convinced myself that those things wouldn’t happen to me, and that it was my destiny to one day rescue the planet. I am talking about a Will Smith in Independence Day style rescue (except I imagined myself with a breadstick in my mouth instead of a cigar). In one childhood fantasy, I used a butter knife and my badass Barbie Mobile to defend the residents of my neighborhood from a rampaging, genetically mutated, alien-giraffe hybrid that had escaped from a secret government lab. (Kids, if you ever want your mom to get fired as the president of the PTA so she doesn’t embarrass you in front of your class, simply splatter your shirt with ketchup and burst into the annual Teacher Appreciation Luncheon with a spork screaming about man-eating giraffes. Trust me, it works like a charm.)

This desire to be the hero had me hooked on stories where people discover they’re part of an amazing new reality—a world where the impossible becomes possible. If I waited long enough, I thought, maybe Hagrid and his flying motorcycle would come crashing into my bathroom as I sat on the toilet and proclaim, “You’re a wizard, Autumn!”

But it’s one thing to dream it, and an entirely different thing to live it. Had I been smart and heeded the advice of the Pussycat Dolls when they warned us to “Be careful what you wish for, ’cause you just might get it,” then maybe things would have played out differently.

I wished it.

I got it.

And now I’m about to die.