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On the Planet Zork Earth Approx. 1700 words Michael Lee Smith
There is love of course. And then there's life, its enemy. —Jean Anouilh
A glint of time. Razor's edge of a moment. That's all it took for the invasion of Earl’s homeliness to obliterate the real world. The plain old world. And that was fine by Juanita Moment, the genius and solitary auto mechanic; recent visits to her father’s house had become . . . painful. “A zipperful of hair,” Juanita whispered.
Earl sat on his haunches, in the dirt of Dr. Luther Moment’s side yard, inviting one and all to partake in his “beauty.” The sight of Earl always suggested to Juanita the results of an equation containing:
1. a three-year old's creativity.
2. a brown crayon.
3. the basic instruction: Draw a dog.
Her father, Luther, had long sought possession of a canine “mutant,“ so to speak, and it had been delivered unto him in his sixty-first year, and he lovingly and joyfully christened it with the name of Earl.
Juanita looked across the chain link fence at Earl and smiled. How pleasant Earl made an unpleasant morning. How irrelevant his mug made reality . . . and isn’t reality often very undeserving of reverence? Earl, it appeared, hadn't, until this point, noted her presence. She suspected poor eyesight. Hoped for poor eyesight -- the cruelty of him accidentally stumbling upon a mirror & seeing himself . . .
Earl barked once. Black rubbery lips formed a reckless greeting. He spun. His famous spin. As with any other Earl-related activity, Earl-spinning was far-removed from the namby-pamby aspects of normal canine exhibitions. More dangerous. Kamikaze in nature. Like father, like son, Juanita mused, shaking her head, referring to her father and Earl, respectively.
"Nice to see ya, Earl."
Earl's tail wagged, beating a song into the air. The title of the song, as interpreted by Juanita, was: No Appointment Necessary. 
Juanita and Earl sat together in adjacent lawn chairs, Juanita letting Earl's Buddha-like presence steel her for another encounter with her father.
In response to the sudden intrusive sound of Earl's flatulence Juanita recited her father’s often-spoken line (and here she made her voice as close to her father’s as possible), “’On the planet Zork animal communication is limited to farts, belches, and snorts. Avid conversation is discouraged.'" She winked at Earl. That was her father's theory of Earl's ancestry—expelled from the mythical planet Zork.
And because Earl's sounds were farts, belches, snorts, and other mystery noises emitted from mystery orifices (an avid conversationalist, Earl was), Luther‘s speculation that expulsion from Zork explained Earl's presence on earth, did, in a distorted way, hold some credence.
"Where's he at?" she asked Earl, referring to her father.
Earl looked suddenly troubled. His forehead wrinkled.
"Uh oh." She'd asked the previous question unguardedly, and now here she sat, paying the price. Fear and anger, like dueling psycho-jazz pianists, hit all the notes, up and down the scale.
Earl found the trail, though Juanita could have found it herself—an empty vodka bottle lay on the patio, its neck pointed toward the back door. A few feet beyond, a pajama shirt lay, like a dead animal cast along side the road.
"On the planet Zork," Juanita's father, the retired astronomer and physicist, had said one night many years ago, not long after Juanita’s mother's flight, first into fundamentalist Christianity, then into the nuthouse, "children don't have parents. Possession of a parent is a felony."
"Why not?" asked the little-girl-version of Juanita, rubbing away a tear. She was trying not to miss her mother.
"Independence, love. Strength. For later, when the wolves come calling."
Little Juanita hadn't understood. She'd simply looked up at her father and wished there were no Planet Zork.
Hot on the trail, Earl now led Juanita through the kitchen. Led her past the purposely mismatched appliances Luther had taken great pains to acquire—the avocado-colored refrigerator, harvest gold gas range, coppertone trash compactor; the deliverymen had scratched their heads (one of them, anyway, the other one had scratched his ass) when they'd come to install the turquoise vent-a-hood.
Then later, when Luther left the kitchen briefly, the head-scratcher had leaned close to Juanita and whispered, "He wants everything not to match?"
"On the planet Zork," Juanita had said, rolling her eyes, "they match perfectly."
Earl now detoured to his empty food bowl. He had the dog-like habit of conveying his wishes via body language—standing motionless, his thick, banana-shaped muzzle pointed at the object of his desire. Many a time Juanita had come in the back door and found Earl poised, as still as a statue, pointed at the avocado refrigerator. Now, Earl stood over his bowl.
Juanita sighed. "He hasn't fed you, has he?"
Earl didn't respond, but stood staring at the bowl, patiently awaiting his dinner’s materialization.
Juanita rummaged the cupboards unsuccessfully. Then the refrigerator. Inside, located a half-can of dog food and about a dozen packages of weenies.
"It's weenies now," she said, referring to another of her father's eccentricities—the habit of eating one classification of food at a time. As she reached for the one of the packages, she knocked over a can of aerosol whipping cream. It rolled out onto the floor. She prepared Earl a casserole of dog food and weenies, topped off with a large dollop of whipping cream.
As he ate, she resumed her search for Luther. The living room was dark, the curtains drawn.
"Luther?"
No answer.
The hallway was so dim that she flipped on the light.
No Luther in the bathroom; she found his robe stuffed into the towel rack.
Further down the hallway at the entrance to what, at one time, had been her bedroom, her eyes followed the shaft of light from the hall and she found him. Clad in a pair of frayed boxer shorts, lying sprawled on his back, another empty vodka bottle grasped in one hand, a fly swatter in the other, was her father, Dr. Luther Moment.
Juanita turned cautiously and looked across the hall into Luther's bedroom. Last time this had happened, she'd been greeted by the sight of a nude woman, a prostitute, whom she'd cautiously awakened and who wouldn't leave until she had a bowl of Cheerios. This time the unmade bed was empty.
Juanita took Luther's pulse, wrenching the empty bottle from his hand. Listened to his breathing—slow, shallow, but even.
"Where's it going to end?" she heard herself whisper. Now that the question had been put forth, she knew, regretfully, she had to consider an answer, again.
Any excuse will do, she realized also, referring to Luther's request yesterday that she come and tune-up his old car. He always found things that needed to be worked on, last week it was the garbage disposal, not long before that, a ceiling fan that had ceased to rotate.
"On the planet Zork," Luther had said a few weeks ago as Juanita repaired the faulty ceiling fan wall switch that he could have easily repaired himself, "Ceiling fans are outlawed. It has been discovered that under specific lighting conditions, and at certain speeds, the common ceiling fan has been known to hypnotize susceptible human beings, mostly elderly or slow-witted individuals."
Juanita stood now and looked down at her father. "On the planet earth, it's been discovered that the common depressant, alcohol, has been proven harmful to certain susceptible human beings, mostly the idle lonely.
"Get up and do something Luther. Discover another meteor or something." She sighed. "On the planet earth, parents teach their children— Are examples of—"
From behind her, Earl interrupted with a loud belch. He stood a distance down the hallway, licking his lips, his forehead wrinkled severely.
"Come here, Earl. It's all right."
But he didn’t; he stood, shifting his weight from one front paw to the other.
"What's wrong?" After a moment she turned and studied Luther again. The fly swatter. Although she'd never seen him use it, she'd certainly seen Luther threaten Earl with it.
"Bastard," she said to her father. "Stupid bastard. You've got one friend left and you—" She turned and walked up the hall.
In the kitchen, something caught her attention. She snatched the can of whipping cream and marched back to Luther. Shook the can with enthusiasm, bent down and began a whipping cream message on his pale chest: On the planet Zork —" then she crossed out Zork and started to write earth, but she ran out of chest before she could complete it, or the rest of the message.
Luther snored softly, oblivious to the application.
Juanita sighed. Then she sprayed a large dollop of whipping cream in each of Luther's ears. "Punctuation."
She left then, went outside and tuned-up his car, which probably didn't need a tune-up to begin with; Luther didn't drive much anymore, thankfully.
As Juanita set her mind on things that wouldn’t make her cry— spark plug gaps, dwell settings, rotor replacement—the shaft of hallway light now illuminated a homely, worried dog. A dog whose deep-set eyes searched the man as it stood tentatively over him, still sprawled on the floor. The dog trembled slightly, keeping the fly swatter in the man's limp grip in constant view, and unable to help himself any longer, he begin licking whipping cream from his master's chest. Then he licked each ear, one at a time, pausing after each lick, watching the fly swatter.
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