ASSIGNMENTS:
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Matt the Pig
Long Beach, California USA
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REPORTS:
PREVIOUS NEXT
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Press release below, sent to: The Grunion Gazette, The Downtown Gazette and The District Weekly
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POLICE FEAR FOR MISSING ENGLISH ALIEN.
It was just going to be another day at the office. Or so he thought.
When Matt Roberts, a single, forty five year old alien newly arrived in Long Beach from Liverpool, England arrived for work at his new employer's Seal Beach HQ he was expecting another eight hours of mind numbing silence studying on the university section of the company portal. He'd come to expect this daily ritual and cunningly would break the pain by carrying out hourly excursions to the nearby rest roms, not through any real fear of embarrassment at the hands of mother nature, more just a willingness to survive and keep the blood flowing right through to his toes.
There was at least one creature comfort he had come to expect. For the past week he'd been 'borrowing' the office of the company regional vice president who was away on business, a large, brigh, airy room with windowed views across the fountained greenery of the gardens. Things could be a lot worse.
Arriving with a whistle in his usual chirpy manner he headed straight for his makeshift home and became somewhat confused and disorientated when he saw the RVP sat in 'his' chair talking on 'his' phone. He dropped his bag to the floor and stood open mouthed as his cereal milk formed a small, white pool around his feet. His jaw felt heavy, his heart sank and a tiny tear formed in his eye. And then everything went black.
Sometime later he came to. Concerned colleagues had dragged him to a nearby vacant office and propped him into a chair. But this wasn't 'his' office, this was a bare walled room containing nothing but a desk and a telephone. No windows, no paintings, no fountains, just a blurred reflection of himself in the glass wall facing him. His eyes had the look of sadness last seen when Bambi lost her mother at the hands of the poacher's gun and his hair and clothes were unkempt.
When he'd recovered sufficiently to gather his senses he recalled a book he'd once read by British journalist Andrew McCarthy who'd spent years incarcerated by extremists in a tiny cell in Beirut. The similarities were just too alike. He knew at that moment he just had to escape.
* Roberts was last seen running haphazardly up the shoulder of the northbound 405 Freeway. That was Tuesday, he has not been seen since. If you happen across a confused man with a weird accent call the helpline on 911.
Written with a fair degree of truth and, of course, an equal measure of fiction. And don't worry, I'm not really missing.
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