Stop Crying – Eric McLaughlin

February 12, 2026

Okay, I’ll tell you.
        They came in masks. Black ones. Some plain. Some with skulls painted on them. Some with flags in red and white and blue. Some with flags with a thin blue line. They came in armor. Black and thick like carapace. They scuttled like bugs too. Small steps. Boots that clicked on concrete. They wore helmets and gloves. They carried automatic rifles. They didn’t speak. They moved in unison. Yeah, very bug like.
        I sat against the cold door of an empty apartment complex. My face hurt because the weather had turned and the breezes came with bite now. I’m sure those that passed me on the street noticed the redness of my face and the frown. Maybe not. Maybe just the smell. I don’t know.
        One day a guy passed me talking on his phone about how this apartment complex was built to accommodate luxury housing but the boom ended and there were no more buyers. Inside there were dozens of empty apartments. Bathroom and a half. Master bedroom with walk in closet. Glass backsplashes. No lights on. No steam curling above steady boiling pots of something. No alarm clocks in the morning. No laughing at the late-night hosts. No people. I sat outside and my face reddened and I licked at chapped lips and I thought these things.
        Right, sorry. I’ll try and focus.
        That night was different. The fall gave way to a day or two of Indian summer. A heat wave or something. And that night people were in the streets. Little kids playing tag and young couples holding hands. I sat against my door and I thought about an empty bath and a half and I watched them all. I smelled an Italian sausage and I almost died. When was the last time I had an Italian sausage? That time my father took me to Fenway? He bought me a Fenway Frank but I told him I don’t like hot dogs and he called me a faggot. He left and came back with an Italian sausage and says to me here kid and stop fucking crying.
        Is that why I sat there in the heat and in the cold? Licking chapped lips and sometimes sweating into pants that were more sweat than pants? Is that why I did that thing and spent time in that cage and why I sat against an empty apartment door? Who’s to say?
        So, anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the armored guys. That night, the one with the kids and the couples, I’m sitting there against my apartment door, and I hear this sound like my own personal hurricane. And I look up and I see bright lights and I hear that beating and thrumming like the hurricane I said, and I’m thinking okay man, this is it, the aliens are landing right here right now so say something smart because they’re talking to you first. But it wasn’t aliens. It was the armored bug men.
        They slid down ropes and they pointed their rifles. One pointed a rifle at me and yelled but I couldn’t understand him cuz of all the thrumming and the wind and the mask and the fact that my heart was beating out of my ears.
        Once they were on the ground one did some waves with his hands and they formed up like, like you ever seen a line of ants carrying bits of a dead thing back to the hill, to the queen? It was a lot like that. He does the hands thing, and they line up and follow him into the apartment building across the street from me.
        But the guy near me is still pointing his rifle at me. And he’s still yelling. And I can’t tell my ass from my elbow. I mean I am shitting myself at this point. Rifle in my face. Black mask. Can’t understand. I’m pretty sure my pants are stained and I smell like piss and I’m glad I just smashed that nip because if not I think all the noise and the stress would have made the veins in my head burst, you know?
        So anyway, he finally grabs me by the shirt collar and yanks me to my feet and drags me to the middle of the street. I’m trying to tell him sorry and I didn’t mean it and you got the wrong guy but he isn’t listening and he pushes me to the ground and my knees hit the pavement and I just know they’ll be bloody and sore in the morning. He yanks my hands behind my back and zip ties them together and then walks toward the helicopter.
        That’s when the bug men come out of the building and I know what is happening and I smile because it is all just a big misunderstanding.
Before the bug men are people in zip ties. They have bags over their heads, even the kids, but everyone knows what they are. They’re immigrants. Illegal immigrants. They came across the border for “a better life” or whatever but everyone knows that’s bullshit. It’s an invasion so the Dems can have more votes or more babies blood to drink or something. All I’m thinking then is that I’m not an illegal immigrant and so everything should be all good and I can go back to the cold empty apartment door.
        But I hear someone say something like fuck it grab him too.
        Then I’m in the helicopter. And I watch the ground leave me behind. Buildings shrink. Lights get dimmer. I feel the mix of that last nip along with the melatonin pills that I didn’t steal and everything gets blurry and then black.
        Anyway, that’s how I got here, with a bitchin’ headache and a crazy story. So, there you go, you know? I’m not an immigrant. Just a red-blooded American in the wrong place at the wrong time. I voted for the right team if you know what I mean. I know I might be down on my luck, but I ain’t the thing you were looking for so I think you can probably just let me go, right? Right? Wait, where are we again? Are you shitting me? Can I go home? But I’m on the right team. But…
        Fuck.