As far as I can tell there was never a black hole behind my mom’s house, but there it was at the beginning of the pandemic. A black hole the size of a basketball hoop. I’m not a scientist or spaceologist but from what I can tell it’s been there for decades, maybe even hundreds of years, quietly expanding. I have to assume that the family who bought the house know about it, the small swirling vortex just past the back garden. You can’t miss it.

While cleaning out the house there was this pull, not physically, just a constant thought in my head, throw some shit in the black hole. Maybe it was the rare chance to do something that I shouldn’t do on a planetary scale, or maybe it was enticing to get rid of some junk that I didn’t want to put in storage. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have thrown so much stuff into the black hole.

1 The Garfield Phone

I don’t know why I let Garfield drift into space with such an appallingly unemotional send off. As I watched the orange cat who hates Mondays stretch into the abyss I felt a twinge of regret, and not just because I could have made a killing on eBay. Maybe. I’m not actually sure how much those are going for online. Hopefully an alien is tooling around in his UFO and making calls with his new orange friend.

2 37 Video Connection Coupons

Video Connection has been closed for something like 15 years, but I’ve always found comfort in the ephemera of a bygone era. It’s like taking a peek into a lost civilization where if you collected four business cards you could trade them in for a free rental. I should have just recycled the coupons but for some reason I dropped them through the black hole in handfuls and watched them flutter into the emptiness of space. That’s just pollution. I really hope astronauts don’t trace this back to me and kick my ass.

3 The Amulet

I know. I know. I KNOW. We need the amulet on Earth to send Trbalthar the crow god back to his home beneath the volcano for an eternal sleep. This was seriously my bad. Hopefully someone can get it back because I really don’t want to deal with a giant crow pecking at my skull for an eternity.

4 Twin Peaks Definitive Gold Box Edition

At the time I think I was just tired of lugging the multi disc set around but now I have to buy it again on blu-ray and I just don’t have the mental energy for that.

5 My Mom

I really should not have thrown my mother into the black hole. It wasn’t a malicious thing. I was just tossing a bunch of stuff into the black hole that I thought would be funny for an alien to find in the middle of space (Spice Girls CD, Green Arrow comics, old Dr. Pepper, cowboy boots) and I got carried away and tossed my mom into the hole. It’s like I was hypnotized by the joy of watching things vanish and dissolve through this pulsating orb that served as a break between space and time. If any astronauts or interstellar travelers are reading this, can you make sure my mom gets home safe? I’m not sure where she is, but she’s the 4’11” lady with pink hair who’s floating in space.

You can follow Jacob Shelton on Twitter and Instagram or read more of his work in Mindfuck or in like every issue of Kill Pretty.