Space Football

The cheering is so deafening that my eardrums seem to vibrate
The score stands at Mars: 1, Earth: 0; the opportunity has come quite late
A Martian defender kicks at the head as I am taking it forward. Just before his feet would connect with the head, I pass it to Rinjin; the Martian goalkeeper stands in front of the goalpost in poise first rate
Rinjin feints to kick the head into the goal post; the goalkeeper jumps forward to intercept, but Rinjin has passed the head to me, and the goal post stands empty in front of my face

The interplanetary world cup is within reach again; Earth’s crowd stands up cheering in their jet seats
“Alphonse, Alphonse,” I hear my name reverberating in space; this goal is a cakewalk compared to done by me the seemingly impossible feats
The blue and brown flags of Earth are being waved all around; Running on my jet shoes, I shoot the head and it curves stately upward. I along with billions of Earthlings pray that the goal post it meets
It is going high. Hold on, it is a little too high. It sails inches above the upper bar of the goalpost. The referee blows the whistle, and Mars, in the final match of the universe cup 2050, Earth beats

The solid red flags of Mars emerge and the Earth’s blue and brown wilt
“Wanker, chutiya, gilipollas, byeong-shin, piece of shit, baka, the abuses come thick and fast, but they don’t affect me; I am too consumed by my own guilt
In a moment, it has all gone to pot, all that we had played for for months, the reputation that we had built
The crowd is hurling cuss words in whichever direction my head I tilt

A beer bottle comes sailing and strikes me in the face. I am bleeding from a cut above my right eye. Then more bottles come flying. As I try to shield my face with my hands, armed police enter the stadium and form a cordon around me
I hear the sounds of the bottles breaking against the police shields as they take me forward, in which direction, I can’t properly see
I am being herded into my private spaceship. The driver wipes away the blood with a towel. And then I am being escorted home by police spaceships three
Throughout the way I am being buzzed by Earth citizen’s spaceships who would have rammed into mine if it were not for the police escort. My spaceship lands into my compound, and finally I am home free

Or so I thought. The next day a newspaper speculates that I had taken money from Mars to miss the goal
Everywhere I go they are holding up posters saying “traitor” and worse. My effigies are being burnt. In the markets, on the way to my daughter’s school, they are shouting cuss words to me. My wife has stopped being invited to social events. My children are being bullied. I don’t know when again we will be whole
On my family, this has taken an enormous toll
The worst is when my daughter tells me, “Dad, you should not have missed that goal”

I am in training in a part of space which is the property of my club Sure Shot
Rinjin tells me that the club has decided to drop me after giving it much thought
Before the match I was the most sought-after player on Earth; now this has come to be my lot
Then I remember the sequence of events that brought this on, and in my very soul, it seems has set in a rot

A gray spaceship appears in the middle of the training round
We hurriedly make way for it. All of us it does astound
It has Earth’s blue and brown flag on one side and the name ON To The Next on the other. It comes to rest efficiently with no sound
A man in the gray uniform of Earth’s space force with lots of medals appears at the door. He says to us, “Look boys what I have found”

He holds aloft a red-blue-green head, which has the structure of a human head but looks like a fish
“This here is the head of Glozia’s king;” on its forehead he places a kiss
He laughs as if he is in a total bliss
“Alphonse,” he addresses me, “Practice with royalty, and then, you won’t miss”

He throws the head at me. I deftly catch it. “On the way, I have applied the preserving solution to it. Now it’s just right to play with”
“From Major Rustmore, it’s your club’s gift.” And just like that he gets back inside and from here, his spaceship does flit
The boys are all looking at each other wondering what just happened. I kick the head high in the air. “You heard the good major. Let's get to it”
Instinctively, Rinjin runs and hitting it with his head to the forward pushes it. By the time, the rest can collect their wits, Choon-Hee it inside the goalpost does hit

Now everybody is alert and fully into the action. The goalkeeper Akira kicks it to Mateo. As David playing for our team approaches him, Mateo feints to kick it left, but David wrestles the head from him without taking the bait
Quickly, he surveys the field, and as Bjørn from the opposing team is inches from him, he passes it to Rinjin. Rinjin comes to kick the head, but as Akira jumps ahead to catch it, Rinjin lifts his feet higher and kicks the space above the head. With the goalpost empty, he passes the head to me at a swift gait
Once again, the head is in front of me. Once again, the goalpost is empty. I am ready to score. Seems like fate
And then I see an unfamiliar spaceship appearing ahead. It straightaway shoots a missile at us and I say to myself, “wait”

Instead of the king’s head, I kick the missile at the bottom, and it strikes the spaceship in the middle. A perfect hit.
As the spaceship explodes, scores of similar-looking spaceships come near it
I find myself saying to the team “Muchachos, let no missile explode amongst us. Send each one back where it came from. This match we got to win at any cost. Coz in this one, we fight for our lives. We will be dead if, in this match, we look like a tit”
Mateo sends the second one home. Akira, the goalkeeper destroys another ship. The scene is literally lit

We destroy four more ships by hurling back their missiles at them
They are now trying to mow us down. But we are prepared for even this game
They are not going to kill us. Not with me at the helm
We are running swiftly in all directions. And by flitting from one spot to the next, we give them a merry-go-around, and their vile intentions we tame

Guns emerge from the spaceships. “Get in between the spaceships,” I am yelling
On our jet shoes, we run toward them deftly dodging the shelling
As the guns open up at the spot I was, I have quickly left the place so that the bullets hit the ship behind, and the effect is telling
The rest of the club is doing the same. Many more of their ships lie smoking. Their might we are efficiently quelling

Seeing this strategy also backfiring, they are back to missiles fire
We are chanting, “one missile one ship,” and the situation for them has turned dire
Only two of their ships are functioning now; of this tactic, they tire
And go back to giving chase to extract themselves out of this mire

One ship is chasing me. The other one is giving Rinjin chase
They are turning as we are turning; I guess these are the best pilots and upon them is a craze
They are not giving up this time. They desperately want to kill us to emerge victorious from the battle they did wage
As I am jumping, running, shooting forward this way and that, I catch Rinjin’s gaze

I signal with my hands for him to come toward me. He understands perfectly
As he reaches me, we extend our hands and at their meeting, shoot up abruptly
The two spaceships collide devastatingly
The next second we are running home uproariously

We descend into Ludwig town, the nearest military base
More spaceships may be approaching; we quickly make our case
Sirens are blaring all over Earth in danger’s face
No spaceship has reached Earth yet. Seems I, nah, seems we did win this race