NASA scientists detect evidence of a parallel universe where time runs backward.
– New York Post

On the morning of his thirty-ninth birthday, Nhoj hopped out of bed a little too easily, with an alarming lack of aches and pains. In horror, he realized how this would go. Next year he’d turn thirty-eight, then he’d turn thirty-seven, and before long, he’d have one foot in the crib. He saw the writing on the wall—it was done in crayon, with random backward letters.

Looking in the bathroom mirror, Nhoj sensed his hairline crowding his forehead. He groaned. He’d never bought into the American obsession with age, but still, it was hard seeing himself looking youthful. His distinguished salt-and-pepper mane would soon be all pepper. His crow’s feet would fly the coop, leaving his face creepily unlined, like a doll’s.

Even more than those changes, though, he dreaded the grotesque abdominal muscles that would sprout from his torso when he reached his twenties. Who could ever love a body like that?

On his walk to work, Nhoj passed a small grocery store where people hefted rotten avocados and considered heads of wilted lettuce. He found himself envying the produce’s desirability. He spotted his fruity equivalent: a green-tinted banana that made customers recoil. Like Nhoj, the banana was unlikely to ever experience human touch again. Not if anyone got a load of those crazy abs.

A few blocks later, he saw a mobile pet adoption van parked outside a pet store. Nhoj sympathized with the wet-eyed puppies watching all the older dogs get scooped up, the limping seniors’ whole lives stretching out before them.

Eventually the unwanted pups would shrink and wink out of existence, becoming fetal tissue and then nothing at all. If only they were cuter, maybe someone could justify spending such a brief amount of time with them. But they didn’t have any of the adorable traits that prompted people to adopt, like a missing limb, a weird skin condition, or hip dysplasia.

Nhoj forced himself to break eye contact with a particularly young, spot-eyed pup leaking pee and, from the looks of it, hope. He hurried to his office building and, once inside, sprinted to catch the elevator. Jesus, he wasn’t even out of breath! Euthanasia was sounding better and better.

It was controversial, but many men of a certain age opted for a quick, painless death over the existential agonies, empathy deficiencies, and late-night booty texts of youth. Nine hours into his thirties, Nhoj couldn’t blame them.

How long before he started pounding Natural Light and blasting emo pop? Or thinking Dane Cook was funny? Better to pull the plug now, before he hit his poetry phrase.

Nhoj stepped off the elevator to a rowdy “SURPRISE!” from his coworkers. They wheeled out a cake on a squeaky cart, two sets of hands flexing their paper-thin skin and incredible liver spots. Etched into the cake’s icing sat a cherub wielding a scythe, a tongue-in-cheek nod to his looming mortality. The cherub’s abs were totally shredded.

When the trick candles wouldn’t go out, someone joked that it was because of Nhoj’s “weak little baby lungs,” and everyone laughed, flashing their gleaming dentures. Cocky bastards. Most of his coworkers were in their sixties or seventies, their lives a never-ending parade of gin rummy, bingo, and early bird specials. They were freaking invincible.

When the swaggering geezers demanded a speech, Nhoj sputtered, “I’m, uh, looking forward to learning all the skills I’ve been using at work for the past thirty years!” Then he housed two slabs of cake because he could feel his metabolism accelerating.

His thirties might be O.K., but his twenties were sure to be a hellish limbo riddled with bad judgment and worse road trips. Still, what scared Nhoj most was the end, or rather the beginning, of his life. Wasting away in a nursery, watching Animal Planet, shouting at random intervals. He would die alone, incontinent, jealous of those people who choke to death on corn dogs.

After the party, Nhoj feigned an illness and ducked out of work early. He jogged back to the dog adoption van (didn’t even pull a muscle) and saw the puppy he’d made eye contact with that morning. It was the only dog left in the van, flat on its belly in the corner of the crate.

When he and the puppy got home, Nhoj emailed his boss to say he wouldn’t be back in the office for the rest of the week, having contracted the most youthful disease he could think of—chickenpox. It was a little far-fetched, but they couldn’t fire someone in their thirties without inviting an age discrimination lawsuit.

As the pup eagerly sniffed every inch of his apartment, barking at random intervals, Nhoj laid down some old newspaper as pee pads, put Animal Planet on, and vowed to stick around for whatever came next.

Evan Allgood has written for The New Yorker, The Believer, McSweeney’s, The Millions, Vulture, and Paste. You can read more of his work on his website.