It’s Monday and I’m not working at the Silver Bullet Bar. I spend off days (and most unclaimed time) working on my dissertation. I’m a PhD candidate and I’m doing research on the topic of how to revitalize small towns that have lost their industrial base. This hits close to home for me because I’m from the midwest and there are many once-thriving towns which now languish because they lost so many manufacturing jobs in the 1970s and 1980s. It’s painful to go back to my hometown because all I see are closed storefronts and factories that have been standing empty for decades. 

Of course I’m also deeply intrigued by my secretive new friend who I have yet to see and volunteers very limited information about herself. And yet is clearly very intelligent being able to recite the entirely of Maya Angelou’s poem I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. What kind of person is Maya?

And, I wonder, is Maya a person? 

Yes, I know, that’s one hell of a question to ask. Yet there are many things about Maya that don’t make sense. How does she live in the airport without ever being seen? The airport is one of the best guarded most secure facilities in Colorado short of being a military base. There are cameras everywhere. And there are security guards you see and ones you don’t see. Airports are always vigilant about the possibility of a terrorist attack or some other horrible violent event like a public shooting. If someone lives at the airport and is creeping around the terminal, surely, Maya would have been caught.

I’m also curious about the language Maya speaks. Maybe this is a good place to start. Some quick research on the Internet tells me that click languages are not common. Most of the people using click languages are South African tribes. Is Maya a member of one of these tribes? This seems unlikely but it’s still a possibility.

Then there is the conspiracy theory about lizard people. Specifically lizard people living in tunnels beneath Denver international Airport. Like most people, I’ve dismissed this as complete bullshit. Part of the conspiracy culture’s bonkers paranoia. Still, it would explain a few things.

I do a search on “Lizard People” and learn that conspiracy theorists believe that there are shape-shifting lizard people who rule an elite secrete society called the Illuminati. Disguised as humans, these lizard people occupy powerful positions all over the world and are secretly creating a New World Order. Again, it sounds like a fever dream and given Maya’s timidity, it doesn’t fit. 

But it would explain her reluctance to be seen in the light, her strange sibilant accent, and the deformity.

She certainly doesn’t behave like any human being I’ve ever met.

For fun, I do an image search on “lizard people” and I find hundreds of images: many are of huge, evil-looking creatures with weapons you only find in science fiction and comics; others are super cute, like the lizard version of My Little Pony or Pokemon. Finally there are a handful of super buxom lizard babes who want to mate with and kill unsuspecting human males. If I had to choose I’d say Maya is probably closest to a Pokemon lizard girl given her size and gentleness.

I decide I’m going to ask Maya to let me see her. I realize this is risky because she might panic and disappear but if we’re going to be friends (friends!) we need to trust each other. 

Copyright © Judy Murdoch

Lizard Girl – 5