Howard Philkins had one really good thing that happened to him in his life, and it was so good that he almost didn’t believe it was happening. He wasn’t used to good things happening to him, and his natural impulse was to distrust the amazing thing when it occurred.

It happened when he was retired from his job as a toll collector on the New Jersey turnpike. Actually, he was out on permanent disability, because his eyes went bad. After 40 years of collecting tolls, he could no longer make change for people, because he developed glaucoma and was going steadily blind.

So, he lived in his little house near Neptune, New Jersey, three blocks from the beach that he never went to anymore because he couldn’t see the girls in their bikinis. Howard had always had a weakness for girls in bikinis, and it galled him that he couldn’t see them anymore.

Howard’s main pleasure in sex was visual -- he had never had a wife or even a girlfriend, because he didn’t want to stop looking at pretty girls, and when you were in an exclusive relationship with a woman they expected you to stop doing that.

Howard couldn’t bring himself to stop looking at females, so he remained celibate his whole life.

As his vision went, though, he held on to the last remnant of his lifelong passion -- Marilyn Monroe, in “Some Like It Hot”. He thought Marilyn Monroe was nothing less than a goddess, and “Some Like It Hot” was the peak of her divinity. She had gained just enough weight at that point of her life that she looked plush and rounded, her curves delicious, and her wiggle, in the famous scene at the train station, pure beauty.

Howard spent his days in his darkened living room replaying his DVD of “Some Like It Hot” over and over, peering at the screen to try to get his failing eyes to register Marilyn’s beauty one more time before the darkness came.

It was a miserable existence, and he often cried himself to sleep in his easy chair at night while the movie played, as the bitterness of his situation made itself fully known to him.

It was in that setting that the amazing thing happened: Marilyn showed up in his house.

Actually, it wasn’t really Marilyn Monroe -- it was a large green slimy creature named Kannzik, a visitor from a faraway planet, a thing that had crashed its spaceship on the nearby beach one night and wandered through the streets looking for a place to hide from the police sirens that had begun to shriek almost immediately after the crash. Propelling itself through the darkened streets, Kannzik had seen the flickering blue light from Howard’s living room and decided that this might be a safe place to hide out. The creature slithered through an open window and then found itself in front of Howard’s TV, where it watched “Some Like It Hot” from beginning to end, paying minute attention to every nanosecond of the film, absorbing all the knowledge it could from the story while Howard snored in his chair nearby.

Which is why, the next morning, Howard awoke to the sound of Marilyn Monroe’s breathy voice.

“How are you this morning, honey?” the voice cooed.

Howard opened his eyes to see the blurred outline of a curvy blonde woman in a tight white dress bending over him.

“Are you feeling good?” the voice cooed.

Howard knew he must be dreaming, because this couldn’t be Marilyn Monroe in front of him, right in the middle of his living room.