They Are Here Now
The landscape of the Mojave Desert is beautiful, especially in the lonely blackness of midnight.
Winter’s unforgiving, harsh wind seized me by the hair as a lied in bed. Nature’s great outdoors became a part of my bedroom in an instant. I was sleeping, but not really. The lights were brighter than anything I had ever imagined and I wondered if looking straight at them would blind me forever.
I had heard the stories and read the newspaper articles and seen the movies. During early morning walks with my basset hound, Michael, lights would hover, twist, and sputter about in unusual patterns. Sometimes I would stop in my boots and give a slack-jawed stare, while Michael peed on the tan desert earth and rummaged for the bones of God’s dead little forgotten creatures.
Those lights — they could not be explained by anything rational or scientific. The brightness would vanish as swiftly as it would appear. I hoped the visitors would be kind to us. But I have learned in life that if you have to hope really hard for something, things probably are not going to turn out well for you.
When the blinding bright lights invaded my reality, I was relieved to see that the visitors had finally arrived. Sometimes the waiting and worrying is worse than the eventual suffering. The wind was so cold and harsh that all I could do was cuddle in my blanket and close my eyes tight.
Maybe they’ll take me home with them and make me their little Earthling mascot, and trot me out for intergalactic holidays and show me off as a trophy to make all their space buddies jealous.
The wind stopped and the lights dimmed. The face staring at me was recognizable. Large, oval, black eyes, with a tiny mouth. No nose. Except that this fellow had liquid skin. If you were to touch his head, your hand would go right through, yet the head and face somehow held together nice and sturdy.
The walls of my house disappeared. The visitors were standing at my bedside, examining me. I felt intense pressure around my skull, as if life itself was being manually squeezed from my head. Tremendous pulling and twisting at my legs made me scream in agony. As soon as I opened my mouth, the fellow with the black eyes seized my tongue and peeled off the top layer of skin. Then, all of my top teeth were extracted in a single, horrible yank.
More than anything, the visitors were enamored with my fingernails and toenails. All twenty nails were ripped from my body in an instant. I screamed like I had never screamed before, but they couldn’t hear me. No ears.
I lied on my bed, shivering, crying, and screaming, wrapped in my brown fleece comforter. The fellow with the black eyes and liquid skin gently placed a single hand with long bony fingers atop my head, like a priest absolving a believer of his sins at mass. The pain disappeared in an instant and I felt euphoric.
Blackness overtook the light, the wind stopped, and the air became warm again. The walls returned to their designated places.
I looked to the floor and saw that Michael was sprawled out — half on his doggie bed and half on the Persian rug, with his basset hound ears spread eagle. His mouth was open slightly, with his tongue sticking out. He was fine.
THE END
