Authors: M. Starks
Chapter 3
It draws back, the alien creature that was standing over me in my feverish sleep. I can see a clear film pull over its three eyes and retract. It blinked!
My hand shakes, the light skittering over the edges of the room I'd become so familiar with, unable to focus solely on the being in the bunker with me.
If it has come to finish me off, I am grateful. I'm not well. If this is all there is to this new world, dying is okey-dokey-pokey with me. Let's get it over with.
I rest my hand at my side, the circle of light focusing on my feet.
The creature slips closer. My heart thuds in my chest, the sound of horses stampeding in my ears. I want to speak, but my voice fails me. My throat is parched, my lips cracked. Even my breathing sounds raspy.
I am here.
I look up, meeting the alien's three eyes to my two. It spoke to me. In my head. It's voice sounds like my father's. Calm, peaceful. Loving.
This gives me chills. My teeth chatter. I don't look away.
Is this real?
I ask myself.
Yes.
Are you a hallucination brought on by my fever?
No.
Am I dying?
Yes.
Who are you?
I am.
That makes no sense.
If you say so.
What do you want?
I do not want.
Fine, you are one of those. Specifics are important. Let me ask this way: Why are you here, in this bunker, with me?
To see you.
Are you going to kill me?
No.
A brilliant light flashes in my mind. I close my eyes, instinct taking control, but the light is not external. I see myself, through the alien's eyes. I am lying on the bottom bunk, the skinniest I've ever seen myself, my face a pale oval framing my wide eyes. My hair is matted to my head, rats nests, as my mother liked to call the knots in my hair, shaping my hair anew. Beads of sweat formed on my brow, my teeth chattering. My hands clenched at my sides. I then see the filth I've been lying in, unable to rise to eat or relieve myself. I am embarrassed.
All of these stars in the sky, all of my dreams of somehow reaching them someday, moving beyond this life. A creature, one from beyond this world has come, entering my abode to speak to me. This is how I greet it.
Hey, there. How ya doin'? Sorry I can't shake your hand! Oh, don't mind the smell… or the mess…
Do not worry.
That voice again. Comforting, soothing. Scaring the hell out of me. I register that it uses my father's voice so that I will not be afraid, but this somehow makes it worse.
Would you wish that I use another voice?
Please.
Which would you prefer?
Your own.
This is not possible. I do not have a voice.
I think about this for a while. It may have been minutes or hours. I'm sort of in and out of consciousness. The alien is patient.
Then use my father's voice. You were right to choose it.
Thank you.
The alien thanked me?
You're welcome.
It is all that I can say in this absurd moment.
May I help you?
Help me?
Yes.
What do you mean?
The word pictures fill my mind again. This time I see myself being carried in it's alien arms. It picks me gently up from my bed, and carries me through my bunker. It takes me up the steps, where a ship awaits. It is the size of a helicopter. It is shaped like a sphere, it's colors and lights like that of a ball of fire. Light forms shifting and swirling. It is immensely beautiful. The most beautiful thing amidst the dead world around it.
The picture fades, the brilliance of it dying out like an ember.
I suddenly feel a great depression fall upon me as though the weight of the ocean were crushing me, holding me to the sandy bottom of its' depths.
Why do you feel sad?
I don't know.
Why did you kill so many of us? Destroy our world?
We did not kill as you say, or destroy, as you say.
I don't understand.
Anger surges through me once more, but it is torpid and dull.
I see the reflective film slide over its eyes again, as if it is blinking in surprise. It's face is expressionless. I stare at it. Three black, almond shaped eyes set in a bony face, a single line for a mouth. The skin is pebbled and rough looking. As my eyes linger over the face, the skin appears translucent a moment.
Are you a hologram?
No. I am here.
Why do you appear see-through?
See-through?
Like a ghost.
I can blend.
Like a chameleon.
Yes.
You still haven't answered my question.
No.
Why not?
I will show you later.
I nod. Of course. Later. There might not be a later.
There will be a later.
I feel irritated. My thoughts are no longer mine, but a shared collective.
Do not worry.
I sigh heavily. I am so human, so flimsy, powerless. I am dying. Dying while I have a conversation in my head with a real-live alien. An alien that says they did not destroy our planet or all those I have loved, leaving our very own dogs to pick through their bones.
May I help you?
Yes.
The answer comes immediate. I want a later. I want to see what happened. I want to go beyond this world, if that is where hope lies. I'm tired of acceptance and adaptability. I no longer feel sharpened by them. Hope is all that I have,
if
this alien helps me.
Just as I had seen in the coruscant pictures the alien showed, it picked me up as my father once did when I was very young and half asleep. It carried my decrepit, undependable human body through the remains of my bunker. The grey walls bleak and uncaring. Crumbling in places. For a fleeting moment I worried about leaving my few meager belongings behind.
Is there something you wish to bring?
A picture. In my pack.
I will return for it.
Thank you.
Together, me in the alien's arms, the alien walking on four legs, we climb out of the bunker and into the sunless cloud-covered scape.
A fire raged through here recently, the trees are burnt, charred black. It must have happened while I slept fitfully below.
Did my old neighborhood burn too?
Yes.
Well, at least now I don't have to worry about dogs picking through my parent's bones, or the lack of my having buried them.
The sphere-like ship shines lustrous, phosphorescent, polished, radiant. A stark contrast between the barren panorama of charred trees, dirt, and bleak lighting.
A panel slides open and we enter the warm darkness. Lights flicker on. No, the sphere becomes translucent and the lights I'd seen on the outside are now visible inside.
Amazing!
Yes.
It sets me down in a strange chair, made out of a material I could not know.
Remain here. I will return for your picture.
Okay.
It's not like I have the strength to wander off, nor the desire.
The alien is gone for a brief amount of time. It hands the picture to me with its long slender fingers, four of them, and sits in the other chair.
The panel slides closed, the gap in the swirling ebbing and flowing lights is gone. We rise rapidly above the ground. There is no sound, no turbulence like I once experienced in a helicopter. I don't feel much except for the force of gravity.
I can see everything. The clouds billowing out above, the red light emanating behind them. The ground below, stretching out long and wide. It all looks the same. Barren. A wasteland. Burned and flattened.
Will the earth ever be the same?
Someday.
Like a cut in the human body, the earth will mend.
That voice is my teacher's from Science class.
I nod. My eyes are growing heavy. My head is dizzy. My heart is beating erratically, an inconsistent staccato beat in my chest. I want to take it all in. Soak it up, as though I am absorbing the suns rays for the first time, and I am in desperate need.
Am I hallucinating all of this?
I wonder again.
No. This is real.
My father's voice again.
I try to enjoy it. How many lifetimes will see this? The end of the world… the journey to a new one?
There are other survivors.
How many?
Not many.
Are you helping them too?
Others like me, yes.
Good.
We pass through the clouds. I feel at peace, watching the earth below me fade into the swirl of water vapors and other poisonous particles. Now, I see a nebulosity below me, and a glittering cloud of stars above.
We rise even faster. My eyes close and open, heavy lids threatening to steal this moment.
We are in the vacuum of space. Moments ago that vacuum was death. Now it is hope. I feel excitement mingled with anxiety.
Do not worry.
That's easy for you to say. You've been here before.
If the alien could laugh, it might have.
What does the future hold for me?
That question is a loaded one. One that brings on the anxiety.
You will see.
I push my human emotions aside and hope that it is a good future. I don't know what to expect. I only have a human imagination to contend with… which means I can only imagine things based off of what I know.
As much as I long to remain awake and alert, enjoying the full freedom of leaving earth on an alien spacecraft, my affliction of failing health robs me of the twinkling tick of time in which I am transported from earth to my new home far away.
I dream of heaven. Pearly white gates and all. I see my mom smiling in the brilliance of heaven. Her gorgeous smile. The one that always made me smile in return, as though beaming up at the sun and moon and stars. My whole world. My father stands holding her hand. He is smiling, and there are tears in his eyes.