A wee story

There was a silence in the room. I hadn’t recognized the sound that had awoken me; silence and nothingness. The bedside light didn’t work. My brain told me to assume it was a power cut. I lay on the bed for a few more minutes, but the silence was unnerving me and so I stood up and walked slowly to the window. I wasn’t sure why I was walking so slowly, let alone quietly. Something was not happening as it should, something that I had become accustomed to.

As I drew back the curtains, a shape in the sky blocked out much of the morning sunlight. It was huge. From the window I could not see any discernible shape. My intuition had proved me correct. From sleeping heart to a thundering heart, pounded, like Charlie Watts drums; the blood pumping through my body like the piston of a formula one racing car. The moisture in my mouth was sucked out into the cool air of the room. And all around me, the silence relented. All I could hear was myself. Every movement I made crunched against the still, cool air; loud enough to warrant detection.

My bladder needed emptying as did another part of my body, but my feet would not move. Motionless, I remained, for at least another 10 seconds. Then I crashed through the air to the toilet. Not for the first time, my bottom got the best of my brain.

Sitting, as I was, gave me time to reflect on how I had always wanted to be the first man on earth to meet aliens and have it authenticated. However, the reality was not what I had anticipated. There I was, emptying, what felt like my whole being into the toilet. It was time to be brave, and face my day of reckoning, my destiny. Well, that will have to be my new plan, once I was able to leave the bathroom.

I washed my hands and face; it was not the time to shower. Jeans, T-shirt and sneakers - a weak substitution for body armour – and my body was taking me to my front door. What would lie beyond, The Day of the Triffids, War of the Worlds, The Day the Earth Stood Still or Independence Day?

I opened the door, to be greeted with an unusual scent. Undetectable in my nasal memory or my synapsis. It was not pleasant. Tentatively, I walked through the garden to the gate. In fact, there was no scent I could smell that was remotely familiar. Not only that, nothing moved, and I mean nothing. No breeze. No sound. Nothing. My movements created crescendo after crescendo, as I broke through the still air. I looked at the large object in the sky. It resembled the badge Captain Kirk wore, in Star Trek. I was not sure of the colour as it seemed to be metallic, of sorts. No lights flashing, no movement, just a smooth captain Kirk badge that blocked out the sun.

The village was deserted. Slowly, I walked towards the shape, where the village green was, exposing myself; totally lost in space.

I waited for the silence to be shattered by high pitched sounds, alien sounds, any sound, anything but the sound of nothing. It was then, I had my first close encounter. Indeed, it was very close. Initially, I thought the light was playing tricks on me, as the only discernible object was like that of a large bubble, blown from soap through a circumference. It wasn’t spherical though, it was shapeless, and only visible when the light caught it, albeit almost completely transparent. I was overcome with intrigue.

And then.

Then there was contact. It was cold, like a beached jellyfish. There was no sound, just the strange scent. My mouth was making no sounds, no talking sounds, no recognizable sounds, not a sound came from my mouth. In the deafening silence, my T-shirt and jeans dropped to the ground, my sneakers stopped moving and slowly, ineluctably, I too became consumed by transparency and disappeared from the earth.