Welcome to the third and final part of this tale. If you missed part one and part two, go catch up. (None of this will make sense otherwise.) As always, this is a true story, although all names except my own
have been changed. Thanks for reading, and I hope you'll enjoy the story
of one of the most surreal nights of my life.
My heart leaps. I jump up and open the back door. Shivering and sucking air between their teeth, they cross the threshold of my house, now a part of this most peculiar of nights.
"We sneaked out of Lainey's," Paula whispers.
"You don't need to whisper, my mom's out of town for the weekend."
"Oh. Good." She walks straight to Jacob, seated on the end of our long, sectional couch, and nestles herself under his arm.
Karen, somehow, looks stunning despite simple sweats and a pony-tail. Brandon watches her come in. Erika, wearing an orange hoodie and black sweatpants, looks adorable with her hair in pigtails. She flashes a genuine smile at us as she comes in. She and Brandon sit on the far end of the couch together. I, in turn, receive a disappointingly platonic hug from Karen and we both sit near the middle of the couch, a few feet apart.
For a few minutes we sit in near silence, the quiet hum of the music videos barely filling the space left by our lacking conversation. The Foo Fighters' Everlong video comes on. Its opening guitar riff is subtly ominous and foreboding. It sounds like a potent mystery whispering a few of its secrets.
"Hey, turn this up, I love this song!" Brandon says. I turn it up.
"Hello. I've waited here for you. Everlong. Tonight, I throw myself into...Out of the red, out of her head she sang." The volume's up just in time to catch those first lines. The video depicts Dave Grohl falling asleep and sinking into some sort of bizarre, "Elmstreet" style dream. The eerily appropriate opening lines and phantasmagorical aesthetic of the song feel somehow expected and in tune with the very night I'm living, like the soundtrack to a surreal film where the lines between reality and fantasy blur.
This all ought to feel normal, sitting on the couch in my own living room, surrounded by my closest friends, and yet it feels oddly displaced, like some sort of alternate dimension, just a shade off color from the real thing, one notch down the spectrum. It's as eery in its similarity as it is in its difference. It may be the music, it may be the dancing blue lights of the television in my dark living room, but I say there's something in the air tonight. The cows felt it. It had them on edge. I feel it now too. The feeling isn't all together unpleasant, but it's uneasy.
The song ends with the band all revealing themselves to have been costumed players in the video's narrative, and jamming together in a small bedroom. As soon as it's over, Brandon is on his feet. Fuel's Shimmer comes on next.
"Bathroom," he says, and leaves the room. He turns on a light on his way out and the spell is, at least temporarily, abated. Less than a minute later Karen gets up and leaves the room as well. Feeling awkward between the cuddling couple on my left and the now lone Erika on my right, I scoot down for a talk. She smiles at me.
"Hi." She speaks softly, not in a forgetful attempt to keep from waking an empty house, but intentionally under the music, only to me.
"Hi." I say. "I'm glad you guys came up tonight."
"We couldn't let you guys walk all the way here and not at least see you."
"Does Lainey know you're gone?"
She smiles impishly. "So are you and Kassie still going out?"
"No, we broke up a couple weeks ago."
"Oh, that's right." She looks at the television. I turn my head too, looking, but not seeing. "Why did you guys break up?"
"Ehhhh, I don't know."
She smiles.
I'm overcome with a sudden foolish desire to tell her things. I know my best friend, her boyfriend, is one room away. I know it won't accomplish anything. But her brown eyes bore into me and my words are like oil, full to bursting and demanding release.
"You know, there actually is a reason Kassie and I broke up."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. Remember that day, near the end of last year, after, um, you and I broke up?"
"You mean, after you broke up with me, after one week?"
"Um, yeah, that's the one. Well, I still remember it. You were wearing pink shorts and jelly shoes."
"I still have those. I mean, of course I do, it was like five months ago."
"Yes, well, never get rid of them. Ever. Anyway, something about, I don't know, the way you looked at me, like, you weren't fazed at all..."
"Typical guy. You only want what you can't have." There's that impish smile again.
"No....well, yes. But this was different. It kind of drove me crazy. I haven't really stopped thinking about you and those...damn jellies since."
She looks back to the television. She's smiling again, a different, softer sort of smile. "Well, I'm sure-"
Whatever she's sure of, however, I never find out. She's cut short as Brandon comes noisily back into the room. Quickly I scoot over, and he sits down next to Erika.
"Oh, yes, I love this song too!" He says. It's Our Lady Peace's Clumsy. I turn off the television, throw the remote down to the other end of the couch, and walk out of the room. "Hey! I just said I like that song." Karen passes me on the way in. I go to my room and lie on my back, staring up at the ceiling.
When I come back a few minutes later, the girls are preparing to leave.
"So soon?" I ask, not looking anyone in the eye.
"Yeah, we've got to leave now or we may not make it," Brandon says. I look up at the wall clock and read 3:30.
Ten minutes later we're back in the dark cow field, once again the three lonely and haggard adventurers. Minutes ago, as the girls had gone their separate way, it felt like a long story was concluding. Now, back under the blue light of the stars and the rising moon, it feels like we're picking back up on an adventure, hopping back on a train we had abandoned one town back.
The highway that will take us north back to Brandon's street is visible far in the distance. The occasional passing car provides a modicum of perspective to what is only a fraction of the monumental task ahead. We walk in silence down the hill, and that eery, lucid feeling returns. I'm wondering internally at its possible cause when once again we're stopped by Jacob's voice.
"What is that?" For one wild moment I fear another cow attack. This time, however, he's pointing to the sky, far off toward the west. It takes me a moment, and then I see it too. "Is that a star?"
"No, that's way too bright to be a star," I say. "It looks like a really bright planet."
"It's moving," Brandon says.
"That shouldn't be moving that fast." The trepidation in Jacob's voice is utterly genuine. "It's moving toward us."
It happens quickly, a matter of seconds. The bright light, once so far as to be thought a particularly bright planet, is moving across the sky and into the foreground of our vision with otherworldly speed and complete silence. A few short seconds later, it's almost directly above us, flying low. Very low. Deathly silent. No engines, no propellers, no whirs. I hear the sound of the flashlight hitting the grass and Jacob begins a desperate and vain search for hiding, finally settling to hunch down in the weeds. It's an act of raw fear; there may be no place to hide, but he'll try.
Brandon and I stand transfixed. As the aircraft moves overhead it reveals its underside. It's the shape of a triangle with rounded points, one bright white light glaring down from each of the three points of the triangle. Slightly, it turns its underside up, as if to make sure we get a good look, makes a ninety degree turn, and in an instant is gone, speeding away north.
For a moment we stand in shocked silence, wondering if our eyes have cheated. But would they all have cheated the same way?
"I've...I've never seen anything like that," Jacob says at last.
The feeling returns to my legs and we start walking again, simply because we can think of nothing else to do. It feels like we should be calling David Duchovny or screaming in a mad fit of terror, but there's nothing for it but to keep moving.
"It was so quiet," says Brandon.
"Yes, and fast. I've never seen anything that can go from a speck to being just above our heads in a matter of seconds. I've never seen anything near that."
"Not without breaking the sound barrier or at least having deafening engines. We've seen something here. I'm convinced," says Jacob. "It felt so strange. Like, I had this urge to just be hidden, out of sight."
"I was too shocked to move," I say.
The thorough dissection of our experience and every possible explanation carries us far through the trip back, all the way up to Brandon's driveway. We never settle on anything rational, so we accept the irrational.
When we arrive, it doesn't feel like near three hours have passed since we left my house, which must surely be the case. We wonder if we've made it back in time to avoid annihilation as rumors of a coming sunrise are whispered all around the dark purple horizon. Quietly as ever, we sneak back, safely, in the front door and down into Brandon's basement bedroom.
I lie in bed, awake, the evening's multiple adventures and mysteries playing through my mind like a vivid strip of film, and I hear the sound of stirring upstairs. It seems we made it back with mere minutes to spare.
"Hey. Guys." It's Brandon, whispering. "We can seriously never tell my parents that we did this."
Our silence is our consent. I close my eyes and the next thing I know, it's nine o'clock and I'm being awakened by Brandon's mother. My mom's boyfriend is outside, waiting to give me a ride home.
"How was it?" He asks as I get in his van and close the door.
"It was fun."
"What did you guys do?"
"We sneaked out and walked all the way back to my house, almost got killed by cows on the way, hung out with girls, saw a UFO on the way home, and got back here just before sunrise."
He sits in silence for a moment. "Are you serious?"
"Completely."
The End
By Jonny Wall
1 comment:
What a thoroughly peculiar evening.
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