Writing for Fun
August 2015
An Encounter With Aliens - Reg Pound
Well that was an interesting evening. The speaker at the Men's Forum Club had given a talk on Unidentified Flying Objects and Space Travel. He certainly knew his stuff. And he was convincing.
I'd never really given much credence to the idea of UFO's or the likelihood of visitors from space. However, since the landing on the moon, space travel itself wasn't to be denied.
The enthusiasm, knowledge and research of the speaker this evening made me feel less certain of my previous cynicism and scepticism.
Bill and I continued a discussion about it when we went to the pub for our usual 'post Forum meeting' drink. Listening makes you thirsty!
At first we agreed that UFO's were just figments of imagination or optical illusions. As the evening wore on and more refreshment consumed we each felt that with so much apparent evidence perhaps there was something to alien life.
We contemplated what form a visitor from outer space may take.
Space travel existed so we had no dispute with that. But our view of space beings went from the sublime to the ridiculous. More ridiculous than sublime. We tried to outdo each other with our ideas. From multi-coloured blobs like jelly fish to creatures of unspecified material resembling poor attempts at origami.
Finally we agreed that we here on Earth were really all creatures from another galaxy deported to Earth as a punishment for wrong doing; the same as criminals used to be sent to Australia.
It was the only way, we decided, politicians, property developers, and lawyers could have come into existence in an otherwise perfect world.
I was on my way home now. I always walked on 'Forum evenings'. It was just a couple of miles and I would never drink and drive. Bill lived in the opposite direction so we had separated outside the pub.
As usual I planned to get home by nine o'clock and although it was not late there was nobody else about. The late night doggy walkers had yet to make an appearance. A mixture of street lighting and bright moonlight did, with the soporific and illusionary effect of the beer, create some weird shadows.
I arrived at the part of the Avenue where blocks of flats gave way to large detached houses, which was about halfway to my home.
Weary from walking and a little fuzzy from the drinking, I sat on a low wall of one of the houses. I was screened from the house by several tall shrubs and a conifer tree.
Just as I was about to recommence my walk, two furtive shapeless shapes appeared on the other side of the road. Shapeless shapes? . . . is that an oxymoron? 'More moron than oxy,' Bill would have said. Anyway, they arrived as if from nowhere. They seemed not unlike that imagined in our fantasy by Bill and me as to how an alien from space would appear, No real form that would help distinguish between man and woman; rather like coloured rubbish sacks, with a shroud like frame and hoodie looking face. They kept in the shadows as if not wanting to be seen. Well them and me too.
I shrank further back behind the shrubs, unsure of myself; the apparitions hadn't seen me. I now felt embarrassed about showing myself in case it seemed I was up to no good, a burglar, a flasher, a peeping Tom, or worse still using the bushes to relieve myself. At the moment, that last option wouldn't be far out.
What with the lecture, Bill's and my discussion, the drink and clouds moving across the moon giving shadows a life of their own, my imagination began to run away with me. Visitors from space! That's daft, but who or whatever they were they were alien to me. Perhaps the extra whisky to celebrate Bill's birthday was causing me to hallucinate.
And then the shadows approached one of the houses. The front door opened. A stream of light flooded out from the hallway accompanied by an unearthly sound, not of this world – similar to that one may hear on Radio One.
Perhaps a colony of beings had already established headquarters here in Thorpe.
A form at the door asked in an eerie muffled voice 'Who are you?'
The shadows replied in a like voice:
'I'm Win.'
I'm Ena.'
'Hallo Win.'
'Hallo En..a..nd what do you want?
They answered almost in unison, 'Owen said to come here for a party.'
'So, and what is the password?'
They answered together, 'Trick or treat'
'Right. Cool costume and make up. Come in.'
They melted in. The door closed, the house was in darkness and once again, the sounds contained within it.
I shook my head to clear it and without further hesitation continued my walk at a brisk pace anxious to get home.
Perhaps after the next Forum meeting I won't join Bill for a drink afterwards. According to the programme the speaker is giving a talk on a comparative study of Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula . . .