There was a humming noise that I couldn’t place. It grew louder before the curtains were blasted with a flash of brilliant light that projected every thread and stitch on the far wall where the television was playing out the third episode of a Scandinavian crime drama.
The humming stopped.
I settled back, concentrating hard to follow the plot as I had missed the first two episodes, but a new noise, like a slow release of steam, disturbed me again. It was coming from the garden, so I got up, put on my shoes and Liverpool jersey and went outside.
In the middle of my lawn was a flying saucer.
The disc-shaped craft was silver-white in colour with flashing lights around the circumference. A row of black holes in a central turret could have been portholes and it stood on four stick legs, with a central gangway extended from the centre, hissing vapour from the opening. It looked, like, well, like the spaceship in every other 1950’s science fiction film I had seen. Minus the string.
I was quite surprised.
A small human-like creature emerged. It was smaller than me, I’m not huge, it was about 4 feet tall, with large black eyes and thin limbs. And green. Like every other alien I had ever seen on the big screen.
I wasn’t sure what to do.
I took my ‘phone out of my pocket to take a picture, for evidence, seeing aliens in your back garden is not something that happens every day, and I wasn’t sure I would be believed. I asked the alien if I could turn the garden spotlight on for a better picture. I am not sure he understood, I asked in English, I also asked in French, on the off chance, but I didn’t know what the French for spotlight was, so I went with “spotlight”, there was a good chance it was the same. Either way he didn’t seem to mind.
I raised the ‘phone to take a picture.
As I framed him in the LED display, I thought about the headlines. Aliens found in man’s back garden. No. Lunatic claims he saw aliens. The digitial image is not a collection of silver hallide crystals, there would be no negative to wave at the police when they were holding me down in the back of their van. I could here the cries of “Photoshop!” as I trained my unsteady hand.
Who would believe me?
I looked over the fence, but my neighbour was on holiday, and that was when I made my decision. With only words and an easily doctored image my account of the Alien’s arrival would be ignored. My own life would deteriorate into a lonely path of being shunned, my ramblings falling on ears already deafened by the incredible day to day. The situatuon was hurt still further by his pathetic cliché spaceship and stereotype appearance. Where was his imagination?
It is shame I said to him, that he so closely matched the standard visitor of the science fiction writers of yesterday, who had imprinted this image on the social frame. With nothing unique to make him more credible, or a space vessel with at least a shred of novelty, my picture would end up at the bottom of the inbox of a local news reporter, weary of loch ness monsters and escaped lion sitings.
I lowered the mobile, and thanked him for dropping by.
He said. “Take me to your Leader.” Which didn’t help.