Alien Abduction
Tis but a dream
The night condensed into a storming wind of projectile rain. The roof pelted with what sounded like beads thrown from a thousand Mardi Gras floats. Cajun folk stories of Boudreaux and Thibodeaux stumbling upon a crashed alien spacecraft—turning Martians into gumbo—were like counting sheep. As the night fell into a subtle coma, the mind plummeted into a vision of lime green.
The dream, in the third person.
Past dreams had always unfolded before him—fleeting scenes cast upon the firing synapses of a mind burdened by a meal eaten too late. They were observed, endured, and forgotten with the morning.
But this dream was different.
He watched himself from above and behind, as though suspended behind an invisible camera. The world bore no sky, no earth, only an impossible shade of green that somehow possessed depth. Distance existed where it should not.
Far beyond his own silhouette, blurred beneath a trembling, almost gelatinous haze, floated his home. A pair of soot-stained gas lanterns stood sentinel beneath wrought-iron brackets. The house hung alone in the void, detached from any earth, horizon, or sky. As though someone had deselected the checkbox for the laws of the universe.
He stepped onto nothing.
Yet, he stood on solid ground.
One foot followed the other, heel to toe, as he walked toward the front door. The path revealed itself only as it was needed, extending silently ahead and disappearing behind every step.
As he reached for the doorknob, it slipped through his hand.
Quite literally.
His fingers passed effortlessly through what appeared to be solid wood, as though the atoms themselves had forgotten how to collide. He pulled his hand back in disbelief before reaching for the door once more.
The result was the same.
Then, without crossing the threshold, he found himself inside.
He awoke.
Not from the dream, but within it.
The darkness inside the void was different. Not the pitch black of an unlit sugar cane field, but a muted veil of navy blue, as though the world had been draped beneath the grain of an aging film reel. Faint hints of purple and maroon contrast every shadow, shimmering with the faintest hair-raising static.
It was there, within the familiarity of his own home, that he noticed the hummingbird. Its metallic blue-green wings dissolved into a blur as it hovered effortlessly through the room. He sat upright in bed and reached toward it.
Before his fingers could close, the bird buffetted beyond his grasp. Not via fear, nor in haste, but as though an invisible current surrounded his body, gently carrying it away like a leaf gliding across still water the closer he went.
He reached again. Yet, it yielded to the same unseen force. Forever within proximity, never within grasp. The hummingbird then fluttered in a strange pattern then vanished into the darkness.
And he awoke.
The storm remained.
Rain was still battering the roof. The house was silent, the electricity extinguished somewhere within the walls. Silence, instead of air conditioning. For a moment he lay motionless, uncertain whether he had truly awakened.
Through his half-opened eyes, he reached for the loaded rifle beside his bed.
Crossing the darkened house, he stepped outside into the rain and made his way to the electrical panel. Water streamed from the eaves as he reset the breaker. A sharp click sounded from the switch. The lights inside the house flickered back to life.
He turned toward the front door. Something compelled him to stop. He looked upward through the rain.
Behind the low ceiling of storm clouds, a vast circle of brilliant lights revolved in absolute silence. Hundreds of white points traced it’s circumference with impossible precision, spinning slowly beyond the clouds as though something incomprehensibly large hovered just out of sight. He could neither hear it, nor comprehend it.
He simply stared. His jaw on the floor.
Then, he awoke.
Warm sunlight spilled across the room. The rain was gone.
But the dream? The dream remained.