This is an attempt for National Novel Writing Month. It is not perfect. It's probably not even especially good yet. Xen is not going back to revise anything until he is completely done. So, deal with it.
Jasmine and Chrys ate their microwaved leftovers in near silence until the former had enough of the latter's glaring.
"So, dear sister of mine, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Chrys asked with undisguised malice.
"Eating peas and carrots that are still cold on the inside?"
Chrys narrowed her eyes to slits. "Don't play dumb. I'm eighteen. I'm going to college in the fall. I sure as hell don't need big sis interrupting me hanging out with guys because she doesn't approve of other people having fun. I manage just fine without you the rest of the year."
"Some creeps came to the door, threatened me, and said they were coming for you." Jasmine pointed her fork for emphasis, peas clinging to the tines.
"You think I'm stupid? Jazz, that stuff is just for fun, so people with no lives can sit out in fields and have an excuse to finally look at the stars. No one sane believes it."
"Your boyfriend does."
Chrys's anger flamed so high that it was a wonder the areole of white-blonde hair around her head didn't singe. Though the fierceness grew, her voice became deeper and quieter by degrees. "He was humoring you, idiot. He doesn't think aliens or UFOs are real. And he is not my boyfriend! Other people can have friends of the opposite sex without it being romantic."
Jasmine fumed by shaping her mashed potatoes into a tower. "He seemed to believe in them last night."
"That was a... a blimp or weather balloon," Chrys argued.
"How would you know?"
Chrys's eyes widened for a moment. "Dylan said so."
"Were the plastic eating freaks weather balloons too?" Jasmine asked, feeling she was on the wrong end of this debate.
Chrys pause, finally taking her sisters anxiety in. "That for real happened? Pinky swear?" Like when they were little girls and Jasmine had to burst Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy shaped bubbles, Chrys extended her pinky for the greatest of sororal oaths.
Jasmine took Chrys's pinky in hers and said, "Most solemn pinky swear, some freaks came in and threatened me about UFOs and said they would come for you next."
"What should we do?" Chrys asked, finally showing some of the existential unease Jasmine had been stewing in.
"I think we ought to go to that UFO meeting Dylan mentioned, because it is way more likely that it is just one of them."
Jasmine hadn't learned enough about UFOs and those who obsess over them to have built strong prejudices for what she would see at this meeting. She'd met only one paranormal fetishist in her life prior to Dylan, a porty library aide at Annandale who used the supernatural to excuse his bad behavior and lack of social skills, even proferring it as the reason he dropped out of college last year. Granted, it wasn't a favorable example, but Jasmine also didn't think he was a generalizable one either.
She hoped it wasn't.
Jasmine never reached out to the unnatural for her answers. She'd had enough parochial schooling before middle school to have a residual attachment to the beautiful parts of believing, the certainty of knowing one is loved by something beyond her comprehension, but also a niggling fear of those who believed too much in anything insubstantial. Believers were the sort to wave pictures of dead fetuses at her when she went to her gynocologist or blow up tanks. Or come to house and pretend to be government agents.
Despite her practical ignorance, she knew enough to expect something clandestine.
"The Walker Valley Schoolhouse?" she asked Dylan.
"Yeah?"
"I went to Girl Scout meetings here," Jasmine said.
"Not on Wednesday nights, you didn't. They've been holding these here for decades."
Inside the Schoolhouse were twenty-five people, most in their forties or above. Jasmine was surprised at the preponderance of women present, having quietly expected that aliens and conspiracy theories would attract more men.
Jasmine scans the room for any men who might resemble those who visited her days ago, mentally superimposing ill-fitting suit. No matter how hard she tried, none came close to fitting and Jasmine began to walk out again until Dylan grabbed her arm to stop her.
"They aren't here," she protested.
"Yeah, but you are. You should sit down and listen. Maybe it will make you feel better about what we saw."
Dylan pulled out a metal chair from the back empty table, which Chrys slid into. Without reaction, he pulled out another chair and motioned for Jasmine to sit.
Jasmine pulled out the chair next to the one Dylan offered her. She didn't wish to too closely associate herself with a potential believer, particularly in a room that might well be filled with rabid believers.
Her goal here was purely observational and she don't wish to skunk that by seeming any more suspicious than I needed to transcribe. There was a sign when she entered, politely forbidding photography, recording devices, and quoting. Jasmine gets out a pen and a small notebook, laying these on the table. Within the minute, attendees tried to peek at this blank sheet.
As the attendees mill around, enjoying the gratis coffee and doughnuts, Jasmine tried to take it all in. The room itself was concertedly usual, three rows of faux wood tables surrounded by metal folding chairs. The organizers sat at a table perpendicular to the attendees. The wood paneled walls were interrupted by a green chalkboard and corkboard, on which is tacked notices for community events. An American flag rests listlessly against the far corner and someone's happily panting pit-bull wanders under tables. The lead organizer, a man with long gray hair tied into a ponytail, called the meeting to order half an hour late. He held up a white pen, saying, "This is a recording device! You cannot record any portion of these meetings. I have received reports that people intend to report our actions. Don't do it or we will ban you."
Jasmine slid the pen and book back into her bag and rose to leave, but Dylan held the bottom of her shirt and mouthed the words, "please stay." She clenched her jaw and then relented.
"Now, could we please stay on the subject of UFOs this time?"
One by one, the attendees introduced themselves, some very simply with a first name and town of origin, some by fabricating obviously false stories about battles with galactic intruders.
When Jasmines turn came, she opted only to give her name and say she is from Pine Bush. This had been sufficient for all prior introductions, but the man stopped Dylan from beginning. "And why are you here?"
Jasmine frowned. This wasn't fair. She thought herself the exact opposite of suspicious, but that might be why she stood out so. Or perhaps the man asking this was simply apprised by the men who had visited her days ago. "I was curious," she answered.
"About what?" asked the woman beside him, who Jasmine took to be his wife.
"UFOs?" she answered, but all the eyes on her wanted their pound of flesh and would not be satisfied with such diminutive replies. "I wanted to know why aliens would travel unfathomable distances to hang around Pine Bush." In this way, at least, Jasmine knew enough to have prejudices. She'd taken an astronomy class her freshman year and knew that it would take ten thousand years to reach the Oort Cloud, the technical edge of our solar system, using the fastest rockets currently in existence. Pluto is, in fact, barely one-fifty-thousandth of the way there. If it took eons to simply get to the edge of one's galactic yard, she just couldn't imagine the neighbors dropping by for anything so simple as a casual visit, especially since the metaphorical houses were uninhabitable well into the next state.
These practical concerns seemed beneath her audience. Collaboratively, the attendees rattle of that Pine Bush is rich in tungsten and is the inverse of the Cydonia region of Mars, though what either of these has to do with UFOs is not readily apparent to her.
Neither Dylan nor Chrys is interrogated for the brevity of their introductions, frustrating Jasmine further.
She watched the remaining seventeen people talk about themselves and their experiences and was startled by the degree of casualness with which they make incredible statements. The first of these was, "A lot of us time travel though astral projection. We're familiar with it," said precisely as one would tell a stranger that a lot of people like tomato in their salad. The group nodded and murmured their agreement. It isn't that the group was indiscriminately credulous as much as they have mutually agreed upon the rules of their game. A man mocked his friend for thinking a sound in the forest was Bigfoot when it is coyotes, however one was given that feeling that this is only because Bigfoot runs his schedule by the speaker. There is a consensus, also, that one cannot remote view the moon because the aliens will repel psychic visions. Later, a representative of a Mutual UFO Network stated that he believes that aliens, UFO, and ghosts are all "in it together". Again, the group stroked their beards thoughtfully and made sounds of agreement.
With this fodder, it was impossible for conspiracy theories not to spring up and the group seemed to tacitly accept the veracity of each. The most notable among these are that all abductions stopped as of 1997 because the aliens only had a fifty year contract with the United States government. No one brought up abduction experiences that have occurred after the deadline, or why crashing a spaceship should mean an agreement with the government, or abductions occurring outside US borders. Additionally, the United States government is controlling half the UFOs people see and those are the unsafe ones that will give you radiation burns and cancer.
Jasmine fidgeted in her seat, drawing glances that she tried to ignore. A man stood across the room from her, shaking slightly as he relates that, last decade, he awoke paralyzed, panicked, and seeing dark figures out of the corners of his eyes. He wanted to hear that he was not alone or crazy, which this group can certainly provide. However, Jasmine knew they cannot provide him the truth, that what he experienced has a natural explanation and is called a hypnopompic state. Jasmine suffered from this as a little girl, waking her parents with screams once she regained control of her body. They took her to her pediatrician, she was successfully diagnosed, and her night terrors ebbed within a year, never to return. It did not mean aliens are visiting her in the night, it simply means that she transitioned from sleep to wakefulness incompletely. Jasmine agsin felt the desire to scream as the group assured this man that aliens will stalk him wherever he goes. Further, that the man will pass his nighttime violators to his son. He ws advised to tell his child about this as soon as possible and believe any crazy thing his son says henceforth. A woman across the room introduced herself, and then passed because she has nothing new to share. Someone at the table pointed out her round bruise. Literally within seconds, the bruised woman proffers her arm at anyone who will look, saying she can't remember where it came from, and saying it is raised in the center and hard, obviously implying that it is an alien implant rather than the product of clumsiness. She returned to her seat with a grin on her face.
Finally, after hours of introductions, it finally came to a man who was large in every sense, with a rapidly receding gray hairline. Jasmine was relieved because this farce was nearly over and the meeting could begin in earnest.
"Now, you all know about the dangers of psychotronic demon weaponry," he began. As the attendees nodded, Jasmine slouched back into her chair. In the ten minutes between opening his mouth and finally running out of crazy-gas, he revealed that, because he is one of five civilians in contact with a retired government contractor called Source A, there is going to soon be a hoaxed alien attack. Of course, as the government controls half the UFOs, this is an easy feat. This vast and complicated maneuver will be done purely as an effort to get into our wallets. This man knew because, aside from being in contact with a shadowy government official, he was also in regular contact with being who are operating outside of our galaxy. It was his job to bring disclosure to the world, but not by actually telling us everything that is going on. That would get him in trouble, but the aliens are going to help him out. In his words, "The giant triangles, some belong to us and some belong to them. They will start appearing over major cities, hover, and then leave. Just to prove that they aren't going to destroy us. They have some reason why they wanted us alive. They can disable missiles. They don't want us to weaponize space." To prove that this process is already well underway, he added, "First, we'll go after the Russian bears, then manufacture terrorists, then we'll go after the aliens. Two out of three have already happened."
Finished bloviating, the man sat and Jasmine looked expectantly to the organizer who stood, thanked everyone for their introductions, and dismissed the meeting.
Jasmine's gaze turned instantlg to dagger, which she wielded at Dylan. "What the hell was that?!"
"A typical Pine Bush meeting," he answered with a yawn.
"That answered none of my questions," Jasmine growled.
Chrys sneered. "That's because you didn't ask any. They aren't mind readers."
"Really? Because I'm pretty sure that guy thinks he is," she spat, nodding toward the final speaker.
"Why didn't you ask your questions or tell them what happened?" Dylan asked.
"Because they're insane."
Dylan shook his head. "You came in here intent not to share. Why?"
Jasmine huffed. "These ore people who see spaceships and talk to aliens."
"And you've talked to men who ate plastic and stole hours from you. And we both saw that UFO. Are we insane too?"
"I don't know."
"Well, neither do they. Most of them believe what they are saying as much as you do," he said. "Most of them didn't come here intent to lie. Yeah, some are attention whores or unmedicated schizophrenics who come to be enabled, but I bet you ignored the people who are as rational as you are who are just going through something profoundly weird. Like you are."
Jasmine hated how right he was and hated more the smug look on her little sister's face.
Pine Bush is a serialized novel being written by Xen. It didn't happen to you, your best friend, or his cousin. Why? Because it didn't happen. All persons, living, dead, undead, or unliving are purely coincidental. Any real persons are used fictiously. What you are about to read is not a news broadcast. No portion of this book may be distributed without the expressed written consent of Xen. Feel free to rope your friends into reading it, though. Do it or I start shooting PuppyOrphans.
He is syndicated throughout the internet and will write for you if you pay him.
