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.
When Jasmine turned, she saw that the ponytailed organizer closing in upon her. The crowd of UFO "enthusiasts" chittering their psychoses parted for their leader, desperate to defer to authority they recognized. Jasmine unsubtly pulled her companions toward the exit, but they saw what was coming and did not budge. Jasmine imagined she saw some malice in Chrys's intransigence, but granted this might only be because--even at a distance--this man's further encroachment filled Jasmine with such anxiety that it was easier to give into the purity of righteous anger.
"Hello, Jasmine!" he said when he was within shouting distance, stopping amongst his followers. "Dylan tells me that you were visited!"
All around her, the people began to look askance, as though she owned them a campfire story they could reappropriate and claim happened to them instead.
She understood the man's game. Unless she wanted him to continue to shout what Dylan had divulged, she had to bridge the gap between them. Bastard.
She walked toward her, but not without dragging her entourage along with her. If she had to suffer, she would not be doing it alone. "What?" she said.
"No, it's okay. I can keep a secret," he shouted back even louder and with no sense of irony. Then, recalibrating his voice to her current proximity, he asked if the three of them would like to come into the kitchen with him to help him clean up from the meeting and talk about what had happened. Jasmine would not, but saw that she was outvoted.
Jasmine sat on the counter top, picking at a doughnut and explaining to this man, Charles, what had happened in the last few days. Against her preferences, she told the unabridged version for fear that her sister or Dylan would butt in and expand upon something that might encourage Charles unduly. She'd rather she have control over how insane this all sounded. "And," she finished as Dylan nudged her off the counter so he could wipe it off, "I think most of the people in that meeting were mental ill attention seekers and you shouldn't be encouraging outright lies."
In succession, Chrys's eyes flared at her tactless older sister than shot to Dylan in apology for her parents having ever birthed Jasmine. Dylan looked between Charles, Jasmine, and Chrys with no more expression than were he watching this potential conflict on television and was distantly curious to see how it would turn out. It was Charles who finally reacted, by laughing from beneath his gray beard. "And you aren't like them?"
Jasmine gaped. "No! I don't want attention at all. I don't think I'm being harassed by little green stalkers. I don't know what is really going on, but I'd rather try to eliminate all natural, rational excuses before blaming intergalactic monkeys from the fourth dimension who are somehow interested in a really boring town."
"Gray," Charles said after a moment, as though he heard nothing more of what she has said.
"What?" asked Jasmine, baffled.
"They aren't green, the aliens are gray. Some in the group think the Grays don't have a digestive system, so they have to soak nutrients through their skin. The horrible thing is that they think human blood is their food choice. When they need nourishment their skin turns from a gray color to a pasty white color. Of course, that's just utter horse apples. The Grays are the peaceful aliens. Not like the Reptilians..." Charles stroked his chin as though trying to remember something. "I don't think you are crazy, if that helps any. I try not to judge unless asked, but you seem to be asking. I know some of the people who come just need someone to care about them and this is the only way they are able to get someone to listen. I give them a few hours a month and doughnuts, then I send them back to their families confident that they are not alone in the world. Or universe, actually."
Jasmine wasn't sure she could process the reassurance after the image of blood-sucking space creatures. Of course that was ridiculous. Humans evolved to suit our environment, so our blood would almost definitely contain some element that would be highly toxic to a creature that evolved on a different world. In fact, aliens should on no accounts resemble humans, and these ones do. Bilaterally symmetrical, bipedal, humanoids with two eyes and one nose. There are animals that evolved at our sides who look less like us than supposed aliens do. Were aliens to find us, the chances are fairly good that they would appear in a form beyond our reckoning. It is only for the convenience of the costume department of Star Trek that people choose to believe in humanoid aliens.
"So, since I'm not crazy, who visited me and, most importantly, are they going to be coming back?" Jasmine asked. “And if they are going to come back, what can I do about it?”
Charles stopped washing dishes to say, "I think Dylan is spot on. They sound like perfect Men in Black. As long as you don't become a hardcore Ufologist or begin publishing your evidence, I don't see why they should bother with you again," Charles said. “They are really… spotty. They’ll visit someone who isn’t at all sure what they saw and who is inclined to just forget about the whole thing. They’ll tell that person never to mention it to anyone, when that is really the last things they would ever want to do. But they will leave alone the people in this group, who are not shy about sharing their evidence and who have regular sightings. Ain’t nor rhyme nor reason.” At this, again, he let out a staccato laugh.
"Yeah, I really can't see Jazzy hanging out in fields," Chrys said.
"And I don't have any 'evidence' to publish," said Jasmine. "I kind of hate to ask, but they don't sound like anyone in your group playing dress up, right?"
Charles chuckled. "Well, I know for darned sure no one I know is seven feet tall. Plus," he said, rubbing his own paunch, "I think we all enjoy the veggie burger special at the Cup and Saucer too much to fit into the suits you describe.” He thought for a moment before adding. “You shouldn't eat red meat, the Grays said so."
Jasmine rode home, laying across the backseat of Dylan's car and trying to sort through the intervening hour. Somehow, this meeting seemed as disturbing as her visit from the Men in Black, if in a much less direct fashion. At least the MIB represented something physical, something weird but absolutely outside herself and her control. The people at the meeting seemed to represent what could happen if she was anything less than vigilant, if she ever allowed this experience to be something that defined her. Even casual belief, acknowledgement that the easy answers weren’t always the comfortable ones, seemed too dangerous to entertain for a moment.
Jasmine was faintly flattered to note that Dylan had made some effort to clean out the fast food wrappers, magazines, and aluminum cans from the backseat—reducing it to seats upholstered in duct tape—to better accommodate her, but was still annoyed that he had taken the liberty of telling a stranger what she had been going through. If she had wanted to out herself to these unstable strangers, she damned well would have. It didn’t feel like a violation of her privacy, however, because that would involve acknowledging that what he shared against her will had any personal value to her.
Apropos nothing more that the silence that could be heard over the peripheral static of Dylan’s car stereo, Chrys said, "You know, you were a real jerk to Charles. He was just trying to be helpful. You could be nice to people occasionally."
"Chrys, he is a nutbar enabling the truly insane so he can feel a sense of power over them. It makes me deeply uncomfortable to know that these people are wandering around Pine Bush, looking for aliens to justify the emptiness inside them and let them feel special without any real effort," Jasmine said, not taking her eyes off the stars overhead as her looked through the back window.
"Is she always so cynical?" Dylan asked.
"Pretty much," Chrys replied.
Jasmine gasped. "Pull over!"
Chrys began to question this abrupt demand--did Jasmine need to vomit out of a sense of contrariness?--but Dylan was already on the shoulder, having learned from much experience (and tens of dollars of cleaning products to obviate the smell) that this particular request was to be instantly abided.
Jasmine shouted, "Look at that!" and burst out of the car and into a field of tall grass that nearly swallowed her up. Dylan pulled his key out of his ignition and followed wordlessly. The car continued sputtering to sleep for a moment more, until Chrys pursued Dylan into the grass so as not to be left alone. Jasmine, she knew, was not the sort to do things this erratic unless she had good reason.
Initially, it was impossible to see what Jasmine was rushing after. Then it was impossible not to see. One hundred feet above them hovered a triangular blot of starless sky at least as their high school.
"You see it?" Jasmine asked. “You do? Do you have your camera, Chrys?”
The other two could only nod that they saw it, silent as the object. Chrys felt in her bag for the camera, but stopped, literally stunned by the sight overhead. Their minds recoiled at what they were watching. The object began to sway like a pendulum, its lights growing and multiplying with each horizontal circuit. Then, all at once, it had vanished as if it had never been. The three were mute in its absence, agreeing to return to the car through gestures and a sudden discomfort with their presence in a stranger’s field.
As they approached the rusting car, they saw lights dancing over the exterior. Figures they couldn't identify, moving with purpose and curiosity, paced around it. Chrys gasped and one of the figures turned toward them and shone a light from its hands.
The three were frozen in fear as the figures waddled toward them.
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.
