Frankentown (18 page)

With a graceful movement of its hands upwards, time around them sped up. Hector and Al were cleaned up by a crew and carried out unconscious. Then many pilots walked through to conduct routine testing of new prototypes. So much has happened that Frank hadn’t noticed that he was now pressed hard against the rough ceiling of the testing hall; each dried up paint on the popcorn ceiling pressed into his back like at a $2 acupuncture session.
His senses began to fail him when he began going in an out of varying states of consciousness, then his body dropped to the ground like a sock full of quarters.

There was very little that felt the same after that. Lying on the floor in an attempt to compose himself and get up, he realized what was happening with utter disbelief. The realization that not a hair on his body is out of place came on like a slow-cured buzz of a dark beer.

Hector and Al cowered, half awake, in the corner of the south end of the hall.

Frank could almost feel the gray radiating heat in its aura as the being rose and its contour took on a vibrant orange glow. Then he, himself rose and started glowing a bright yellow-green.
He could not control himself; without any effort at all, he started floating toward the strangest looking of the beings, speeding down the hallway.

It was as if he was latched on.

Logically
, Frank though,
This means that he is taking me with him somewhere.

Within minutes, they reached the opening that he’d try to cover with foam earlier, but never stopped. They flew right through without any effort and flew off into the night sky heading west. That night, dozens of freeway travelers would see two bright orbs heading west at high speed. Not many would report it.
The general consensus was that even if they existed, why would they come to us?
What could we offer such an advanced life form? Why would they, intergalactic transcendent beings, want to have anything to do with us?

Frank soon started recognizing California beneath him, mainly because of the incoming shoreline. The glowing being ahead of him went lower along with him attached, heading down.
Just as they were about 300 feet from the ground, Frank realized they are above Monterey.
This was were he saw a similar sight the first time, when he, Steve and Allen went squid tagging, courtesy of the Bay Research.
 

That was about all that he had time for to go through his head before the alien, along with him, splashed into the ocean and headed further down. The orb with Frank inside shot into the water, sending mountainous waves back to the shore.

The deeper they went, the gnarlier and older the flora grew.

All among them, mysterious silky silhouettes
 
flew all about them, turning up tufts of dust.

A great, dark and big shape flew at his leg to grasp it; a giant octopus, studded with textured rocks which were actually parts of its skin, stretching large, tentacles flowing all around.

A dark squelch of ink made it difficult to see anything but only about as far as the light tore its way through the cloud. Nowhere. Nothing.
He hung suspended in space, deep underwater.
 

A long slithery arm crept up its way to take hold of his left arm. Frank struggled as much as he could, and would he had not been protected in a radius of the orb he was in, he would have been long done for. The octopus grasped yet tighter.
From inside the bubble, Frank could see that he was just out of harm’s way.
The mystic power enveloped him from all sides, making him practically impervious to being crushed like yesterday’s baguette.

The alien must have then started going again; Frank was being pulled deeper and deeper into the depths. He felt pressure in his head and body, though not the pressure of the entire ocean crushing down on him. He was being protected. That must have been a good thing.
But what happens when the protective bubble disappears? Surely under the pressure his head would implode and he would have a very quick, and very painful death. Maybe, after a while it would just ‘pop’ and the contents would float to the shore for seagulls to devour.

Not a good combination, he thought.
By now, their surroundings were far too dark and his vision had begun to fail him.
The octopus must have let go a while back.

It was pitch black for a long time, while Frank felt the pressure on his head and body relieving. Slowly but surely. And it wasn’t clear if this was due to some sort of adaptation, if he was asleep or
worse, he was - dying ...
or dead already
.

Back on the base, Hector finally came to.
His head was pounding and he felt like life had just, yet again, handed him a wet towel across the face. Al regained what was left of his perpetual lack-of consciousness and got up like a baby deer would for a first time. They stood together, leaning against the wall, panting.

Neither of them spoke, nor did they have to; they both just went through a nearly fatal experience with an alien, so they had at the very least that in common.

As Hector crawled around on all fours, looking for his glasses, without which he was nearly as blind as a bat, Al peered over the side that opened into the caverns.

The dark depths of the man-made caves were indeed an amazing feat of construction. Almost beehive in nature.
 

At closer inspection, Al noticed strange flora attached, glowing mushrooms and weird coral-like plants clutched onto the spongy material.

It did not make him feel insignificant.
Al just wasn’t that kind of guy.
The most important person in his life has always been only himself. If there was such thing as significance, he would certainly be the king of it. Hector finally found his glasses.

At this exact moment, Frank was in depths of the Pacific Ocean,wrapped in a protective bubble, under the protection of the Gray Extraterrestrial.
 

A small sliver of light at the end of the tunnel began growing and Frank believed his vision to be almost restored. In fact, there had been a real light at the end of the tunnel.
Not a spiritual one, nor an optical illusion; through a crevice of the black waters, no natural light penetrated. Too deep to see jack-.

As the light turned from small to all around them, it took his eyes several minutes to adjust.
Like turning on a kitchen light at night, he could mostly squint.

Soon the white surroundings cooled to a dim glowy interior. A wall with dim glowing fauna started appearing in front of Frank, but he felt like he was going up. It was a monstrous cave.
An all-too-familiar feeling shocked him.
He had nothing to connect it to. No memory from his life.

Maybe a fragment of a memory from an old broken mind. Flashes.

They were slowing down again, and readying to land on an small brick island on a flat surface of dense fog, at least two miles in diameter. They were inside a behemoth tunnel, perfectly balanced both in structure and craft; deliberately and masterfully created.

In place and no longer inside the protective bubble, Frank felt like he could get up and gather himself. Enormous stone pillars on the walls far off were all defined with perfect precision in every way. He could almost see the far wall of the tunnel, but the walls were so enormous and far away that they filled the horizon.

All among him, floating lights transformed into lanky figures. Each being landed gracefully on little green brick islands on the misty ocean; like wild game at early hours.
Each being had a different aura, but they were all colder colors. Several beings landed on a patch of green not far away from him. Their skin seemed raw and exposed, unlike he’s seen before.
One of the beings moved closer to observe.

It was a surprise to see its eye, no longer black, vacant and anonymous, but a round deep blue iris that could look right through you to the other side and then some.

The gray looked at him with a look of undeniable sympathy but with the means of extermination.
The same way Frank felt toward mice in his home, uneasy, thousands of feet under.
Panic swept his mind, fleeting, desperately trying to grasp a single thought to hold on to.

A memory of Laura was the first and last thought to go through his head before reality drifted into a dream.

Chapter Twentyone

Homecoming

The autumn rain drummed Frank slowly awake.

It was a sunday and Frank did not have to work.
He would just take it easy.
 
He was wearing his bathrobe over his pajamas, which had kept him more than warm all through the night, but the house was never cold like some houses get sometimes. Not even now. It was miracle he could have slept wearing so much and not sweat like a pig. Over the side of the bed, there was an unfamiliar ceramic pot with a big green plant that Frank couldn’t recall the name of. In with the plant was a small card glued onto a wire, stuck in the pot.

It said
 

“Hope you’re feeling better.”

Signed Laura xoxo

It was then that Frank came to a realization that he cannot recall exactly what happened yesterday.
 
He didn’t know what time it was, nor did he care. What had happened?

Shame was not one of his commonly felt emotions, and though he spent many a fender-bender morning follow-ups convincing himself to get away from boozing, it always seemed to come back to him like a good dog, only, he was the one coming back to it.

Frank’s point of view drowned in pints of whiskey was always that of a victim. Life just keeps serving lemonade, so why not add a little whiskey to it?
It might make it go down easier
, he eternally poeticized.

When it came time to own up to his deeds, he was much like his father who’d never owned up to anything. All the havoc he once caused now, tied and with strings attached, came back to bite him right on the ass.

There was never really any question of it.
Frank stumbled into the kitchen, barely awake. Looking at the desk he was instantly reminded of a small alien corpse that lied there, limbs loosely jumbled around its warped torso.

Slowly things started coming back to him. The cancer. Hector. Then nothing. He sat down and turned on the kettle for some tea.
Surely it would help him unwind. Must’ve been a nightmare.

It was all fragments; Memories of time spent on the base, Chida, and with the repeated blows to the head it was no wonder his memory came in jumbled like different color m&ms.

Where did Laura come from?

The sharp whistle of the kettle signaled Frank to snap out of trying to recollect what was left of his memory and pour hot water into his favorite mug instead. Then, with an sizable groan and a jabbing pain shooting through his lower back,
he sat down in his living room and flipped the TV on. Weather reporter spoke of the impending rainy season that annually hit the Bay Area, starting late November. Then they announced the predictions for the next week’s increasing storms.
 

Then, in the middle of the weather girl’s sentence the sense of foreboding he couldn’t initially place finally clicked. The weather report suddenly changed to a news cameraman crew shooting actual light-discs, dancing in the sky.

 
It was late November, and the Oakland incident was only beginning. Yet since then, weeks have passed and now it would’ve almost been the middle of the Christmas season. But it wasn’t.

Flipping through dozens of channels failed to inform him of the actual date, and the free city paper yellowed in a pile in his garage, way overdue for recycling. His cellphone’s screen was cracked and the phone itself was off. This had left him with no choice but to go out on foot, in search of the actual date.

Frank simply threw on whatever he could find underneath a rainproof poncho he kept in the coat storage by the front door, and a broad rain hat.

The roads were wet and slippery and the air was heavy with the built-up fragrance of rain.
Everywhere he looked, great mirrors of water reflected the protruding buildings out of the fog.

The closest store near was a chain drugstore, all decorated just in time for Christmas, which was a temporary relief at best, given that the stores put up decorations just about when Halloween’s through. Outside, the local newspapers were lined up in neat little quarter-dollar powered boxes. He rummaged through his pocket to fish out a dirty old quarter, at which an on-looking bum salivated, only to be quickly disappointed.

As he inserted the quarter into the box, he felt as though he’d been there before.
Perhaps in a dream.

A déjà-vu.

As he pulled the handle , he realized that he was not in the habit of actually purchasing newspapers, let alone from quarter-dollar boxes.
 
It was as if the whole action, every part, was pre-calculated.

It was
 
November 14
^th
.

So it was true. Either he suffered from some kind of a brain lapse and dreamt vividly for nearly a month or he was somehow transported back in time.

He crawled slowly back up to his father’s house, continually attempting to exhaust the possibilities of what happened, may have happened and could yet happen.
If the aliens have the ability to move in time, why would they take him?
What possible significance was he?

At home he picked up the phone to call Allen, whom he hadn’t spoken to since he was nabbed by the military. Who else could help share his confusion with, if not his best friend?

The landline was disconnected for whatever reason and his cell phone looked like it was stepped on by someone heavy. He couldn’t call no matter what.
Coincidence, perhaps.

Evening fog walloped over the wet rooftops that lined the streamy streets of Berkeley hills.

Cold and alone, with no memory of what happened, Frank felt maddeningly perplexed.
Was it all a dream?

Or was he transported?

As he pondered, His thoughts became very visual in his head.

The tall beings exist somewhere between dimensions.
Sourcing a different vibration frequency that our own ‘reality’
∴
The grays use different vibration frequencies to become visible to the human eye
∴
So in a larger sense they are spirits.