#4

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. The void simply swallows the noise while death swiftly follows. Though it is curious to imagine what sort of creature would be able to scream in that vast emptiness. The answer to that question is quite simple; those that can breathe can scream. Perhaps this next part is best put as a riddle: what swallows all light and noise?

What a terrible first paragraph. What am I supposed to do with that? How could Nobody hear a scream in the vacuum of space? Outer space is the lack of sound, and sound can only occur where there are ears to hear it.

Chris sat at the desk staring at that paragraph of words sloppily typed out on the word document open on his computer. He couldn't believe that he had written it and that his hands didn't stop him from writing something so atrociously dull. He looked longingly out the window and imagined his saggy old self breaking through the glass and hurtling towards the concrete below.

What stopped him wasn't some image of his loving family; no, it was that he believed cracking his jaw on his driveway would be bad optics for public relations. Beneath the studio above the garage that Chris designated as "his office ." The writer looked around and studied this office of his, feeling nothing but contempt for everything he saw. He stood up from his chair and walked over to the window he was just contemplating throwing himself out of. He stared at the spot on the concrete where his body would lie, imagining his caved-in face and teeth littered around his head. For a moment, he could almost hear the moans of agony that this other self would have felt in such an ineffectual suicide attempt. A sick feeling of joy bubbled up in his stomach as he imagined this alternate reality.

Then something else caught his eye. A great bird flew out from the tree line behind his home and landed on the streetlight just before his house. It was a snow-white barn owl, and it was staring directly at the writer. A deep-seated feeling of discomfort overtook him as he stared into the owl's black pits for eyes. The hanging streetlamp flickered on and off with the bird perched on top of it.

Then there came the sound of a door creaking behind him. Chris pivoted quickly and saw the door to his office slowly swinging open. The owl was inside his office. It was settled on the mantle of the old candle in the corner of his room. The writer whipped around to see if the raptor was still on the street lamp. It wasn't. Though he knew nothing of birds of prey, he was sure this was the same owl. How did it come into his home and office above the garage so quickly? The writer wondered. The raptor took off from the mantle, spreading its wings and heading right towards Chris. The man ducked and covered his head in terror.

"Chris?" The writer heard his wife's voice. He looked up and saw her standing in the doorway, looking at him with a confusing disappointment. "I thought you would wait to start drinking until after Ricky's game, and you know how much it means to him that you make it there today."

The writer immediately started defending himself. "I swear, Barb, I haven't had a drop of it. The wildest thing just happened. There was an owl that somehow made it into our home! It was perched just right there," He turned about and pointed out the window at the street lamp. "And then I turned around, and I swear to God, it was in my office. Sitting on that old candle thing right next to you. Then it started flying towards me, and I ducked, and now you are in here."

"Then where did it go?"

"I don't know. It must have flown out of the window."

"But the window is closed, Chris."

"Well then, I am not quite sure what happened, but believe me, there was a white owl in here!"

Barbara was not convinced. She rolled her eyes and told her husband that he had ten minutes to get himself ready before they needed to leave to get to their oldest son's baseball game. Then she spun around and left his office. Chris looked around for a moment as if he would find the owl somehow hiding where his wife wasn't able to see. The writer then went to his desk, where his laptop was open. That first, terrible sentence hovered atop an empty document haunting him. 'Am I losing my touch?' Chris wondered, scanning the room for signs of the raptor. 'Am I losing my mind?'

The writer reached down and opened the bottom drawer, where a half-empty bottle of bourbon and dirty glass was stashed. Chris slumped down in his swivel chair and poured himself a bourbon. He drank it fast and then shuffled across the room and into the bathroom beside the door to the stairs. He brushed his teeth and washed his face. Then he walked silently down the steps to the garage, where he found his wife waiting for him in their Subaru. She looked at him impatiently while Chris slumped over in the passenger seat. Barbara exhaled loudly, and her husband fixated on analyzing that breath for most of the car ride over to Ricky's game.

It was quiet for most of the car ride. The bourbon warmed Chris' belly, and he soon forgot about the owl, feeling lighter. He tried to make casual conversation with his wife as they exited the highway where Ricky's school was. Their chat felt easy until Barbara asked Chris about his writing. He told his wife that it was "going good," and they were quiet until they pulled into the school. The writer put the palm of his hand against his thigh, where he could feel the small flask sitting in the pocket of his blue jeans.

Barbara parked the Subaru next to the gymnasium, and they joined the other parents gathering in the parking lot. There was a handful of them that Chris recognized. All people that Barbara had introduced him to several times. He couldn't remember a single one of their names for his life. Though they all knew him. One of the other fathers would always say, who could forget the "famous writer" as they walked up. It was always clear that he was miserable, and Chris revealed recognizing this. They all talked for a few minutes. Barbara kept staring daggers at Chris. He must have not been impressing her with his interpersonal skills. This delighted him.

The group of parents slowly migrated over to the baseball field. There were bunches of students and parents sitting and waiting for the game to start. There was a small concession stand at the entrance of the ballpark. Before sitting in the stands, Barbara stood in line to grab some snacks while Chris went to the bathroom and downed half of his flask.

The couple made their way up to an empty row. The game was just about to begin. Chris thought that he had been smooth, but Barbara had noticed the flask in his pocket when he walked out into the garage, and she could definitely smell it on his breath as she followed him to their seats. They sat down, and the game started. Ricky played third base. He made eye contact with his parents and waved. Who waves at their parents in a high school game? How did I raise such a dork? Chris asked himself.

The batter hit a fly ball to center field. The writer's eyes followed the ball to center field, and that's when he saw it again. The snowy white owl was perched on the scoreboard, staring directly at him with those big, empty eyes. There was something wrong with that owl. There were brief seconds where Chris thought he saw something else. Perched on top of the scoreboard. As if it was never actually an owl that was making awkward eye contact with him. As if it was something far more sinister and terrible, his mind was incapable of comprehending it, so what he saw was an owl. These thoughts lingered on the periphery of the writer's awareness. When he realized this, the writer's heart nearly stopped, and he had trouble catching his breath. "Honey, do you see that owl?" He asked his wife.

"What owl?"

"The one on top of the scoreboard."

"There's nothing on top of the scoreboard."

Chris glanced over at his wife and then pointed to the scoreboard, but the owl wasn't there when he looked at it again. As time passed, he tried to focus on the game, but the thought of the raptor was still there, lurking in the back of his mind. The writer excused himself to the bathroom to finish off his flask. Chris saw the bird again as he was walking up the stands to his seat, and it was sitting on the fence behind the upmost bleachers. It took off from the wall and swooped down, flying directly towards the writer. Chris ducked and shrieked in terror.

There was a brief moment of awkward silence. Everybody was staring at Chris. He uncovered his face and stood up. He saw a couple people in the crowd whispering. He turned around to try and make as sly of an exit as was possible, but when he turned around, he noticed that his son was staring at him from third base. Ricky looked disappointed.

The writer walked with shame to the parking lot. He pulled out his phone and ordered an Uber, who was there in a few minutes. The driver took him home. He texted his wife that he left because he wasn't feeling good. When Chris got home, he immediately went to his office and poured another tall glass of bourbon. It was soon empty, and Chris sat down in his swivel chair and closed his eyes, trying to relax. He was asleep in minutes.

. . . . .

Chris woke up feeling something being pushed up his rear end. He was in a dark room, levitating. Though he had never felt the weightlessness before, his mind had no doubt that this was it. He was held in suspension by a soft blue light. He heard little footsteps shuffling around him, but since he could not move his head, the writer could not look down and see his captors.

"Excuse me, I think one of you may have misplaced your finger," Chris said sarcastically. He determined that he had been kidnapped by aliens within moments of waking onboard this vessel. The blue beam of light and probe up his ass gave it away. "Are you guys really going to be this cliche? Are you little green men with big heads and black eyes?" He felt so confident until he said those last two words. Then he remembered the baseball game. First came the shame of everybody staring at him, of the petrified look on his wife's face. Then, there was a flash of the raptor flying overhead. Then, he saw the impression of the owl sitting on the street lamp. Why that image disturbed him so, he was still incapable of saying, but the sheer horror of that moment, the way the owl was looking at him, looking through him.

Then something shocked him from down there. It sent a shock wave up his spine. He screamed. "Your humor would be of better use in your writing than in conversation with us." The voice shook his whole body. An alien form flew up to meet him at eye level.

"You look like a demon. What is this, a dream? This is the plot of an Asimov book. Though you don't seem as benevolent as your fictional counterpart." Chris spat back at the alien. It must have been three or four feet tall, with a five-foot wingspan. His face looked like the face of aliens depicted in the '60s when all that Area 51 was coming out. He had two little horns protruding from the top of his bald head. He looked like he was grey, or perhaps a dark green. The hazy, blue light seemed to obscure his vision. Chris tried to study everything about the creature before him. This experience felt so real that even if it was a dream, he wanted to remember all of it. He had skinny limbs and long talons on the bottom of his hands and feet. Chris tried to keep his composure, but the creature's vision horrified him. He felt some primal terror he couldn't comprehend. The writer recognized the intensity of its intelligence by maintaining eye contact. Every moment he prolonged it, the burden of being seen by the thing became unbearable.

"Oh, but we are. The pain of my voice is simply in hearing it, which may be quite uncomfortable for you. That is why we placed that implant inside of you."

"Is that what is giving me the prostate exam?"

"We thought it might be useful to give you a small glimpse behind the curtain. We desire to influence you to have such an audience."

"In what way? Do you want me to become one of those hippies that live out of a van and hand out flyers about UFOs on a street corner?"

"Hardly. We do not believe that you will handle this experience like that. And we calculated that showing you our face will result in a certain outcome that will further our long-term agenda on earth. Now, you understand that we planted a failsafe for this encounter. And if you start running your mouth about what you see here, it will be seen as a total mental break due to your Alcohol Dependence. Your family will place you in a rehabilitation facility, and you will never write another bestselling book again. But there is another path in front of you. You can decide that this is all a figment of your imagination. A nightmare, you may say. It could be a turning point for you. To give up some of the bad habits, you have picked up. You can regain your writing skills by working hard and taking care of yourself. And that will eventually lead you down the path of influencing the culture in a way that we desire."

"Well, I gotta be honest with you. This whole thing has made me feel exceptional, and I must be a significant guy if it attracted your attention."

"Not really; this same procedure is being done on several hundred other potential candidates tonight. Neither you nor I are significant. We simply have given ourselves the duty of shepherding younger civilizations towards the Goal."

"What's the Goal?"

"That's not important to you. The important choice will be in front of you shortly, and I suggest you choose wisely. Though humans have never appeared dependable when they make decisions." Then everything faded to black.

. . . .

Chris woke up sitting at his desk. It was in the middle of the night. He looked out the window and saw that Barbara's car was back. He checked his phone, and she hadn't texted him. He sat back down at his desk. Noticing the bit of bourbon left beside his laptop, he poured it into a glass. Then he looked at it for a long moment.

He opened his laptop. Typing rapidly. Manically. Right beneath that atrocious paragraph at the top of the page. He wrote down everything that just happened to him in the best detail possible. He wrote until his fingers hurt. The writer tried to remember every detail. These are the very words he wrote. He continues to write them now. Asking himself whether there was a single detail he forgot. . .

There wasn't. Chris sits back at the desk while narrating the movements on this page. Then he looked over at the bourbon glass. He paused his writing for a moment. Then the writer chose to stand up, pour out the rest of the liquor in the bathroom, and come back and read what he wrote once before deleting it forever and never mentioning it again. He makes a promise to himself to work at being better every day. To earn that importance, the alien of his dream indicated he had. Though he determined it all a bad dream, he felt it could be considered a significant turning point in his career.

Now I am going to go pour the bourbon down the drain.