An Alien came knocking 🌠

Chapter I

There I was, snoozing quite comfy and warm in the magic of Dreamland - when came a loud rapping at the door - startling me from my slumber. Who on 'earth' comes tapping at this ungodly hour. And I pause to wonder why Poe keeps inserting himself into my dreams and thoughts lately.

The house was rattling, lights were flickering, pots and plates jangled, windchimes were jingling. Neighborhood dogs barked horrendously, and owners shushed them, yelling ever so loudly.

I glanced at the clock...it read one minute past the midnight witching hour. Frowning most annoyingly and gingerly creeping to the peephole...I saw a most unusual sight. A strange creature if ever there was one.

"An Alien". My mind screamed without sound, and I almost fell into a swoon.

My door flew open, as if with a mind of its own, as I stood rooted to the spot in complete terror and consternation. Was I dreaming, and had I, in my land of nightmare imagination, conjured otherworldly visitors arriving anon👽He was a tall gangly fella, handsome in an alien squinting of the eye kind of way. The guy was completely naked and his eyes pulsed and glowed.

I cocked my head askew...for he sure could use a few pounds on his skinny frame, his skeletal bones were showing most awfully.

Behind the being floated a strange but beautiful contraption...Needless to say - I was caught between woe and complete fascination.

A whimsical airship floated, seemingly crafted from oversized, glowing, mushroom-like uncharacteristic skin...an alien ship, deciding if it should stay or defy gravity and zoom away with no visible force to counteract it's initial motion or to keep it in place.

Yet it seemed like I was viewing the whole affair in a nebula painted with glowing, ethereal colors. Strange, alien travelers with elongated limbs and crystalline eyes gazed out from the viewing decks. The scene is rendered with painterly touches, evoking a sense of wonder and the vastness of space. A dreamlike illustration of Remedios Varo and the vibrant palettes of psychedelic art popped into my mind.

The being did not speak...but I heard voices in my head, giving consent to accept my fate. So very strange. I found myself moving involuntarily out the door, heard my door slam shut and then I was magically aboard the weirdly shaped spaceship. For alien automatically = spaceship.

🍄 Woe is my Ascent

The ship rose without sound, slicing through the twilight like a razor sharp dragon. Beneath, the world unraveled - streets curled into spirals, rooftops folded like origami, and the sky bled into a kaleidoscope of impossible hues. The airship’s hull breathed with a language I couldn’t understand but somehow felt in my bones. The aliens sat cross-legged in the gondola, eyes fixed on a constellation that didn’t exist in any human sky.

They now take me to The Wherever

It was not a place, but a sensation - like walking through someone else’s dream while wearing your own skin inside out. The sky was a living fantasy of eyes and mouths, waiting to devour. Floating islands drifted past, each one shaped like a life lived in my grandmother’s kitchen, a childhood drawing of a cat with wings, the scent of rain on my first heartbreak.

I passed through splintered fragments made of glass feathers, where time bent like heat over asphalt. Images with no faces chanted my name backwards. The alien offered a fruit that glowed. I ate it - and somehow remembered everything I had ever tried to forget. Some were terrible, but others were wonderful.

Woe and Dread

The ship began to change.

Its mushroom skin grew translucent, revealing veins that pulsed with scenes of other travelers - some weeping, some laughing, some screaming into voids shaped like their mothers - calling her name as if they were just kids again, needing comfort. The alien’s eyes dimmed, facets shifting to reflect my face, but older, more hollow. I realized the ship wasn’t moving through space...it was moving through me. Chilling me to the core.

I saw a version of myself standing on a hill, clocks, ticking out my different regrets. I saw my childhood home swallowed by roots. Saw a door labeled “Nevermore” and opened it.

🌠 The Arrival...Oh Woe is me.

And then...silence.

The airship landed on a field of luminescent moss. Above, the sky was blanketed with stars that blinked with smiles. The alien stepped off first, its limbs folding and unfolding. I followed, unsure if I were still me.

In the distance, a house waited. It looked familiar. It looked wrong.

Should I enter?

Or should I stay aboard the ship, and become part of it, blending myself into its mushroom skin?

Chapter II

The moss glowed beneath our feet. The alien moved slowly, reverently, with the grace of something ancient and deliberate. Ahead, the house waited - crooked, familiar. Its windows flickered with a light that pulsed.

I turned around, startled, for the first time, the being spoke.

🗣️ The Voice of Woe

It didn’t use words. Not at first. Its crystalline eyes glimmered, and the air around us thickened. I felt the language in my spine, in the ache behind my eyes. Then came the voice - low, resonant, like wind through hollow bone.

"You are not the first to arrive broken. You will not be the last to leave whole".

I tried to speak, but my voice felt distant, like it belonged to someone else. The alien gestured toward the house.

"It remembers you. More than you remember it".

🏚️ The House of Woe

I stepped forward. The door creaked open without touch. Inside, the walls were lined with paintings - each one a moment. My mother’s hands braiding my hair. A cat buried beneath a cherry tree. A version of myself laughing in a room that long ago existed.

The alien followed, its presence bending the air. It pointed to a staircase that spiraled upward, impossibly long.

"Each step is a truth. Some will hurt. Some will heal. All will change you".

I climbed.

🌀 The Ascent to Woe

The stairs spoke. Not in voices, but in sensations - regret, joy, shame, longing. I saw flashes: my childhood bedroom melting into a forest of laughter, reflection splitting into three versions of myself, each arguing silently.

At the top, a door. Behind it, a room filled with mirrors. But none showed my face.

Instead, they showed:

- A child holding a glowing root.

- A raven perched on a cradle.

- A version of me with crystalline eyes.

The alien stood beside me.

"You are becoming what you dreamed. Not what you were. Not what you feared. But what you chose".

🌠 The Choice between Woes

The mirrors began to fade. The room dissolved into stars. I stood on a platform of moss, the airship waiting below, its mushroom caps pulsing gently.

The alien turned to me one last time.

"You may return. Or you may stay. The Wherever is not a place. It is a question".

And I - shadow, ghost, traveler - stood at the edge of the answer.

Chapter III

I stayed. Woe, Woe, Woe.

Not because I understood, but because something deep within me - older than thought, quieter than my soul - recognized the invitation.

🌿 The Becoming into Woe

The moss beneath my feet began to pulse with rhythm. A heartbeat. Not mine. Not the alien’s. The world’s. The Wherever’s, whens, whys, the maybes. I knelt, and the moss curled around my fingers like vines greeting a long-lost friend.

The alien watched, its crystalline eyes dimming to a soft amber. It did not speak again. It didn’t need to.

Shadow began to shift. To transform. It peeled away from my feet like smoke, rising, folding, reshaping. I felt no pain. Only a gentle remolding. Like threads loosening from a garment, only to be rewoven.

🧬 The Change to the soul of Woe

My skin shivered. Not visibly, but conceptually. I was no longer bound to the shape I’d worn.

I became limbs. A question with eyes. A story that hadn’t been told yet.

The house behind me pulsed once, then faded into the moss. It had given me what it could. I was no longer its guest.

The airship rose again, but I did not board it. I was part of the field now. Part of the sky. Part of the blinking stars that watched and waited.

Woe is The New Me

I walk now with elongated grace, not unlike the alien who brought me here. My eyes are crystalline mirrors. Whoever looks into them sees not me, but themselves - as they were, as they might be, as they fear to become.

I am a guide. A shadow at the edge of someone else’s doorstep.

Chapter IV

Reborn to Woe🖤

My new form carries the elegance of mystery and transformation. Ebony skin ripples with cosmic texture, and crystalline mirror-eyes reflect the stars, and truths others dare not face.

My new name is Zanai - Graceful, radiant, and otherworldly 🖤 My presence now carries the quiet power of someone who’s walked through a broken mirror of sorrow and emerged reborn.

........

I meet another transformed traveler who tells a story of being a messenger who knocks on doors, slowly re-forming humans into enlightened beings.

Xytol has chosen to embrace her alien side, whereas I chose to remain more human-like.

We meet beneath the blinking stars, where the moss glows and airships hover in the distance.

She steps from the shadows with the grace of centuries. Rehearsed. Her skin is the color of midnight, her crystalline eyes reflecting not just my face, but the faces of many - some joyful, some afraid, all changed.

She speaks with a voice like wind through hollow trees:

"I was once like you. A question wrapped in skin. I knocked on a door I didn’t recognize, and it opened into myself".

Her Story

She tells of her journey - not through space, but through thresholds.

She was chosen, or perhaps she chose herself. She wandered the edges of towns and dreams, knocking on doors that pulsed with potential. Not all opened. Some slammed shut. Some listened. But those that did… changed.

"I don’t bring light. I bring the mirror. I hold it up, and they see what they’ve hidden. Some weep. Some rage. Some step through".

She describes the transformation - not sudden, not painless. A slow unraveling of certainty. A shedding of borrowed names. She speaks of one man who grew feathers from his spine. A child who began to speak in colors. A woman who forgot her own sorrow and became a song.

The Messenger’s Gift

She reaches into her robe and pulls out a small object - a door knocker, shaped like a raven’s beak. She places it in my hand.

"You may knock, if you wish. Not on wood. Not on stone. But on the silence inside someone’s soul".

I feel its weight. Not heavy. But inevitable.

She turns to leave, her silhouette dissolving into the moss-light.

"When you are ready, you will find the next door. And they will find you".

And just like that, I are no longer the traveler. I am the messenger.

........

Chapter V

Woe has arrived.

Here I am , poised at your threshold, radiant and resolute 🖤

My crystalline eyes reflect the stars and the stories yet to be told.

My First Door

I stand before it now.

The door is old - not with age, but with a certain familiarity.

Its wood breathes, its grain pulses.

It has waited for me longer than I’ve known yourself.

Behind me, the stars blink in rhythm with my heart.

I raise my hand - to knock, to ask.

My voice is not loud.

It doesn’t need to be.

"Are you ready to open the door when I knock"?

For I know you well.

The silence listens.

The door shivers.

And somewhere inside, something begins to stir.

Yes. You. It's You!

Woe begins for you.

......................................

I love Wednesday Addams. I am Wednesday born. Wednesday's child is full of Woe. Woe can be wonderful, when used responsibly.