For your consideration, the portrait of a man caught in a rather odd situation. A man who lives from manuscript to manuscript, who spends his time smoking cheap cigarettes over weak diner coffee waiting for his nerves to calm and waiting to get a break in the vicious world of American writing. We present to you Elyan, writer, former paratrooper, and transplant from upstate New York. While he moved to the country to escape the noise and enjoy the slowed pace of small town living, he never expected to move right into...
Elyan's hands shook as he lifted the second cup of coffee to his lips and watched the smoldering ends of his cigarette die in the ashtray. He sat in the diner booth, trying to get his hands to stop shaking. The incident was still fresh on his brain. A few hours before, he had driven his car off into the woods, down the unlit forest roads where he knew he wouldn't run into another living soul if he took the right turns off into the mountains and didn't look back. It was summer; he had his windows down and let the warm and somewhat damp breeze blow past. The cicadas were quiet, the reflection of deer's eyes were absent too. Elyan was never a manic driver, but last night had been different. He had pushed the gas pedal almost to the floor, the roar of the engine breaking the unnatural silence of a summer in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Then it had happened, all at once the sky was cut by a blazing white line headed by a massive object, too perfectly shaped to be a shooting star or meteor. The sound had come right after it, the low woof sound and then the scream of the noise trying to keep up with its creator. He had watched it strike the earth a few miles up, a flare of red fire and smoke into the air above the trees. Something had compelled him to go find the crash. What if it was a downed aircraft? What if there were people injured?
Elyan finished his second cup of coffee and his hands still shook terribly. When would the shaking stop? The adrenaline seemed lodged in his veins.
The closer he had gone to the crash, the more that silence had seemed to grow. It wasn't natural, there should have been something. The quick click of bats or the movement of nocturnal creatures through the woods should have been there, but they hadn't been there. He had slowed down the car to a mere crawl and finally to a stop. The yellow light that had glowed through the trees didn't have a smell like burning fuel or anything of such. It had smelled like nothing.
He had stepped out of the car but only for a moment before the trio of large black shapes had stepped into his view and his heart had shot into his throat. They had been large, almost eight feet tall, humanoid shaped and their clinical eyes had reflected in the night within their large bulbous heads. He had tried to scream but no sound had come out, he had tried to run but his feet had tripped over themselves. Now, he could feel the bruise on his ankle coming up form where he hit the running board on his car trying to scramble back inside his car. The creatures had glided toward him noiselessly as he had floundered trying to turn his keys, trying to close the door, trying to find the pedals on his vehicle. One was nearly on top of him before he had managed to throw the car in reverse, tearing away as fast as he could.
Elyan didn't know how he did it but he had somehow ended up here, at Haley's Diner. It was six thirty in the morning and the sun was just starting to pull itself free from the horizon. There were dark circles under his eyes. He placed his now empty cup aside and dabbed out his fourth cigarette. At least he hadn't driven off the road in his panic.
What exactly had he seen out in the woods? Big Foot? No, they weren't hairy enough, their heads not humanoid looking at all. The Jersey Devil? No, they didn't look like a flying goat, so what were they?
"Haley?"
"You finally talking, kid?"
Elyan had know Jim Haley for several years, the man was the town blabbermouth. He was short and stock with a face like a well loved teddy bear and a body to match. He owned and ran the diner and, although his food wasn't exactly the best, his was the only dive in town that was open this early. He stood behind his counter and wiped down its chrome top. Elyan lit up another cigarette.
"Do you believe in aliens?"
Haley looked to the man, "I dunno know much about science fiction, kid… Why d'you ask? You want more coffee?
Elyan shook his head, "I saw something in he woods."
"Did you now? What'd they look like?"
"I thought you didn't do science fiction, Haley?"
The counterman smirked, "But I am curious."
"They were tall and had large heads and their eyes glowed. The ship was oblong shape…"
"I dunno know what to tell you, kid."
"But I'm not going crazy, Haley, I know what I saw. What else could it have been?"
Haley shrugged, "You want any noise?"
Elyan just puffed on his cigarette for a moment before he answered, "Sure."
"Any preference?" Haley meandered behind the counter to the old and nearly falling apart small radio that sat on one end of the kitchen window and was plugged into the wall.
"The news… anything on Sputnik?"
"You got it."
He flicked the radio on. The tinny voice of the prerecorded early morning newscaster was in the middle of recounting yesterday's events. Haley turned up the sound.
There was nothing of particular interest to be had, nothing that he hadn't been informed of the day prior. There was just the usual – what was happening in Washington with the president, what was going on in Russia, in the Eastern Bloc, how the stock market was performing. There was some rehash of how a man out in California discovered a new way to power the upcoming line of Facsimile LTD robots. There was nothing new about the Russian probe that had been shot into outer space.
Elyan sighed and lowered his head a little as he flicked ashes off his cigarette.
"No luck, kid, now you wanna eat something before you-"
"Wait, turn the radio up!"
He had heard it, the immediate interruption of the broadcast followed by silence, then the broadcast returned and then silence again. There was flickering between the noise and silence once, twice and then nothing.
Eventually a rather sleepy, but forced calm voice came over the air: "We interrupt your usual radio broadcast to bring you this important announcement. At four sixteen AM Eastern Standard Time, multiple unidentified flying objects entered Earth's atmosphere across the United States. We have been told that delegates have met in Washington to confer with some of the travelers that were aboard these flying craft. We ask that you do not approach or engage with any of the craft or its inhabitants until further notice. There have been no violent incidents reported. If you wish to stay inside, you are encouraged to do so. There have been several reports of craft landing in Washington County, Frederick County, Franklin County and Adams County. We repeat, do not engage with either the craft or its inhabitants. We will update you as more information becomes known. Thank you for listening and we return you to your regular broadcasting."
The flicker of noise and silence returned, once, twice, three times, before the radio resumed its drone of the prerecorded newscast.
Elyan sat there, tight-jawed and in shock. He didn't want to believe it. He didn't want to feel the sudden coldness and sickening fear creep into his stomach. He had seen aliens in the woods, he wasn't going insane.
"Holy cow…" Haley faltered.
"So…" Elyan managed to speak, his voice terse and grating, "How do you feel about that science fiction now, Jim?"