What do you hate about yourself? Your height, your weight, your hair color?

What I hate about myself is that I talk to dead people. This horrible gift is something I've been spending my whole life learning how to manage. But possibly the worst day I've had trying to manage my ghost-talking was July 4, 2019. All I wanted to do was go to the UFO festival in Roswell.

I drove to town with no plans, just to see what was going on. I had a delicious lunch at the El Toro, then started walking down Main Street until I got to the Visitor's Center. Next to the entrance was a pile of dirt. On top of the pile of dirt was a rubber figure of an alien with a tortured look on its the figure was a sign inviting visitors to search through the dirt for debris. Prizes would be given for each find.

I didn't think much about it, went inside, gathered the usual tourist pamphlets and walked out the side door to the tent next door. It was sponsored by the Roswell Boy Scouts; and inside was another rubber effigy of an alien with its guts hanging out, the alleged autopsy.

Boy Scouts . . . aliens . . . guts hanging out.

And then I heard the scream inside my head. "Bring my babies home!"

What!?

"Bring my babies home!"

I walked back to the entrance of the Visitor's Center and looked at the rubber alien lying on the pile of dirt, but it wasn't a rubber alien anymore. It was a sentient being in a hostile environment lying on the ground, grimacing in pain and dying. And in my head, this being's mother was screaming, "Bring my babies home!"

I went back into the tent and looked at the autopsy victim. Was he dead when they cut him open? I truly hoped so, but the emotional energy I was connected to was horrified at how it was being treated. The dead had not been treated with respect or dignity, but mutilated by barbarians. They were souled beings, and their souls were trapped in the energy grid of Planet Earth. I was engulfed in an energy field of grief.

I hurried out of the tent and back onto Main Street.

A folk band was performing in front of the courthouse. A group of humans were dressed in alien costumes of silver lamee with goofy headdresses. Instead of fun and creative they seemed garish and insulting.

"Bring my babies home!"

"Please! We want to go home!"

Now the dead aliens were screaming at me.

Most humans think aliens are imaginary, mass-hallucinations. Not only did they sound real to me - they sounded like beings with souls or spirits that live on after death. And they were in agony.

I rushed up Main Street to my car, crawled through traffic out of downtown and started driving. I had no clue where I was or what I was supposed to do. I just drove to clear my head. Then I got out of town onto the open highway and it happened - the same thing that has happened to me many times at funerals and graveyards - the vortex opened and they flew out of this dimension into the next.

The screaming stopped.

But I was still shaking.

I headed west on U.S. 380, across the foot of the Sierra Blanca mountains, past the Trinity nuclear bomb detonation site and into Socorro. I trembled the entire drive.

I checked into a hotel, threw my suitcase in the room and walked to the bar next door. I sat down and ordered a beer while a meth addict tried to sell me earrings so she could have some cash to get her next hit. She didn't tell me that, but she had that ghoul feeding on her aura that I see in many addicts.

What kind of species are we that we would torture sentient beings like that? What happened to the bodies? Were they shipped to Wright Patterson Air Force Base where they are bobbing in bubbling tubes of formaldehyde that we see in the movies?

Where did they come from? Did they travel the galaxies faster than light speed or zip through wormholes? Maybe they live inside the Earth. Do they die like humans do and leave families behind? If so, how do they die? How does their culture honor their dead? And how could human beings be such callous sons of bitches!

The bartender brought me a bowl of pork and green chili, and the man sitting next to me struck up a conversation. His name was Dave and he ran the fireworks stand across the street. He had lived in Socorro his whole life, worked at the local hospital and was about to retire. He needed a break and a beer and a conversation with a stranger.

"We're good people here," he said.

There I was, sucking on a beer thinking the human race was a pile of rubbish and this stranger is saying, "We're good people here." Or are we a species that wants to torture any being that isn't like us?

Dave finished his beer and went back to selling his fireworks. I made it north up I-25 back to Denver.

It has taken me eight months to write this story. I am trembling and have a lump in my throat. And I need to go to the park to walk it off.