ALIEN ENCOUNTER

MY EXTRA TERRESTRIAL GUEST

NOTE: Dear reader, this is a wild work of fiction. This story is just a small attempt to put my imagination to words. The characters mentioned here have no resemblance to any person living or dead, and any resemblance is mere co-incidence. I have made my sincerest attempts not to bore you with blank comparisons, and I have let my English skills go hand in hand with my imagination. So here we go . . . . .

I glared at the sky at midnight. I thought it would be really good if I sight a comet or perhaps even a planet!! I would become famous and that particular star or comet would be named after me. I would be in the news papers, news channels and everywhere else. But even though I sat there with my super zoom camera until late night 2:30, I had failed to find something fascinating... except the star studded sky and the big fat white moon. So I was growing quite impatient, my sixth sense telling me I would find something, but I was about to give up and go to sleep, when I saw something shining really bright, as if it would collide with the earth any moment. Thinking it was a comet, I took my camera to take a snap, but it was too bright for my camera's lens. It blurred in my picture, giving an unclear appearance. Thinking I would try my luck the next time, I went to bed and was about to fall asleep. Suddenly I heard a loud thud; as if something had stroked the yard of my house with a blast. I felt there was a comet under my room!! None of my family members was at home, except my uncle who was lost in his deep slumber. He was so fast asleep that I doubt if he had even heard the sound. I ran down to the garden, and was amazed to see what my eyeballs showed me. It was a full fledged grey coloured flying saucer, or let's say the so called "Unidentified Flying Object" or UFO, with lights of all vivid colours and shapes, and was irregular in its shape!! I couldn't believe my eyes. To be sure I wasn't dreaming, I pinched myself and it pained. Suddenly, there was a hollow entrance in it, and I saw something creeping out. I wanted to shout but I knew if I make any sound, I would not only wake the soundly sleeping people, but also scare the creature. Moreover, I wasn't able to produce any sound out of astonishment. I just couldn't believe it. I was chosen as the lucky one to notice such a phenomenon, I thought. So, I hid behind the bushes and observed it carefully. Then I told myself how nice it would be if I take a picture, with the shutter sound clicked off, but I later cursed myself for forgetting it in the bedroom in all my curiosity. Now, even if I would make a slight movement, the creature would get scared or maybe even attack me. So, I decided not to move. Then, there I saw it; a greyish-skinned creature, with a tinge of violet in its pale, bare skin. I thought it looked very disgusting with 10 fingers in each hand (I am sure I had counted it right), with large baseball-sized eyes, yellow in colour, bulging out as if they would pop out any moment, shrunk limbs, just as long and thick as my garden stick, nostrils instead of a nose and a smiling wide toothless mouth. It was standing as upright as we humans do, on its legs, or let's say Limbs, supporting its abnormally swollen stomach and a head so large that, I thought it would almost be the size of a baby-elephant's head. I felt like laughing aloud when I compared the sizes of its stomach and head to its limbs. It looked ugly, funny and unusual but its smile was a soothing one. For one moment I was reminded of a hero of the latest alien-centred science fiction film I had seen.

It crept out and put its hand in the saucer, to take out something triangular. I slowly came out to see what a sort of being he was, measuring my footsteps (or should I say toesteps), meticulously as I tiptoed outside. To my great surprise, on seeing me it shook its head as though it was a wild, mad bull raging on seeing red. Then it projected a beam of an alarmed red laser from its triangular device. The light fell on the wall behind me and as I moved thinking I was blocking the view, and noticed it had made a few signs on it. They consisted of an eye, a needle, a picture depicting hell and a pea. I felt, once again, like roaring into laughter as I thought it was really ridiculous that he or maybe she (mind me, I couldn't think of any way to find out its gender) showed such a weird combination of signs to someone on earth like me, as I am really very poor at decoding pictures. At that very moment, it came to my mind, that I should have attended the free ENCRYPTION classes conducted by our School Science Club. I really started to regret this. I took my own sweet time, and understood finally, the message behind. The pictures probably said, "I NEED HEL-P". So, I asked him through signs and understood that he actually needed to refill his vehicle, which had run out of fuel. So I got all sorts of oils available at home, like Kerosene, vegetable oil, castrol oil, a can of petrol meant for my dad's car. Then I thought about what my parents keep saying about hospitality, and guest-treatment. They always say that it is a good habit to offer a glass of water to whoever visits our doors. To them, it was a mark of a well-cultured person. So respecting my culture, I filled a 200ml of water in a big bottle, kept all the oils and the bottle of water in a large tray and went to the garden to attend to my "guest". Then, I was awestruck, by what happened. It smelled all the oils as if scanning them, and lifted the large bottle of water. As strange as it would sound, he opened what looked like the bonnet of the saucer, and emptied into it the entire 200ml of WATER!!!!!! Then he projected a calm blue laser jet from the triangular device, and this time it showed a tank, a U-shaped magnet, a large sea, a U-shaped magnet again, a snake forming the shape of letter S, stuck to a crescent moon. After nearly 10 minutes of my so-called "Decoding", I understood it meant to say, "THANK YOU (U)!!! SEE (A) YOU (U) S-OON!!!". I realized I had kept my eyes too wide for a way too long time, and so I blinked for a nano-second, and then I could neither see my guest nor the saucer, but could only see the triangular device. So I picked it up and tried to operate it, but nothing worked. Thus, I just took it and kept it in the secret drawer of my cupboard. I know you will think I am a mad person, a sort of a crack or something, and that I could have become famous by just giving the device to the Media and then it would go to the Scientists, but I prefer not to do so because I know that if humans come to know of the alien-existence, they would start encroaching their world too, just like how they encroach forests. I would not like to become the cause for mass extinction and destruction of an alien world. Even though it would be useful for research, I don't feel Human Greed will allow them to live in peace. Whenever I see the Tridevi (my Indian nickname for the Triangular Device), I am strongly reminded of my secret strange garden ALIEN ENCOUNTER.