Stardust

Chapter 1

     I wish I still believed in a God. I thought to myself as I stood frozen in the autumn night. The banging became louder and louder. I tried to move my legs but the fear had taken control and my body froze solid. I cursed my poor flight or flight response and began to shiver from both fear and the wind that began to blow. I swallowed hard as the banging grew in intensity. Louder. Louder. LOUDER.

BANG BANG BANG BANG!

And then as quickly as it had started.
It stopped.

      Suddenly, the front black panel from which the banging had seemed to be coming from began to raise open like a garage door on a suburban house. With a low groan, the panel raised and below it the same soft glow that emitted from the sides of the box began to spill out onto the wet city sidewalk.
     I felt my legs begin to listen to my brain again as I instinctively found a hiding spot behind the apartment dumpster. I peered around the corner as my body trembled.

As the panel came to a halt, the light shone bright in the november darkness. I could make out a tall shadow against the glow. I knew I should run but something told me to stay.
      Perhaps it was a disturbing sense of curiosity- the type that gets people like me killed in horror movies; perhaps it was fear of getting caught as I ran. Whatever the case was, my feet stayed planted as my legs continued to shake.

That's when I saw him. A man stepped out of the box. He was tall, ducking under the doorway as he exited. With the backlight of the box and the darkness of the alley it was hard to make out his face. But the streetlight highlighted his fluffy black hair, skin tight clothing, and antenna.
I shook my head as if I was a horse. I knew I was getting tired. After all, I had somehow began to hallucinate a man with antenna in my apartment alley. I was able to catch myself before a laugh escaped my lips, my hand flying to my mouth. I blinked my eyes and attempted to adjust them to the light. When I looked up again, the man was gone.

The Box was gone.

All that was left, was the darkness of the night.

I turned around and opened the door to the building. As I began to head back to my apartment, shaking my head as I walked, I couldn't help but to laugh. I knew that I must either be hallucinating or dreaming. I hadn't ever sleep-walked in my life, and was never one to hallucinate, but as I began to unlock my apartment door again I pulled out my smartphone to Google anything I could relate to. One answer peaked my interest.

"Sleep deprivation!" I exclaimed aloud. "That's it! I clearly need more sleep. I've been working on my portfolio too much and simply need to sleep it off. Easy! No more crazy Hailey! Gosh, I couldn't imagine it being an easier!"

I began to take off my shoes and socks and jump into my twin bed. I was clearly simply sleep deprived that was it! After all, it was midnight and I had been up coding and clearly that had degraded my mind into believing silly fantasy fairy tales. It was almost laughable how simple the answer was.
After all, I was imagining giant PCs and alien men in the alley of a rundown Indianapolis apartment complex. How stupid!
I laughed to myself and began to get comfy in bed. I looked out the window to the alley where I had been below. Nothing was there except for the dumpsters and a few puddles left by the rain of the day before. I sighed as I gazed out.

The light pollution in the city drowned out most of the stars causing me to feel a pit in my stomach. I thought back to the nights I would spend back in Gooseville with my mom. She and I would stare at the sky as we laid on our backs in the dewey grass, pointing out our favorite stars. I felt minuscule beneath the vast sky, dreams of space swirling in my mind like distant galaxies.

 
The knot tightened as my thoughts shifted to recent years—failing grades, rejection letters from all of my dream colleges piling up on our kitchen table.
I shook away the memories and started at the only star I could see. It wasn't even a star in actuality. It was Mars. 

Staring at it, a sense of bittersweetness welled up, pushing a tear from my eye. I wiped it away and sighed as my reflection in the window stared back at me. I looked at my brown eyes in the window, a dark reflection stared back.

Suddenly, a flash of light jolted me out of my sorrow, catapulting me back into the present moment. The light was bright and red. I rubbed my eyes in pain before peering out the window again. In the alley was the same box I had seen before. Standing next to the box was the man.
The light was shining bright and for the first time I saw him in greater detail. His hair was a fluffy black with loose waves. His body was tall and slender but still defined and toned. His clothing was tight and leather with bronze detailing. The pants he wore matched his top and he wore brown boots that stopped mid calf. His clothing, though strange, was not the oddest thing about him. I felt my stomach flip as I noticed two antennae wiggling from out of his head. The red light caused the colors to be somewhat unreadable and yet I could see that his skin was an unmistakable, cold, cyan.

 
I blinked, rubbing my eyes, and this time the vision persisted. He was still there.

And he was staring right at me.