A Texas girl finds herself admiring a light in the sky only to find out it is indeed an alien, which transports her to another time long long ago in Africa and pairs her with a Neanderthal population in hopes that her descendants will populate Nort...
This is our favorite part because it starts their story and Julie is now somewhere in a time and place they can understand. And the excitement grew as the story progressed.
We continue. Julie was floating, suspended in the middle of some undefined space, and brightly lit, with no walls, no top, and no bottom. There was nothing to see but emptiness. And then in that emptiness, there were waves of brilliant lights that came in all sorts of shapes and colors that felt to her like static electricity flowing through space.
Borealis, she said. (Borealis, the clan whispered raising their hands into the night sky.)
She heard a rush of static noise like the noise on a radio with no signal, a television between channels. But it sounded mechanical, more like millions of those tiny tin toys that click when you squeeze them. But Julie couldn't see them because whoever had her there was invisible.
Clickety clickety-click, they said.
Julie screamed. Where the hell am I?
She was suspended in what felt like a vat of warm gelatin that pressed against her body. Naked, she screamed and whimpered.
Clickety, clickety-click, they said
Clevis, that you? You bastard.
The sounds roared in stereophonic waves. Her hosts were tickled, pleased with their new guest.
It sounded like a Zeppelin song. The waves of light moved with the sound, like a body of swallows preparing to migrate.
Even as she spoke, the lights performed their magic, and her voice seemed to echo throughout. But it wasn't her voice. It was the mimicking of her voice by the Clickers, as she called them. Years later, while she sat by her fire, cooking up dinner for her children and her grandchildren, even her great-grandchildren, or writing her memoirs on homemade vellum, she would look up in the sky and mutter, God-damn Clickers. But, for now, she timidly squeaked out this,
Um. Anybody there?
Nothing.
I have to pee.
Clickety - I have to pee – they mimicked her voice statically.
Clevis. That you? You bastard, d'you give me some of that shit you bought last week? I told you I quit doin' that.
Clevis, a static voice vaguely distinguishable. It sounded like her own voice mixed with Jim's from the radio show, and Clevis', and her momma's.
Who's that? Who the hell is there?
Clickety –Who the hell is there, went the echoes – clickety.
Julie resisted the temptation to cry but managed a few tears.
We are not Clevis Julie, said the voice ever-changing, mixing voices Julie knew, slowly becoming more homogenous. Are you comfortable Julie?
Comfortable? Julie said mockingly, Like a bug in a petri dish.
Comfortable? they said.
Julie felt compromised but had no sense of danger, only vulnerability. She asked for her clothes back as loudly as she could. The spectral lights changed color and the static noise moved constantly. The lights changed with the static noises as she spoke, and they maintained uniformity while nothing was spoken. Yet rarely was there silence, and so the lights undulated. Humming
Then in some part of her environment, she saw an image of herself, and there was Clevis next to her and they sat in the living room of the trailer, and he handed her a piece of paper. It was the LSD. She saw herself taking it. And look, there was Clevis only pretending to take his.
What the hell, she said.
The sounds mimicked her anger, like a swarm of bees.
I remember that. That bastard said he took some too. No wonder he didn't get sick.
Then the lights showed her what had happened to her while she was tripping. Some images she remembered, some not. Most not. The lights changed to a fiery red. She felt herself getting angry watching this, and then sick to her stomach.
She shook her head to clear away the vision of her psychedelic trip and closed her eyes until those images were gone and replaced by others. They passed before her eyes from birth to the present. She saw her father. They were camping in Chaco Canyon. He was teaching her how to light a fire using stones. She squealed when the wood they had prepared fired up. Julie smiled and the clickers sighed.
The images went more quickly now, and when her parents lost the ranch, she watched as people removed their things and took them all away.
When her father lay dying in the hospital with Momma by his side, he hadn't a clue who she was, but she stayed next to him. Then the funeral. There were hundreds of people there.
Julie closed her eyes as tears streamed down her cheeks. When she opened them again, the images were gone. The static clicking resumed its steady flow.
Who are you? She said. Why you showin' those things to me?
Do they displease you, Julie? You can see anything you want to if you would like.
What do you want? Julie had now lost all will to resist. Darkness came to her, and she cried for a long time.
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