FLASHed

18. Ticket to Mintaka

Hi, I have to apologize up-front, because I'm not very good at talking with people anymore, well, at least with regular people. But I have to tell you a story. It's important to me, and I really need to get it off my chest--ah, off my back maybe. Anyway, it's about when I was abducted by aliens and how you don't wake up in the morning expecting to visit another star system.

I didn't expect to visit another star system, not on this one day not too long ago. 

I wasn't thinking about the stars. 

I was thinking about the hottie in bed next to me, smokes, coffee or at least something to put an end to the killer hangover from the big night before--a hair of the dog maybe. I remember sitting up and reaching for the cigarettes on my bedside table but was pulled up by pain in my back; it'd been three days since the final shading had been done and the ache didn't seem to be getting any better. If anything, it was worse and I was getting kind'a worried.

I walked to the bathroom to have a good look at the new tattoo that spread across my traps, ran over my delts and went right down my lats, the skin was still a little raised and red but otherwise looked okay. Well, no, it didn't only look okay, my whole back looked fucking awesome. Sam Archer was the artist, and she'd taken the photos I'd given her and made them into a masterpiece. Before she started, she wanted to know the story about the pictures of the cave drawings and if they should be copied exactly or if I didn't mind her personal interpretation.

You know, I really respect artists, especially the good ones like her, I was lying on the table when she asked. 

"Jeez this is a really cool image, but do you mind if I give a bit of my take on it. You know, level it up a bit?"

 "Go for it! " I screwed my head around, "But, it'd be great if you could keep the same patterns so it's recognisable. Dad found the art on the walls of a cave that he discovered before I was born".

"Holy shit, that's so cool. Have you ever been back?"

"Na." I shifted to a relaxed position, "He lost the cave after that. And not for lack of looking, so he said. The photos he took were the only record of the drawings."

"Wow, that's something special."

"One of my best memories of him. I thought they were lost, but found the photos after he died last June. Recording them in ink would make them permanent, so like, I'd keep my memory of him with me."

It took a heap of visits, but the result that Sam pulled off was something that still looked primitive and had the same arrangement, but the patterns she used were a heap more detailed and yet kind'a sketchy at the same time. It's hard to explain how good the final work was other than to say that, on this one morning, I stood twisting in front of the mirror for ages so that I could admire the art on my back, even though I had a headache and needed to pee real bad.

After a smoke, a coffee, a walk to the café on the corner for a real espresso coffee, and another smoke. Hang on, have I got that right? Smoke--coffee--coffee--smoke, yeah that's right. Followed by a bit of bud which I took up to the roof of our apartment building. The last thing I remember was laying down on the sunbed with my back facing up so it could get the open air and sun to heal.

. . .

You don't know how lucky we are, only having one sun; one, not too big, not too small, not too close, a beautiful yellow sun. Because it's deadly in a solar system with two really white-hot suns, well no, actually three suns (but the biggest sun was made up of two stars spinning around each other). Suns that appeared in the sky as points of light that would burn anything in their path like if our sun's light was focused through a magnifying glass. 

You got to know: in a system like Mintaka, it's tough finding shade.

Sorry, you must be wondering what the hell I'm talking about, well hell is probably the right word to use here, but not hell in a biblical sense with fire and Satan and stuff, or not hell in the Buddhist sense with demons impaling you up the date-hole; no, I'm talking about an alien home world type of hell. No demons, no devils, not even any probing, but lots of standing naked on the same spot for ages at a time while hundreds of aliens walk up to mess with the artwork on your back. It was a kind'a, I-JUST-WANT-TO-SIT-DOWN type of hell, but you couldn't.

You see, on that day, on the roof of my apartment, I was abducted by aliens. One minute, I was just laying there, and the next, I was dropped in a standing position in a big empty room. You wouldn't like the feeling of being laid out relaxed and then suddenly finding yourself in the standing up position without warning. Your muscles aren't ready for it--like, I wasn't ready for it and just fell down in a heap on a floor that seemed to be made of smooth black rock. After a short while, I stumbled up confused as fuck, and one of them came in. They didn't say anything, didn't look at me in the face with their big black eyes, they just seemed interested in my back. I say, 'they' because lots of them poked and stroked and buzzed my back. Because it was all about my back, I couldn't see anything that they were doing--I think I'm glad of that.

After many of these stand-up-for-ages sessions, one of them came up to the front of me, actually looked at me, or looked through me (not sure which) and placed their long, spidery fingers on the sides of my head. Hangovers are nothing compared to the pain I felt right then, but it soon passed, and after that, I could hear them. At first, it was like I was at Comic-Con with so many people talking at the one time that the whole sound was like a bunch of noise. But then, after a while, the voices began to make sense, but they weren't talking in any language, it was more like they were talking in ideas. I'll try and explain: rather than hearing words that made up a sentence, inside my mind, awareness regarding a topic became manifest, and with this awareness came understanding. It was like unlocking whole chapters in a book in just a few seconds.

. . .

I know so much more now that I did before. But, I'm not going to bore you with the secrets of the universe; I'm sure they'll tell you all when they feel like it.

Oh, and I bet you're wondering why they took me and what was so important to them about the pictures on my back. Well, I can tell you that the cave drawings in the photos were made by the hand of one of their own; one who had, thousands of years ago, crash landed and became lost on our planet. The patterns of rectangles and dots made up a farewell message to their family; a song of love and longing for home, filled with loss and sorrow over the fact that they'd never see their children again.

I told them that, for me, the drawings were also a message--a message from my dad. They seemed cool with that too.

You have to know that these guys are always watching and they see everything--I mean, everything. So when they found me lying on the roof, they recognised their long lost message and just zapped me up.

I guess you could say that this tattoo was my ticket to Mintaka. Luckily, it was a return trip, and when all is said and done, I bet they were glad to see the back of me.

fin.

<◕.◕> First published here Jul 23, 2019