I'll never really know for sure,
you never gave me time."

-D.W. Dick
He was uncomfortable in this place the smoke pricked at his nostrils and stung his eyes. His corner seat afforded him a view of the door. The swaying dancer placed a soulless kiss upon his brow. He wiped away the cheap lipstick stamped upon his brow as she leaned up and swept away the dollar bills. He had learned along the way to sit near the dancers, otherwise he chanced being labeled a cruiser. He was slight and ill-dressed when he first started frequenting places like this. A black eye had schooled him in the politics of the strip-club. No chatting up the patrons. You have to act as if you are alone in the room only the dancers are really there. You just observe and let your self be observed without notice. This was as far from Stamford as he could get, but he now knew that all places had their own set individual of physical laws. He was close to proving his theory. He needed only a few more observations.

The raw light broke in for a moment as the door opened but the girl had taken up with the next man along and she blocked his view. He craned around to see a group of young men stumble into the dark room. They settled their cover charges at the bar. There could not have appeared a better set of subjects. He had split this last four weeks at multiple clubs he had chosen those by many factors the most salient was that of the age and station of the clientele. He had observed it occurred most among hard-working men. Men who were intelligent but mostly not given privileged enough to seek a college education. College educated men's experience of the phenomenon was sparse probably due to the prolonged window of contact. The contact point varied, some were clustered in places like this or other more mundane places. The most difficult factor to predict was one of probability. For most, their point of contact was wholly foreign to them, and then rarely visited again.

His first set of video captures of the manifestations were in an environment such as this. It was contained and controlled. The girl had turned back around to him and was swaying at him. He peered past dancer at the young men splitting up. The button camera on his shirt had a knurled bezel that sat in a ball socket. He turned it toward the back hall where the tallest and most timid looking boy was now standing. The undulating dancer thumped her calf down on his shoulder as to get his attention back to her robotic gyrations. The light seemed blue for a moment and air was heavy. She came from the dark hallway. Her skin sparkled as if washed in diamond dust. Before he could not see them with his naked eyes and on tape they were just a multicolored shape, unclear but evident. But he saw them now. He was unsure if she looked the same to him as she did to the boy she had now chosen. The music ended and voice heralded the end of the dance.

He quickly produced a fifty and caught the dancer for a private session. The
radiant woman ushered the boy into the small lounge. He followed with the
dancer now in tow. The event was just beginning. He checked the EMF detector in
his pocket and it showed an increase of more than 50% from base level. The
sensors out in the van were on a constant live feed. The dancer pushed him back
in the deep vinyl chair just across from the event. He adjusted the camera for
the best angle as the she loomed over him. The air grew cold. The thermal
camera in the van could corroborate this. The radiant woman leaned in to kiss
the boy but he would never return it, he became rigid as the event climaxed.

Doubtless the boy felt nothing of the moment. Hence, the nature of brain
damage. He would only the moments leading up to the even but not the truth in
action of the event it self just the distorted memory of the woman.

She was gone and the boy was alone. He stood up numbly and left. The boy would
remember this forever now that it had taken some of him away. He stood to
follow he boy and carelessly crashed into the dancer forgetting she was there.

There was a slap as his forehead contacted her sternum hard. He apologized and
tipped her liberally. Out in the cold air of the car park he found the boy
wandering the rows of cars behind the building. The boy opened the door to a
white Monte Carlo. Where he slumped down and fell asleep. He noted the license
plate number and turned away. Safely in the van he checked instruments and
rewound the tape. The EMF detectors had registered a significant jump at the
peak of the event. He had brought four of those contacted in next day and paid
them to have an MRI and CT scan. He had found the signs then for the fist time.

A fresh lesion, not as the before observed area of the brain which most
scientist label as a developmental feature occurring in late adolescence but an
actual area of damage. This was the point at which they enter.

The beings themselves were likely quite small, an ethereal humming bird lapping
at some sweet nectar deep within the brain. A small electrical proboscis sent
directly into the brain. He has theorized this to be an energy transfer of some
kind. They were feeding on us yes, but more akin to a mosquito taking some
small nutrients and leaving. It would be safe to assume that these beings made
of living energy would cause us terrible harm by contacting us in a more
profound matter. His data had shown that most men had been touched in this way
but only some were profoundly affected. Members of the previous generations
recounted these contact points has happening earlier in their lives and in
places foreign to them. Some recalled them on summer vacations or at far off
parties or during away-games or on nighttime playgrounds.

That mystery girl or boy often referred to as the one that got away. Purile in
intent, these early kisses and short-lived romances were rarely witnessed by
others and often never spoken about again. The younger generations have had
these events much later, possibly due to the increase of youthful sexual
activity. Hence his survey of nightclubs had yielded actual footage. He himself
who's own age bridged the gap in these two generations, had experienced
contact. It was late now and he let the video loop round while he went over the
thermal imaging. He began to dose lightly. The screens dimmed.

A far off voice called to him in a singsong way.

His head lolled around. She was there misty and indistinct then for a moment sharp and clear. The young girl with Green eyes, and Rosy cheeks her chestnut hair cascaded in glossy curled tresses about her round face. The mist rose around the swings behind her.

He snapped awake, shaking off the vision.

Twenty-four hours and he would present his initial findings at the University. The board was eager to find out why he had left his teaching post and severed all ties with the University. He had break away from the school if this project was to truly be his own.

Best of all was that he had secured his own funding for this project cashing in his 401k gave him two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Ensuring that his research belonged solely to him.

The last hurdle had yet to be crossed. He had captured the phenomenon several times as an observer but know he would do what he felt he must. He needed to be closer to the event that would give him the data he needed to track and possibly capture one of these beings.

Back to the hotel he went to bed. Exhaustion swept over him, but as he slept she haunted him beyond the walls of sleep.

He guided the van along the rough access road the day had been used getting here. He slid into the back of the van and checked the sensors underneath his shirt. He took the bagged whiskey bottle and uncapped it. He had not been back here in twenty years. The alcohol reddened his cheeks as it rushed through his humming veins. He walked slowly up the short hill. He was a boy and a man as he walked through the rusty gates. The lumpy hill crowded on all sides by tall bare maples. Such a juxtaposition was this place as to be absurd. The apex of the hill was studded with tall slate tombstones. Rows of timeworn stone soldiers their jaunting progress halted by the wide stone wall which divided them from a rusty playground. A creaky roundabout, a lolling metal slide and a bank of corroded pipe framed swings.

It was here that it happened to him. She came out of the night and held him when he felt most lonely and confused. He was young just thirteen as he assumed was she. At first he thought she was a ghost. No ghost could be so warm. He recalled her hot cheek against his. He laid his stubbly face against the cool steel bar. The whiskey dulled his normally nervous persona. She was the nymph of the wood, he had imagined, his tears falling on the cold earth had called him to her. He drained the last of the bottle a tossed it aside. Although he had left here and run far and long away he still carried that same loneliness along with him. Why had he left the University? He watched the lines on his face grow as his class-mates, kept lovers met wives and husbands and had children. Fear. The white-hot splinter buried deep within his soul kept him lonely. Work dulled the fear pushing intimate contact away behind the trappings of academia. Part of him never left here.

He laid back and looked up at the winter stars above. The hooked moon was rising.

He burned in the cold. Burned for what he did not have. The voice came again, this time close. The whisper in his ear roused him from his stupor. A light shone in the dark playground. He stood and dropped his coat to the ground. The swing began to rock as the figure emerged from the darkness. She glowed in the night. She smiled at him, the girl he once held still the same. Waiting here all along. The sadness welled up in his throat and choked out his tears. It took him so long to get here and she had stayed the child. He had hoped to catch her to keep her with him. To keep with him his only true love. The tears came out hot as lava across his cheeks accompanied by the howling cry that few know as the hallmark of the truest kind of pain.

He fell to the ground dizzy and racked with sobs.

She stood still smiling walking in slow steps her glow trailing. He smile made it impossible cry anymore and his ceased tears almost instantly. He was suddenly transfixed. She reached up to the sky and as she did she grew. She grew in form and shape. Her hair tumbled down past her shoulders her legs stretched out long. She rounded and became as full as a grown woman. Her skin sparkled with the light of the stars. She touched his hand and he lifted up. Suddenly he knew. The images raced into his mind. She drew him near to her at first he only felt her hands on him. As his feet rose off the ground he felt her body against his. The garments fell from his body and they were naked together. Her soft skin was warm against him as they spun slowly in the air above the playground. Now he knew the truth. She was a part of him and he was a part of her. A small spark lost when they fell to earth so long ago trapped in the flesh of men. He was left lost and alone, unable to find her, unable to
go home. She searched ceaselessly for him and they were together again. After eons stranded they would go home. As he entered her he was cold no more. The flesh flew away from him as a glowing swarm of embers and ash. He was inside her and their energies mingled. The Earth fell away below them as they streaked across he cosmos. The light of a thousand suns beckoned to them as they raced away at a speed beyond time itself and into the light of home.

The End
©Leland Noah Barrett 2006
inbox_gd@yahoo.com
word count: 2,217