I was coming home the way I usually do when coming home
late from the café. I take the back roads through Los
Felix and the northernmost part of Silverlake to get back to my house
in Echo Park. Because if there are only a few police cars on
Sunset Blvd, if you’re black and you’ve got dreadlocks
the police are going to take a second look at you at three in the morning,
especially if you’re in a sports car. So anyway, as I’m
going south on Glendale Blvd., headed for my warm bed in my house in
the Echo Park hills, I had just passed the Hughes Market on Glendale
Blvd when my peripheral vision caught something going very fast over
the hilltops to my left. I figured it was just my imagination
and I was really tired. So I proceeded on my journey down the
road until I came to a traffic light by the freeway on-ramp and as
my little white Nissan approached this light which was turning from
green to yellow and would soon be red, I downshifted, preparing to
stop. Slowly I came drifting to a stop. There’s something
about Los Angeles in the early morning hours, like an atomic bomb had
dropped and you’re the only person left in the world. I’ve
been in this city for twenty years and from my first night here I had
noticed how empty this city gets at night, and this night was no exception. A
black cat sat on the curb looking directly at me like he knew something
I didn’t. I had never known this intersection to be this
quiet. Then all of a sudden the cat ran away and I rolled down
my dirty car window to get a better look at where the cat had gone. A
very warm gust of wind came through the window like it was wrapping
itself around my face and very softly caressing me, almost as a woman’s
hands might. When I turned to see where the wind was coming from,
it had died down that quickly. The treetops were bristling and
then it was quiet again. A second had passed and the stoplight
turned green, and I rolled the window back up, and I proceeded through
the intersection when a light tremor started to shake the car. The
sort of tremor you feel seconds before an earthquake. The shaking
grew stronger and stronger and my car started floating like a boat
in the open sea. I just knew that it was an earthquake
and at any time a power line was going to fall on my car and I would
be electrocuted and die. And then came the quiet again.
A second went by and my thoughts went from horror to amazement. The
stillness and quiet of the moment were going through my bones. Then
everything around me turned bright with light, the inside of the car
was bright and all outside was bright with light. A few feet ahead
of my car an object descended to the ground. It looked like one
of those shuttles our government sends into outer space, and it was floating
just a few feet above the ground. It was so large, just floating
there. I could see no windows for anyone to be looking out but
I couldn’t help but feel like someone or something was inside this
thing watching me. It took up the whole intersection. And
then it again started to very slowly rise high in the sky again and head
east over the hills toward Elysian Park and Dodger Stadium. I sat
there dumbfounded, hoping to wake up in my bed thinking I had just had
a bad dream. I pinched then slapped myself to make sure I wasn’t
asleep. No, I was wide-awake. I kept driving, my body controlling
the car but my mind in another space. Should I call the police? Should
I stop people and warn them? No. They’ll just think
I’m some nut.
Now I didn’t want to go home, I couldn’t go home. I
turned my car east and headed for Elysian Park. As I entered the
park I was wondering what I would do if I came in contact with the spaceship
or its occupants. I was hoping to see where it might have landed. I
kept getting the feeling that I was being beckoned and this no doubt
was what had brought me to this park instead of going home, like I was
being pulled to it.
I slowly pulled the car over the side of the road and turned the engine
off and sat there collecting my thoughts. I took a deep breath
and closed my eyes. Trying to absorb everything happening I just
laid my head back for a few moments. When I opened my eyes there
was a woman standing in front of the car. A silver metallic sheet
wrapped around her, she stood there staring at me and all I could do
was stare right back. My eyes were transfixed; I couldn’t
take them off her. It was just those black pools of her eyes; black
as the galaxy she came from. It wasn’t so much her beauty,
and she was quite beautiful, it was those eyes. She started to
slowly walk around to my driver’s side window. For some reason
I felt no danger or that any harm was imminent. Her eyes were on
me all the way, lost in the black holes of her eyes. I had never
been hypnotized before.
When she reached the car window she stood still there and the window
rolled down by itself. It was her eyes, her eyes, what was it about
her eyes? This was the woman I had been looking for all my life
and now she had found me. I slid over on the seat and she opened
the door and got in beside me, all the time staring. She unwrapped
the metallic sheet around her and she had nothing on underneath. My
gaze moved from her eyes down her beautiful body; that was the first
time I took my eyes off her eyes, I had to. I had to look at her
body. While my eyes were digesting her body, smoke was starting
to materialize all around the outside of the car. Within a matter
of seconds the car was enveloped in smoke. No matter which window
I looked out there was nothing but smoke. By now this woman, or
creature, or whatever, was sitting there naked, no blemish on her body,
her nipples long and dark. At that moment all I could think was “I
wish my tongue was long enough to reach across the car and lick her nipples.” Her
nipples were long and hard like someone had been sucking on them for
hours.
Her face turned toward me and she put her right leg up on the car seat. The
dark hair between her legs was staring me in the face and her dark eyes
were still glued to my eyes. I couldn’t help but move closer
to her. I knew not what danger lay before me but I couldn’t
resist. There wasn’t a force on earth strong enough to stop
me from exploring what lay in front of me. By now I was less than
a foot away from her. She put her hands on the back on my head
and pulled my face down between her legs. I went down fast, down,
down, down, down never to come back up. I didn’t want to
come back up.
When I woke up I was in my bed and it was dark outside. I glanced
over at the clock on the bedside table and it was 5:30 AM. I immediately
went to the window to look out. I could see the stars. The
sky was clear. Where was she? Had it been a dream? Or
was it real? Off in the distance on the other side of the clearing
from my house I saw a bright object rising up over the trees and into
the sky. I lay back down on my bed closing my eyes, knowing
I would see her (or them) again.
|