I don’t know all too much about my companion.
Seems like he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
We aren’t related in anyway, and I’ve not spent enough time with him to consider him a friend – at best, I suppose you could say he was an acquaintance.
Like I said, he’d just been standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The abduction itself was primitive to say the least. Most people would probably expect a beam of light, then a sudden, unnatural lifting into the sky – and most people would be wrong.
It was quick, and violent. We were grabbed by naked, fleshy tentacles, our limbs restrained. We could do nothing but gnaw at their flesh, before we were plunged into a long, unyielding darkness.
After the initial shock, I felt around the dark and found that we were in a craft of some kind. The walls were smooth, and hard. I tried to look for a hold, hoping to tear my way through to freedom, but it was useless. Within an hour I gave up and succumbed to the torpor that had seemed to come with the unlit craft.
I don’t know how long I was in there.
How could I?
There was no way of telling time. No stimulation at all, apart from occasional bumping and noises coming from the space outside the craft . After a while my companion started chattering to himself, and although I’m not sure if it came from a place of passion, fear, or cold, he began to cuddle up to me. We sat together like that for some time, puffing up our coats in the hope of filling them with warm air.
Then there was an almighty click, and the ceiling began to shift. It was moving, and suddenly a band of light filled the tiny craft, revealing white walls which curved into the floor we stood on.
My companion was stood in shock, but I tried to bolt for it. I rammed myself through the gap, and found myself face to face with that mass of intricate tentacles. My false charge seemed to startle it, it reeled back on its stalk, and I used the opportunity to go screaming in the other direction.
It was then I realised how far from home I really was.
In front of me was a vast, open plane. Covered in what looked like a light grey moss. In the distance there were gigantic alien structures, so complex that I really doubt they occurred naturally. The sky was an off, pale yellow. Like it had once been white, but since diluted. It seemed to have a texture to it, as if the sky itself had clouds weaved directly into it.
I’d let myself get distracted for just a moment, but that was enough for the tentacle monster. Before I could run I was grabbed once again, and taken go my enclosure.
My enclosure was essentially a massive cage, with elevated platforms, and gangways going from one side to the other. Obviously, my first instinct was to scale the wall, and I did, but there were thick white prison bars acting as a roof. From there I got a good look at my new cell, and found that it had already been stocked for my arrival.
There was a bucket of water, next to a bucket of colours. Upon closer inspection they were quite clearly fresh vegetable, but kinds I’d never seen before. Knobbly yellow circles with tasty buds all around, and light green beans as big as your head!
My companion was already there. He hadn’t even tried to escape, and to this day I cannot tell if that was a smart thing to do, or a stupid one. He was quiet most of the time, but would often hum to himself as he placed up and down the cage. Our new, strange environment had something of a day/night cycle. Although it was one of absolutes. There was no twilight, no dusk, dawn, sunset or sunrise. There was simply light, and at night, with the change lasting no longer than a second, there was pitch black.
For the first few ‘days' we didn’t see the tentacle monster again. But another entity showed its face a couple of times. This thing was far bigger than the tentacle monster, but for some reason, I suppose do to its general natural and demeanour, and the fact that it had never even touched me, let alone grab me, I was less scared of it than I was of the monster.
It was a large circular thing, around the size of your average house. I find it hard to describe. Like me, it had two eyes, two nostrils and a mouth. But its overall profile seemed flat, and its skin was a horrible, smooth looking white. The eyes were immense, a whirlpool of colours in front of a milky white. The pupil was around the size of my fist, and I got a horrible shock once I saw its mouth widen for the first time. A monstrous gnashing maw, with crunchers the size of tombstones, and an inescapable smell of rot.
I leapt from the platform, onto a gangway, hoping to avoid its bite. My companion stood dead still, I was sure he was frozen in fear, sure he was about to be crunched up by the maw, but thankfully I was wrong.
There was no biting, no chewing, but a soft humming.
I recognised the tune, as my companion had hummed it earlier, and I watched from the furthest platform as the two entities, one of my own species, and one of an alien, sang together.
After that, everything calmed down quite a bit, and as the days passed I fell into a routine of eating, sleeping, and spending time with my company. The humming behemoth visited often, but never entered the cell, and I started feeling better about it in general. The tentacle monster had turned up a few times, each time it did I sprung to the back wall of the enclosure. It would then drop some more food into the food bucket. This time not strange vegetables, but a sort of muesli, which was palatable by myself and my friend.
One morning we awoke to find the behemoth staring at us, and the tentacle monster pulled down the drawbridge to our cell. I didn’t dare move. Was it some kind of test of loyalty? Or a trap? I looked to my companion for answers, but as usual, he wouldn’t reply. It was as if the tentacle monster had one of its appendages deep inside his brain, screwing with his thought process , making him silly and suggestible. To my shock, he walked straight out of there, and found somewhere on one of the large alien structures to sit.
After what must have been an hour of contemplation, I joined him up there, trying my best to avoid the monster, and the behemoth.
We couldn’t go very far. This universe? Planet? Realm? It is finite. You can touch the very corners of this world, feel the texture of the end of reality. The thought that I would not escape was a depressing one , but at least I had company.
We’d venture among the structures whenever we could, whenever the monster opened the cell, and we would return when the behemoth began to follow us. Then we would eat muesli and vegetables, sing songs both jaunty and sad, and finally sit side by side on a gangway, and fall into a deep sleep. These were the best times I spent in the alien realm, and like all good times, they were short lived.
One day, during a ramble across the grey moss, we found something.
It was a huge, gleaming portal in the sky, with a platform directly in front of it.
We went up to investigate, and found something wonderful staring back at us once we reached the platform.
It was earth.
Undeniably, it was as if someone had taken a picture of a field and pasted it onto an alien landscape. But it wasn’t a picture, it was moving. The sun was shining in the sky, the wind was blowing through the leaves of the trees . If I listened closely I could hear the conversations and chatter of my kin. I wanted so desperately to be there, I leapt into the portal, but found myself repelled by some invisible force field, and opened my eyes to see the behemoth, gesturing towards the cell.
I did as it wished, and went towards the cell. My companion had different ideas. In a fury, and seeing freedom so close, he too threw himself at the portal. The aliens noticed, and not one but two tentacle beasts went for him. With great effort, he struggled, and bit, and scratched at the things. He managed to evade their grip, and try the portal again. This time he hit it harder, and with a lot more momentum.
There was a crack, and I watched my companion fall from the platform. There was blood on his face, he wasn’t moving, and then.. the monsters scooped him up, and took him away.
That night was the coldest.
It was the loneliest.
And it was the quietest.
I vowed to figure out the forcefield. Brute force did very little against it, so it would have to be approached differently.
I fell asleep that night trying to listen for the other people I’d heard at the portal, and woke up to find something disturbing in the cell.
It looked like my companion. But it was smaller. Its features exaggerated, like a 3d caricature of my old companion. I gave it a firm push, and found it was made of the same smooth material the craft was. It bounced back a little, but in its 3 days of being there, that was the only time he’d moved.
This was the final insult.
A mannequin!
The audacity of those alien bastards!
I decided that I would leave, and that they would have to kill me before they stopped me.
It was getting warmer by the day, and I had been watching the aliens periodically check the portal, the tentacle monsters would push against it, and I would be hit by a wall of wind. Perhaps the wind was generated by the portals activation. Perhaps they were stealing Earths cool climate in order to cool theirs. I haven’t put much thought into it. All’s I knew is that there were a few minutes each day when the portal was open, and that I was always locked up during that time.
I’d been testing the perimeter of my cell, too, and had found that the doors used by the tentacles to deposit vegetables and muesli had a little give to them. I could grab the lowest bar with my mouth, and lift it just over the top of my leg.
It would have to be enough.
As usual, I woke up, and had some breakfast. Then, as usual, the aliens let me out for a little exercise. After an hour or two, I was given some more veg, and returned to my cell. Once my cell was truly secure, they deactivated the force field and left me to my escape.
The hardest part was detaching the mannequin from the catwalk, and even then it was quite hard to move the thing into the right position... But after half an hour, I had it next to the service hatch. I kept trying to pull the bar up again, but found I couldn’t slide the mannequin under the hatch in time to stop it falling. I tried one last time, and felt a frenzy of rage when I failed. I smashed my head against the bars, and called out as loud as I could.
A tentacle monster appeared behind the hatch, muesli in hand.
It opened the hatch, and slinked in. I eyed the portal, still open. This was my only chance, but the tentacle monsters stem took up most of the hatch way.
I didn’t even think. I just let my body act on pure instinct. I charged the hatch, and sunk my beak deep into the fleshy stem.
The tentacles convulsed, and quickly retreated, taking me with them. I was thrown out of the cage, but managed to stabilise by flapping my wings as hard as I could, and twisting my body to face the portal.
In one fell swoop, I glided through the portal, and back to my own realm.
As I left. I heard the behemoth shout.
“Polly!? No!”
