I Want to Believe
8/20
Two glowing bright lights urged me from my sleep in the front seat of my car, stationed in the back corner of a Wal-Mart parking lot. I felt groggy as if coming out of a drugged stupor, the memory of how I got here and the events of the past few hours shrouded in a cloudy haze. The lights zoomed away and the original sense of calm, unquestioning happiness soon followed. I slipped on a pair of shoes and climbed out of my car, emerging into the shadowed world of a strange land at daybreak. I soon found that all of my limbs were intact with no visible signs of lobotomy, needles, radiation, or extra digits – I couldn’t prove any of the events of the previous night – and really, who would believe me? Rows upon rows of corn lined the road as I walked into town. The few people who were awake seemed quaint, though most made me uneasy. Were they in on this too? Bulging eyes stared at me from every corner – shaped cookies at the farmer’s market, a display in front of the music store, restaurants, billboards, parking lot murals, even street lamps. These representations of 50s style little green men were no where near like what I had seen – or what I had thought I’d seen – but I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. I ducked my head low, past the police, past the courthouse, past the McDonalds with a crashed spaceship-turned-play place where Ronald McDonald romped around in a space suit – and back into my car. An alien shaped cookie made me feel better, like I had just bitten off one of their heads, and I soon decided that I probably was making it all up. Dust flew in a whirlwind around my car as I cruised off into the sunrise, a bright green flash darting across the sky.