Sightings of Extraterrestrial Life is My Job

If I write this will that mean your world will be safe?  Could these words be as loud as that gun that killed that boy?  Nah.  To this day I persist to be a fool, with only fool stories, abstract and simple and too normal to the naked eye.  Which reminds me, there's a story I once over heard in a crowded smoke filled Inn/bar.

The wood that the Inn had been constructed in has a mossy look to it, a wet, mossy look to it.  Touch it and it sucks back in like an out of water sea urchin barely visible to the naked eye.  The wall's alive.  Drinks are splashed around a bit and it is very likely to have been the root of this wall's vague, animate, ambiguity.

I touch and almost get caught.

As I order another Joker's drink with ice and mint, I hear this old beggar tell a wise tale, truly, and terrifyingly concise.  It started with the death of his best friend and long time companion, Dog.  It was a beagle, and it had died yesterday.  A careful eye into the old man's faded thin leather bag, one would see the body of the deceased, a flaky, stale foot protruding ever so obvious.  The beggar was dramatic in telling his story that many felt like it was just ramblings from a mindless drunkard.  Many of times has mindless drunkards stumble in ranting about their misery and doom; but, the man here, with a dead dog in his purse, this man has truth in his voice.

He claimed Dog was not fated to natural causes, but a hit and run.  This was not a normal hit and run incident.  This dog's estranged owner, carefully explaining what happened to everyone who'll listen, has been confessing a taboo in this town.  The thing is no one ever mentions for fear of being executed.  "Extraterrestrial Beings".  You are hung then burned for suggesting such heresy and nonsense.

But this old man, he tells and retells his story.

He says the aliens drove their ship straight into Dog.  From a dirt path they were on he saw the ship drop from above with ease, and glided its silver body down the path right at them.  The old man said Dog ran forward at it in an attempt to do as it was alive to do: guard its owner.  And it did.  The old mad could have been in the dog's fate, wadded in a ball, stuffed into an old sack.  The moment the ship hit Dog's body, it shivered and stopped in mid air.  It was flashing bright lights of all sorts of colors when the old man gathered Dog up and ran off without looking back.

"Why didn't you turn around to get a good look at this, "ship?""  Some drooling mongoloid says spilling drink all over the conscious floors.  The old man says, "I could hear it!  It made a moaning wail upward, it flew away, out of earth's bounds!"  But they all said he talks like a retard.  And the old man continues to tell the story.  I listen for a tenth time only to see if the old man slip up and tell it differently and maybe add something that wasn't there before, but he doesn't.  It only becomes more simple and shorter, word for word.  He leaves, never looking back, but he hears.

I get ready to leave but first I want to collect the story on a napkin, before the Joker's drink gets me tongue tied and gutter bound.  I write it all on a four by four inch newsprint napkin and I am highly satisfied with the job well done, when all out of nowhere, drink from a passerby heading to the trough, splashes from his weak gripped mug, all over the napkin.  The walls retort, but are whispers to the naked ear.  A violent crash comes from the back of the bar.  Heavy laughter erupts from the corner of the room.  Candle light flickers as I leave, as I go without drinking my Joker's drink for fear of losing the memory of the old beggar and his dog, Dog.  Hell of a story.  Hell of night.