Times Square at last. All the preparations. The long journey. Finally, my dream trip realized.
It’s not what I expected. The crowds. The noise. The flashing lights. The damp heat.
It’s overwhelming.
Feeling lightheaded—trying to sit down.
Dizziness. Fuzziness. Fainting.
Who are these strange ones—black clothes, spikes, and metal studs—rushing at me with black nailed grasping hands?
Something’s wrong. They’ve done something to me.
Blackness.
Awake—barely. Masked faces—crowding close. Strapped down—unable to move. Face covered—poison gas flows.
Blackness again, then awake.
More flashing lights—speeding by. Hurtling through the darkness.
Needles pierce me. Rhythmic pressure crushes my body. More poison forced through my face.
Nothingness.
Strapped to a table. Surrounded by fiends—masked and gowned. Blurry in the bright lights. Flashing lights on strange machines. Tubes everywhere. More needles—more poison flows.
They force my eyes open—bright lights—blinding me. Garbled speech I can’t understand.
They’ve forced a probe down my throat. Gas is pumped through the probe, my stomach distended. It’s excruciating—they’re going to kill me.
More garbled speech—they’re shouting.
Greasy, cold metal on my bare skin, the electric jolt paralyzes me. And again. And again.
Now awake. I’m unable to move or talk or open my eyes. They’ve removed the needles. The poison has stopped.
How long will this last? I scream to myself.
Why did you take me? I was just visiting.
###
“Shock him again.”
“Doctor, there’s no pulse. We’ve lost him.”
“I don’t understand it. The metalheads that called 911 told the EMTs that he just collapsed, and CPR had no effect. Why did this man die?”
“The autopsy will tell us, Doctor.”
###
Darkness. Awake—I can’t see. I feel slickness on my skin. They’ve put me in a bag.
I’m still strapped down—painful across my heart chamber.
The probe is gone. My heart tube squeezes slowly and still gently moves my fluid.
My gills, hidden by my artificial hair, still absorb the needed nitrogen.
I can breathe—plenty of nitrogen in this planet’s atmosphere. It’s why we can visit.
Unstrapped—pain is gone. Lying on a flat table, sliding, a click.
Still can’t move from the shocks—dark, cold, quiet.
I scream soundlessly in anguish—I can’t warn the others.
Freezing cold.
Darkness.
END