Abduction

He was sitting quietly outside a church, watching a young confettied couple cuddle into the back of a car. He seemed impassive to the cheery smiles of parents, the knowing winks of friends and happy aunts sniffling into handkerchiefs. He stared at the scene, oblivious to the hurray of the engine as it applauded into life. Neither was he moved by the waves and hoots of the congregation as the limousine whispered like pillow talk down the street.

I couldn't help noticing how forlorn he looked, this man, as if he was a jilted lover seeing a long lost sweetheart marry a close friend, I thought. Or he was ruminating, like me, on the last flush of bachelorhood as it evolved into the family of environments that drew sustenance from mortgage rates and the smell of new born children. There was something about him that drew me across the footpath, through a posy of well-wishers with honeymoon nuptials prodding their libidos, and into the tiny churchyard.

I sidled up next to him with a comment about the hot sun and my aging feet. As if to emphasise my rather mundane introduction I slipped off my sandals and massaged my instep. I made it plain to him that I was a mere passer-by and had nothing to do with the wedding crowd. It occurred to me that it might help him relax if he knew I was as innocent a spectator as himself. He turned to me with those unseeing eyes of his, appeared to absorb my appearance with a quick other-worldly gaze and sighed. He returned his attention to the dispersing matrimonial flock as they swapped directions and pooled cars, all eager to taste the brews and delicacies of a reception at some distant location. I felt more than a little uncomfortable sitting there on that bench, hovering just outside the orbit of this stranger's desolation. I felt arctic breezes blow from his solitude, his detachment loomed as glacial as polar ice turning our sunny little garden into frozen tundra. "They think they are masters of their own script," the man said, "If only they knew they were victims of half-baked preconceptions."

I was stunned by his unorthodox opening lines. I caught a deep, uncontrolled breath, making an undiplomatic hiccuping sound in the process, and looked sidelong at his frigid face. I was not prepared for cryptic repartee. I pride myself on having mastered the art of exchanging cordial remarks about the weather and easily engaged in the usual banalities that pepper chit chat and banter, but this was so totally beyond what any reasonable person should expect. Under the pretence of savouring a gem of an insight I turned his words over in my mind. I found a sharp edge in his tone, a crystalline anger in the voice, as if the language was a prism directing scattered explosions of helplessness into verbal incantations. I wondered whether his words carried any meaning or if they were simply empty statements of a diseased brain.

"Well, yeah," I started, having decided to play it straight, "I find it hard to commit myself to relationships these days. But then again I've had my day. I don't begrudge ...

He cut me off with a most disarming sneer before coughing into the middle distance, "You know, I used to believe that life on Earth was a unique event. I used to think we were alone in the universe. God's chosen people..."

I didn't have to say it - the obvious reply seemed to resonate in the air. "But now?"

"But now..." he lamented, "but now..." A half smile lifted onto yellowing teeth. A cheeky, derisive twitch punctuated the corner of his pale mouth emitting a word that confounded me. "Abduction," he said.

I had no reply to offer. I wasn't sure I was meant to reply. At least not with words. He searched my body language for clues to my real response. His eyes rested on me like electrodes. It seemed my every muscle and nerve was connected directly to some place in his brain that would review and analyse any reaction. I looked at him shyly hoping not to give anything away. After all I didn't know what he was talking about. I gulped hard in my efforts to find the appropriate rejoinder.

"Abduction?" I echoed.

He nodded, silent and slow.

"Abduction," he said again.

With great relief I felt his gaze disconnect from my metabolism. My shoulders slumped forward as his hold relaxed. I wanted to say something comforting, as I was sure this man had been through a tremendous ordeal that he found difficulty in speaking about. In the second or two that followed I wondered about whether he had had problems with an orphanage. Perhaps he was trying to find his true parents and had met with bureaucratic barriers. I was building a story of him being snatched from a cot and sold to wealthy but infertile parents. I saw him brought up totally unaware of his real origins. There he was in my mind's eye as a teenager wondering why there were no birth photographs, why he did not resemble one bit either of his parents. Then as a young man guessing the truth and a long fruitless search for his roots. Perhaps an old newspaper clipping of baby-snatchers had provoked some inkling of his fateful past.

All this flashed through my mind in barely a second. The explanatory saga that formed around this man was so vivid that I immediately became convinced I had uncovered his life's story. Being outside a church I put it down as a result of some divine inspiration. I had performed a Christian act and the Lord had rewarded me. But what I said was:-

"Abduction."

Almost immediately I regretted saying it. I was beginning to sound more like a parrot than a reasonably sensible do-gooder. Before he could respond - perhaps with an offer of seed from his pocket - I scrambled around and came up with something slightly more sustaining. "It must be a terrible thing to be taken from one's parents."

He nodded again before looking down at his feet. I followed his lead and noticed for the first time that he was bare-footed. Not that that was unusual in itself, it was common practice in the height of summer to go without footwear, especially for the young and unemployed. I had already stereotyped this man as being from the wrong side of the economic upturn the country was supposed to be having; one of the many zeroes that formed an executive's pay packet.

Our silence stretched interminably. I thought I had done my bit for our dialogue and waited for him to shoulder some responsibility for its continuance. He simply drew circles in the dust below the seat.

He flashed those imploring, vacuous eyes at me as he drew bizarre shapes with his big toe. His eyes kept lifting up to me and dropping to the ground. I took this odd practice to mean he wanted me to read something down there.

Was his situation so untenable that he could not even verbalise his problem? Was I expected to guess his torment by reading hints in the sand? I looked but found nothing of note. A few circles, a squiggle, a dot and a curious triangle with lines behind it.

It meant nothing to me and I was becoming a little bored with his mooning and childish scribbles. I stretched my back and wiggled into my sandals.

"Oh, well," I said with a false yawn, "best be getting home." Thinking this preparation for my departure was too clumsy, and rather callous given the man's predicament, I touched his shoulder and, in slightly more than a whisper, said, "Good luck, I hope you find your parents some day."

"Don't you see?" he said hurriedly.

"What?" I replied getting to my feet and shaking little cramps from my legs.

"The picture!" he cried pointing at the nonsense in the dirt. As if our whole meeting had rendered his behaviour and puerile graffiti self-explanatory he gaped at me in astonishment. "This is not our solar system, this here is not a human!"

I breathed heavily through my nose and got down on my haunches with a crack of my knees. I pointed at his marks.

"Is this a solar system?"

He nodded.

"Three stars and four planets?" I ventured

He nodded.

I hunched my shoulders and spread my hands. I hoped the raised eyebrows and curled mouth indicated adequately my complete lack of understanding.

He leaned forward conspiratorially and mouthed a word. I guessed the first letter was an 's' but found the rest of the word void of clues. He mouthed it again and this time I imitated his oral movements.

"Serious" I said blankly before grasping the context in which I was to read his lips. The word was meant to depict a star system and being an amateur, but telescope-less, follower of astronomy, the answer fell out of my head and straight to my tongue. "Sirius!" I said loudly, triumphant.

The man cringed away at the sound covering his ears the way pantomime actors do. He put his index finger to his lips to quieten me, looking around the now deserted church grounds for eavesdroppers. He fell to his knees and waved his hand over the squiggle.

It reminded me of a dollar sign; a snake coiled around a staff. I asked him if it had something to do with money but he shook his head violently indicating I was a long way from the mark. I continued to stare at it wondering why I was groveling in the dirt with a man who was obviously a lunatic looking at Rorschakesque marks on the ground. I had tried to humour him and give him the benefit of the doubt concerning his sanity but found myself becoming increasingly annoyed at the charades and pictographic games.

He kept looking at me opening and closing his mouth.

"Good God, man, just tell me what the hell it is you want to say!" I shouted finally losing patience with his infernal parlor game. "Is it a fish? A lizard? A serpent?"

His eyes lit up at my last guess.

"A serpent!" I said crossly, "And what's this?" I continued pointing at the cone, vexed beyond reproach, "It looks like an Apollo landing vehicle!"

He sat back with a satisfied grin.

"Abduction!" he said pointing a thumb into his chest and a finger at the hieroglyph he'd drawn on the ground.

Finally it made sense. He was a lunatic. The kind that was off the planet. Probably a member of a secret cult, to boot. He didn't seem violent and that made me sigh with relief. There were no weapons apparent on his body. I could see that easily enough as he wore very few items of clothing; a plain ragged T-shirt and jeans with frayed cuffs and knees. I wondered why I had even taken the time to speak with such a down and out person in the first place. Surely I had seen his dirty clothes, filthy fingernails and generally unkempt appearance when I had approached him. But, no, that was not what I had seen. I had been caught up in the happy marriage scene and the downcast misery of a lonely fellow human that contrasted so starkly with it. I had not taken the time to assess the social status of my companion. It was simply the act of a good Samaritan, a nobleman of the commonwealth of humanity.

But now I was regretting my decision and thought it was about time to heed that inner counsel that said, "P.O.Q.." I rose to my feet and made some false claim about an appointment I had to keep. He must have sensed something in my manner, something that brought home to him his previous lack of articulation because he suddenly became animated.

"They've been here before, you know," he started in a quiet cultured voice, "A long time ago. Can you guess when?"

"I have no idea. Look I must be getting ..."

"Two hundred thousand years ago."

"Sure. And you remember that? I'm sorry, I'd love to talk but ..."

"When we became Homo Sapiens," he continued ignoring my attempts to excuse myself. "They are amphibious."

"Sure, sure ..."

"At least the good guys are. The nasty guys have long misshapen heads and use another race with wings as their slaves."

I don't know what it was that pricked my interest in what this raving idiot had to say. He spoke as if from a position of authority; someone who had witnessed the events first hand. His innocence and softly spoken manner were a curiosity. As he continued he exhibited all the hallmarks of an educated and articulate speaker. He quoted passages from the Holy Bible and long tracts from myths he said were taken from Babylonian clay tablets. As if to emphasise his academic ability he took a side track that left me breathlessly awed by this man's knowledge of Sumerian pictography. All these things in themselves would be enough to grab my attention but it was the way he sprayed questions at me, rhetorical musings designed to undermine my belief structure, that held me fascinated by his demented hypothesis.

The questions were addressed my way but they were quite evidently part of a greater thesis that echoed in the recesses of his loneliness. I sat and listened as he spilled words onto his sleeve for me to read at my leisure. I wasn't part of his world, I was simply a stranger closing in on his very own distance, supplying the backdrop for his canvass.

"Do you understand what I'm saying?" he suddenly queried, "We got it all wrong. We have to re-examine our stories and myths, re-arrange the ... the ..." he was searching for a word that had escaped into the ether.

"Deckchairs on the Ti...." I started absently.

"Furniture!" he said in triumph. "Internal furniture, the stuff in here." He pointed to his head.

"Oh!" I said blandly. I had been so caught up in his wondrous story, dreaming wild dreams of distant histories, that I had failed to follow the threads of his argument.

His stern look made me shudder. Suddenly he grabbed me by the collar and shook me hard enough to rattle my self-esteem loose. "You're not bloody listening!" he shouted, "No-one listens!" He let me go, stood up and walked in circles around my seat. "How can I prove that I've seen them? They took me away for tests a few years ago. They taught me their language. I read their books."

I could only look on in pity as his previous commanding studiousness disintegrated into a wailing tirade. How, I wondered, could this obviously intelligent young man become so lonely and alienated that he had to make up such outlandish stories. He could surely get work as a researcher given his knowledge of ancient languages, all it needed was a firm push in the right direction. As I studied his ranting at the sky, his fisted insults aimed at heaven and the dark, brooding hopelessness that engulfed his silent moments, I felt a compulsion to hug this fellow being, protect him from the harshness of our civilisation.

He was verging on tears now. I rose to put an arm around him for comfort. He turned and cried on my shoulder, "How can I possibly make anybody understand. Can't they see the contradictions?" What could I say? I didn't want to sound too pompous or paternalistic, and anything I said at that moment would probably be charged with that sort of cultural noise. I stroked his hair and patted his back, trying hard to do so in a masculine kind of way. He slumped to the seat again, eyes firmly on the grass by the side of the road where Buttercups grew in mimicry of unknown constellations.

"I've read their history," he said finally, "They came to mine the Earth of all its minerals." The sun came out and spread it's warmth on the two of us in this garden of introspectivity. Shadows bent against the grey brick wall of the church. He pointed to them. "But a shadowy leader usurped control of the planet. We know him as God," he mumbled, "The angels are his slave race. They do the bidding of the God-people. Messengers, that's all they are, mere messengers. A whole civilisation reduced to that of a carrier pigeon."

We sat in silence, him and I. Me wondering at the squeezing aneurism that must be invading his mind, he with his face in his hands, his hair brushed back, tears glistening off his cheeks. I wondered if I should just leave and allow him his time of surrender or perhaps it would be more dignified to stay until he had acted out the full passion play.

"They wanted to make humans into pack horses. Miners and pack horses." He looked close to exhaustion. "They later sold their rights to us to little grey insectoidal creatures who are breeding us for DNA." His eyes were fire red against a pale skin that hung like tracing paper over his skull. Deep creases on his forehead added years to his looks. "The amphibian creatures, the people who rescued me from the abductors, protested to the .... the ..." He faced me directly. "The Annunaki, they are called. The Sumerians called them by the correct name. The Annunaki are the supreme watchers of colonisation. They have no power themselves but everybody, and I mean everybody, fears their words."

"The Annunaki?" I said for no reason. I thought I'd look them up in my encyclopedia when I got home.

"Yes. The amphibians complained to the Annunaki."

"And God stopped the slavery?" I ventured

"No! no! You still don't understand, do you?" he shouted at my vacant expression. He jumped from the chair with a sudden venomous petulance. The movement toppled the seat backwards and spilled me into the rose garden. I heard him shout, "The serpent is our saviour. We worship the wrong god, dammit! This church is built to those that want to enslave us!"

By the time I had recovered my composure the troubled man was half way down the street. I imagined lead weights and baggage dancing lightly around his belt. I crossed myself at his blasphemy and muttered a little prayer for his salvation. As I got up to continue my walk I thought proudly of all the miracles in the Bible, Noah industriously building an ark to save two of every animal, Adam and Eve biting into the apple of knowledge, Christ Almighty feeding multitudes with a few fish and a couple of loaves of bread.

A few steps later I fell into a fit of depression. The lonely fellow back there on the bench had caused me much grief. Insect beings, amphibians and winged slaves, indeed! I could not believe that an intelligent person could become so much a prisoner of such preposterous stories.

Some people will believe anything.

Stephen Thompson is a self funded unemployed homemaker as a result of government downsizing, which has given him the opportunity to take writing seriously. He writes poetry for pleasure and has given readings of his work at small gatherings in Sydney. Stephen now lives in Brisbane and is working on two novels. He is a member of VISION, a group for writers of Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy.

E-mail: esstee@gil.com.au

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