The Light, the Beginning, and the End

"You're starting to worry me," his mother had said when he began reading into the topic at a young age. It became everything to him, and he believed it was his job to bring people's attention to it. He read every article, downloading file after file off the Internet. He had amassed quite a collection of videos as well. Each of these said the same thing: reports on alien abductions, UFO sightings, and mysterious government cover-ups. Greg personnaly had never seen an alien, or a UFO for that matter, but they were as real to him as the ground he walked on.

Greg was torn inside, between the need to see and alien for himself, proving beyond a doubt to him that they were real-or did he already believe that? But he was torn between that, and the fact that the very thought of gazing into the infinitely dark and forbidding eyes terrified him to no end. His fear won over him, and some nights he woke, terrified, thinking he heard something, or saw the tell-tale light. being afraid of the dark is more common than the phobia Greg had, which was being afraid of the light.

Whenever he mentioned the fact, he would have to explain himself. Greg was not afraid of light, as in sunlight, that would be crazyt, he was afraid of what the light, represented. Of course, none of that made any sense if you were a skeptic, a blind as Greg called them. Blind, not in the physical sense, but blind to the world, and the limitless possibilities of the universe.

"I don't think I want to know.." his Mom said when he asked her if she understood what he said. The light, he said, came during the night, which was the beginning, and the beginning was the end. They would come, and take you away... No one could say for how long as accounts vary. Greg could go on like this, and he always did. Some people never come back. Others came back insane. The most terrifying sound for Greg, at night, was nothing. For like the light, no sound, nothing ata ll, marked the beginning. But soon there would be sounds, screams, your screams. Greg shivered with the thought of being one of their crafts, to be inside the light.

"Here you are," said the taxi cab driver, pulling up at his small home, snapping him out of his thoughts.

"Thanks," Greg politely replied, handling the driver his money. Walking up to his house, he pulled out his keys, and unlocked the door. A wave of cool air hit him. His air conditioned house was a welcome change from the humid weather outside. His parents would not be home until next morning, so he had the house to himself. He went immediately to his collection. Several file folders, so full they looked ready to rip open. There was always papers falling out. He pulled out the file folders and rested them on the floor and began reading them over.

His favorite of the articles were not on Roswell, which was the biggest, more known case involving a crashed UFO. His favorite case was about his heroes, un-likely heroes for a teen aged boy. His heroes were Betty and Barney Hill.

'Who are the Hills?' his Mom would ask. His Mom asked a lot of questions about the subject, Greg knew she was just humoring him, as she did not believe. She was blind. That did not stop Greg from spewing out facts and tid bits of information on the subject. He found the stories sounded more real if he told someone else.

"The Hills were the first documented case of an alien abduction," Greg would pause for his Mom to show her 'give me a break' look, but she listened anyway "they started the way for countless others who were too afraid of ridicule to report their stories" Greg would go on to describe the case, and the events following it.

Needing some background noise to shatter the silence, Greg played The Offspring's CD, Smash, skipping it to track 9, a familiar song, Greg song the chorus to himself as it played:

When will the world listen to reason?...I have a feeling it will be a long time...

When will the truth come into season?...I have a feeling it will be a long time...

How true those words were. Greg was smart, and did well at school, but he thought he was wasting his time there. He did not want to become a mathematicion, or a scientist.. He had no idea what he wanted to do for a living, but in his spare time he collected evidence on the existence of extra terrestrials. His father avoided the subject altogether, and if Greg brought it up, he would not listen. Greg was tired of always arguing, most people thought UFOs were as silly as the Easter Bunny.

'When I was young, I could have sworn I saw the Easter Bunny.. and if other people said the same thing, it does not mean that I actually saw it,' his Mom had commented once. Greg would argue and argue...

Silence.

The CD had ended. Greg had been so absorbed in his thoughts, and reading the cases over, he had ignored everything else. Including his hunger. After microwaving a few slices of pizza, he flicked on the T.V in his room. Summer re-runs filled the screen. These were not good the first time I saw them, commented Greg to himself. But he watched them anyway. The smell of the taxi lingered on his clothes, and he changed into shorts, and lay on his beds.

After spending a week with his grand parents, up north, it sure felt hot down here. His parents would be back in the morning, and life would get back to normal once again...

Sleep fell on him quickly. Greg was a deep sleeper, and not much would wake him. Nonetheless, late that night Greg woke up with a start. He thought he heard something.

He listened. Nope. Nothing.

He stood up, getting out of his bed, he walked slowly into the kitchen, his heart beating slightly faster. He felt anxious, as if he expected someone to be in the room. He turned the corner.. Nothing. He strained his ears, but could not hear anything.

Nothing at all.

To his dismay, the gentle, but familiar sound of the air conidtioning had ceased. He looked at the clock, which was flashing the numbers 12:00.

Power's out?

It was the middle of the summer and it was a clear night? He tried a light to make sure, it did not turn on. He picked up the phone, it too, was dead. An uneasiness settled on him quickly. He felt he was suffocating in the night.

Go back to bed, go to sleep, he thought.

He lay down, facing the window. Then it happened. A blarring white light shone brilliantly through the blind, through the curtain, and even through his closed eyelids.

Blinded and terrified at once, he tried to stand up, but fell back on the bed in a sitting position. The light was giving him a headache.. He heard no noise, as if time itself had stopped, and was standing still in fear. He swallowed, but his mouth was dry, it was beginning.

This scenario was all-to-familiar for Greg. He let out a wordless cry, after opening his eyes, when he sensed a presence in the room. Not inches from him, its hideous face directly in front of him was a small, grey being. Its skin lacked any pigment at all. Its face was almond shaped, only nostrils instead of a nose. The large black eyes stared at Greg, and he could not look away. He could not think rationally, or act. He felt like a deer caught in the headlights of a car.

The eyes were so black, blacker than coal, blacker than a starless night, just one big, endless void.

Greg tried to run, but he felt a numbness spread over him that prevented him from even standing. The numbness covered his body like an unyielding fog. He felt like he was under anesthetic. The alien, a Grey, moved quickly, drawing Greg closer without actually touching him.

Greg was enveloped by the light.

He was staring down at his house, but he did not remember leaving it.

Then he was entering the underside of a craft.

The light was so blinding....

And then he was on a table. There were more aliens around him, staring down at him. Fear was not an ample description for what he felt.

He screamed and screamed, out of fear, and just to break the awfull, dreadfull silence. Time did not pass, but eventually his voice was hoarse..

Greg would never see the end. It was not tangiable like the light, which he could see. It was not tangiable like the start, because he remembered the beginning. No, for Greg, he would never see the end.

What saddened Greg the most during his eternal stay in the light, was not the pain he was enduring, but the fact that he will become another countless statistic of a missing person who never returns, and his abductors will or can not be brought to justice, because according to a majority of the population, they do not exist...