Alien Abductees Anonymous

 

'My name is Zog, and I've been abducted by aliens.'

'Welcome, Zog.'

'My name is Bzzzz, and I was abducted by aliens.'

'Welcome, Bzzzz.'

'I'm Grub.'

'I'm Vimu.'

'I'm Xyler.'

'Welcome, all of you to this inaugural meeting of AAA – Alien Abductees Anonymous. My name is Qetta and I am the leader of the group. Who would like to tell their story first?'

Vimu raised a tentative tentacle.

'Go ahead, Vimu,' said Qetta. 'Tell us what happened to you.'

'I was undulating down the street late one night, minding my own business, when I saw a flash in the sky. There was what looked like a star, descending slowly in a cloud of smoke. As it got closer I could see it was some kind of space craft that looked like a metal Bgrumb, all geometric, except it only had four legs. There was something painted on the side. A square with red and white stripes on it, with another, smaller square in the corner which was blue, and covered in stars.'

'That's exactly like the one that took me!' Xyler exclaimed. 'So it wasn't my imagination!'

'So it had that,' Vimu continued, and some black shapes which could have been writing.'

'Can you remember what they were?' Qetta asked. 'Could you draw them for us? I have some vellum here. How's your ink supply today?'

'Fine,' Vimu said. He extended a tentacle and carefully squeezed ink onto the page. He held up the vellum to show 'NASA USA'. 'Like that,' he said. There was also a picture of a kind of green plant with four leaves.'

'Then what happened?' Xyler asked, his antennae quivering with excitement.

'The door opened and two creatures got out. Were they ever ugly! They only had four limbs, two of which they used to walk with. They had tiny eyes and bulbous noses and dark tufts growing out of their heads. No antennae. Their skin was a disgusting pink colour, like puke.'

'Mine were exactly the same, except the tufts on their heads were a kind of pale yellow.'

'One of the ones who took me had red tufts,' Zog added.

'You say they had pink skin?' Bzzzz asked. 'Mine didn't. Mine had skin that was dark brown.'

'I was taken by a group of about six of them,' said Grub. 'Their skin tone ranged from pale beige to almost black. Not one of them was green, or even blue.'

'So they took you into their ship?' Qetta prompted.

'Yes,' said Vimu. 'They tied me up and put me in a cage. They chattered amongst themselves, all excited, and I noticed something else. Some of them had deep voices and others had high voices. They put a container of water in the cage with me. I mean, water! I knew then they were probably trying to kill me. I was parched, I could have murdered a nice cup of sulphuric acid, but there seemed to be no way of communicating that to them.'

'The ones who took me actually drank some of the water, and it didn't even harm them. They must be pretty damn tough, those things. Anyway, they got out a bunch of little black boxes and pointed them at me. I thought they were going to shoot me but they pressed all these buttons and nothing actually happened.'

'I had the same thing,' Bzzzz said. 'Black boxes. Only there wasn't a square with stripes. They had a blue square with a circle of yellow stars and...' Bzzzz reached for the vellum and wrote on it 'EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY'.

'What does all this mean?' Grub wondered.

'I confess, I have no idea,' Qetta said. 'All I know is, when we try to tell our stories, nobody ever believes us.'

Not Today

Nathan Tate was about to offer to buy a round when his phone buzzed. He could never ignore it; not now. Not now he'd given his number to the emergency services, so that they could call the superhero, Power Blaster, to let him know if he was needed. The display on screen showed the call was coming from ‘Mother’.

Nathan knew it wasn't actually his mother, but an emergency call. If his mother called, the display would say, ‘Mum’.

'I have to take this,' he said, and moved away from the group.

The person on the other end told him that a person was trapped under a train at Eastville Station – could he help? Time was of the essence and there was no easy way to get lifting gear down there.

'I'm on my way,' he said. Turning to his friends, he said, 'Sorry, guys, I gotta go. My mum has had one of her turns.'

'Want me to drive you home?' one of them asked. 'Be quicker than the Arrow.'

'No, thanks, mate, I'll catch a cab. I don't want to spoil anyone else's evening.'

As they watched him go, another member of the group commented, 'Is his mother really that ill or is he just trying to get out of buying a round? It happens a lot lately.'

Nathan's especially acute hearing picked that up; but he pretended he hadn't heard. He resolved that next time he met this particular group of friends, he'd make sure he got the first round in.

Ambulances, fire crews and compliance agents surrounded the entrance to Eastville station, preventing people from entering. Power Blaster landed, making sure his back was to the crowd gathered outside. Sure enough, he could see cameras flash as people managed to get shots of the back of his head. The compliance agents let him through. He ran through the concourse and vaulted over the ticket barrier.

On the platform, he could see immediately what had happened. The head and torso of a young woman could be seen by the side of the track; the wheels of the train had run over her pelvis. His head spun a little. She had to be dead, surely. Nobody could survive that, could they?

He took a deep breath and floated down so he could assess how best to move the train. As he landed, the woman's eyes opened. 'Power Blaster?' she whispered. She was not only alive, but conscious. He knelt beside her. 'I slipped,' she said.

'I'll get you out,' Power Blaster said. 'Hang in there.' He stood, making an assessment of the best place to brace himself against the engine.

'Wait a second, Power Blaster.' A paramedic, who'd been kneeling by the girl, called to him. 'Can I have a word before you do anything?'

'Sure,' Power Blaster said, and followed the man a few metres into the tunnel. The girl under the train watched them with terrified eyes.

'There's something you need to know before you lift that train off her,' the paramedic said in a low voice. 'There's severe crush trauma there. It's only the train stopping her from bleeding to death, and while we could, in many cases, apply a tourniquet, the way she's fallen and the extent of her injuries make it impossible. Not only that, but even if we could do it, the crushed parts of her body will release toxins which will kill her anyway. So even though she's conscious and lucid, the minute we move that train, she dies.'

'So by saving her, I'll actually be killing her?'

'Effectively, although it will be deemed an accidental death.'

'How long could she live with the train on her?'

'A few hours at best. Though the Arrow Train Company want things cleared up as soon as possible so they can get the trains running again.'

'Heartless pricks,' Power Blaster muttered. 'There must be something you can do.'

'I'm sorry, Power Blaster, but there isn't. I've had a couple of doctors down here to make their own assessments, and they agree with me. Even if, by some miracle, she did live, her injuries would be so life changing, her life would be a living hell. She'd never walk again, and that would be the least of her problems, believe me. The best we can do is sedate her before you start, so she won't know what's happening. It's the only humane thing to do.'

'Let me talk to her, first,' Power Blaster said, and went back to kneel beside the girl.

'I'll never walk again, will I?' she whispered.

'I don't know,' Power Blaster hedged. 'I'm not a doctor.'

'I might even die. I don't want to die. I've never even kissed a man.'

'Well, I can soon rectify that,' Power Blaster said. He leaned over and kissed her gently on the lips. 'There. You can tell all your friends when you see them that you kissed Power Blaster.' Power Blaster had never been able to make up his mind whether there was anything after death or not; but if there was, she'd see her friends again eventually.

'Am I going to die?' she asked, in a small voice.

'We're all going to die,' Power Blaster said. From where he knelt, he could see the station clock, showing a minute to midnight. 'I can promise you, though, you're not going to die today.' All he had to do was keep talking to her for another minute and what he'd said would be perfectly true.

'What's your name?' he asked. 'I like to know the names of the women I've kissed.'

'Karen,' she replied.

'I'm Nathan,' he said. It was the first time he’d ever told anyone at an emergency scene his real name, and the last, until many years later, when he would appear on TV and tell everyone.

'What did the doctor say to you just now?' she asked.

'He said... he said that lifting the train off you might hurt, so he'd need to give you a sedative before I move it.'

The Paramedic came over. 'We need to do this, Power Blaster,' he said.

The station clock clicked over to midnight as the paramedic injected something into Karen's arm. Power Blaster stayed where he was, holding her hand. 'I'm right here with you,' he said to her.

At 12.01, her eyes closed. Power Blaster held one hand while the paramedic took the pulse on the other wrist. 'She's gone,' the paramedic said, at 12.02.

'Gone?' Power Blaster looked up at the man. 'But I haven't moved the train yet.'

'I know, but I gave her a lethal injection; it was kinder this way. For both of you.'

'What right do you have to make that decision? She didn't want to die.'

'Nobody does, but trust me, she couldn't have survived, and even if she did, she'd have a lousy life. Besides, you can move the train now and know you didn't kill her.'

Power Blaster didn't know whether to feel anger or overwhelming sadness. A group of people had appeared on the platform. 'Who are they?' Power Blaster asked. 'They're letting people in to gloat, now?'

'No. Those are the funeral directors. They have a job to do, once you move the train.'

'About that, Power Blaster,' a man in a dark suit strode up and peered over the edge of the platform. 'We need to get these trains running as soon as possible, certainly by the rush hour.'

'Corporate asshole,' Power Blaster muttered under his breath, but knew it had to be done.

Sadness won out as he left the station. He turned his back on the photographers gathered outside, as he always did.

'Are you going to give us a victory roll, Power Blaster?' someone yelled.

'No,' Power Blaster replied, without turning around. 'There was no victory today.'

Most of them would have found it hard to believe what Power Blaster did after he flew home. He climbed into his mother's bed. 'Bad day at work?' Adriana Tate muttered, knowing something truly awful must have happened if her superhero son had crept into bed with her, like he used to as a small child when there was a thunderstorm.

Power Blaster couldn't answer, for by now, he was sobbing uncontrollably. Adriana put her arms round him to comfort him, as she'd done when he was a child. The only time he'd been like this as an adult was when Michael had died, and she'd been in an even worse state herself, then. At least now she could be strong for him. He'd tell her what had happened when he was ready.

She woke with him in her arms, as she had many times when he was small. Now, he was a big man, and her arm was numb. She tried, but failed, to extricate herself without waking him.

'Hungry?' she asked. He'd tell her what had happened when he was ready. She knew not to push him.

'Starving,' he said.

Over breakfast, he finally poured out the story. 'They didn't even give her a chance, Mum. They just killed her like she was some animal.'

'I know, that's horrible – but you're not a doctor, Nate. Those guys go through years of training. They knew she didn't stand a chance. Think about it – what kind of life would she have had if she did survive, with no legs, half her intestines missing...'

'Yeah. I guess you're right, but it's so unfair. Such a waste. Why did it even have to happen in the first place?'

'We'll never know.'

'I want to go to her funeral. I don't know her last name, though, so I don't know how to find out when it is.'

'Start with the news. There'll be a report, I expect, and they'll probably mention her name.'

'Yeah. There were paps there. Couldn't believe I wasn't going to do a victory roll.'

Power Blaster soon found out Karen's full name and the district where she'd lived. He could then access that district's funeral listing page and find out what he needed to know.

He went to the funeral as Nathan Tate, not as Power Blaster. Power Blaster showing up would turn the whole thing into a media circus and nobody would want that, least of all Power Blaster himself. He intended to be as unobtrusive as possible. If it was true what the New Agers often said, that the spirits of newly dead people often attended their own funerals, then Karen would know why he was there. Nobody else needed to. He'd be able to tell her family how sorry he was for their loss and then slip away.

Karen's mother, however, was curious. 'I don't think I know you,' she said, when Nathan approached her with condolences.

'I'm Nathan,' he said.

'She never mentioned a Nathan.'

'I hadn't known her long.'

'So how did you know her?'

'I saw her at the station. I liked her. We got chatting. I was about to ask her for a date when she saw her train was coming and ran for it...' he wiped his eyes. It was almost true. He had spoken to her at the station, and if things had been different, he might well have asked her out. She'd had lovely eyes.

Karen's mother gripped his arm. 'I wish you had. She used to cry herself to sleep because no boys were ever interested in her. I hope she knew you were. I wish we could have met because she introduced you to me...' she broke down.

'Me, too,' Nathan said. 'Me, too.'

When the family had gone, he walked back to the grave and placed a single red rose on it.

It goes to show, he thought, as he walked away, you never know what's going to happen, and you must do all the good you can, and seize all the happiness you can, while you can. Power Blaster resolved he was going to do exactly that.

***

If you'd like to know what Power Blaster did next, you'll find more of his story in these books:

The Raiders Trilogy

Book One

Book Three

Book Two

   

Power Blaster is a superhero who lives in a dimension not unlike our own, in the mega-nation of Innovia. No-one knows who he is or where his powers come from. 
After saving the life of the President several times, Power Blaster learns that a test of a nuclear warhead to defend the planet against asteroid strikes will have devastating consequences for his world and sets out to prevent it.

Power Blaster's actions lead to an unexpected result - a wormhole opens between his dimension and our own. Anyone in the vicinity is pulled through. People from diverse backgrounds and cultures must co-operate to survive and learn to live with the powers travel through the wormhole has bestowed on some of them.

A stable wormhole is established between the two dimensions. Power Blaster is determined to bring Desi Troyes, the person responsible for the bomb, to justice. Help comes from some rather unexpected sources. Meanwhile, Shanna Douglas sets out on a mission of her own, to find out if there is a cure for the life altering condition the wormhole gave her friend, Benedict Cole. Little does she know that she will stumble upon the secret of Power Blaster's mysterious origins.

What to do with used notebooks

If you’re a writer, you almost certainly have shelves of notebooks, full of first drafts of novels or short stories which have long since been transcribed onto the computer, and turned into printed books or e-books.

Perhaps you like to keep the first drafts as they are for posterity, but perhaps you simply don’t want to throw them away, and so they just sit there gathering dust. Perhaps the notebooks are too nice to throw in the recycling, because they were gifts from friends or family, or the lovely blank books you bought to encourage yourself to write.

What’s the solution?

For me, it’s turning them into art journals, or altered books. When I first heard about the art of altering old books, it appealed to me, but butchering books didn’t. Then it occurred to me that I could use the notebooks full of first drafts and give them a new purpose in life.

I’m not writing a “how to” manual here. I’m just going to show you some of the things you can do with an old notebook if you happen to be a bit crafty as well as a wordsmith. If you’re inspired and want instructions and/or ideas, search Pinterest or Instagram for “art journals” or “altered books” and you’ll find plenty.

I’m writing this during lockdown and have to admit at times wondering if mooching around shops like Hobbycraft just to see what you can find will ever be possible again, but there’s still Amazon and other online stores and there are all kinds of things you might be able to find at home, especially if you’re a bit of a hoarder, that will finally find that purpose in life you always knew it had.

Here are a few of the things I have used:

• Advertising leaflets
• Bleach (can be dripped on old, out of focus photos to make interesting effects)
• Carbon paper
• Christmas crackers/party hats
• Clip art
• Clothing labels
• Confetti
• Craft scissors/crimping shears
• Decorative paper napkins
• Ephemera, both found and purchased
• Last year’s calendar
• Old greeting cards
• Old magazines/newspapers
• Old maps
• Old photographs
• Origami paper
• Pens and pencils
• Pressed flowers
• Quality Street wrappers and other packaging
• Remnants of paint samples
• Ribbons
• Rubber stamps
• Rubbings of coins and other textures
• Scrapbooking supplies such as background paper
• Shaped hole punches
• Sponges or scrunched up paper for dabbing paint on backgrounds
• Stencils
• Stickers
• The sticky paper left behind after the stickers have been used
• The plastic mesh bags fruit and veg sometimes come in
• Tippex
• Transfers
• Washi tape
• Watercolour paints
• Wax candles (Scribble on a page with the wax and paint over it with watercolour)
• Wrapping paper.

A few of my favourites:

Patterned pages from an old magazine torn up and roughly glued. A rubber stamp of Chinese characters. Cutouts from magazines.  

Rubber stamps, old photo ephemera from Amazon. A bit which fell off an old Christmas decoration, magazine cutouts, decorative craft tape, found ephemera.

A picture from a magazine and craft tape.

 Magazine cutouts, a pressed orchid, washi tape.

 Birthday card, nature ephemera from Amazon, craft tape, confetti, watercolour paint.

 Old craft paint, paint sample, magazine cutouts, rubber stamps.

 Magazine cutouts, stickers, watercolour paint.

Watercolour paint, felt tip pens, metallic markers and white markers

 Magazine cutout of a window with the glass cut out and I’ve doodled on my writing underneath to make it look like fantasy script. Then used a red marker to draw the bricks around the edge.

 My drawing, coloured with felt tip pen and the background drawn with a gel pen. Both this example and the previous one made use of a technique called Zentangle. If you like to doodle and draw, Google it. But make sure you have lots of time and drawing pens!

My latest masterpiece is a small notebook turned into a 3D work of art. Starting at the back and using a drawing compass, I drew circles which gradually increased in size until I couldn’t expand them outwards any more, at which point I started making them ovals. I took pictures from magazines and brochures, wrapping paper and scrapbook supplies and cut out circles to fit onto the various pages (keeping the cutouts for use in future projects). Placing more cutouts so they stuck out into the space. I made a border out of washi tape for each page, originally to reinforce the edges but found I rather liked the final effect:

Finally I added quotes, sayings or jokes so that each page also had some words on it. Here’s the first page. And again with the pages spread to emphasise the 3D effect.

It may well be a bit too busy and cluttered for some people’s tastes. Personally I liked the fact that as you turn the pages, more things become visible:

If you fancy giving this a try, you can simply experiment or you can give your creation a theme, such as:

• Travel
• Seasons
• Love
• The sea
• Colours
• Family
• Memories
• Nature
• Christmas.

Have fun!