Close Encounter of a Personal Kind

He woke sluggishly, groggy from a deep, contented sleep,

Crawling his way most begrudgingly from

The enchanted and curious land he had happily inhabited,

And wondering what it was that had disturbed him?

Fumbling, he hit the clock and listened

To that oh so familiar, electronic voice tell him

That it was 2.33 a.m. and 11 degrees centigrade.

It was as black as the pit, and then he heard it.

At first it seemed like a hissing sound,

Maybe a burst pipe or, somewhat unlikely, snakes.

He nudged himself mentally.  He no longer lived

Where there were any seriously sinister snakes.

He lay, listening intently, a seemingly irrational dread

Slowly tightening like a third fist within his chest,

As his mind tried to make sense of the sinister sibilance.

Suddenly then he realised coldly , it was whispering!

Harsh, venomous, cruel whispering, toxic whispering,

Whispering that he knew was not warm or kindly.

He could make out the words, scratchy words,

Words which tore at his ears in such a manner

That he wondered that they did not bleed,

But their meaning totally eluded him.

As he reached to turn on the light and arm himself,

Fear being supplanted by adrenaline fuelled anger,

Something turned his urgently darting eyes,

Clawing for some sort of input and understanding,

To the ceiling, a little to the left of his bed,

To a place where air would ordinarily be.

When he saw it he bleakly dismissed thoughts of fight.

This was something, he somehow knew,

Which could not be shot or stabbed,

Kicked, kneed, throttled or gouged,

And somehow he knew too

That flight was not an option.

It was steady at about two metres up,

And solid, left of his bed somewhat,

At maybe 45 degrees from the horizontal.

It was like a tear in a nightmare’s black curtain.

Shades of grey it was, but no light escaped from the tear,

To lighten the room; it hoarded it

Like some aspiring black hole

Defending its event horizon,

And for reasons he knew not, he wondered

Why its edges looked tattered and torn?

Within the tear were two faces, also grey.

They fluctuated as though he was viewing

A poor signal, or observing them through ripples,

Just below the surface of a pool of water.

Each was similar, with elongated features,

Their chins long, almost pointed, noses similar,

Ears a little like a Vulcan’s, he randomly thought.

Each had high cheekbones and foreheads,

But he saw no facial hair.  Both were wearing  

Black skullcaps and had stiff, extended collars

Which reached halfway up the back of their heads.

Their most notable features were their eyes,

Granite-hard eyes, deeply sunk in cave-like sockets,

Drilling into him like chrome vanadium gimlets,

As mouths clicked and to each other they whispered.

Though he understood not, he felt their tension,

And their malevolence, which was palpable.

They wanted him, he felt it;

Craved his core, his very soul,

That which made him, him and no other,

And he knew from a deep, primeval place within,

That here was an antediluvian enemy,

An adversary he recognised to be malevolent,

And it would be desperate and dreadful for him,

If they managed to reach through the gap, the tear,

The portal to another dimension, which was what,

He was abruptly most positive, it was,

And drag him in!

His mind momentarily wandered away from his predicament,

Trying to rationalise, to make some sense, to escape perhaps,

Excited instead at this surely certain evidence

Of alternate dimensions, as he now knew this to be,

And whether or not it sat comfortably

Within the physics supporting quantum mechanics, or in

String theory whether it proved a 10 dimensional universe,

M-theory with its 11 dimensions to spacetime or

Bosonic string theory dimensions posited at 26?

Such thoughts insanely flashed across his mind momentarily,

And then his attention crashed back to what appeared to be

A very real, cold and present danger.

He recognised that thinking would not help him this time,

Nor his curiosity or persuasive words, for they wanted him,

Wanted him badly and, as he felt the warmth

Leaching from the room and into the grey, shimmering portal,

He knew in his bones they were oh so very close;

It unequivocally was only two metres,

And horror clutched his heart

With renewed vigour.

He stared at the wavering faces, transfixed,

A wretched rabbit, part of him noted objectively,

Caught in the glare of a car’s headlights.

They had a somewhat bizarre beauty, he realised,

Or perhaps they could be beautiful if they didn’t have

As his instinct assured him they had,

Darkness at their very twisted core.

He wondered, somewhat resignedly,

What it was they wanted him for?

It wasn’t going to be agreeable!

His atypically fatalistic pondering unexpectedly eased

As a gentle caress of hope stroked his heart,

For he felt their growing, distressed frustration,

Saw it writ plain upon their faces,

And, too, yes, their fear.

Something was preventing them

From hooking him and reeling him in!

His mind darted from possibility to possibility

As to what it was that they feared in his dimension,

That which was preventing them from

Taking their seemingly defenceless prize?

Riley, he knew from his snoring, slept by the bed,

Undisturbed, as were his fellow ‘guard dogs’.

Incredulous then, he realised in some instinctive manner

That it was the cats; there was something about cats

Which frightened them, perhaps recognizing in them

A capacity for cold, utterly merciless,

Completely calm and casual cruelty

Even greater than their own!

He felt Squeaker on the pillow beside him,

Coco on the duvet, lying soft but solid against his knees,

And somehow, his searching eyes having adjusted

To the dark, and a cloud, perhaps, having

Slipped away on its journey to who knew where

Allowing Selene to wash the room

With silver light, he could see, too, the two ‘Gingies’

Sitting up, bookending Joey and their sister Charlie,

And all were calmly staring, unafraid, unblinking,

Almost owl-like, at the rent in space time,

And the two faces, with fear now writ large upon them.

He felt more of the tension draining from him,

Feeling that the menace was receding,

Speculating, whimsically, what his blood pressure was,

And whether or not the cats were guarding him purposefully,

Whether they knew it, had been set to it (if so, by whom?)

Knew what was happening, were there specifically

To ensure his safety against this specific threat,

Or if he’d just got very lucky?

The thoughts were almost as bizarre

As the situation with the iniquitous entities

Reaching for him from their alternate, inimical dimension.

And as he thought on it, hissing muttering continued,

Words tripping over each other in their haste,

And then, unexpectedly, wondrously,

The tear slowly closed, ragged pieces marrying perfectly.

And as it did so his guardians turned their attention

Away from the vile and most alarming phenomenon,

And reverted to normal cat business, washing,

Stretching limbs, almost shrugging lazily,

A minor incident in the past,

Nothing interesting to see here anymore,

Winding themselves around each other,

Into positions both unnatural and uncomfortable

For him to consider personally,

Settling down to sleep again.

He lay quietly considering his final sight of them,

The two beings still whispering,

Fraught now, frantic,

Perhaps urging each other to take action,

Action both were too fearful to take,

And he lay there, wondering

If they would return,

And try again?

He knew he was awake; no dream this.

He realised he had experienced something

Most extraordinary and personally perilous.

It was also, most certainly, truly inexplicable!

It did tell him, however, a different story from the one

He had learned heretofore about the makeup of the universe.

It was, as his studies had increasingly informed him,

Multidimensional; that it was possible

To reach from one to another,

And that there was one, at least,

Which, most certainly, was inimical;

And somehow he knew his two visitors

Were not aberrant exceptions within their dimension,

But standard representatives of a realm most foul!

And he reached to stroke Squeaker

As he heard Charlie purring herself to sleep,

And he considered again, how bizarre cats were,

And whether they knew or not, or cared,

That they were his most certain guardians,

But whatever the answer might have been,

With the seeming protection they gave him,

He fell back into a deep and untroubled sleep.

And when he awoke at 7.00 a.m. to the alarm,

Her electronic voice and a tinny cockerel

Doing their daily duty of dragging him

Into another perfect day to seize,

He flicked on the light, and as usual,

Found himself still surrounded by cats,

With big Whisper strolling in for good measure.

He felt immeasurably thankful

For their presence, for their protection,

Felt, too, a little moment of triumph

At the frustration of his nocturnal visitors,

As he most clearly visualized them again,

Even with his eyes open.

He sensed the truth of them,

And their degenerate and total depravity,

Reaching to the very centre of his being,

Within every resonating fibre in his body,

Though he so very much didn’t want to,

And a little chill washed over him,

Prickling his skin, squeezing his heart,

For he knew not what their visit augured –

Certainly nothing good! –

Pondering, too, if he was a specific,

Unique target or whether their ilk,

Went fishing for ‘souls’

Regularly, and only those,

Surrounded by cats,

Survived the night,

And lived to tell the tale,

To a totally disbelieving world?

And would they come visiting again?

And as the days and nights flitted by

And there was no reappearance

He wondered if it had been a dream,

Or perhaps it was insanity, dementia

A fascinatingly complex paranoia,

Or, indeed, all three with knobs on,

Because he very much wanted it to be so,

But he knew with certainty that it was not,

That his nocturnal visitors

Were real, were hunters of souls,

And thus it was that he did not protest again about

How many cats chose to sleep in his room.

And so, too, he wrote it down as

A quirky poem / story,

Knowing no one would believe it,

But hoping that at least a few

Might consider letting their cats

Sleep on their bed at night,

Just in case.