A Semi-Short Story--Brandon

            I put my hands behind my head, as no ideas came to me. In my cozy little corner of the world I called my room, I was troubled. I had been tasked with something herculean, something of a greater magnitude than even the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, I had been faced with the task of writing a story, and I had flinched in the face of such an adversary. 

I was fresh out of ideas, not that I had writer’s block, far from it in-fact, but I merely had no truly greatideas with which to write. As such, this meant that I was over due for some good down-time, some alone time in which I could plot my conquest of the world- and maybe pay some peace-of-mind to the writing of the dreaded story.

So, I went on a hike to pass the time. It was supposedto be a standard hike, nothing extreme, nothing exhilarating, nothing exonerating, so why, pray tell…

                                                                                                …was I stuck on an alien ship!?

All I wanted was to go for a hike… was it that some higher power hated me? Was it because I had chosen the path less traveled? Did I trip a death flag somewhere along the way by chance? I certainly didn’t invite Murphy and his laws to the party. At any rate- here I am, onboard a flying saucer of some descript, exhausted in every scene of the word after a battery of rather invasivetests, thathad been held on the behest of a bunch of little Greys. Oh, it’s not all bad, see, I’ve got company here after all. They’re an odd bunch, to be certain, and quite noisy. The bestway I can describe them is… ‘aristocrat-monks’. We all know of those old paintings, and in Shakespeare’s plays, of the kind old monks in their brown robes, and odd haircuts, but these guys, these guys aren’t the kind of monk you’d see Robin-hood with. Their cloaks were of a wine-red, their wide-brimmed hats of a similar shade, and the gold on these guys, it’s enough to make any Royal green with envy…                                                                                                                                                                                                           … and they were all shouting at me!

I don’t know, nor do I particularly care about, how long my sleep lasted, but tired as I am, I cared about being woken up by the shrieking of a strange alien langu- no, that’s Spanish. The cells have been steadily filling up over a painfully long time with random people; some in togas, others in armor of some knightly kind, and more in… indescribabledress of some kind or another. Its been alright so far, the robed men with me seem to have excepted me- or at least tolerate me. The screaming is from my new Inquisitorialfriends, as I’ve figured out what they are. With the rapid-fire Spanish which basically amounted to (in their broken English) “The Bug-Eyed Witches are controlling the Metal Demon’s flames!”.The cause of their screaming, though, is new. The lights, a clinical white, are now flickering and dimming. After an intermittent time of flickering, they give out entirely, being replaced with an eerie silence, before a mighty crash echoed through the halls, the still energized fields zapping all who were thrown into them, and surely frying some of the knights in full metal armor. The tortured screech of metal and roars of jets outside was deafening, before another lull in the noise and violence was had…

                                                … it appeared that Scotty had beamed down the whole ship.

We were free from our otherworldly captors due to one of the ship’s many new holes, but not out of the woods yet, literally. We had trapesed through the woodlands for hours in the night, just me and five of my least favorite friends. Earlier we had happened upon a paved road, and had followed it to civilization, though civilization here being a gas-station, and the attached liquor store. Things had gone less than stellar from then. We walked into a tense atmosphere, a masked man with a large knife was holding up the register.  Shouting had happened in plenty, punches were thrown, and prayers had been invoked, but in the end, with few injuries, and only several declared heretics, we had been victorious, after all…

                                                            … nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

We had been at the store for little more than ten minutes, and the former-robber was carried off into the back of the shop by the Inquisition to be… Inquisitizedfor his offenses, for lack of a better term. In his desperate attempt to get people- all of whom were just as terrified as him- to help him, he had thrown his car keys. They had hit me square in the chest. I am now driving away in my new jeep. In the rear-view mirrors, I can see the lights of a dozen cop cars or more tearing down the tarmac to the store I just left. Glad I’m not any of them, cop, or fanatic. I had vowed to myself, as I drove down that desolate road in what I’m certain is Iowa, that I would never speak of this incident ever again. But then, a crazy thought hit me, what would I do for the story, what would I write about? 

… well, vows are made to be broken, right?