He Stared Up Into the Stars

He Stared Up Into the Stars

He stared up into the stars. It was a clear night in the last week of April. All the familiar sky bodies were twinkling in their usual places. He should know what they are and where they should be. For 60 years now he had barely missed viewing the late April sky on such a night. Now that he was no longer in school, he wasn’t distracted by homework, or the guilt-inducing looks of his parents when they told him he was “night-time day-dreaming” when he went out to look at the stars. Now that he was retired, he did not have to worry about having a boss tell him to take work home so that it would be finished by the morning – the slave driver!. He was now free to see the night sky as much as he wanted.

As long as he had been staring up into the stars, he had wished that he could travel into space and come closer to the stars. His first ambition, which grew from when he was 10 years old, and movies told him to ‘look to the sky’, was to be an astronaut. It was also his first big disappointment. He caused that problem himself. His science marks were only ever fair, never of a grade that would make it sensible for him to be a science major at university.  And he decided, after having several nightmares of his flying a plane and it crashing, that he did not want to join the air cadets as a teenager. He did not have the necessary calm for the job, and he had too wild an imagination to be a pilot.

Following his father’s much more than just a suggestion, he majored in business, and did well in the subject. His father had been right! It was like the stars were aligned against him and his early ambition. And if he were truly honest with himself, he would know that he never really wanted to fly a spaceship. He just wanted to ride in one and get a better view of the stars. 

That would be pretty much impossible now. By the time that kind of real long distance travel were possible he would be long dead, even if he could afford it, which he couldn’t.

Now his only cockpit was a comfy old brown chair that had been demoted from the living room to the backyard. Once he had captured the broad view of the sky with just his eyes, he turned to his telescope to visit each star individually and with a closer, more intimate look. No matter how often he had done this, it had, unlike him, never grown old. It always had a first-time thrill to it.

But there would be something new that would appear on this night of nights. He looked directly north for his favourite view. He could determine directions by the markings on the big, cement-based bronze compass in front of the chair. When he cast his telescope northward, he saw something unfamiliar. It was an unwanted intruder into his comfortable eternity of star position. It neither shined nor twinkled. It was just a shadowing dark presence, blocking out first one, then others one by one of the stars that he knew so well. It was it was playing space tag with the light-giving sky bodies.

Once he was able to catch a good view of the presence, the image came into his mind of a worlds-wide black fuzzy caterpillar. While there was a clash of feelings that arose from the potentially threatening sky body or craft and the little earthen creature, the analogy worked for him, scaring him not a little. He often saw things as metaphors, even when those were a little disturbing sometimes, and hard to drive out of his mind.

An Encounter With a Dream

After hours of sky search, occasionally spotting the sky caterpillar ship, and then losing it for a longer period of time, a definite darkness approached him. After being hit by what he could best conceive of as a kind of shock wave, he felt himself return to a kind of consciousness. He had no idea how long he had been asleep.

As he opened his eyes he saw stars, quite literally. As he looked into the sky, he could no longer see the strange object, just the familiar stars he was accustomed to sharing the night with. But, as he became more and more aware of his surroundings, he realized that the stars appeared  larger to him. A few seconds more and he realized that his surroundings shared in the strangeness of this night.  For when he moved his head from side to side, he could see nothing of his backyard, just a darkness he could actually feel with his hands.

           Then he heard something approach him quietly, but still audible. It was hard for him to see it clearly, as it was of the same darkness as its surroundings. He was in for a bigger surprise if that were possible. A sound came from the being. It sounded somehow familiar, but it took him a few seconds to finally recognize what he was hearing The creature was emitting the tune for “twinkle, twinkle little star”. It stopped for a few seconds, and then he began to cast another tune upon him, similarly familiar. After a few seconds, the words that went with it came to him: “When you wish upon a star.” 

Then he heard a voice. It sounded very much like a human’s voice. Like the tunes, it had a familiar ring to it. Of course! It was his wife’s voice. 

“John, you fell asleep in the chair. I didn’t want to disturb you, as you looked so happy sleeping there. But the night was growing cold, so I put my fuzzy black scarf around your neck. I hope you don’t mind. Then I started humming to you to see if you were close to waking up.” 

John did not feel that the right words could come to him at that moment, but he knew they would eventually emerge, and that they both would have a good laugh when they did. For now, he just looked up into the sky and smiled. It was a beautiful night for star-gazing.