A Great, Glowing Orb

An orange pre-dawn glow rims the horizon, slowly banishing the hazy periwinkle twilight. Soon driving this direction will be almost unbearable, the strong clear rays of the rising sun burrowing into my eyes.

I choose to beat the sun, and slip a pair of square black sunglasses over my face. Vintage, $5, super cool. They make me feel like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, even though they don’t really look like his sunglasses at all. As my 14 year old brother would say, “Issa Vibe.”

It’s a vibe I’m grateful for as the sun’s rays finally bend over the curve of the earth and the eternal glowing ball sits squarely on top of the highway, framed between the trees.

I pull the visor down, and try to keep my eyes on the road. It’s difficult. The sun is painful to look at, but it’s also beautiful. The metaphor isn’t lost on me as my eyes are also drawn to a Polaroid shot pinned to the inside of the visor. 

One of the best and worst memories.

Beautiful and hard to look at.

The picture is me and my best friend at the beach, almost two years ago this week. Our first “adult” vacation, taken after a year apart at different schools. We drove 24 hours to California, through desert and mountains, and finally, to water. It was magical, the most perfect summer day in LA. The beach was a dream, the water blue and perfect. We spent the whole day soaking up sun, lamenting our land-locked lives back home.

The house we were staying in was further from the beach than we would have liked, but it was all we could afford and still have a place to ourselves. It was up in the hills, hidden by trees and tropical landscaping. Even though we had to fight traffic, it was worth it. The house was lovely, all mid-century lines and pale pinks. It was on the way back there from the beach that I had pinned the Polaroid to the visor. I remember thinking that I would always want to be reminded of how absolutely perfect the day had been.

Boy was I wrong.

Like, super wrong.

We were tired after the beach, but like any self-respecting teenagers on vacation, we ate dinner and then immediately headed out to the pool.

That was when things started to get weird.

The sun made its way down toward the ocean on the distant horizon, and we relaxed in our flamingo-shaped floaties. It took a while for me to notice that the sun seemed to have stopped setting, and that the fuzzed-out orange glow had been a constant source of light for far too long. 

I’ve always wondered if that moment of consciousness is what caused me to remember what came next, while Jess didn’t seem to remember anything.

Like the volume turning up on an amp with no guitar plugged in, I suddenly became aware of a buzzing, like a thousand metal bees were swarmed above me.

So I looked up. 

Big mistake.

Filling the whole sky above me was a sleek sheet of curved metal, punctuated by orange lights that pulsed softly. A scream rose in my throat and died almost immediately. A scream wouldn’t help. As I watched and tried to make sense of what I was seeing, a circular piece in the center of whatever-the-heck-this-thing-was seemed to dissolve slowly, like the pixel melting animation of video games from days long past. When it was all gone, a powerful, pure light poured out. Droplets of water began to rise around me, and soon Jess and I were also being lifted up, up, up.

The memory cuts off abruptly. That’s all there is to it. I shake my head, and try to refocus on the road.

No one believed me, not even Jess. Especially not Jess. We woke up the next morning in our beds safe and sound, no scratch on us, no hair out of place. Jess was sure we had just blacked out or something from drinking too much. But I knew that wasn’t true. We weren’t even old enough yet to buy alcohol, and we didn’t know anyone in LA to buy it for us. And I checked. There was no alcohol in the house. Jess took this as proof we drank it all. That I had just had a super weird dream. But I knew that just couldn’t be true. 

I’m not crazy.

I know that.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, or a person who gets lost in wild fantasies. I’m about to graduate with a degree in accounting, and a minor in flute. I am precise and delicate and careful. Honestly, I’m kind of a stick in the mud. So I knew, with every fiber of my being, that something really weird happened that night.

But it's hard to be certain when everyone thinks you're just making it up. After a few weeks, I stopped trying to tell the story. It started to sound too weird, even when I said it to myself. Maybe something had happened, but maybe it was nothing. Maybe someone had slipped something in our drinks at the beach. In the eyes of my small town parents, anything could have happened to us in a place like LA. 

After a year, I didn’t even believe it myself. I put it out of my mind, choosing to focus on the sun and sand and glorious warmth of the rest of that trip. I told myself that I left the picture pinned to the visor to remember those things, not the disaster that may or may not have happened after the beach. And usually, that worked fine.

So why is the memory hitting me so hard now? Am I having that weird road-hypnosis thing, but instead of forgetting I’m driving, I’ve gotten lost in a buried memory instead? 

I focus on the road again: white lines and reflectors, grey pavement, green trees. The sun is still directly ahead of me, forcing my eyes away from the horizon. The highway is oddly empty, even for this early hour. The Polaroid hovers in my upper periphery like a magnet, drawing me to look. I glance back up at it: two smiling teenagers, the vastness of the ocean behind them, and millions of grains of sand under their feet.

Come on brain, back to the road.

Except- the road’s not there anymore. 

The car is hovering 20 feet above the highway. I almost scream, but it dies once again in my throat. A scream wouldn’t help. I squint past the bright light of the sun.

Except- it’s not the sun.

Behind the light is a vast, curved metal sphere.