A Surprise Awaits a Reporter

A Surprise Awaits a Reporter

Scene One – Walking Through the Woods – Camera in Hand

Why did I think that I was taking a short cut? I don’t even live in this part of town, and have only visited it a very few times. And I am getting very tired. It’s been a long day and the sun is beginning to set. I might not be able to take the pictures that the editor wanted me to take. And what does ‘a strange red light over a potato field as the sun set’ actually mean?  And why trust what some boy had to say on the subject? He may have just seen an old movie from the 1950s or 1960s and had UFOs on his brain like I did when I was a kid. 

My nasty editor often sends me to the weirdest, most unlikely situations and then laughs at the pictures that I take. And no one works with me on these assignments. I think they might be trying to get rid of me this way. I suspect that the editor does not truly believe there is anything to this ‘UFO sighting’, or he wouldn’t have sent me out on this assignment ‘just in case’. He would definitely have sent his son instead.

I hope this path through the woods gets me to the field like the old guy I asked for directions said that it would.  It would have been an easier trip if my car weren’t in the shop. The path is barely visible.  Maybe the old guy had mixed it up with someplace else. I do that sometimes myself. I am so very tired, I really need to find my destination soon. It’s Saturday, and I stayed up very late last night at my local bar. My boss knew about my Friday night love affairs with drinking at the Toby Jug British bar. That’s doubtless why he called the bartender there. I used my best imitation of vocal sobriety when I spoke with him. I don’t think he cared whether I was drunk of not. He just wanted me to take pictures the next day, or to force me into a situation where I would say ‘no’ and he could feel justified in firing me.

I stayed until closing time at the bar, and the bartender had to shoo me out, not for the first time. Then I walked home dragging my feet, but it still took me a long time to go to sleep when my head hit the pillow.

The editor told me that I had to wait until the sun was beginning to set to take my pictures, As in his thinking, the lighting would be ideal then, maybe making the picture spookier.   

The trees in the woods are beginning to thin out now, and I can see the field of potatoes ahead. The old man was right in the directions that he gave me. I have some time to myself  before the sun begins to seriously set, so I think that I will just sit down for a short spell, with my back to a particularly thick and comfy-looking birch. A little sleep now would not hurt, and I am sure it will only be a relatively short sleep. My few camping experiences as a child involved only short naps at night, with my worrying about dangers involving bears, cougars or wolves.

Scene Two – A Rude Awakening

I was suddenly awakened from the lovely dream I was having concerning my pictures appearing on the front page of the newspaper by a voice asking me a question I could not totally decipher at first. The second time that I heard it, I detected the words ‘Are you hungry?’, spoken in a young boy’s voice.

It was so dark that I could not really see what I was being handed, but it felt like some kind of apple. I took it with an almost silent ‘thank you.’ 

He replied with the strange and somewhat threatening words of ‘They want you to eat it so that you can see them”. I am not always a chance taker, but I had a feeling I didn’t have much choice in the matter. Mere seconds after I bit into the obviously drugged apple, I saw that I was surrounded by four figures with belts that glowed, and were about the height of the boy standing directly in front of me. I could also tell that I was inside what I believed was probably a rather small spaceship.

 The boy then spoke again. “I know that you are from the newspaper, and have come to take a picture. The editor of your paper said on the phone when I called that he was sending someone to the field to see whether the light was still there.   The Cloids are going to give you a picture that you can give to your editor that won’t lead to their discovery.” With those words, the lights came on. There were four Cloids in the room, short, and with clearly intelligent faces. One of them walked up to me and handed me the picture, that I could copy and say that I took it. It showed a large red balloon that floated above the potato patch. It was illuminated by a bright set of lights that circled around it. The picture was taken as the sun was setting. I wondered how they knew that was the kind of picture my editor wanted, although not necessarily with the balloon. I did not really want to find out, and I certainly was not going to ask the Cloids the question. I merely responded with a ‘thank you,’ and a slight bow that I thought would be appropriate to the occasion. They bowed back to me, as did the boy.

The boy, I later found out that his name was Harold, and I left the rather small space ship, which shortly afterwards took off quickly into the starlit but still generally dark night. Harold told me that when he encountered the Cloids, they had known that he had seen them in the sky the night before, and had beamed his brain to discover that he had spoken to the editor of a newspaper. That was why they had sent the balloon up at sunset today  As we walked and talked our way through the forest, I asked him what his parents thought about his night adventures. As a newspaper reporter I am naturally nosy. Harold told me that he would often sneak out the window of his bedroom at night, and go adventuring. I told him that I owed him at least one dinner. He agreed. I felt that he might be a source of suspicioius newspaper scoops in the future.