JUST LIKE CHARLES DICKENS USED TO DO

The Author has been trying to get his fiction published for a long time. Without much success. He recently wrote this science fiction humor story. He submitted to the usual suspects and it was rejected.

In the 19th century, popular writers published their novels as serials in magazines. So the Author is publishing this story, "The *********" on his blog. It will be published in three or four installments.

Enjoy.


THE *********
By Robert Feightner Copyright 2007


“Come on Cal, it ain’t much futher,” Dean said, waving his arm as he and his friend Cal walked down the narrow, wooded path.

Cal had bagged his buck last Saturday so he was sitting in The Rusty Nail drinking beer when Dean came running in about an hour ago. Dean had been out deer hunting and he came in with some story about a guy appearing and then disappearing by his tree stand. And leaving some space thing behind.

Dean said he had climbed down from the stand to take a leak. He didn’t want to whiz around the tree stand because the deer could pick up the human scent. Just when Dean was getting ready to urinate, Dean claimed that the guy run by, set the thing down, and disappeared.

Dean was stammering so much that Cal couldn’t make much more sense of what he was saying. But something to bring Dean down from his tree stand on the last day of deer season had to be important. So Cal left the bar and rode back with Dean to the farm where Dean hunted.

Dean hunted on his aunt’s land. It was an old farm that she inherited from Dean’s grandparents. She cash-rented the land to local farmers. Dean rented the run-down farmhouse from her. Cal had been out there a few times, but didn’t remember every landmark.

“It’s just up here,” Dean said, pointing to the edge of the woodlot.
“Like I told you,” Dean recounted, “I had to take a leak so I came down from my tree stand and walked back a ways into the tree line to talk a whiz. And the guy, or whatever he was, set it down here.”

And there it was.

“See. I wasn’t lyin'.”

Cal and Dean walked over to it. It was about two-foot square. But it wasn’t really square. It was wavy and irregular. It didn’t even look solid. It was kind of clear, but you couldn’t really see through it.

Cal kneeled down about five feet from it. Dean walked around to the other side.

“What in the hell is that, Dean,” Cal asked.

“The guy who set it there, and I still ain’t believing what went on about that, said it was a “*********,” Dean said.

“I never heard of such a thing. A *********,” Cal said, “It doesn’t look like much of anything. But is must be something, or he wouldn’t have left it here. Maybe it is some alien thing. From outer space.”

“I’m glad you said it, Cal. I was afraid you would think I was crazy before you seen it for yourself.”

Cal stood up, walked around the thing called a “*********”, and stood about three feet from Dean.

Dean told Cal that when he was urinating he heard a whirring sound and the leaves and underbrush rustling. Dean said that he then quickly zipped up his pants and turned around to see what was happening.

“And the woods was gone. That’s what you said?”

“Well, not all gone. Not where I was standin’. I was still in the woods. Just mostly out in front of me was gone. But I could see that the woods were still there behind and on each side.”

“I hear some noise, banging sounds, I guess, and I hear some yellin’ in some foreign language. And this guy runs up and sets this thing down. He says something in a foreign language. Then he must have noticed me, cause he looked at me and said ‘a *********,” Dean recounted.

“He said it to you. He said it was ‘a *********.”

“Yeah.”

“A *********?”

“Yeah. He said ‘a *********,” Dean answered.

“Now wait. You said that he was talking some foreign language. Maybe some alien language. How could you tell what he said? Did he say it in English,” Cal asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, he must have. He changed to speaking English, I guess. ‘Cause I understood what he said.”

Dean continued to describe what happened. The guy turned and ran out of view, into whatever kind of space he was in before. And then he heard some sounds and some people speaking a foreign language. And then the space in the woods disappeared and the woods were back like they were. And the ********* was left sittin’ there.

“Now let me get this straight, Dean. After he set it down, the guy ran on in this other space and disappeared. And some people, or some aliens, was following him. And then the space disappeared. That’s what you said,” Cal recounted.

“Well, I’m not sure what was following him. But I did hear noise, like coming out of the space, from the side the guy was runnin’ from. So I guess it sounded like they was following him,” Dean replied.

“What did he look like? Did he look like a man or an alien?”

“Well, he wasn’t no gray slanted eyed thing like from Roswell.”

Dean said that the man looked human. He went on to say that he was wearing black pants and a brown jacket. He had short brown hair.

“What do you think, Cal? You’re the first guy I came to with this, cause I know you watch Star Trek and the X-Files and stuff. You might have some idea what’s going on?”

Cal bowed his head and stroked the side of his face.

“Them are just TV shows. This is real. Or kind of real.”

Cal then walked back over and knelt down in front of the *********.
“And what in the hell is this?”

Cal picked up a stick and poked the *********. It was solid but didn’t weigh much. It moved with the slightest of touch of the stick.

“Careful, Cal, damn it. It might do something.”

“I’ll be careful. You want to find out what we got. It might be worth something or be something real important. Hell, it could be worth a ton of money. We probably got a genuine alien artifact here.”

The men talked awhile about what to do with the *********. They decided against calling the cops. The cops would tell the government and they would take the ********* and question them about it. They might be able to sell their story as a book or a movie, though.

“Dean, does anybody else come back here?”

“No. The farmers got the crops out. My aunt doesn’t come around. Nobody has permission to hunt out here but me. Why you ask?”

“Well, I’m thinking that it’s gonna get dark soon and we should just leave this out here tonight. I don’t think we should go hauling it around until we know more about what we got. We can sleep on it tonight and decide what we want to do next.”

Dean agreed and the men slogged back to the house. Dean drove Cal back to his house and they agreed they would meet tomorrow morning