Into the White

Theres nothing here. There's nothing fucking here! I can't...I...I dug all goddamn day. My hands are covered in blisters and sores, my back is screaming in pain, and the sunburn on my face is pure agony. And for what? There was nothing. No-thing at fucking all. I'm...I'm done for. I have no money left, no way to get back to the main road unless I cross the desert again, which I have no energy for, and the food I back-packed in is only going to last me a couple weeks. I knew getting into this that if I failed I'd be up shit creek without a paddle, but I was so sure it was here. I was so fucking sure....

Is that what they told you?
What who told me?
The aliens that abducted you.
They didn't "abduct me" I went willingly. And I'm not so sure they were aliens at all.
Well then what were they? They looked like aliens right? The large black eyes, skinny with gray skin, the whole bit...
I think they looked like that because that's what I thought they'd look like.
Jesus, you're fucking insane.
See, thats why I didn't tell you the whole story. I'm not telling anybody the whole thing because they'd think I was nuts. They already do.
Shit man, I'm sorry, let me buy you another beer...

I tried another spot today, thinking maybe I had miscalculated or made some huge error. I chose the exact opposite side of the shack and dug for as long as my strength would hold out. All I found was a dead dog skeleton. I buried the rest of it, but kept the head. As I write this by flickering lamplight, lying on this filthy mattress, I can see it watching me from the table in the middle of the room, even though it's too dark to see it's eye sockets. I'll try talking to it tomorrow, tell it I'm sorry for digging it up, that it was an accident. I'm going to need all the friends I can get out here...

I remember being asleep the first time. I was asleep and dreaming about this girl that sat in front of me in math class, the one with the pretty eyes. I was taking her clothes off when suddenly everything faded away and I woke up to a blinding white light. I was floating in some sort of fluid and there were other things moving around me but they were hard to see even when they brushed up against me. It felt like I was being watched and it scared me. That was the first time. I woke up on the lawn that morning. Mom said I had sleepwalked there, I knew better....

I can't do it anymore. I can't fucking do it. I've dug up around this whole fucking place. I've even torn up the floor of the shack and there's nothing. You can't even know how that feels, to hold that emptiness in your hands, when you were promised, when you fucking knew, that salvation would be given to you. It was supposed to be so easy. They lied to me, the bastards lied to me. I'm so weak that I can't even move from the floor. I finished the last of the bread and water yesterday. That fucking skull is laughing at me, but I'm too weak to stop it. Even if I could get up and smash it, what if the laughter didn't stop? What if it's not coming from whatever soul haunts this place? What if it's coming from inside my own head?

The third time they appeared in the clichéd alien forms. I was sixteen and had snuck out of the house to go to a beer party. I was running through the woods, trying to make my way to County Road 86 when they just appeared, long skinny gray beings encased in bright white light. They took me up in what I assume was their ship. They might have used some sort of mental telepathy. I don't remember metal or anything tangible, I just remember floating. Floating past the moon, past Pluto and Charon, past the edge of our solar system. I saw planets and stars that scientists had only glimpsed through telescopes, I saw them from far away, I hovered over dead planet surfaces, I felt the horrible heat from their suns. I drifted past the end of the galaxy and saw things that I can't describe. I saw creatures living on planets, beings so far out of our realm of comprehension that I my mind couldn't make sense of what it was seeing. But I knew they lived, I could feel life pulsating all around me. A million waves of energy poured into my soul, lifting me into the heavenly paradise of the eternal void....

Why did they lie to me? The dog skull has no answers, he's shut up for a change. Why did they lie? They told me...they told me it was here...

The other inmates in this place don't like me. Thats good, I don't like them. I'm not like them, I'm not insane. I'm not going to cut my wrists or run into a church and smack a priest in the head with a two by four. I'm not dangerous. It's just that everyone thinks I am. I suppose thats what you get for almost killing yourself out in the desert and then trying to break into a government facility after you're rescued. I suppose I shouldn't have killed those guards. But they don't matter. Their souls will be recycled and they'll be re-born on some other plane of existence. The only problem is that they won't remember any of their past lives. If I could have found what they told me I needed to look for, I could have traveled all across time and existence, switching realities at will. But now I'm stuck here, left to rot. And no one will play Checkers with me...