Something Meaningful
Brian Plante
Sometimes, cures don’t exactly work out as they are intended. Such is the case in Brian Plante’s story about a unique second chance.
* * * *
“Irene, where’s my pipe?” I called. That woman was always hiding it on me. Can’t a man even smoke his pipe without his wife interfering?
Irene pointed to my hand. I looked down, but the pipe wasn’t there. In my palm were pills. Lots of them. Blue, like the color of those space aliens. Was that really my hand, all covered with freckles? When did I get freckles? No, wait, they were ... liver spots. And the knuckles were all gnarled. I remember now, I had arthritis. Stop shaking.
When had I gotten so old? What year was this, 2011? No, that would make me 55, and my hands looked older than that. The aliens came in 2020, and that was ... how many years ago? I was holding ten or twelve blue pills and a couple of white ones. The blue ones were the nighttime ones, for when I couldn’t get to sleep. See, I do remember! And the white ones were for motion sickness, so I wouldn’t barf. Was I going on a trip, then? Could this be the aliens’ ship? Irene kept telling me something like that ... something about a lottery and the aliens coming for me. Did I win? But no, the surroundings looked too familiar. It was just a regular bedroom, not a cabin on a spaceship. Was this ... yes, I think I was in my own bedroom.
“What are these for?” I asked, dropping the pills onto the sheets beside me. Didn’t I just take a bunch of pills? Was it time for more?
Irene gathered them up and put them back in my shaking hand. “It’s to help you sleep, George.”
Irene was all gray-haired and wrinkled. Perhaps sixty or so. Older than I remembered, and I was ten years older than she was, so I must be really old, although I couldn’t remember when that might have happened.
“Sleep?” I said, looking over at the alarm clock and squinting. Both hands were on the ten ... it was ... it was...”But it’s ten o’clock in the morning. Where’s my pipe, Irene? Have you seen my pipe around here? You’re always losing my things.”
Irene frowned. “You haven’t smoked a pipe for twenty years, George. Now swallow these pills. It’s time to go to sleep.”
“Ten o’clock in the morning and time to go to sleep? And they say I’m the one losing my marbles. Bring me my breakfast, and stop this nonsense.”
Irene walked over to the window and opened the blinds to show the inky blackness outside. “It’s nighttime, George, not morning. Time for a rest. Please don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.”
“I am not tired,” I said. “Get me some raisin bran and an English muffin, and don’t make me wait all morning.”
“This is for the best, George. Please swallow these pills, and quickly.”
I put a couple of the pills in my mouth. Irene handed me a tumbler of water to wash them down. At least, I thought it was water. I sputtered on the first sip and nearly spit out the pills. The glass contained vodka, not water. Now I remembered. I did just take a bunch of pills earlier. Maybe a lot of pills. And I remembered being surprised by the vodka.
“Christ almighty, Irene, what are you trying to do, kill me?”
Irene looked startled. “It will help you sleep,” she said, putting the remaining pills in my hand.
“Dammit, woman, stop talking nonsense. I’m going down to the park for my walk. Get me my clothes. Is Bernadette coming over?”
Irene bit her knuckle. “Bernadette died twelve years ago, George. It’s just you and me.” She turned away, but I thought I saw a tear roll down one cheek. “Would you like to see Bernadette again?”
Bernadette dead? It couldn’t be…I just saw her the other day. I must have heard Irene wrong.
“I would like to see Bernadette,” I said. “When is she coming over?”
“Please, George, take your medicine,” Irene said, pushing my hand toward my mouth.
I looked down. In my hand was a bunch of blue pills. Same color as those aliens on TV. Didn’t I just take some pills?
“What are these for?” I asked.
“George, please! Just take them.”
I swallowed a few of the pills, and sputtered on the vodka again. Irene cleaned me up and gave me more.
“Quickly,” Irene said, handing me a glass of water.
I put the pills in my mouth and took a sip from the glass. Why, it wasn’t water at all…it was vodka!
“God dammit, woman, you’re trying to poison me!”
I tried to fend her off weakly as she poured more vodka into my mouth, but my arms were like lead weights on the bed. I sputtered out a spray of the liquor, and must have gotten some of it in Irene’s eyes, because they were red and flowing with tears.
“This is for the best,” Irene said.
“Oh my God, it’s true,” I said feebly. “You really are trying to kill me. Can’t wait to get your hands on the insurance money, I’ll bet. Just wait till Bernadette gets here.”
Irene wiped her eyes, and dabbed the spilled vodka from my chin.
“Murderess,” I whispered. My speech was slurred and my eyelids drooping. “Bring me a phone so I can call the police. You won’t get away with this.”
Irene held my hand, but I could barely feel it. My head was spinning and I struggled to keep my eyes open. If I fell asleep now, I might never wake up.
There was a knock on the front door.
My eyes widened momentarily and I tried to call out. Maybe it wasn’t too late, if I could get to a hospital and have my stomach pumped. It was probably Bernadette, and she would save me from Irene’s scheme. But my voice would not work, and I was already too weak to lift myself from the bed.
Irene left the bedroom and closed the door behind her. I heard her answer the front door, and then there was the muffled sound of strange voices. It didn’t sound like Bernadette.
The bedroom door opened and Irene came in. She was white as a sheet, and her mouth was hanging open. Following her through the door was a group of ... what ... some kind of animals? No, it was a bunch of those alien things. Four of them, right there in my house. They were ugly creatures, with skin the color of robins’ eggs, and faces that looked like they had been rearranged with a sledgehammer.
“Mr. Hemlick,” the leader of the group said in a thin, artificial voice, “your wife summoned us. We are here to help you. We can alleviate the condition you call Alzheimer’s disease.”
I could barely keep my eyes open, and my breathing had become shallow and labored.
“Why didn’t you come sooner?” Irene said to the blue men. Was she crying? “I put his name on the list two years ago. You’re too late now. I’ve already ... you’re too late.”
Irene spoke some more with the aliens, and she was clearly alarmed, but I could barely make out the words. The leader of the aliens gestured back and forth with its ... whatever it was. Its appendages looked like small octopus tentacles on the end of thin, blue arms.
“George Hemlick, do you want to be cured?” the alien said.
I wanted to scream, yes, yes, save me from this murderous woman, but my eyelids were so heavy. One of the aliens leaned over me and I felt something cold and wet covering my mouth before I blacked out completely.
The blue spaceman sucked the life from me. Like water rushing through a pipe, I felt myself draining ... out.
And then it all went topsy-turvy.
Everything was different. In mid-thought, the dull old bedroom where I lay rotting was transformed into a vibrant, surreal vision of the familiar space. The scene swam before me in a riot of colors that I don’t remember seeing even when my eyesight was still good, and I couldn’t focus properly on anything. Sounds jumped out at me from all corners of the normally quiet room: a faint electrical buzzing from the table radio (which was turned off and should have been silent); the tick-tock of the alarm clock like the beat of a drum; some scratching sounds from a cockroach, perhaps, within the walls; and the breathing noises of the people in the room sounding like a windstorm. The odors of sweat, vomit, vodka, and ... old-people-smell was overpowering.
Everything was the same as before, only magnified tenfold. No, that’s wrong. More like a thousandfold.
Was this finally death, then? An out-of-body experience? I knew Irene was trying to kill me, but I didn’t feel dead yet. I just felt ... different.
Despite the circumstances, I was thinking clearly, like a curtain had been lifted from my mind. And I definitely was outside my body, because I saw myself lying there on the bed, an old, withered carcass all flushed and convulsing. Three of the blue people, Canopians, were gathered around me and Irene was making a great show of it, wailing and throwing off great drippy crocodile tears.
After a minute or two, the room stopped swimming and I began to realize I wasn’t some discorporate soul floating on the ceiling. My brain was telling me this was real, not some near-death hallucination. I was flesh and blood, but I wasn’t human flesh.
I was one of them. I was the fourth Canopian.
Opening my mouth, I tried to yell to the strange blue men that Irene was trying to kill me, and to have them call the police, but I couldn’t open my mouth. I tried frantically to point, but I barely succeeded in raising the strange tentacle hand at the end of my arm. My brain, my Canopian brain, sent the signals to move human fingers, but there were just the blue octopus fingers that only fluttered aimlessly at my command. After a few seconds of frenzied fumbling, I realized I did not know how to make this body breathe, and I became consumed with the thought that my salvation from Irene might be very short lived, indeed. I would soon suffocate.
Be calm, George Hemlick, a voice spoke. This body knows what to do if you only relax and let it. It was one of the Canopians, turned to face me, only he hadn’t really spoken. The creature’s voice was somehow in my head without being in the air, perfectly understandable without being in language, absolutely clear without being audible. It was the most immediate communication imaginable, speaking directly into my brain, this alien brain, without a word being uttered.
It reassured me. How could I not trust it? It didn’t seem like the kind of voice that could lie, like the voice of God. I stopped trying to scream and relaxed, and sure enough, my Canopian eyes focused and I began drawing breath.
Irene was slumped on the bed over my dead human body, oblivious to the exchange between the Canopian leader and me.
Can you hear me? I thought at the creature, wondering if the telepathy, if that was what it was, worked both ways.
The Canopian didn’t react. I attempted again to lift my arm and point at Irene, to tell them about her plan to poison me, but I couldn’t control any of my new body’s muscles, and nearly toppled over before the two others grabbed me and held me upright.
Don’t try to move, George Hemlick, the voice thought-spoke in my head. Something unexpected has occurred.
The others converged on Irene, helping her into the rocking chair by the window. They spoke words of consolation and grief to her. Real words, in English, not the silent signals I was picking up from the leader, and Irene was assuring them it was all right, that I was too far gone and it wasn’t their fault.
Damn straight it wasn’t their fault. I’d have been in that dead body if it weren’t for the Canopians. Now I was alive. Not human anymore, but alive. And Irene would get away with murder if I didn’t make these blue people understand.
She killed me! I mentally screamed at the aliens. She gave me bad medicine. Call the police!
The Canopians all turned to face me, so I knew they must have picked up something, but instead of calling the police they gathered around me and half pushed, half lifted me out of the room and through the front door. I tried to fight them off, to break away and lunge for Irene and wring her scrawny neck, but I couldn’t make that strange alien body move. The funny arm with the octopus fingers just flopped about uselessly at my side.
The trio of Canopians rushed me out of the house. There on the driveway was a strange vehicle about the size of a Winnebago. It wasn’t a car or truck, though, since there were no wheels, and it looked too flimsy for the road…all glassy and transparent. Inside the vehicle were two rows of odd-looking seats…odd for humans, but my alien body fit into one just fine. When the other Canopians were in and the door was shut, there was a slight humming sound and we were off.
Through the transparent walls of the vehicle, the ground quickly slipped away, until I could see the Earth below us like in those NASA films. As if I hadn’t already had enough excitement for one day, the aliens were abducting me, and I was helpless to stop them. The vehicle approached and rendezvoused with a much larger vessel of the same type, and the two craft joined seamlessly to form one.
During the brief trip into orbit, I felt myself become weightless. Nevertheless, something in the chair held me fast and kept me from floating away until we reached the larger vessel. Then the Canopians pushed and pulled me, floating my body through the hatch and into the cavernous space of their main ship, which somehow still had gravity, although I felt lighter than I did back on Earth. There were dozens of Canopians milling about, carrying strange objects and performing functions I couldn’t even begin to guess about.
You are one of us now and are welcome here, a silent voice thought-spoke inside my brain. Do not be afraid.
Sure, don’t be afraid, he said. I wasn’t even sure which one of them was addressing me, let alone how to respond.
Let me out of here, I thought at the group of them. My wife tried to kill me and now I’m some kind of a monster like you. I want to go home!
The Canopians made excited gestures among themselves.
You are not thinking correctly, a voice thought-spoke.
Fear muddles your idea-casting, thought-spoke another.
Relax and concentrate, thought-spoke the first. Your body already knows how to project your thoughts, if you can calm yourself.
I looked at the blue men and knew there was nothing to be afraid of. If it weren’t for these people, I’d have already been dead, poisoned in my bed by Irene.
I ... thank you for saving my life, I thought-spoke, slowly and with as much calmness as I could muster. Can you hear me now?
Several of the group made elaborate hand gestures with their sinuous fingers and then all but one walked off.
Uh-oh, I thought-spoke. Was it something I said?
We heard your thoughts, George Hemlick. You will grow better at it with experience, but for now we are satisfied that you are an intelligent being. We will try to make you comfortable here. I am called Ecreath. Do you wish to ask me any questions?
Jeez, what the hell am I doing here? I thought-spoke. How did I get in this body? How do I get back to normal?
Please calm yourself, Ecreath replied. It is much harder to understand when you are excited.
I’ll ... try, I thought-spoke, making an effort to keep my composure. How did I get to be in this body?
Your human body was suffering from a disease, Ecreath thought-spoke. Your spouse entered your name on our help list some time ago, but there are so many of you and relatively few of us. We came to you as we have to many others, to cure you. The Canopian who touched you, Davril, was a healer, but something unexpected happened.
My wife poisoned me, I thought-spoke. Did your healer know about that?
No, but that explains it. We Canopians heal from within. Many species, including your own, have some capacity to heal many infirmities by the power of the mind. The healer goes into your body, and uses its own internal capabilities to heal. Unfortunately, counteracting large doses of toxins is not a task the mind can easily perform.
But then why am I still alive?
While Davril was in your body healing your Alzheimer’s disease, he parked your mind, your healthy mind, into his own body for storage. It should have been temporary, but Davril got caught in your body by the poison and succumbed.
Then my wife is doubly a murderer, I thought-spoke. Your Davril is dead, and I might just as well be.
You are not dead. We will attempt to make your new life as comfortable as possible.
Okay ... Ecreath ... thanks for your hospitality, I thought-spoke. But what I’d really like is for you to take me home. I have to make sure that murderer of a wife doesn’t go unpunished.
We are home, Ecreath thought-spoke. You cannot live among humans except for brief periods. The atmosphere on Earth is not sufficient to sustain your present bodily needs.
Great, just great, I thought, but not to Ecreath. Thinking to yourself was somehow different from thought-speaking.
...
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