Love Like This || Short Story

I remember it was a full moon the night before I met the aliens. My girlfriend and I had hit a rough patch and I had decided I needed some fresh air. I called up a co-worker of mine, Sean Herman, who was the outdoorsy concealed-gun carrying type, and I asked him if I could borrow his camper for the weekend. Not only did he agree, but he offered to hitch it to his truck, drive it out to his favorite spot on his buddy's plot of land, and drop me off there by myself. He promised he'd be back in two days to pick me up.

The camper was a complete garbage heap. All the metal was rusting and all of the wood was rotting. Inside it smelled like a mixture of cat pee and skunk. It had a tiny kitchen with a sink under a window with yellowing curtains, a bathroom barely big enough to stand in, two beds on either end, and a small table that folded out from the wall. The linoleum floor was bubbling with mold and gave-in like sponge anywhere I stepped. But it was free, so I couldn't complain too much.

As Sean drove away and I listened to the sound of his truck fading into the distance, I looked down at my cellphone and saw that it said NO SERVICE. It was also right around that time that I realized this stupid camper didn't have any electricity or water hookups. I was literally sitting in the middle of a field hours away from civilization and stuck for two days. Luckily I had brought a few flashlights, including a headlamp, and plenty of food, beer and books.

When night fell I made a small bonfire right in front of the camper and placed a rusty folding lawn-chair next to it that I had found in the closet. I kept my headlamp on at all times, and roasted some hotdogs on the fire for dinner.

I was actually quite terrified. The noises you hear when you are alone in the wilderness are spooky as all get out, you suspect the walls of the camper are too thin and rotten to protect you from something like a bear. You here something shuffling in the grass behind you, you hear some animal yelping in the distance. Owls and insects, frogs, the occasional wolf howling at the full moon.

God damn was that moon full. And there wasn't a cloud in the sky to block it. It was so bright the whole field was lit up with a faint green glow. It just hung in the sky, like a perfect ball levitated by the strenuous concentration of some magician. I stared at that white ball, couched in a sea of twinkling stars, for a long while.

God damn those stars were amazing to look at. That night sky was putting on a show for me. I could see every dimple and blemish on the moon. I stared at it and tried to comprehend how far away it was. Tried to realize that I was looking at a real object floating out there in space, circling us all the time. It was blowing me away, I guess because I didn't have anything else to occupy my attention.

But when I started looking at those stars I really got lost. I stoked the fire, gobbled down my last wiener, and then just leaned back in that lawn chair so that my entire field of vision was just the sky. I could clearly see the Milky Way, and as I looked at some of the stars I swear I could perceive them as tiny white spheres in the sky.

Suddenly it wasn't just a big 2D screen in the sky I was looking at, but vast 3D space. I was perceiving the depth that reached out in front of me, and starting to comprehend that there was nothing between my eyes and those tiny white spheres but distance. The Milky Way transformed into the gargantuan spiraling mass it actually is, viewed at a sharp angle, and I felt as if I were on some cosmic ferris wheel, attached to the end of this spiral, looking down at it's shape from high above it.

I started to be able to feel the earth as it spun, and the whole reality of my situation as an animal living on this planet on the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy came rushing all at once. Adrenaline flooded my body and I started getting dizzy. I let the sensation take over me and just kept staring at the stars and moon above and then CRASH!

I fell over backwards in the lawn chair and smacked the back of my head into the rusty metal of the camper. I decided I had had enough for the night and packed it in. The mattress and pillow and blanket were surprisingly comfortable in the dark smelly camper, and somehow I slept like a baby that first night.

The next morning I placed a grill mesh over the fire and cooked up some eggs bacon and coffee for breakfast. That was the part I had most been looking forward to on the trip. Something about cooking breakfast on an open fire alone in the wilderness had been calling out to me for months. Eggs and bacon and coffee specifically. It was good, but not quite the fantasy breakfast I had conjured in my mind. In the end it was just regular eggs and bacon like always, nothing special.

That day I remember I was thinking about my girlfriend for much of it. I just sat in that lawn chair with the fire smoking and coffee in hand, and I thought about what went wrong. She had been saying she was thinking about seeing a psychologist, that she just felt unhappy and unsatisfied in every way, and nothing she tried could shake it out of her.

Then, one night, out of no where, she burst into tears and told me it was all my fault. She said that she felt like she couldn't come to me with things. Every time she tried to confide in me I always suggested perhaps a change of diet, or to be better at tracking expenses, or not to drink so much, etc. She said that she felt hesitant to come to me with concerns because instead of just being there for her and listening, I was always telling her, "if only you were better," which didn't help at all.

I was crushed by the revelation that I was a bad partner in this relationship. I had been completely oblivious to it the entire time. Somehow I hadn't seen it, and yet there it was, bright as the burning sun before me. This trip was supposed to help me figure it out. There was something fundamental about who I was that was harming my girlfriend, and I couldn't think straight at home or in the city around people. I just needed to be alone with my thoughts for a while, I thought, yet here I was, and nothing seemed any clearer.

I decided to take a little walk midday. Just a short distance from the camper I came upon a strange looking mushroom growing out of the grass. Well, it actually wasn't all that strange looking, it was a normal brown mushroom, exactly the size, shape, and color of the mushrooms my roommate from college used to grow in his psilocybin mushroom farm. I picked all three of them and wandered back to the cabin.

I had no internet or phone access, so there was no way to confirm, but I was absolutely sure these were psilocybin mushrooms. I had spent years looking at them in my college dorm room, and these were identical. I considered it a sign. Maybe a nice little mushroom trip would help me figure out my life? Maybe it was meant to be? I decided, what the heck, I'd give it a try. Worst case scenario, I thought to myself, I poison myself and die alone in this field before Sean comes back to find me. It was a gamble I was willing to take.

So that night, as I was roasting my wienies over the open fire, I scarfed them down with a mushroom garnish. Three hotdogs, three mushrooms, down the hatch. It was another cloudless night, and the stars were as mesmerizing as ever, but the moon was a little less bright than the night before.

It was about an hour later, I was staring into the flames of the fire when something strange started to happen. I started to see shapes and faces in the flames. First it was a large face, a woman's face, in the center of the orange and red blaze. It would fade in and out, for a moment I could see it clear as day, her lips formed of wisps of bright flame, her eyes dark red, the outline of her head perfectly shaped. It moved as quickly and lively as the flares, her mouth opening wide to tell me something over the crackling fire but her face fading back into the flames before she could get it out.

Then it was tiny little fire creatures. Little smurfs or trolls but entirely made of fire. They were like the cartoon flames I had seen in old Disney films, not quite evil, but not totally nice either. They'd jump out of the ember and land in the grass and start running in all directions. Some ran towards me trying to climb up my leg. Others had wings and flew up in the air and swam in circles above me, doing aerobatic swoops and barrel rolls.

I leapt from my lawn chair and began frantically trying to stomp and squish them with my boots. I could see their little legs under them as they ran from me, and I could see snarling and sneering mouths carved into their bright fiery faces. More and more hopped out of the camp fire and ran in all directions. Soon they were dancing all around the camper, laughing and having a grand old time, and I could do nothing but run away, into the darkness, with only my headlamp to light my way.

That's when the aliens came. I ran into the darkness and tripped over a tree branch falling flat on my face. I remember it didn't really hurt, instead of pain I felt intense vibrations ricocheting throughout my body. The ground felt cool and spongy, and I rolled over on my back and just lay there.

When I opened my eyes I saw her. Crowned with a marvelous crystal war bonnet, and her neck draped with glowing turquoise pearl necklaces. Her face beamed a cool white glow and smiled at me with the compassion of every mother that had ever looked at her child. I felt intense love radiating from her and I felt enveloped in safety, security, and compassion in her gaze. I could have laid there forever. I could have died in her arms.

"Come with me," she said in a soothing and angelic voice, and offered me her shimmering hand.

My arm felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. I couldn't move it. I couldn't stretch out my hand to grab hers. I was locked to the Earth like gravity had been turned up a thousand times stronger. I felt like I was merging with the Earth, being sucked into it and engulfed by it.

"Stop trying," she said calmly, like a mother amusedly observing her child's first attempts to crawl.

Accepting her sage advice, I relaxed, and suddenly, and with no effort, my hand floated up towards hers and grabbed hold. The moment we touched a surge of electricity raced down my arm and zipped straight into my brain stem. Then I was pulled like a magnet straight off the ground and up into the sky.

I looked down and could clearly see the forest beneath me getting smaller and smaller until it merged into the tapestry of a vast landscape. Before I knew it I was in another world entirely, I presumed it was inside their space ship.

There I was, in a dark environment, with three blue and green glowing beings standing in front of me. Strange geometric shapes and objects floated gently around us, shifting form and pleasantly emitting ever-changing neon colored lights.

"Don't give in to amazement," one of the beings said to me.

I tried to calm myself, and as I did I began to notice a music that had been playing in the background for a long time, but that I had not noticed. It was a rhythmic drumming along with a mechanical clanking and clinking, like a group of construction-workers loudly doing their work to the beat of this drum.

"You are permitted to ask just one question of your choosing," the matron lady said to me in that angelic voice, it was like an entire symphony encompassed in one sentence.

I thought long about what I would like to ask these aliens. I knew I needed to make it count. The meaning of life? What planet are they from? Does God exist? What is the solution to all of earth's problems? What are the winning lottery numbers for the next lottery? What is the cure for cancer? Thousands of things raced through my mind, but finally I remembered why I was there in the first place, and I wasn't going to ruin the opportunity to find a real solution.

"Well," I said, "my girlfriend and I have hit a bit of a rough patch, you see, and I have the feeling that it's mostly my fault. I mean, I'm trying my best and all, but there's something I'm missing, something I'm not getting right. I really am just trying to help, I really just want to be the best boyfriend I can be, but... it just seems like no matter what I do, I only hurt her more... Can.. Can you help me with that? Is that... a good question?"

At that moment it was like a million fireworks and bells went off in the space around me and suddenly I felt a deep sense of peace. I felt at home, and the answer didn't come in the form of words, it was intuitive. It was the most obvious and certain thing that had ever existed.

Everything is going to be okay. All you need is love. Love more. Love more deeply. Love more people. Love humanity. This is the way the whole of Earth can be healed.

I felt it so deeply and so assuredly I began to scream and yell out in ecstasy, "I love you! I love you! I love you!" And the fireworks and the bells kept ringing and exploding all around me. I had never felt so sure and so at home in all of my life. Everything made sense for the first time. I could see it all so clearly. Everything was made of love, everything began with love and everything will end with love. It was so satisfying and so perfect an answer I began to weep with joy.

The next thing I knew I was laying in the damp grass again on my back. I rolled over onto my stomach and looked up, and under a light seemingly shining down from the spaceship above, a little ways in the distance, stood my girlfriend.

I ran towards her, tears streaming down my face, arms outstretched, and she began to run towards me. We smashed into each other like two blobs of water that had been shot from cannons. I melted into her waves of love, and we spun in dizzying circles crying into each other, "I love you! I love you! I love you!" This went on for eternity, for lifetimes, for millennia, and I never wanted it to stop.

I awoke to Sean screaming bloody murder. I had fallen asleep about a hundred yards from the campsite, still embracing a tree with both arms. I had a thumping headache and there were scrapes and scratch marks all over my face.

"What the fuck!? What in god damn hell! I'm gonna kill you!" Sean was yelling.

Where the camper once stood was a smoldering black pile of ash and rubble. There was a circle of black scorched ground surrounding the site. My mouth was parched and sticky. Sean came running over to me once he saw me moving around in the trees.

"What the hell happened!?" He screamed at me, "You know you're buying me a new camper now right? Well? What the hell happened? Tell me!"

I stood up slowly and brushed the sticks and grass off of my clothes. My headlamp was still on. My eyes were crusted together and my vision was blurry in the bright sunlight.

"Well," I said," y'know it's like, this experience that I had it, it was, erm, y'know it was kind of the most profound experience I've ever had in my life..."

• KG

In the order in which they appear:

Photo by Eric Gilkes on Unsplash
Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash
Photo by Teddy Kelley on Unsplash
Photo by Benjamin Balázs on Unsplash
Photo by Joshua Newton on Unsplash
Photo by Esaias Tan on Unsplash
Photo by kazuend on Unsplash
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
Photo by Desert Research Institute of dri.edu

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P.P.S. And remember these are fictional stories! My last story Inside Was The Fear about selling crack was awarded the OCD Top Nomination of the Day by @ocd in issue #30, but many people mistook it for a non-fiction story! :P But regardless, I was very honored, and aspire to make the cut as many times as I can!

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