I remember the eyes. Black, roughly almond shaped. I still recall the tree house. Sitting and staring into those eyes. Black night no stars.
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Sometimes I think it was all a dream, some freakish evolution of childlike whimsy. But when I stare up into the night sky, to the stars and the spaces between, I know it wasn’t a dream. Not my dream, anyways.
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I named him Kiki. Kiki told me secrets. My parents didn’t like Kiki. Maybe because he told the truth and they didn’t. That’s what Kiki thought anyways.
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Whooshing, footsteps, light, and then… nothing. This is the only memory I have of every single night from ages 7-13. Sometimes I get glimpses of something like a slaughterhouse, people on conveyor belts, corpses piling up, flayed and mutilated. Embryos floating in strange casings that hung from the ceiling.
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I put on snowpants just for the occasion. Kiki liked to hide far away from my backyard, so I had to find him. Kiki liked to go to the forest. Kiki said it was safe there, where nobody could stop us.
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I scream into the night, and a vile ‘intelligence’ whispers back, just barely audible. I’m scared I’m going crazy.
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Kiki told me the sky-people were here before us and will be here long after. Kiki’s pale skin blended in with the snow. Kiki told the truth. Kiki was old.
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They broke my mind. It is not safe. Imagine, if you will, a man placing his hand inside a pond and playing with the fish. The fish could never understand the man, but he knows everything about the fish.
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Kiki was older than grandpa. Kiki knew more than mom. Kiki never slept. Kiki waited outside my window at night. Kiki was scary then, but Kiki was my friend.
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We tell stories of grays, silly little men that abduct us at night. The terror is lost in translation. Only the naive think they are from another earth or from out of time or from another ‘dimension’ or that they don’t exist at all. I know where they come from.
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I lay under the Arizona sky, lights dancing above me. I swear I can see figures off in the desert, whispering to each other. They’re talking about me, you know. One of them takes me by the hand and leads me to a black lake. In the reflection I can see myself. It was all strangely calming. I fell into the lake. I fell out of time. I fell through the cracks and peeled back the veil and I saw it. The tragedy that is all of us. The answer. The truth. And that truth was, of course, that there never was one. Only dreams, only dreams. I never knew.
I crawled out of the lake, coughing up black bile and yellow and red and white. They were gone now. I journeyed back to my car, and drove home. One of them ran across the road in front of me. The car crashed. Hospital. Lights. Nobody remembers this crash but me. Nobody remembers the hospital but me. The doctors were quiet.
I stare into the sun and the sun stands fierce. It is our father and our mother, our progenitor, without it we are nothing. But it is young and they are old, and it cannot protect us.
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Kiki told me he was like god. That he would protect us.
Kiki is not god.