It was six o'clock in the evening, Sunday the eleventh of November.  An X registration, silver Vauxhall Cavalier drove past Water End, a small village on the A30 London Road between Hook and Basingstoke.  The driver of the car was a white male, who had dark brown hair and blue eyes. He drove carefully towards Basingstoke, to see a friend of his, who lived in a suburb called Brighton Hill. It was a dark, cold evening. Fog cast its mysterious shadow over the road in patches, playing games with the driver. It was clear one moment and then the next you could barely see twenty yards ahead of you.  The driver, named Kenneth Baxter, concentrated on his driving whilst listening to a local radio station. Being played was a song by a female artist called Louise, a track named Naked.  Kenny steered his car past the Hatch, the radio began to crackle as it lost the frequency. Kenny tried to adjust his radio to find the station but to no avail. It was a fruitless task, the radio was dead.  Suddenly the car came to an abrupt stop, "Damn it," Kenny exclaimed as he slammed his hands on the steering wheel.
He unfastened his seat belt and was about to open the door as a bright light shone from above, the car began to rattle and jump up and down. Kenny held onto the steering wheel, breathing heavily, his eyes wide with fright, trying to stay calm but failing terribly. Hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, he felt as if he had been hit by a barrage of static, his eyes hurt, the light was so bright. He had a loud buzzing in his cars, his heart raced as his car shuddered to an eerie halt. The light still shone, Kenny was sure that the car was being lifted into the air, he couldn’t be sure of it because he wasn't able to see outside the car windows, the light just drowned everything out.  The brightness suddenly increased, became blinding before falling into pitch blackness, the buzzing sound had stopped, Kenny couldn’t even hear the sound of his own panicked breathing, then he suddenly felt an excruciating pain in his head, one that was so painful that it knocked him out cold.

Kenny Baxter's blue eyes opened, he rolled his head to his left, he was in a silver walled room. As he sat up his head throbbed, he had a sensitive pain in the back of his eyes, the small yellow light in the centre of the silver ceiling was just enough to hurt him, he covered his eyes with his hand. That was when he noticed the pin holes in his wrist. His eyes widened, hurting them further. He quickly scanned the room. A woman was sat on an identical metal bed to the one on which Kenny sat. She was matching him, "So, you're up then?" she said. She sounded American.
"I guess so," Kenny answered as he studied the small pinholes.   Seeing that those little holes were the only thing that had been done to him, Kenny turned to the woman. She was a slim young woman who had light brown hair and wide green eyes. She wore a floral dress and brown leather sandals, and appeared tired and run down. Kenny looked back at the pinholes in his wrist,
"They do a test on you the moment you arrive," the woman said.
"Who are they?" Kenny asked.
"Aliens."
Kenny gave the woman a hard stare.
"Very funny, there are no such thing as aliens," he protested as he climbed to his feet. He suddenly felt dizzy, so took a few deep breaths to steady himself,
"Where do you think we are?" The woman asked.
She remained seated, but she watched as Kenny walked to the room's only door.
"I have no idea, but it doesn’t have to be aliens.  If I were you, I'd stop watching too much television," Kenny scoffed.
"What is television?" She asked.
Kenny's almost laughed as he turned to her. It was only her look of curiosity and seriousness of the question that prevented him in doing so.
"Surely you know what a television is?" Kenny asked.
"No," she replied, quite truthfully.
Kenny slowly walked towards her.
"Where did you come from?" He asked.
"South Carolina," she replied.
"I thought that you were American" Kenny said.
"Didn’t they have television where you came from?" He asked.
"No, they don’t," she answered.
"Surely they did.  Everyone's got a T.V. nowadays, it's the nineteen nineties for God’s sake,"
“Nineteen nineties?  No it is not, it has just turned the eighteen twenties," the woman stated.
Kenny's mouth dropped, "Who are you?" He asked.
"Laura-May Phillips," she replied.
"And you are?"
"Kenny Baxter," he replied, sounding unsure of himself and now feeling worried,
"How long have you been here Laura-May?"
“I do not know," she replied, sounding as unsure as Kenny felt.
Kenny walked back to his bunk and sat down. He looked at Laura-May. She was a quiet, attractive woman who must have been in her late twenties,
"How did you come to be here?" He asked her.
Laura-May sighed as she lent forward, her green eyes welled with tears, and she stared into infinity as she recollected what happened to her.
"I was working late on the dirt of my husbands farm, it had been a hard day, gathering up the harvest. Some of our black slaves failed to turn up for work, so I chose to work the fields, trying to get our crops ready for the weekend, in time for the coming harvest festival.  I was on my way back to the house when all of a sudden, a bright light shone from the heavens, right down on me. I was scared but I could not run, I tried but it just wasn’t possible. The next thing I know is that I am raised into the air, into the centre of the light, then everything went black and I later found myself in here. Later that day, these horrible little people arrived and took me to a room, where they done something horrible to me, they claimed that is was for the better good but I wasn’t so sure. They put these metal things into my body. It hurt so much," she said tearfully.
"No matter how many times they do that to me, it still hurts," she added.
Kenny took a deep breath, he didn't like the sound of that. Kenny was now scared. Laura-May seemed such a nice person, it was a pity that she had gone through so much pain. At that moment, the door hissed open and two beings stepped inside. They were about five foot tall with very skinny grey bodies, large oval heads and big black eyes. Their legs and arms were very thin, with tiny little hands that had three little fingers and they wore no clothing.  They ignored Kenny and marched over to Laura-May, who began to scream. They took her and dragged her to the door, kicking and screaming, pleading with them not to hurt her again.  Kenny, angered by the little beings, charged at them. One of them turned to him and, once Kenny was in striking distance, hit him, knocking Kenny off of his feet and throwing him across the room with incredible force, force that surprised Kenny, who didn't expect such thin little creatures to have such strength.  The door of the room closed, cutting off the sound of Laura-Mays cry's for help.  Kenny sat up, he shook his head, he ached as he stood up, looking at the room's only way in or out. Things looked grim, very grim indeed.

It had seemed like hours since Laura-May had been taken. In that time, Kenny had been provided with some food, though not entirely palatable, Kenny had chosen to eat it. It seemed possible that if he hadn’t the aliens might not give him any more, and Kenny had no idea how long he was going to be stuck in this prison.  He sighed, it seemed strange to him that in the time he had spent alone, he found himself thinking of work. He worked as a stores assistant with a local hydraulics and pneumatics supply company. He found himself thinking of his customers, whether it was for an account or cash sale, if the job required a hydraulic hose assembly or a selection of adapters. Many times he had been unhappy with his job, with the annoying branch manager or the despairing goods-in controller. At times he had wanted to quit, but now he found himself missing it. He missed the curses of Biff, the goods-in man, who would shout and curse at his computer when he did something wrong with it, or the inconsistencies of the manager, who would agree with something one moment and then disagree with it the next. There was one compensation though, that was the secretary, Kylie. Now she was a different matter all together. She was a lovely woman, who had long brown hair and the darkest brown eyes he had ever had the pleasure to look into, and she had the most perfect body.  Kenny would look forward to the summer months when Kylie would turn up to work wearing some of the shortest skirts that he had ever seen, some barely covered her stocking tops, and blouses with the lowest cut neck lines that displayed everything of her charms. It was a pity that she was married.  Kenny shook Kylie and work out of his mind. He felt that he had to keep his mind on where he was, even though he had no idea if he was light years from Earth or just onboard some kind of space ship that was in orbit over his home planet.  Kenny jumped off of his bunk as the door opened and two aliens entered. He wasn't sure if these were the same ones as before because they seemed to be identical.
"Where's Laura-May, what have you done to her?" He shouted as they approached him.
Kenny heard a strange buzzing tone in his head, something that seemed to be telling him that Laura-May Phillips had been returned to her home.  Kenny backed away from them, he didn't believe them. He soon ran out of room as his back hit the metal wall behind him. The aliens grabbed him and, with incredible strength, they led him out of the room,
"Get off of me," Kenny shouted as he tried to fight them off.
"You’ll be safe," he heard echoing around his head.
"We will not put you to any harm," that same voice stated.
"You hurt Laura-May, so what makes you think that I trust you?" Kenny shouted at the aliens.
"You have no other choice,"
Kenny shivered as he was led down a corridor and into a big open planned town or city. Big buildings formed streets in which many of the little alien creatures walked around, like humans would, through a town centre or shopping mall. One thing Kenny noticed was there was not a vehicle in sight, everyone seemed to walk to their destination. The whole place was covered by a dome that was made out of a plastic looking frame and glass. The whole place was lit up by the sun outside, the sky was a beautiful blue. Kenny noticed that there was a constant buzzing tone. It became clear to him that these creatures were telepathic or something like that.
"This way. We will explain everything to you."
Kenny was led to the glass walls of the dome. It looked out over what appeared to be the remains of a city.
"In the past our people relied on industrialisation and chemical waste creating transport. It was our undoing, we began to die. We created this place to survive in as our world turned against us. We could no longer live outside, many people died, only a handful survived the holocaust. We had to change, to adapt to our new way of life, so over many years, our bodies and brains changed," the aliens said telepathically to Kenny, who was still looking over the city remains, in stunned silence.
"Our population is growing, we predict that in ten years, this city of ours will be too small to cater for our needs. We need you, and people like you, so that we can understand and learn how we coped before, when we used to live outside.   We must adapt again, with science as our tool, so that we can leave this city and live like we did for centuries before," they added as Kenny caught sight of something, something that made his heart race and made him sink to his knees.
"No," he said shakily, his eyes filling with tears. "It can’t be," he gasped, for what stood within the rubble of the fallen city was the greatest symbol of power and tradition that you could ever find, a status symbol of a great city, a tower that everyone around the world knew of, the tower of Big Ben.

Laurence Culley

Copyright: Laurence Culley/Legacy Writings