I ain’t never wrote nothing down before so if you guys don’t understand something that’s too bad. Just move to Brooklyn and I’ll explain it to ya’ real personal like. The reason I’m writing something now is I just gotta’ tell somebody what happened to me and my brother Tommy the other night. It was a completely weird experience. I mean it was worse than the time me and my buddy met his aunt at a bar. She was no longer looking like his aunt. She was real different from what he remembered. His aunt now used the men’s room. We left that place a little confused but shrugged our shoulders an’ figured it wasn’t any of our concern.
The weird experience happened one typical Friday night. Me and Tommy was playing cards with our buddies at his place like usual. Outa’ the blue Tommy says he wants me to go up to the roof with him for some air. I figger’ he probably seen somebody cheating and wants to tell me real private like. We usually did that before we threw anybody out and banned ‘em from our game.
When we go up to the roof I asked Tommy why we was there an’ being an idiot he tells me he don’t know. I was getting ready to give a good smack to the back of his head when we seen a bright flash of light and heard a strange sound behind us. We turn around an’ there is one of the strangest looking dudes I ever seen in my life. He is short an’ has this big head with some real buggy eyes. He’s wearing what looked like a tinfoil dress. He looks stranger than our uncle Charlie from the Bronx. Uncle Charlie always felt that he was a cave man from the ice age. My family always slept better knowing Charlie was locked up in the crazy house.
Tommy looks at the guy and says “what are you doin’ up here, huh? You just move into the building or something?”
The tinfoil wearing guy starts talking to us without moving his mouth. My guess is he works in some ventriloquistic type job or something. He just looks at us and says “You’ll do as specimens.”
I look at Tommy an’ could tell by his expression he didn’t understand what the guy meant either. We both figgered he’d disrespected us so Tommy starts gettin’ mad. He points at the dude and says “Oh yeah, your mother will do as a specimen. How you like that ya’ freak?”
It sounded pretty funny at the time. Tommy and I laugh and give a high five to each other.
The weird guy lifts his arm and points his strange looking finger at Tommy. This guy’s finger was long, skinny and has a suction cup thing at the end of it. Tommy goes to hit the guy but before he can do anything the guy up an’ zaps him with this like lightening bolt from his finger. After that Tommy is standing as still as a statue in the park. Now this makes me mad. I’m ready to get in the guy’s face. I point at the dude and says “Hey, you buggy-eyed freak. You best fix my brother or I’m gonna’ bust your buggy-eyed head”.
Before I know what’s happenin’ the dude goes an’ points that suction cup finger at me. With a zap I’m no longer on the roof. The next thing I realize me an’ Tommy is on sitting on these tables in the middle of this like Star Trek, Star Wars kinda’ room and can’t move. The room is filled with a million buttons blinking different colors. There are these like big screens on the walls that look like super huge big screen televisions. I can only imagine what it would be like to watch sports in that place. Everything was kinda’ white but nothing had any smell. I ain’t ever been in a place before with no smell at all. This place had no cooking smells or people smells. I’m telling you there was nothing. The worst part was I couldn’t recognize anything. I know I’m no brainy guy when it comes to electronic stuff, but there was a table with what looked like tools on it. As a mechanic, I use tools all day but couldn’t figger out how even one of them things would be used. It was like looking at a tray of dentist tools and not knowing which ones he’s gonna’ use to rip up your mouth.
I look at Tommy and ask him if he knows what was going on. Tommy not only doesn’t know what was going on, but he tells me to stay the hell out of his dream. I can always depend on my stupid brother to act like an idiot during any occasion.
All of a sudden this like door thing opens and in walks not only one but three of them buggy-eyed, tinfoil wearing guys. They all talk but none of them is moving their lips. They seem upset for some reason and I’m guessing it’s a family thing ’cause I heard em’ arguing about being related to this species.
They go over to Tommy and say “We’ll test this one first.”
Now Tommy is so scared he starts crying and calling to God, the Virgin Mother and even Father Scarpati, who he never even liked. They just point a suction cup finger at Tommy and zap him. Now Tommy ain’t moving anything, especially his mouth. I was sitting there thinking how our Mom would’ve loved to have one of those zapping, suction cup fingers when we were growing up. Her life would’ve been a lot easier.
I figger’ if I keep quiet maybe they won’t zap me none. I try to keep my mouth as shut as possible. They stick a few needles in Tommy then put him in this television thing and you can see all his insides. They were even uglier than his outsides. They rub a few of these like glowing vibrators things all over him and seem really amazed at something. I think it was because Tommy had more hair on his back than a gorilla but I’ll never know for sure.
When the buggy eyes are done they come over to me. I looked at them for a second and wonder what their parents looked like because they would be one ugly family. I keep picturing a whole family of them guys wearing their tinfoil outfits at Coney Island in the summer. With the harassment they’d get I bet they’d set a record zapping people.
They look at me and say “We will test you now and then return the two of you.”
I said “Hey, before you guys zap me how about telling me a few things.”
They say “What do you want to know?”
I ask them a bunch of questions and they only answered what they want. They say they’re from some place called Alphabetacentouri or something. I know right away this place is far away from the city. They tell me they are observers and collect data of different life forms from within our galaxy. I’m thinking maybe they can give me a heads up on some sports scores since they were data collectors. Maybe they got ideas on where to get cheap beer or how to play better poker. My dream of makin’ some real dough using their info ends when they tell me they know nothing about sports, poker or drinking beer. I don’ believe ‘em but try to be nice.
No matter how much I tried with them little buggy-eyed dudes they didn’t want to be friends. So then I get an attitude. I notice I can move my arms so I try to smack one of them in the back of the head to see what he does. Another one zaps me before I can connect. I suppose me an’ them tinfoil-wearing buggy-eyed dudes is just too different.
The next thing I know Tommy and I are standing on the roof in the same spot and our watches are showing only one minute has passed. We looked at each other and are a little freaked out. In the sky there is suddenly a big, bright light and then nothing. We both know we got to quickly get back to the poker game and have some beer.
Tommy and I never have talked much about what happened that night. Both of us just keep dreaming about it. Neither of us is sure if it was a bad dream or really happened. I guess we don’t got the nerve to tell anybody ’cause we’re afraid we’ll end up locked away in the crazy house with our uncle Charlie. I think writing it down is my best bet. Trust me when I say if you ever see one of them buggy-eyed, tinfoil wearing dudes on your roof leave him alone. There’s a lot more to them than you know.