I got in at ten minutes past midnight. Every step I had taken from the tube station was a slog. My feet ached, and I was ready to fall face-first into my bed. I just about had the energy to brush my teeth before I went to the bedroom.
Staring at my face in the bathroom mirror, I noticed dark circles that weren’t there before. My eyes looked tired and drained. I looked at the space on my chin where I thought I’d seen a spot developing. It was still there. A red almost-bump.
I liked my face. I liked its elasticity. I pulled a few faces and made myself laugh even though I was weak with tiredness. Or perhaps because I was weak with tiredness. I was staring into the brown eyes of my reflection when it happened. A vision slammed into my head:
Big black eyes shining into mine. Long, thin arms wearing loose, rubbery gloves. The figure stood over me. I was lying on a table. Why was I lying on a table? A thin, gloved hand hovered close to my face. I screamed.
I screamed in the bathroom. The memory was so real, I felt as if I could touch it. Or it might reach out and touch me. My skin crept. My hands clung on to the edge of the skin and I let out a long, wild shriek. I remembered. I remembered everything.
*
I got in at twenty minutes past midnight. Every step I had taken from the tube station was a slog. My feet ached, and I was ready to fall face-first into my bed. It was a struggle to force myself to brush my teeth before I went to the bedroom.
I kept my eyes down, avoiding my own gaze in the mirror. I spat a huge gob of used toothpaste down into the sink and trudged off to bed.
In my fantasies, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. In real life, things weren’t so easy. I crawled into bed and wrapped myself up in a cocoon of duvet. I pressed my face down into the pillow. Nothing happened. I did that trick I’d learned: relaxing your feet, then relaxing your calves, then your thighs, working upwards through the body until you fall into an immediate slumber. It didn’t work.
I wriggled around until I was lying on my back. That’s when it happened:
It was as if I was back there. The place. The place that couldn’t exist. I was strapped to a table. There were figures above me. Figures with long, thin arms. The rubbery material of their gloves sagged down until I thought it would hit me in the face.
Big black eyes looked into mine. The being hissed at me. It rattled with its whole body. That must have been its speech because I couldn’t see a mouth. It hissed and rattled and put thoughts into my mind.
‘You will remember none of this,’ it told me.
It pulled out a sharp implement. Something I had never seen before, shiny and silver with a needle-like tip. The whole thing was about two feet in length. The creature managed the implement with deft hands. Soon, the sharp, pointed tip was hovering directly over my eye.
I struggled against my fetters. I tried to move my head, but I couldn’t wiggle more than an inch to either side. The point came closer and closer to me and I found I couldn’t even close my eyes.
I wanted to say something, wanted to scream. It felt as if my mouth was stuffed with cotton wool. All I could see was the gleaming point coming down at me and the huge black eyes of the alien wielding it.
The point got closer and closer, until all I could see was the gleaming needle and a blurry fuzz all around it.
‘Knock me out,’ I wanted to say. ‘Put me to sleep. Don’t make me see it. Don’t make me feel it happening.’
I couldn’t even make a mumbling sound. My head was fixed in place now. The couple of inches of wiggle room were gone.
There was a pressure, like a puff of air, and the thin blade pushed down into my eye. It kept pushing, kept pushing. I wondered how long the point of that thing was. Surely it couldn’t keep going. Keep going. Keep going.
I remembered my childhood. All the way back to toddlerhood. I was sitting on the floor with my older brother, his arm around my back. He was laughing uproariously. His head tipped back, showing his shiny pink gums and his tiny white teeth.
I remembered that time on the beach. We were older then. Nine and ten. My mother tilted the camera on its side and took a picture of us climbing up the beach as if we were climbing a mountain. I could feel my fingers digging into the hot, powdery sand. This was in Hunstanton in Norfolk. The scent of salt sea air filled my nostrils. There was a shop selling fish and chips nearby, contributing the scents of vinegar and frying oil.
The needle pulled out of my eye slowly. I felt it go. The pointed tip hung over me for a moment more. There was mushy grey material on it now. What was that?
The room came back into focus. The creatures in their baggy gloves were still standing over me. The head man still stared down at me with those evil eyes.
I tried to move, tried to scream. It seemed I was tied down by more than my fetters now. My hands felt weak. My arms felt weak. My torso felt as if it belonged to someone else. I could feel it breathing, my chest rising and falling, but it didn’t feel like me.
The alien hissed and rattled at me once more.
The words formed in my brain:
‘Now, we begin.’
*
I got in at twenty to one. Every step I had taken from the tube station was a slog. My feet ached, and I was ready to fall face-first into my bed. I didn’t have the energy to brush my teeth. Instead, crying, I crawled into my bed.
I remembered a flash of me and my older brother as toddlers. We wore matching dressing gowns. His was blue and mine was red. His arm was flung around my shoulders and he laughed. I could see into his mouth: his pink, shiny gums and his tiny white teeth.
There was another time, years later, when we were nine and ten. At the seaside in Norfolk. The scent of salt and vinegar and frying oil in the air.
What had put those memories into my mind?