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inflated, delirious.
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    Arms outstretched, tense and taut, a man sat alone in the dark room. All lights were extinguished. A candle, lit an hour before, had gone out. Despite the below-freezing temperature outside, the man wore nothing but his underwear. The circulation had long ago left his legs, the tingling of limbs asleep long passed. Now, his legs simply did not exist. The organ of life pulsed strong within his chest and seemed to hammer against his rib cage with every beat. Loud. He could hear it, but not like the people who say they hear their heart beating, when they really mean they feel it beating. He heard its sound . It was a bass drum steadily pounding on, like the rhythm kept by the man who conducts the rowing of a slave ship. And deep in the bowels of the ship, he drummed faster to produce his desired effect: to speed up the rowing. To speed up time itself. Breaths came short but quick, keeping time with his heart. He sweated profusely. Eyes wide open, bulging out and quivering every which way for a sign, adjusting to the blackness, seeing through it. All was eerily still, with the room draped in the quiet that accompanies darkness, a quiet that is a sound all its own. A silence so stark it hums . Dark, dark, all was dark …
    And then the abyss crept in.
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    Morning came, and the sun brought no warmth with its reappearance. Temperatures were in the low twenties, and the overnight forecast called for the middle teens. But for the first time in weeks, a weather-related story did not make the top headline.
    â€œHave you seen this?” asked Robbie Jensen, Spotlight Magazine ’s editor in chief. He was a short, skinny, balding, bespectacled man. He was perpetually on edge, and he further fueled this with an always-present and always-full coffee mug clutched in his left hand.
    â€œWhat?” Mike asked. He had just arrived and had not even sat down.
    Robbie held the morning paper’s Lifestyle section. The headline read, CLOSE ENCOUNTER IN TRUMBULL.
    â€œIs this for real?” Mike asked primarily to himself. He took the paper. “They could’ve at least tacked a question mark on the end to add some speculation.”
    â€œRead it. You’d think I bought it in the grocery-store checkout line.”
    Mike scanned the article. It gave the entire what’s what and who’s who. Pops Dickey. Sam Petrie. Lewis Driscoll. Police Captain Graham Lattimer (whose only statement was his name). In full color, to the right of the piece, was a photograph of Pops, Officer Petrie, and the dead cow. The caption stated, FARM OWNER “POPS” DICKEY AND TRUMBULL POLICE OFFICER SAM PETRIE WITH THE ALLEGED VICTIM OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL VANDALISM.
    Hmm. At least they wrote “alleged.”
    Mike looked at Robbie blankly.
    â€œYou got this, right, Mike? You never called me back. Did you get it?”
    â€œNo. Everybody was gone when I got there. I got lost, and then the sheriff or somebody told me to leave.”
    All Robbie could say was, “Oh, man.”
    â€œRobbie, by the time we print anything, this’ll be old news. We’re a monthly mag, you know. In two weeks, Goober the idiot neighbor will fess up. You know how this works. ‘It was just a pie tray hanging from fish line.’” Mike acted it out with his fingers. “Et cetera.”
    â€œYeah. Maybe.” Robbie seemed to calm down.
    Mike said, “I’m saving your life here, man. We woulda looked like morons.”
    â€œRight,” said Robbie. “Okay, look. We can get the basics from the stuff already in print, but I want you to do a UFO story for next issue. Special Report: UFO Phenomenon, or whatever. Okay?”
    â€œYou’re killing me.”
    â€œIt’s special interest. Interest that is special. Suck it up. It’s not like I’m asking you to find Bigfoot or something. Treat ’em like morons, I don’t care. I just want to see the story.