Tag: Rednecks

[Original Post: Sunday, September 26, 2021]

“The first thing I remember was the lights.  I woke up, and there they were… shining through my window bright as the sun.  I tried to shield my eyes, but it wasn’t enough.  I could still see them even with my eyes closed.  Bluish white, piercing impossibly through my body and my mind.  I should have been scared, but something compelled me instead to follow them.  To seek out that unfathomable glow.  To see what was creating such otherworldly brightness.  To see what wonder of heaven or of earth had invaded the dark little shroud tucked around my early morning bedroom.  Curiosity had gotten the better of me.  Inexplicably, I watched myself as, a moth drawn to a flame, I quickly threw on a jacket over my T-Shirt and stepped outside, expecting… something.

Metallic.  The lights were coming from something metallic.  I strained to see more through the brightness as a loud sound like the foghorns I remember from the lighthouses that dotted the little beach east of my childhood home startled me out of my own head.  Then, I saw the shadows.  The little shadows of what appeared to be humanoid figures stepping out of tall rectangular hatches on either side of the glowing metallic silver mass.  They were wearing strange clothing, old rustic American jumpsuits like those worn by mechanics of several generations gone by.  And, there, over the breast of their uniforms I saw a patch that was identical across each of the barely visible figures now standing darkly in the glow of a halo of bluish white radiance behind them – a name patch that on each and every one of them that said, in faded red cursive lettering, simply… “Allen”.

They grabbed me and tied me to a platform on the back of their silver metallic mass.  I saw a strange symbol engraved upon the front of their giant machinework out of the corner of my eye as I screamed in objection.  The face of a horned ram staring back at me.  And near it, in almost human looking writing, what appeared to be the English word for… “Dodge”?  The Allens took out some fishing line and tied me to cold metal, a kind of flat rectangular storage bay on the back of their oversized silver conveyence, a trail of smoke leading up from the end of a long, loud exhaust tube sticking out from the back of their machine.   Laughing, they opened small cylindrical containers of some kind of foamy beverage and took sips from their unusual refreshment before climbing into the control chamber at the front of their otherworldly vehicle and driving me down the road away from my home… away from everything and everyone that I ever loved… and into a cornfield from which I feared I might never return.  A cornfield known for having strange animal mutilations and aluminum can litterings occurring overnight.

Once they got me to the field, I tried to scream but they simply laughed, and continued to drink out of those strange cylindrical vessels whatever it was they relied on for sustenance.  They took out a rusted, red metal box filled with all kinds of cruel, otherworldly torture devices and began hitting me over the head with what I can only describe as some kind of tiny bent metal rod.  The humanoids responsible for my abduction called it an “Allen Wrench”.  Soon the hitting me over the head with a wrench was joined with what appeared to be human screwdrivers, pliers, claw hammers, and whatever else my sadistic benefactors could find and retrieve from within the horrible depths of their cold metal box.  A receipt from a human “Human Depot” store spilled out puzzlingly from the accursed red container as they reached for a especially vicious looking “Hex Key” (their language, not mine – I have no human word equivalent to offer for it) and begin poking metal parts of it up my nose while drinking more of their frothy chilled space juice and laughing.

Eventually, I must have passed out from terror, because the next thing I knew, I woke up alone in the middle of the cornfield with circles of tire-track-like impressions forming a geometric design in a pattern all around me, several dozen unlucky possums found mutilated (squashed) on the small country road leading away from the field back to town forming a red trail of truth – a small lingering evidence that my humiliation at the hands of the Allens was real.  It was a long time before I felt safe enough to reach into my pocket for my smartphone and call for an Uber to get home.  Longer still before I told my family back home what had happened that night after returning to my humble abode and forcing myself back to bed even knowing I wouldn’t fall sleep while recounting in my head all the horrible, otherworldly things I had heard and seen.

Many of my friends think the entire incident was simply a dream.  Something I made up in my mind, to make myself feel special in some way, as I live out my otherwise boring and uneventful life.  But I and my Uber driver, Diego, know the truth.  I didn’t drive myself out to that cornfield.  And I certainly didn’t tattoo ‘Get ‘Er Done’ and ‘Here’s Your Sign’ on my own back that night.  I encountered something otherworldly and supernatural that will stay with me my whole life… until my very last day on this humble little planet that we call Earth.  And I say humble planet very earnestly, because if that strange night of torture with the Allens taught me anything… it’s that we are not alone in this world.  Allens, in whatever backwoods you find them and in whatever giant pick-up truck they are riding in, are not a trick of the light or an experimental weather balloon to be dismissed.  They are not some new governmental aircraft, or angels, or time travelers, or swamp gas, or wolves.

They are very, VERY real.  And, maybe… just maybe… without you even knowing it right now, there is a slightly sober Allen waiting and watching over you right now, too.  Waiting to shine his lights into your bedroom.  Waiting to take you out into that cornfield.  Waiting to stick a Hex Key up your nose and laugh.

Waiting to shakily tattoo ‘Get ‘Er Done’… forever… in broken, illegible letters on your back.”

~The above account was submitted to the management of “The Eye of Zatara” by a reluctant and trustworthy witness, a man who may or may not have been the ACTUAL cover-up artist who removed the “Get ‘Er Done” and “Here’s Your Sign” tattoos from the back of the anonymous, tortured victim of our story.  As Halloween season approaches, the “Eye of Zatara” will continue to investigate paranormal phenomenon reported to us by various bored employees at businesses we frequent, spending at least thirty minutes verifying the details of these stories before posting them forever on the internet as indisputable fact.

We at “The Eye of Zatara” have an ironclad commitment to finding out the truth about our reality, and sharing that truth with you, our readers, so you can better understand the horrors that could face you in the otherwise innocent world all around you.

Watch the skies, dear Reader.  Or, um… the roads.  Or something.  (Your driveway, maybe?)

~The Gatekeeper