Slim fingers, long bones. Pale as milk, with transparent silk as hair and eyes you could look right through to the other side.
What do you want? I asked, because I didn’t know what else to say to an alien creature showing up uninvited in my bedroom. If I had ever contemplated the possibility, and I hadn’t, I would have assumed there would be panic, screaming, adrenaline, and a racing pulse. Instead I was calm- just a little surprised.
I’m not sure, the being said, and that surprised me too. He didn’t have a mouth but I heard a kind of electric and clicking sound and somehow I understood. I didn’t plan on it, he continued. Not specifically, anyhow. We are supposed to explore the universe, but I didn’t mean to scare you while you were sleeping.
He looked perplexed, not sure where to go next. I felt the need to reassure him. Oh, don’t worry about it, I said, patting the blankets beside me. I wasn’t sleeping, I was reading. I moved over to make room.
Tell me a story, he said.
Story by Lorette C. Luzajic
Lorette C. Luzajic writes, edits, publishes, and teaches small fictions, from Toronto, Canada. She is the founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review, a journal devoted to literature inspired by visual art. Lorette is also an international visual artist working with collage and mixed media to create urban, abstract, pop, and surreal works. She has collectors in thirty countries so far.
Image by Adam Strong
Backwards Trajectory 