STRANGE MUSIC
The day the spaceship came we barely noticed it at first even when its shadow fell across the avenue like a great shark. But once the haunting music began we all stopped and gazed upward as though hypnotized.
Perhaps if, instead, we had scattered like minnows, things might have turned out differently.
It began very slowly at first.
Ron Bradshaw stopped washing his Jaguar and, like me, stared open-mouthed up at the great ship suspended above us. Suddenly he began to levitate.
Up he floated, looking like an escaped balloon, his red cardigan vivid against the blue sky.
Janice Williams went next: with a short cry, she too began to rise, with Toby, her dachshund, paddling furiously beneath her at the end of his lead.
Moments later, people who’d come outdoors to stare began to drift upward like dandelion-seeds on a soft breeze. Gradually the sky was full of them, a rag-tag collection of scarecrow figures rising towards the shining spacecraft that hovered above us: lads in baseball-caps, still clutching their skateboards, girls with push-chairs, the daft old lady from number 12, an Amazon deliveryman: one by one up they went.
In the distance, I spotted a host of other figures rising like bubbles towards an open hatch in the belly of the silver ship and, all the while, the strange, unearthly music continued.
It was then that my pacemaker decided to malfunction. One moment I was gazing with wonder at a scene beyond imagination and the next I was lying on the ground. I must have passed out, for when I opened my eyes again the people had all disappeared and the spaceship was leaving. As the strange music grew fainter and more distant, an overpowering sense of desolation overwhelmed me. I sat on the pavement and wept like an abandoned child.
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