I, The First Gurrier

I don’t know why this forest.  Or this day, this year, this life even.  But here I am. 

 

You know, they’ll believe a man walked on the moon but as soon as you get to the core of it – the truth, that is – and explain that it’s not just the rodents we have on this Earth scuttering about in its nooks and crannies, they turn off completely – pure cotton wool they have in their ears, it is.

 

 There is a menhir in the middle of this forest, a standing stone located three miles north of my current position – a large rock erected in a multi-greened glade it is, a most unlikely place for such a baleful thing.  I feel the stone has been calling out to me for much of this week.  Come, it says.  Come to me.  Well, I’m not hearing those words exactly.  Each day I’ve woken up with that slab in my head and I just...don’t know why.

 

I am Calhoun Clarke, a well-known gurrier in these parts.  Well, I was----until the first time I was taken from my house and out of this world before being returned with little to no memory of it.  Before that, I was a prize gurrier, and something of a libertine, in the European tradition.  Happily I had my way with many women.  And was known for knocking rival gurriers about the head with terrific skill.  It’s possible I was not the first gurrier.  Ah, certainly I was not.  There’s a long run of gurriers in the history of things – in this region alone.  But if you were to say anything of me, I would suggest you say I was the first gurrier to make contact with an alien intelligence – certainly – because no other gurriers I know of have spoken up.

 

It is a fine thing that my inner impulses haven’t brought me here to this forest in the dead of night because I don’t think my nerves could deal with it.  The trees stretch on up higher as I get deeper in and there are leafy whispers all around, like the trees are muttering to one another.  I can deal with it in this daylight, but in the nighttime, it would send an awful fright spinning through me.  I have lost some of those gurrier guts I had back in the day.  I’m a different sort of fellow now.  So I am. 

 

Barbara saved me.  She robbed me blind of my gurrier ways.  Some thief she was. Some wife she was.  The first time I saw her, that ravishing red hair rolled up in a hive, I could only lie back in the hospital bed and look up at her in awe.  Some say she only married me for clout as she was an author of speculative fiction and it looked like she was onto a good thing having the first genuine abductee in the region to draw material from.  But I can tell you that when it came to my experiences she nibbled not even a crumb.  Whenever I informed her of my otherworldly encounters in the hope she’d incorporate some of it into her fiction, she said all of it lacked a certain verisimilitude, and of course, I was displeased.  Her last novel Gender Bending and the World Ending concerned time travel and was based on her own experience transitioning from male to female.  I said to her that I found the story awfully oblique, which was a small operation of vengeance on my part.  You give what you get in this life.

 

Not a single bird or animal to be seen or heard in this forest.  It’s like they’ve all been sucked out by a great vacuum cleaner in the clouds because, apart from the muttering trees, in the air there is an odd sort of numbness, the kind you’d imagine would appear if all life on Earth had just been snuffed out in an instant.

 

I stopped being a bad man once before.  What did it get me?  It gave me no esteem with the public.  I was still pounded with mockery whenever I spoke of visitations in the night.  With Barbara having left for a more lavish millieu, is it apt that I should return to the life of a gurrier: to fight and drink, shout and piss, spit and steal?  Sure, maybe, perhaps.  We’ll see what the aliens have to say about it.

 

There it is: the stone of Carrigluey.  Some people say it was left there to mark a huge battle that took place on this spot about a thousand years ago.  It’s a small glade, it is.  So it must have been a small battle.  I sit down in front of the rock and wait. 

After some time, a light comes to overwhelm the clearing.  Starting as bright orange, it then calms and veers into a pineapple yellow.  I can remember seeing this same yellow during earlier visits.  Even with light completely filling the area before me, everything remains soundless and still.  The trees have stopped whispering.

A figure begins to emerge from the softening yellow light.  It is a human figure.  A small, rotund human shape, it is.  As the figure moves slowly towards me, and features of the face become more apparent, I think to myself---- Is that Les Dawson, the comedian and television presenter of yesteryear?  GOD AND MARY ABOVE, I SWEAR TO YOU IT IS!  LES BLOODY DAWSON. 

‘Les.’ 

He smiles when he sees that I recognise him and the smile widens when he sees that I have a pen and paper handy in my pockets.   

‘I thought you were dead,’ I tell him.

‘You thought wrong, my boy.’

After Les signs his autograph on the previously worthless betting slip I give him, he looks earnestly at me and says: ‘I am not in fact the real Les.  I think you know that.  I think you know who WE are.’

‘Eh...I have a hunch.’ 

‘Generally, when we do appear, we do so in modified form – manicured somewhat for acceptance.  Often we might choose icons from your past.  Dignitaries, great personalities that figure prominently in your personal histories.  Television presenters are a common front we might assume.  They seem to have a hold on quite a few of you.’

‘Well, hmm, sure.  But I wasn’t a big fan of Les Dawson, so I don’t know where you got that from.  You might have mixed my wee brother’s memory up with mine.  He was really into you, I will say.  He loved Blankety Blank.  I was more into The Price is Right with Leslie Crowther.  You must have mixed up the Leses.’

Les grunts, snatches the recently signed autograph from my hand, and says, ‘Anyway...it is most interesting to finally speak with you, Calhoun Clarke.  We have been meeting for many years.  But this is the first time we have been able to manage an introduction.’

‘You’re the aliens, aren’t you?’

‘We are not of this planet – that much is correct.’

‘I was right all along, wasn’t I?  You’ve been coming here and abducting me and operating on me, conducting all kinds of experiments.’

‘Operating – yes.  Experimenting – not exactly.’

‘What kind of operations?  I just don’t get it.  Sure I’m only a lowly gurrier.  What good am I?’

‘You’re no good at all.  You are simply one of many humans we extract regularly for our pleasure.’

‘Ah, sexual stuff.  I knew it.  I just knew it.  I tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen.’

‘No, not sexual.  You are no good to us in that arena either.’

‘If I’m no good, then what possible pleasure could you derive from me?’

‘Your brain.  The gurrier’s brain.  When harvested appropriately, just a tiny shaving from your brain can produce an ample gurry crop, a stupefacient drug which we tend to smoke in the summer months, and which some of our elders will chew for long periods.  Oh, gurry brings on a great high.  It is as though one’s senses have been individually plucked from the body and then slooshed back all at once through the veins.  But alas----our authorities have always been against it.   So we must practise our vice in secret.’

‘It gets you off your tits, does it?’

‘For all my gurrier knowledge, I can honestly say I haven’t previously heard that particular idiomatic utterance.  But it certainly gets you off, I will say.’

‘I wish I could try it.’

‘It would likely have no effect on you.  After all, it is already a part of you.’

‘So let me get this straight---you’ve been taking my brain away bit by bit and getting high on it.’

 ‘Yes –you could say our approach – which we have performed on you at least once a year over the last decade – is something akin to medical procedures here on Earth such as, umm, lobotomies, I believe---however you seem to have gotten by okay, so I wouldn’t worry about it.’

‘I still don’t understand – why me?’

‘Other brains have architecture that is resistant to germination.  For example – your former wife.’

‘Barbara?’

‘Yes – her brain is too muscular and would not comply well with our climate.  She is a fine author, after all.’

‘Oh, you’ve read her stuff?’

‘She’s a bestseller on our planet.’

‘I’m not surprised at all.’

‘But, why you, you asked?  You should know, Calhoun Clarke, that yours is considered premium gurrier brain.  Most gurriers don’t last past the age of eighteen.  But a premium one will go on until about thirty years of age.  That’s when we got hold of you.  The yield from your head alone has produced an especially high quality product over the last ten years.  It has even caused a rise in organised crime as rival gangs struggle for control of the merchandise.’

‘That sounds cool.  Like Scarface.’

‘Yes, a little bit.’

‘I love Scarface.’

‘All gurriers love Scarface.  Anyway, we should get on with it.’

‘Oh?’

‘We have called upon you now because this will be your final journey.  You have only one piece of brain left to give.  We thought it only right to let you know what has become of your trimmed cerebrum.  We thought you should at least know that some good has come of your body---despite everything.’

The figure of Les Dawson fades and is replaced by a doorway that is once more surrounded by a brilliant orange light.  Looking through the doorway, I see a sky of endless suns and tiny machines moving through the sky, and not only machines, people too, or beings of some sort floating purposefully as though secured in invisible carriages; it’s a hub for intergalactic transport, it is. 

I hear a voice coming from within the extraordinary portal.  COME ON DOWN, CALHOUN CLARKE, COME ON DOWN, it says.

I move slowly into the orange light.  My body tingles in a million places as I’m touched by the light and soon my physical self is dissolved in the luminescence.  Now I am moving at speed.  Well, the conscious part of me is.  I can’t feel the physical part of me.  When I look down, I can see no belly, no feet, only the flickering speed-lines of cosmic travel; it’s good not to have to look at that belly anymore.  As my caseless consciousness hurtles along at an unfathomable speed, I look around and see to my side multicoloured orbs, heavenly bodies that puff and billow like underwater life forms.  

I can’t move or speak, but I can feel.  I can feel behind me Earth and it is effectively in flames as I travel further and further away from it.  Did I have something to do with its destruction?   Have I been tricked by a destroyer of worlds?  Was Les Dawson really such an asshole?

Soon the journey seems to end and I’m no longer moving.  The blackness of space has closed in on me and built a very small and dark room to house only me, it appears.  But I can still feel Earth burning far off in the expanse.

‘Don’t burn my home,’ I yell out. 

There is no answer in the darkness.  But I can hear a number of voices sniggering away in a corner as though around me a party attended by many braggarts is going on – bottles popping, glasses clinking; I think to myself that even if there are destroyers of worlds nearby at least they have a bottle of something.

A voice: ‘Quiet, relax, these images you see are unreal.’

‘Is the wine real?’ I ask.

No answer.  No sound.

 

 

Soon after, I open my eyes. 

I’m in a hospital bed.    

The door opens.  A beautiful nurse.  It’s Barbara.

‘Barbara, my love.’

She giggles and shoots me a slightly perplexed look.  Perhaps I am drugged and my words to her sound slurred.  I don’t know.  It feels like I’ve been lying here for a long time.  Barbara walks around to the side of my bed. 

‘Have you remembered what happened yet?’

‘It’s all...hazy.  But whatever took me – it wasn’t human, it is safe to say.’

‘Yes, you said that before.  You think you were taken by E.T?’

‘Not the E.T.  But an E.T.’

‘What did it look like?’

‘That’s difficult to say.  My memory is all shattered.’

‘Well, whoever they were, they certainly gave you a fair crack on the head.  It looks like it was a bottle of Macardles.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Part of the red label was embedded in your skin when you arrived.’

‘Why would the aliens have bottles of Macardles?’

‘I don’t know – sure it’s a popular drink.’

‘But only in these parts.  Not nationally.  Or internationally even.’

‘Who’s to say what these alien species can get their hands on, eh?’

‘So...you believe me?’

Barbara smiles.  No smile has ever affected me so much.  I notice her lipstick.  Are nurses permitted to wear lipstick while on duty?  She looks like one possessed of a rebel heart.  She comes closer and her arm reaches past me.  ‘Can you sit up?’ she asks.  ‘Yes,’ I say.  She fixes the pillow behind my head and then presses the call button at the side of the bed.

‘Time for surgery,’ she says.

‘Oh, right.’

‘And yes----I believe you.’

‘You do?  About the aliens?’

‘Yes.’

‘Nobody believes me.  I think you’re the first.’

‘It would be foolish to think we are all that there is in this universe.’

‘Right.’

A trolley is wheeled into the room with an orderly by its side, come to take me to the operating room.

‘Barbara...’ I say.

‘Yes, Mr. Clarke.’

‘Would you go out with me some time?  After all of this.’ 

‘Oh, I don’t know...you’re a nice young fellow...but...I don’t think I could ever go out with a gurrier.  All the drugs, and the drinking and fighting.’

‘Okay...well, I can change my ways.  I want to change my ways.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ she says, smiling.

 

Before surgery, I lie and look up at the silvery-white ceiling of the operating theatre.  I’ve been in these places before and the light has always been cold and filled me with dread.  But now the promise of intimacy and companionship has made the light that shines on my face a warm one.  I promise once I am off this operating table, I will no longer be a scoundrel.  No more bad deeds for this gurrier of the east.  For Barbara is waiting – waiting for me on the other side.

The anaesthetic starts to take effect.  My body closes down as time gets slower...slower; and the last thing I see with my eyes is Leslie Crowther, the television presenter, who is aiming a scalpel at my head and moving in closer...closer.