Alien Stories

by E. C. Osondu

  What if we had gone to war with the Aliens and they had defeated us? Would we have not ended up losing our young men and women in the war?

  What if they had defeated us and decided to carry us away into captivity to their strange land? What would we have done? To be held captive here on earth was bad, now compare that to being held captive in a strange planet where it was rumored the sun never stopped shining.

  If we have ninety-nine gods in our village, the woman Makodi must have visited the shrine of each single one of them to ask for a child. She had married two husbands before her present one and was sent packing on each occasion because of her barrenness. It was when she married her third husband that she finally became pregnant and had her son Obiajulu. Everyone in the village was aware that Makodi treated Obiajulu like an egg. He was the kid whose mother dressed him up in a thick sweater simply because the sky was gray. He was that kid whose mother stood by the edge of the village soccer pitch carrying a gallon of water and hopping from one leg to the other waiting and hoping her son did not get tackled and fall. If he did fall she would be the one to quickly rush into the field to ask him if he was hurt. Their relationship had become the stuff of legend so much so that doting kids told their moms to let them be that they were not like Obiajulu. She was there waiting for him at the close of school. At first his classmates teased him, but they soon got tired because his mother always found a way to top her last act of embarrassment.

  It came to a point that it was not possible to talk about Obiajulu without mentioning his mother.

  If only she could have another child so she could stop suffocating this one with this type of excessive love that kills, some said.

  She may never let him out of her sight long enough to get married, others said.

  Ah, this life. Some children are praying for their mothers to look their way, this one must be praying for his mother to look away if even for one minute. All that love and attention must be suffocating. This was from another woman who lived down the same street.

  There were a few other more philosophical and empathetic comments as well. These few voices commented on how long it had taken her to finally have a child of her own.

  Why should we blame her? First time no luck. Second time no luck, only frustration and then sent away empty-handed, and then finally the third time she got this boy. What do you expect? We must learn from the mother-hen even though we think we are wiser than chickens, but look at the way the mother-hen guards and guides her eggs and her little chicks.

  You know what they say: If you have children, worrying about them would nearly do you in, and if you don’t have children, worrying about having children would nearly kill you. So either way children mean anxiety and worry.

  For a boy who was so doted on, Obiajulu was quite a good boy. Always happy to run occasional errands for his mom and quite a good sport when he was playing soccer with his friends.

  He hardly ever got into fights with any of his playmates, but he was not boring because he equally had an impish sense of mischief and a surprisingly sharp tongue that could spit out biting words when the need arose.

  This combination made Obiajulu well liked though his friends would always end whatever they asked him to do with the expression “if your mother lets you.”

  Finding a palm frond by the doorsteps of your house in the village meant that the house would produce the next person that would be put on the Alien ship. It is quite possible that in the early days people cried and screamed in protest when they saw the palm frond by their doorsteps but that must have been in the past. People simply accepted it and basically saw it as their own way of building the community.

  So when Makodi woke up and saw a palm frond by her doorstep and started screaming everyone in the village was startled but not surprised.

  “Who owns the evil hand that wants to snatch my only palm nut that I got after many fruitless years of wandering in the bush with empty hands?” she screamed as she began running through the length and breadth of the village.

  “Many people have four, five, six, and seven. I have just the one. Many have more than enough to spare and what does Makodi own? I have no bundles of damask like other women. I do not own a big house. The only piece of cloth that I own that should warm me on cold nights is what you want to take away from me.”

  Some in the village considered what Makodi was doing bad form. It was really quite unusual for people to complain the way she was doing when they saw a palm frond by their doorsteps. They did complain but quite mutedly, usually in the privacy of their inner rooms behind closed doors.

  “What exactly does she want? She wants the entire village to be wiped out for the sake of her son?”

  “Is she the first or is she going to be the last?”

  “It is not a bad thing for her to cry. We all cried in the past, but we cried silently and we did it indoors.”

  “Every life is important, whether the life of her son or the lives of all those who had gone in the past, but what matters most is our continued survival and existence as a people.”

  “As many have said in the past, who knows what the journey holds for him? He may like it even more up there than he does down here. If it was so bad out there I am sure many would have come back to tell us how badly they fared over there.”

  Whether Makodi heard any of their comments or not no one could tell. She was undeterred as she ran back and forth through the village cursing and screaming.

  “What crime did my one and only son commit that you chose to punish him this way?” she asked.

  To this comment many responded that it was quite possible to choose where one wanted to be buried, but who has ever heard of one choosing where they were to be born? What a luxury that would be if we had a hand in the matter, they said.

  The day that the palm frond was left on Makodi’s doorstep was unusually gray. It was not threatening to rain but it was just gloomily overcast.

  But there were also those who believed that it was somewhat unfair to ask of Makodi her only son whom she had been blessed with after many years of fruitless toil.

  “She is not young anymore and besides it was so hard for her to have that boy. It is sad. I can see why the thought of losing her boy will make her lose it completely,” someone said.

  “It is much easier for those of us with more than one child to bear to see one of them taken away but for her with just that one boy it must really be heartbreaking,” another said.

  “What is to be done? What can we do? This life is indeed unfair, but we must continue to manage it because there is just one world—this is the only world we have. What choice do we have than to continue to take the good with the bad,” were the words of another sympathizer.

  Every ear was keen to hear what the Elders were going to say. They were the ones who had reached the peace agreement with the Aliens. The Elders were the one who had received this tradition of doing things from those who had gone before. Surely they had something to say maybe they had a solution even.

  The Elders were murmuring and mumbling so much so that one could hardly hear them. Usually the Elders spoke clearly and forcefully but this time it was different. Why were they not speaking clearly? Was there something they didn’t want all ears to hear? When they began to speak clearly above the muffle they spoke in riddles and obscure parables.

  “What type of pain would the body experience that would make the eyes shed blood instead of tears?” they asked.

  “Is there anything we are seeing today that we have not seen before?”

  “The only new thing that will happen on this earth is if the heavens decide to fall upon the earth and cover it all up,” they said.

  “One little fart can ruin a gathering.”

  “One bad apple spoils the whole …”

  “A little leaven ferments the whole lot.”

  The Elders said this and they said that. They beat around the bush without bringing forth anything fruitful. People listened closely to hear what the wa
y out was going to be.

  Meanwhile, Makodi was still wailing through the entire village screaming herself hoarse.

  “Is this how you people are going to be watching? Is no one going to come to my help?”

  “What exactly does she want us to do?” many asked.

  “But I thought you people loved my son Obiajulu. Obiajulu my son who plays with your children. You people always stop me to compliment me on how well behaved he is, are you all going to fold your hands and watch him go, just like that?”

  “Why is she talking like she is the first and only person to have her son taken away? Have most of us not been through the same thing?”

  “When a bird sees a piece of stone coming towards it, it flies away, it does not wait to be hit. When a goat sees an object coming its way to hit it, even the goat gets up and runs away. Do you people expect me to fold my hands as this thing is coming towards me?” she asked.

  By now ears were growing weary from listening to Makodi. Even her voice was beginning to grow hoarse from all the crying and screaming she had been doing the entire day. It was getting to the time that the ship was going to arrive from space. Her son had refused to eat all day and had been sitting on the bed he still shared with his mother.

  When Makodi realized that the time was drawing near for her son to be taken away she returned to her house and stopped crying. She told her son to take his bath after which she told him to have something to eat and then she dressed him up in his best clothes. She too went and had a bath and dressed up in her best clothes.

  They both came out and sat on a wooden bench and began to wait for the arrival of the spaceship that was going to take her son away.

  Now tongues began to wag and get busy at the sight of mother and child dressed in their best clothes waiting for the spaceship.

  “Was she not the one crying only a few moments ago?”

  “What exactly is she up to this time and why is she dressed like someone heading to a party? Does she want us to think all the tears were for nothing?”

  “Why is the boy dressed so colorfully? Does she not know that as soon as he boards the ship they are going to give him new clothes because the kind of clothes we wear here are different from what they wear over there?”

  Soon, the Alien spaceship arrived like it always did. It glided in gently and descended. Makodi walked towards the spaceship holding Obiajulu’s hands. As Obiajulu started to climb the stairs into the spaceship Makodi climbed with him, not letting go of his hand.

  “Where is she going? Has she gone mad? They only take sons not old women, or doesn’t she know that?” someone asked.

  “I will go with him. It is either we go together or he is not going,” she said.

  “Let go of his hands. He must go alone. Do not bring disaster upon us all,” the Elders said.

  Makodi would not listen but went into the spaceship with her son.

  There was a little scuffle inside the ship. The door did not close.

  An Alien’s hand pushed Makodi and Obiajulu out of the spaceship. The door of the spaceship closed. The spaceship left empty.

  The Elders were the first to start wailing. Other villagers soon joined in.

  “What shall we do? Surely, they are coming back to attack us,” they said.

  Many eyes were turned to the sky waiting for the attack, but it never came. The alien spaceship did not return. Not that day. Not that year. Not even the year after that.

  Light

  One day while she was weeding her farm, a ray of blue light from the sky fell on Bukwu. After Bukwu saw the blue light she became a totally different person. She was tilling the soil when the blue light came down from outer space and enveloped her. She said the light had been so bright it was like every other thing around her was in darkness—though it happened in the afternoon—as the light zeroed in on her and she could feel its rays on even the littlest strand of hair on her neck. She said the effect of the light on her was refreshing—like dipping into a cool stream on a muggy day. The way she described the light—she did not use the word alien, neither did she say the light was from a different planet—she simply said that the light that fell on her was not of this world.

  When she was questioned by the village Elders, she said that she had not heard any voices when the light enveloped her, but that she had felt a beautiful warm glow as if someone had poured something sweet all over her.

  The question about hearing voices had been a trick question by the village Elders to actually confirm if she had lost her mind. As everyone in the village probably knew, to hear voices was to go mad. But nobody in their living memory had ever reported seeing a strobe of light descend directly on them from outer space.

  Bukwu said that after the light had ascended she had seen a shiny piece of brown rock on the ground where the light had touched. This turned out to be a problem because, when the Elders of the village went back with her to where she said the incident had happened, there was no piece of rock of any color, shape, or size to be found. This made the village Elders raise their eyebrows skeptically, but they had not said a word and had instead nodded sagely as if they agreed with her.

  It was not uncommon for people in the village to claim to see things. Some had even claimed to have seen ghosts in the past, but to say one had seen blue light descend from the sky on a person who was busy working in their farm was unheard of and deserved some attention.

  Why Bukwu, of all people, was the most often repeatedly asked question.

  Bukwu who was known to be the most quarrelsome person in the village? Was there a man, woman, or child that she had not had a quarrel with?

  Everyone in the village knew it was time to go to bed when Bukwu served her husband dinner. She was the last person to finish preparing the evening meal and by the time she was done it was close to bedtime. Her husband would be sitting on his easy chair shaking his feet, nodding and hissing and fuming as she went about leisurely making the meal. When she was done cooking, she would serve him the food casually.

  “Your food is here. You better eat quickly I need to go to sleep,” she would add.

  She did not bother to eat because she was in the habit of nibbling at whatever she wanted as she cooked, so by the time the meal was ready she was already full.

  “Is this food my evening meal or my breakfast?” her husband would ask.

  “Please eat so I can clear the plates and go and rest. Stop asking me questions for which I have no answers.”

  As they argued their voices would rise. Everyone in the village would know that Bukwu and her husband were quarreling once again about her late preparation of his evening meal and they would get ready for bed because it meant the night was already far spent.

  Her late night cooking and the subsequent quarrel that followed was the first thing to cease after Bukwu saw the blue light from space in the farm.

  Surprised by this change, people began asking questions. They listened in vain every night to hear Bukwu’s querulous voice scolding her husband, but all they heard from their compound was silence.

  To questions from surprised villagers—for, as it is well known in the village, one person’s business is everyone’s business—why she had stopped her late night cooking and quarreling with her husband, Bukwu responded with a series of profound-sounding koans.

  “Quarreling and fighting is not food. No amount of quarreling can fill the stomach,” she said. At another time she responded with: “No dead person was ever eulogized on their dying day for being the most quarrelsome person who ever lived.”

  “Every couple has disagreements; it is those who bring theirs out in the open that the world laughs at,” she told another inquirer.

  Many in the village were lost for words about Bukwu’s transformation. There had never been anything like it before. The closest thing to it was when the village drunkard’s father gave him a haircut and dressed him in new clothes and found a wife for him. The drunkard had hibernated and acted sober for a couple of weeks and had t
hen gone back to his old drinking and falling-down ways.

  Bukwu was the leader of the Npotompo dancing group. They met every week to rehearse. It was a group made up of young women and men. Some of the men were still single. Ordinarily, single men dancing with married women was frowned on but a little less so if they were members of a dancing group. It definitely meant that at some point they would have to present their dance to entertain the entire community and this would suggest that there could be nothing clandestine about their dancing. Bukwu had quarreled with her husband over her membership of the dancing group and how on days when they met to rehearse she prepared dinner early to enable her to go on time.

  After Bukwu saw the light she called her group together and told them that she no longer wished to be a part of the dancing group.

  “My heart is no longer in it. I do not want to waste what is left of my life on earth dancing. I plan to do some more important things as long as I am still breathing,” she said.

  “Are you saying we are idle and that is why we dance? What has come over you? Is dancing not a way of taking a break from the stress and worries of day-to-day work?” they asked her.

  “Nothing wrong with doing what your heart tells you is right,” Bukwu said. “As for my own heart, it has told me different, and I will do exactly as it says,” Bukwu added. She was not speaking in an angry tone. None of the women or men in the group would have dared engage the old Bukwu in an argument.

  “But what is wrong with dancing?” they asked. “Even in one of the holy books a man danced so energetically until his clothes tore into two.”

  “Some things are not bad strictly speaking, the only problem is that there is no profit in them,” Bukwu responded.

  Even her new manner of speaking was somewhat strange. People did not speak that way to each other in the village. She was beginning to sound like an oracle.

  “But you can at least watch us practice our dance. You have been a part of Npotompo since it started,” they begged her.