A Seafront Encounter

She gave me a word. Perhaps it was all she could give, I kind of think it was. Spoken in a whispered voice it was delivered millimetres from my ear: the action brought her body close upon mine. There was the impending contact of her hips and thighs, the gentle crush of her breast upon mine as her mouth glided towards my ear. Her cheek brushed against mine on that last leg of the journey to deliver a word, her mouth pursed to say something and drew up across my cheek. From her body something radiated that made me tingle - I half expected a kiss. My arms hung limply by my side, hands didn't know what to do. Was this an embrace, where I should hold her, should I try to keep her here with me? As it was, I did nothing, I said nothing. She was in control, or so it seemed, and I was rendered inert: just an observer. The word was not a spell, it was the moment that held the enchantment: a moment that had been building since I met here.

When I first saw her she was laughing at the lucky dip machine at the seaside fair, the type of place that used to be in a pier if the damn thing hadn't burned down years ago. The mechanical grabber was returning to the centre of the machine, so I guess she'd just dropped something back into the cheap toy jungle below. I never knew what it was that she came so close to winning. I say she laughed, but when I caught a glimpse into her eyes then I could see a hollowness to the laugh. It was just a facade and nothing else. Perhaps that is why I approached her, such an odd thing to be faking a laugh at. I'd caught a glimpse of something I wanted to know more of.

Wearing a light blue dress and a white cardigan she looked attractive in a homely, simple, sort of way. She wasn't stunning or particularly striking in any way, rather she had the appearance of a loving girlfriend or wife. The kind of woman you would come home to, not run off with.Yet on the other hand her fake laugh hinted at a mystery. Something was out of kilter. I looked her over, an otherwise smart appearance was somewhat let down by cheap, plasticky sandals, an obscure pink colour (which seemed to defy any spectral classification) - the kind of thing you buy at a petrol station to survive a weekend, completely intending them to be destroyed on the beach.

"Do your feet hurt?" Were the first words I spoke to her.

She smiled in response, and I guess she was thinking because she looked at me, taking her time. Time elapsed, longer than polite conversation would generally allow but I don't think she cared: her face said that much, or so I read into it. I start to fidget, being very conscious of not making any unwanted, uncomfortable movements; if she saw she never said. But then she spoke.

"It's because I became a different person this morning. But then, maybe I stayed the same and the universe changed. I haven't quite figured it out." Good looking, yes; but it appeared that I had started to make conversation with a nut job. A big question mark must have formed on my face, I could feel my facial muscles contorting, she wasn't going to help me out. We both waited. She spoke first, she was controlling the situation - it wasn't going well, for me that is.

"Do you know what separates me from you, from anyone else, from anything else?" I almost attempted an answer but in the end sensibly kept quiet, it was a rhetorical question. I didn't expect her answer, perhaps at this point I didn’t want to hear one.

"Spinning.” She let that hang for a few seconds, “And I don't mean the exercise classes. We all share the same types of basic ingredients - electrons, quarks, etc, etc. The universe is fundamentally constructed from a basic set of particles, what differentiates them is the way they spin. It's the combination of these ingredients and the way they spin that makes everything unique. I'm not sure if I've got all the words right, I mean there are things smaller than particles and perhaps, come to think of it, things vibrate more than they spin; but you get the idea."

She started to walk off, not a committed move away from me, just an idle movement in a random direction. Like a random particle she drifted, occasionally being pulled by the forces of the sedentary machines and fixtures. Hers’ was a dance to the illuminations and noises of the assorted slot machines, their plastic light extending a gaudy barrage on her face. A sad dystopian commentary on the redundancy of commercialism against human spirit - yeah whatever. I followed.

There was a silence between us as I followed her daydreaming like movements down the promenade. Occasionally eye contact was made, hers were made up with dark colours that matched her dark hair, which was pulled back into a ponytail. It wasn't pulled back tight, and looked in danger of letting slip from the band that defiantly held it back, so it bounced and bobbed as she moved. Her eyes though, or rather the person behind them seemed, well not quite absent or hollow but she seemed lost as if a gulf had opened up between her and the outside world. Maybe insanity?

The silence went on for a length of time I don't recall, but just as she had ushered the silence in she broke it.

"I became a different person this morning." It was a casual and definitive statement, the words w

eren't strained and they didn't sound false. I reasoned such "self" awareness precluded the possibility of schizophrenia - well I hoped. She continued.

"My spin changed. Happened in an instance, just as you might turn quickly when you hear someone shout

your name or when you've just closed your front door and heard the phone ring. I turned so quickly that all my ingredients, my atoms, gluons and such got "jolted" into a different spin. Well I say all but clearly not every single one: I still look the same. It was the particles that make me ‘me’ at a very fundamental level."

I looked at her, without knowing what to say. So I thought about it, and her, and I must have looked dumb, I felt dumb. It was like ordering the extra beer on a Sunday afternoon when you've already drunk too much, a glutenous decision only this time fueled by a pretty face and not a cool lager. So I'd made the decision to try and pick this girl up, found out she was probably mad; so do I persevere or make my exit? I looked at her again. I could feel my stare upon her, the uncertainty in my mind felt brighter upon her pale cheek than those tacky illuminations of those money-grabbing machines. But what was I wanting to grab?

There was the pause. The pause was wrapped in silence. The world around us was noisy, from our perspective (from my perspective) it was chaos marking our time. The pause had, by this time, taken a life of its own and it seemed a cruel act of destruction to end it. Conversation had faltered between us, but this pause was growing strong; she hadn't disappeared but was waiting and taking part in this creation, this birth. We'd become parents to this thing that was now binding us together, any word or noise would bring us back to the outside noisy, chaotic world. Our spin would change.

"But 'you' is massive when compared to the really small spinning things. Causation isn't so simple from big to small, small to big"

And so I ventured into her world, the pause destroyed. The wrapping of silence was destroyed, man the destroyer, and the chaos of the outside world came crashing in. I felt like I could fall into a whirlpool of hyperbole at any time.

"You calling me fat?" Why is that question from women at random times so effectively disarming? She clearly wasn't fat, I clearly wasn't talking about weight; yet she completely disarmed me. I must have looked like a cartoon character, when their jaw drops an impossible distance to the floor.

She smiled a devilish smile. This wasn't the first time she'd stumped a man with such a line. She wasn't a nun. Her smile was as much for his discomfort as the child-like sense of superiority she was getting out of the situation.

"I'm teasing you." She laughed at the words. "Come on, lets walk." She took my hand and led me down the seafront. The day was strange, sunny and warm yet curiously under populated for a seaside resort with such climatic conditions. Perhaps the tacky seafront entertainments explained the absence of people, no, that is why they would come. It was eight thirty in the morning, funny how a wristwatch can hold such a powerful connection with everyone else's world, reality they call it. It just didn't seem like reality right now.

"What are you thinking about?" She asked that damn question that all women liked to ask, and we're not even dating. She'd stopped, we were leaning against the railings of the promenade, which sat about ten feet above the shingle beach: the tide was in. The flaky paint rubbed off against my sleeve. I was thinking that my jacket had better wash clean. I wasn't about to admit to that, for some reason I had a surge of something I'd best describe as confidence. Time for a challenge.

"Why are women always so quick to ask that question?" Confidence had brimmed over somewhat. What should have been a jovial challenge sounded more bitter and barbed. From somewhere a streak of aggression had surfaced, I racked my brains for an explanation but none was forthcoming. Was this the boney fingers of reality clawing into this world I had found myself in? I must be the mad person, at an alarmingly rapid pace I'd lost all sense of who I was.

Then, it was all normal. Rather she, all of a sudden, invoked a conversation of work, weather and the like. I was suddenly wrapped into a tale of the sandwiches her boss always brought into work on Wednesdays and the way her dodgy landlord would always pop round the flat when she was in her dressing gown, well usually. He was a skinny man with a lecherous smile. It was like she had rushed ahead of herself: she'd started the conversation by jumping straight into the main event, without any preamble or context, although there was still something she was holding back. The conversation was close to the point, but she'd skated around the central issue of what I can only guess was why she was here, what she was doing. There was no need for me to speak, certainly as it seemed to me, as she meandered through the mundanity of her life, providing the backfill of a story she was near the end of. I couldn't fathom why she wanted to include me. I'd started chatting to an attractive girl and rather than telling me to take a hike, either politely or otherwise, she had decided to draw me in, to share and expose. Nothing was asked for in return. I fully admit to having slightly tuned out to what she was saying.

"That's when I saw the sign in the newsagents this morning, it took me by surprise, I caught the words out of the corner of my eye and spun round. Spun round too quickly, changing my spin at that moment. Broke the heels I was wearing, hence the monstrous sandals, it was all they had in the newsagents. I asked the person behind the counter about the advert, but typical - they knew nothing about it. Anyway, I followed the instructions in the advert and here I am."

I didn't know what she was talking about.

"Did you follow all that?" She asked and I nodded and made some sound of agreement and knew I should really ask a question at this point.

"Or maybe it wasn't the spin that changed, but rather the words on the advert were a spell you've just been beguiled by a clever trick?" I asked with a certain degree of desperation.

Again a pause, but this one was of average length.

"That's a good point and I did think about it. However, what if the advert was placed in such a way that I would only see it out of the corner of my eye, when walking from that direction and so force myself to spin round and change. The advert was the catalyst described on twitter." I was a bit startled by the last word, and was increasingly regretting not paying attention to what she was saying earlier.

"Twitter turned you into a new person and made you come here?" The question leaped from my brain, via my mouth, without anything in the universe being able to intervene. She looked at me funny, well funny wasn't quite the right word, rather there was accusation and disappointment there as well. I could see that she was trying to pick which emotion she meant with that look. She decided on humour.

"So, you weren't listening to me were you? Typical man! I found a guy on twitter that seemed like a giggle, and it's coming true. @alienabduction, that was his name. He said the way is signposted but I'd have to be a different person to get there."

"Don't worry I was rambling on a bit, so don't blame you for tuning out."

"You are here to be abducted by aliens? Why?" This was not where I had remotely expected this conversation to end up. Alien abduction on the seafront, surely too public for such a thing. I put my hand in my coat pocket and switched my mobile on; I thought I might need to call someone.

That was when she came close to me and whispered a word in my ear. That was when the boney fingers of reality poked their way into the moment, it was a word that shattered the edifice of what we had become in this brief time.

Just one word: cancer.

"The Doctors here can't cure me. All I've got is a slow torturous death. So why wouldn't I look elsewhere? I've not joined a cult; not hurt anyone or myself. Just taken a trip to the seaside. Still at least I've met a not too unattractive guy, even if he can't quite pay attention to all of a conversation." She finished the sentence with an impish, flirty grin.

Just at that moment the phone beeped. Text. Quickly I read the information. Work.

Apparently I shouldn't have had my phone switched off, but I wasn't supposed to be working today. It was my day off. I couldn't leave just now anyway, it would have to wait.

"Anyway I don't know. I doubt the aliens will turn up. I mean come on, the only reason I'm here is to hope there is a chance I won’t die; that there is something more to life. A chance. A dream when all else turns to a nightmare, what else am I to do. Die in defeat?" Now she was angry, upset and starting to cry. I put my arm around her, it was the least I could. I tried to cheer her up.

"Hey if you've just been following these tweets how do the aliens know to pick you up, to abduct you? I mean aside from the fact that they are aliens." Jumping back into her fantasy seemed like the only way to console her. Her shoulders moved and I took my arm from around them. She waved a mobile phone at me.

"Once I saw the sign, changed into a different person I tweeted them to let them know I would be here. Pathetic really."

This time my phone started to ring. I explained that it was work and that I had to take it, she nodded. I listened to the noise from the machine, for some reason I even nodded at appropriate moments. The words were clear, simple and precise but they sounded more like a noise from the duty manager, another sign of the creeping of reality. I put the phone back in my pocket. Reality had come crashing back into my world, my brain had been flipped to work mode.

"So, what do you do that you’re needed on a Sunday?"

"I work in logistics, a glorified courier some might say. It seems I've got a pickup to make. So much for my day off." With my imminent departure announced I'd shattered her fantasy. You could see her shoulders drop, a frown replaced her smile and the colour and energy drift away, she started to reduce as a person; the cancer's victory flag was being hoisted. Now she was lost for words and looked like a frightened, shrinking girl.

I surprised her. She'd expected me to start walking away so when I took a step closer she was surprised. She was even more surprised when I took her hand and very quickly wrapped a slender silver bracelet around her wrist. Definitely surprised, but also I could sense a growing worry and panic. Then I punched in a few numbers into my mobile and waited.

"The bracelet is a locator, it means the matter transporter can obtain a precise fix and, if you'll excuse the expression, beam you up."

"Beam me up!" Now she was really surprised.

"I hate sci-fi. Matter transference, it would take too long to explain. We'll be gone in a second or two."

"Who the hell are you?" Colour had gone back to her face, in the short term anyway, the adrenalin was kicking into her system.

"I'm an alien, and you wanted to be abducted." In an instant the matter transferral process worked and two people disappeared from the seafront and no one noticed.