DREAMLAND IN WINTER
by Rob Kristofferson
They're just seven words that have adorned my wall for twenty five years, printed on frail paper, now yellowed by time. The letters are bold at the top, to stand out, and every word is capitalized: DREAMLAND IS OUT OF THIS WORLD. These words are important to me, to the point that I'd love to see them emblazoned on my tombstone, by a wife I'm not currently wed to. It would make a unique addition to any cemetery, but unfortunately, I am not old and I am not dying.
Newspapers are one of the finest examples of time's ability to be robust, unmovable, and fragile all at once. Paper, weathered by age, especially newsprint, becomes brittle, jaundiced, ultimately turning to dust, until time itself fades away.
The ultra-comfortable desk chair that pairs with my desk, a frugal investment I now realize considering the condition of my failing museum, has never been out of sight of these seven words. They appear on page seven of a 1992 edition of the local gazette, two towns over from our location in Hope, New Mexico, a town with a population of 105 people. I arrogantly thought if I opened a UFO museum here it would be a big attraction, and make it the new boom town for magazines like People and US Weekly to talk about. My ego hadn't taken into account that a UFO museum already existed in Roswell and was doing quite well for itself.
After the first month, my first wife called it the greatest monument to ego she'd ever seen. "Even bigger than the pyramids?" I asked.
"Bigger!" She said.
"Bigger than the Napoleonic monuments?"
"So much bigger." she said.
She left the next day, thinking I'd failed to invade and conquer the Russian Empire.
It wasn't until the gazette called us "out of this world" that things began to change, people began to notice. I bought ten copies of the paper the day it came out. I framed one for my office, one for home, and one for my mom, though I never saw it displayed in her house. The rest have made their way into scrap book(s), plural, of which I still have one left. My second wife threw most of them in a trash can, and lit them on fire. She left one of them, the one I'd worked hardest on, devoted entirely to the museum. With it a note that said, "Love goes to buildings on fire." It took me years to realize that was the title of a really shitty Talking Heads song. It's probably a great song, I just can't stand it for obvious reasons. I never married again after that. I didn't want the heartache.
The museum opened with just eight exhibits, devoted to UFO lore's most and least well known incidents. I used minimalism where I could, but I spared no expense for a few of them. The exhibit for the Aurora, Texas crash of 1897 is designed to be as poignant as possible. A scene from a graveyard of an odd tombstone with a crudely cut out oval on the front, and inside the oval three "windows" designed to honor the three crash victims. This all overlooks the area it crashed: a farmer’s field, a windmill in pieces, and as much fake wreckage as I could create at the base.
The exhibit for the Cape Girardeau crash in Missouri contains a mostly intact fake spaceship, with minor wreckage scattered throughout a fake forest floor. In the center of the display is a kneeling man, Reverend William Huffman, with a bible in hand and a clerical collar around his neck. He is surrounded by emergency and military staff in a way that is designed to make the viewer feel like they are looking at a modern update of DaVinci's Last Supper. Reverend Huffman is praying over alien bodies under white bed sheets, administering last rights. I worked tirelessly to frame this scene with proper lighting, and trickery to evoke a kind of intergalactic sadness for the alien beings that you've never known, but still feel sorrow over their loss. I spent a large sum of money on this exhibit, including an audio component explaining the scene before the viewer, and in the background, Reverend Huffman can be heard praying these alien souls home. I was unable to afford dummies to place under the sheets. I had to strategically place refuse underneath to get their likeness correct. Sometimes they appear too boxy by an indoor wind or some kid trying to see what’s under the sheet and I have to rearrange the refuse to look the part I need them to play. This is my personal favorite exhibit. When I drink, and often these days, I salute the good Reverend and the deathbed confession that brought us this wonderful museum exhibit. He's a true martyr, and should be canonized as a saint.
The best and last exhibit we had at the time, better than the Rendlesham Forest mock up, better than the Kecksburg crash simulation, even better than the Betty and Barney Hill abduction recreation (which I'm still told to this day that it gives people Robert Stack-like nightmares), is the Roswell Crash display. This is our most extensive exhibit at fifty feet long and twenty feet wide. I tried my best to create a western cinematic for a new audience, kind of like a Sergio Leone intergalactic mash up of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly with a flying saucer and dead alien bodies in the foreground. I scoured through many books to depict the scene as accurately as possible, including a visit to the ranch Mac Brazel worked at when the crash occurred in 1947. I was rushed off the property the moment I stepped foot on it. They called me an UFOnut (sic) and pronounced it like yufonut. I went so far, maybe too far, and imported actual Roswell sand. Under the cover of darkness I filled up five gallon buckets of sand from just outside the ranch. I filled five gallon bucket after five gallon bucket, I was stung by scorpions, rattled at by snakes, and nearly froze my ass off for two weeks to get this sand. Next, I created as much fake alien wreckage as I could using basic tin foil, doing my best not to fold it. The wreckage material, according to reports, was able to unfold itself after being crumpled and return to its original, unwrinkled state. The centerpiece, among this picturesque scene of the American West, among metallic debris scattered on a desert floor, is what has become known to the regular visitors of this fine establishment and local townsfolk as the suffering alien. It's startling to look at for the first time, an alien lying prone on its stomach, nude, it's overly large head angled, looking up, the slightest glint of sadness detectable in its eyes. Its hand reaching toward the sky, the place it came from, in a universal symbol for help. The cost of this alien alone made it impossible to place other deceased aliens in the background, so I had to use the same sheet trick that I used on the Cape Girardeau exhibit. Visitors would call into question the logic of using sheets, inquiring how they were covered up. All I'd tell them is that they were missing the point.
We opened to slow traffic in our first week. The first day saw only two people, and gained slowly from there. Peak attendance for the week was on Saturday. We had a total of twenty or so that day, which looking back on it now is amazing considering the gift shop was months away due to lack of funds, and there was no reason for people to stick around after they had reached the end of all 200 feet worth of exhibits. The building had a hollow, empty feeling to it in the early days. I felt it symbolized Man's struggle to find his place in the Universe, and to solve that question about our loneliness in relation to the Universe.
At the end of the last tour that Saturday there was a young girl, Bryeanna, who stood at the Roswell exhibit, staring at our featured alien. She stood for five minutes... then ten. "Young lady," I said in a stern but friendly voice. I think I was going for a dad vibe, and I kind of wanted to ask her how it was working. "We're closing." I fixed my eyebrows to look stern without realizing they were too bushy and made me look Muppet like. Thankfully she didn't look, she just kept her eyes on the suffering visage before her.
Her parents came back inside after the fifteen minute mark. In that moment I could only think about how terrible a place this would be to bring your family. "Bryeanna, let's go. Your brother is very hungry. He's a child possessed." A male voice said, a voice I assumed to be her fathers. She would later tell me how her brother is the golden boy, and how it was her idea to come to Dreamland.
I will never be able understand the behavior of youths as an adult. I may be compelled by the forces that control us all, things like money, sex, love (maybe, but there's a reason sex comes first), fulfillment, achievement, failure, but what compels a child? Hunger? Hormones? Things beyond their control, above any sense of order? Chaos? What compels a child to fall to her knees and weep openly in the presence of strangers?
Small droplets of salt water began dripping on the floor through coupled hands over her eyes. Her cries sounded like that of a blue whale's, completely alien, something I'd never heard before and probably never would again. Her family stood in fear, consoling her brother, Midas (sic), while a reporter I hadn't noticed before looked on in a state of servile horror. I went to her, and put an arm around her shoulder, because I think that's what you're supposed to do. Every time I did, she would convulse, in a way that reminded me of the unstable properties of Jell-O. Her body then fell to the floor and splayed itself out like a starfish.
"This is the most hauntingly beautiful thing I've ever seen." She said, finally after what felt like five eternal minutes in hell. Her parents shuttered and hold their golden boy even tighter.
I turned to the family and gazed upon them with a look of bewilderment. Sure, I didn't understand anything about parenting, but I'm pretty sure on all the family sitcoms I'd ever seen this was not the way to handle a situation like this. "Folks, maybe help her?" I suggest.
"Oh, of course!" The father says, as if remembering that she was his daughter. He tries helping her up, but she won't budge, like a trick quarter glued to the floor of a Spencer's gifts. I give him a hand, and at last she is on her feet. Her mother continues to clutch her son tightly. It's as if he is a precious doll, and the mother a child. I could see the reporter in my peripheral vision, frantically writing.
"This is... a religious experience, like Christ..." Her eyes had nearly gone blank at this point.
The parents never apologize. They owe me that by their inaction alone.
It took a lot of talking, a lot of schmoozing and use of terms like "good for small business" and "bad for small business," but I managed to convince the reporter to write up something positive, a good review. We became "out of this world." I still like to think we are.
About a week later, the girl comes back, and a feeling of anxiety and terror comes over me. Behind her is a group of girls all within the same age range. Friends. Normally I would consider telling a friend to be a good thing. Bringing a friend, even better. I was in hell now. The group of girls skipps over every exhibit except for the Roswell one. They all stand there before it, taking it in like they are trying to unpack a painting at an art gallery. They stand there, but really they look as if they are drowning in some great ocean or drifting in space, miles from where their bodies stand like plants. The silence of their bodies added to the unease of this moment, and the ensuing sound that would come made for pure terror. They sounded like Sirens. Sirens of the Ship. If the doors to the museum had been open, you would have been able to hear it for over a mile easily. Sound has an ability to travel long distances in dry, flat climates.
I ran to lock the doors and ran over to the girls as quick as possible to calm them and get to the bottom of this. "Ladies! Ladies!" I yelled. I was feeling frustrated. I'm trying to run an establishment, and I felt like it was being taken from me by raging hormones and the rebel youth. "What is going on here?" I had a Principal Belding tone in my voice and it made me feel old.
"It's just so, sad, and heartbreaking, and beautiful." One girl said. "It's so spiritual." Said another. "Minus the cheesy sheets in the back, it's just so affecting, Mr." Said a brutally honest, but compassionate young woman. She had hair that didn't seem normal for a human being to possess. It was abnormally large, but not frizzy. Not even of an afro variety, it just looked excessive, and made her face seem like a lost temple among a dense copse of trees.
"Listen, this isn't good for me. Dreamland is off to such a shaky start, and teenage girls fainting and acting hysterical in my museum is not going to help with sales. What do I have to do to prevent this from happening again?"
In almost unanimous psychic agreement, they looked at me with a mix of bewilderment and awe. They had the power in this situation and they knew it well. They merely looked at each other for a brief moment, looked back at me, and the original girl, Bryeanna, with the careless parents that started all of this and said, "we want to worship. This is our place."
We eventually set the terms: this group would be able to visit, one day, after hours, to worship the "suffering alien." They called themselves "The Order of the Suffering Alien." I'm not sure if they were just trying to earn a tax exempt status (which they did eventually get) or if it was an actual spiritual thing. In exchange for this, they would keep it hushed up. It was practically a vow they all had to take, like the Fight Club rule that has been overused in unfunny ways for years. Eventually, Bryeanna would work in our book store/convenient store that was attached to the side of the building. Among aisles of Twizzlers, Lays potato chips and the kinds of foods you find in food deserts, were books about UFOs, aliens, and the like. We had t-shirts, coffee mugs, famous photos of unexplained phenomenon that people could spend a fortune on. We even framed them. We had such a large selection that we eventually set up a very successful online business and shipped books everywhere. We were the UFO equivalent to Amazon's original premise. We had to shut down a couple of years ago after years of declining sales. I felt like a gangrenous creature that day, forced to remove its favorite limb.
"Hey boss, you ready to get out of here?" Says Top Five Eddie, my only other employee at the moment. He's been with me almost from the beginning, like Bryeanna. He's what I call "The Details." The kind of guy that pays attention to the things that matter. He helped procure what I still believe to be actual wreckage from an alien spacecraft. He claims that it's from the Roswell crash. I trust him, but I still just call it "alien wreckage." I only bring it out for special visitors to the museum. The corporate crowd, ones that make "donations" and celebrities. I once showed it to President Clinton. He loved it.
Every night when we close up shop, Top Five and I head to the only bar in town called Not Alone. The sign out front has a Killroy design, but with a grey alien head that lacks a nose. Two three-fingered alien hands help support a large bulbous head with almond shaped eyes. This is definitely a bar for the otherworldly weary. Inside, there are all sorts of alien and UFO tchotchkes, but the centerpiece is a crashed saucer in the middle of the bar. Tourists and drunkards alike line up to take pictures with it. The old, rustic wood of the floor and bar make it feel like someplace out of time.
"You want the usual, Shep?" The bartender, Sam, asks me. He has long hair and a long beard, two things you definitely don't want in a desert climate. His harsh climate appearance is cut by a dry, old world friendly face. The kind that harbors a huggable smile and a gentle voice.
"Yeah, thanks Sam." I say. He says nothing to Eddie, because Eddie is predictable and strange. When he talks about things he likes, he groups them into top five list. I've called him Top 5 Eddie for years. It's what most people call him around town, too.
Sam places a cold name brand beer, the cheapest, in front of me, and places an absinthe creation in front of Top Five. At the end of the bar sits a man, hunched forward, slightly with a mullet hairstyle, sipping on a drink called "The Skeptic," which is basically a half full glass of water with five lemon wedges on top of the glass. I can never tell if he has a stern look on his face because of the drink he's drinking or the fact that he doesn't believe everything thats taking place around him. He complements the bar really well, though. Seated at the first table in full on conversation about the subject of non-ballistic motion, is Dr. Chris Cogswell and Scott, two regulars. Well... regular is not quite the right word. Sam calls us all his "odd balls." Scott, with a grey and black beard, and baseball cap, is drinking something called "The Astonishing," which is a smooth whiskey blend with black ice cubes. Through some kind of weird ass science, it turns the drink completely black. Chris drinks something called "The Mad Scientist," an odd concoction made with Hi-C's Ecto Cooler and served in one of those plastic pumpkin buckets that kids use for trick-or-treating. At the next table over is Marie, who is challenging the existence of the person she's talking to, Forrest. Marie has her usual, a large wineglass full of vodka ingested through a straw. They call it the "Roundtable," and Forrest sips on a complicated drink called "The Rules." The recipe is so complicated and top secret, that if you ask what's in it, the bartender asks for your address, and in about three days you receive a cease and desist letter. In other words it's best to just leave it alone. One table over from them is T.J., who has a love for craft beer, and in the smoothest voice you've ever heard, will describe what makes each beer great in hypnotizing tones. He has a tendency to steal their wallets while the victim is paralyzed.
At the last table, tucked in a tiny corner, are a group of people I know all too well, and am actually startled to see in the bar. I guess you'd call them the Men in Black, though that's not totally accurate, since there is a woman in the group, too. I've had regular encounters with these individuals since Eddie found us that "real wreckage." Their existence, and visits to the museum solidified that the wreckage was real. They fit the typical MIB descriptions: black suits, black trench coats, black fedoras, old ass black car, the works. They have pasty pale skin, abnormally large blue eyes, but the best and most hilarious feature about them is their sing-songy voices. They talk in the style of hit songs from random decades. When I first started to encounter them, they would speak in the style of Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus." The first was on a mid 90's morning, maybe 1995. The museum was empty and slightly larger than when we first opened. The MIBs just walk in, and the two men started riffing on the song way out of tune, like a swordfish playing a trombone, "You better... stop... this UFO business." The woman then dropped some of the actual lyrics with a reasonably pleasant, and only slightly out of tune voice. It was like I was involved in the strangest game of "good cop, bad cop" ever played, "feeling unknown, and you're all alone, flesh and bone, by the telephone, lift up the receiver, I'll make you a believer..." After they had finished, they turned around in lock step, walked and walked in unison out of the building, though the taller man tripped on the way out. They came back many more times, sing-talking new songs making the same threats. Though they never spoke normally, I kind of got the vibe that they resented the job. Sure, they looked menacing. Very menacing. And it felt like they could invade your mind through telepathy, but some part of them felt human, despite alien appearances. My favorite song-style-speak was in the style of R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet." They approached me on a morning like the first, and sang-spoke in the style of the song where the guy is about to open the closet door. One guy started, "You're going to stop this UFO stuff!" Then the second, "I think he's going to stop this UFO stuff!" The woman had the strangest lyric, "Or we'll abduct your museum!" Then, like they always did, walked out in lock-step.
"How ya doing, Shep? You still floating?" Sam asks.
"I'm as above water as the alien on the sign at this point. We're close to bankrupt, but I'm hopeful that the new exhibit will draw people in." The hardest financial struggle we've had came in the last year. Decreased attendance mostly, but I've also had to raise prices. Top Five Eddie pitched me this idea to open a new exhibit, featuring songs about UFOs, get the artist's interpretation of their works. We have large wall displays of the album cover that the songs come from, and on the other, the text about the song and such. Five songs: "Talkin' Alien Abduction Blues" by Dan Bern, "U.F.O." by Jim Sullivan, "I've Seen the Saucers" by Elton John, "Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois" by Sufjan Stevens, and of course the best of them all, "It Came Out of the Sky" by Creedence Clearwater Revival. In hopes of crossover success, I've booked two artists to play songs for the unveiling, Dan Bern, and the main attraction, John Fogerty. It took a third mortgage I'm already three months behind on to afford this. Hope is a dangerous thing after all.
"Here's to staying in business for many more years to come," Sam says loud enough for all to hear. The entire bar raises their glasses and bottles, and calls out a "here, here" in perfect chorus. Well, almost. Even the MIBs join in. Dr. Cogswell and Scott even raise their eye glasses for that extra bit of luck, and for a good laugh. I add to the spirit, "And here's to Reverend Huffman and to his deathbed confession!" And I'm met with a chorus of "here, heres."
***
The nights leading up to the unveiling of the new exhibit felt unending. It felt like there was a pal hanging over everything, an uneasy feeling that just hung like a bird in the air and moved slowly with the breeze. We walked tight tension wires to get everything set. For about a month, there was a giant sheet of canvas covering all 50 feet worth of exhibit space. We constructed a small, makeshift stage beside the exhibits for Dan Bern and John Fogerty to play on.
I closed the museum the day before the unveiling in order to pick up Dan and John from the airport. I was accommodative. There was water in the back seat. They both insisted on riding in front. (John Fogerty is lightning quick when it comes to calling shotgun, by the way) I don't think Dan minded riding in back.
In the rush that comes with an event like picking up family, or in this case two celebrity musicians from an airport, or driving someone here or there, I'm reminded of why I love where I live. Right now I'm reminded of the dry desert air. I'm reminded of the folks that ventured out west to find something new, and lost sight of what was around them, because of some shiny objects hidden in the ground. I don't think Hope was anything like that, but I definitely am. My shiny objects are generally in the sky, but sometimes you can find parts of them on the ground. Sometimes we judge our lives by the wreckage on the ground upon desolate wastelands that people never forgot. And sometimes we just forget to look up. There's that line in the movie Free Willy where the character Randolph talks about how orca whales were among the first creatures to look up at the stars. Creatures lacking the ability to look up at them normally, but through a maneuvering of the body, being able to see them one eye at a time. I often wonder what it was like for those creatures that saw the first stars appear in the sky. What they thought they were; if they were dangerous. The multitudes.
In the car with these two musicians, I think about all of this and the uncertainty of roads that need paving, and long overdue tire changes. I think about everything I shouldn't be thinking and when I'm just out of orbit, that dry air brings me back.
We stop at a nearby McDonalds, walk inside and eat. This seems like such an archaic event considering the breakthrough of drive through windows. It was Dan's choice, and John didn't seem to mind. Could it just be that they regretted being here? Maybe, but I didn't care either. I was sitting in a McDonalds with Dan Bern and John Fogerty, eating a DQP with cheese. Dan and John were both wearing the kind of outfit that makes you realize they're not from around here, flannel and jeans. Both suspiciously order the same meal, two cheese burgers with Mac sauce, a large fry, and a large Hi-C. Details can be so disturbing sometimes.
Driving into town I'm regaled with stories of CCR's early days, Dan's early days, hit songs, lost catalogs, shady back door deals, and the freedom of song. It's the kind of conversation that people dream of having, but I can only think about the major details of life and how they will play out. When we pull into the museum parking lot I'm instantly met with the shame of seeing the boards over the windows of the convenience store. We've been struggling so long I've forgotten about our windowless feature.
John Fogerty's equipment is heavier than Dan's. Dan doesn't have much, and I think he's made a great career with not carrying much. John's equipment feels like actual baggage: it's burdening, heavy, but when the pieces are put together properly, transcendent. I take them for a tour, including the parts of the museum I'm most embarrassed by. Since we first opened, we've gone through a number of exhibits. I've added some, taken some down. I was met with controversy over the Allagash abduction exhibit because of the naked men being led into examination rooms by Greys. The way the men were positioned gave it a kind of Red Hot Chili Peppers vibe. When I unveiled it, a number of women, and even one man fainted. I took it down the same day. I envisioned an alien themed playground for kids that never materialized. A lot of things I had planned never materialized.
The original eight exhibits are still here, and have been upgraded over the years. The sheets of the Roswell exhibit are gone, and there are actual aliens underneath the sheets in the Cape Girardeau exhibit. I've spent way more money than I probably should have to build a replica space craft. Top Five Eddie helped greatly with that. I don't know how that kid is connected, but he is, and he came through with this schematic for some kind of alien spacecraft. He wouldn't tell me where it came from, (for the safety of those involved) but it was a big hit at first. From the outside it has a saucer shape to it. The grey color gave it a kind of a shivering look, like it would be cold to the touch. Right by the entrance is some weird form of writing, indecipherable. I tried to use this as a tool to research what craft this was, but unsuccessfully. On the inside, there is a large panel back lit with buttons you can press, but do mostly nothing. There is one button you can press that activates a video about the history of UFO technology starring the aforementioned bar patron Dr. Chris Cogswell. It's about a five minute video, and given that the spacecraft only holds five people at a time, led to long lines for the first few years after we opened.
From there is our Hall of Aliens, which contains life size, rubber constructed, alien representations of Greys, Reptilians, Nordics, Hybrids. There is a representation of Valiant Thor, the Venusian who supposedly worked with the U.S. Government in the late 50's. There's a representation of Indrid Cold, with a sinister smile that still scares kids today, and his buddy Karl Ardo. There's a giant Mothman statue with red eyes, giant wingspan, and a depiction of the Flatwoods Monster with its half metallic body. We used to have a smoke machine that made it seem like there was a fire underneath, but we haven't the funds to fix it. The most poignant feature of the Hall of Aliens, I'm big on poignant things, is a human. I wracked my brain for days, struggling over what inscription to include. Finally I settled on a phrase from the great philosophers of R.E.M., "if you believe, they put a man on the moon..."
The last exhibit is the Conspiracy Corner, accessed from the other end of the Hall of Aliens. It contains an expensive bulletin board style display of different conspiracy theories connected with thumb tacks and string, and the whistle blowers that came forward with the information, and their dates of death. Phil Schneider is the star of this board, along with Dr. John Mack, and Dr. Karla Turner.
I take John and Dan into the gift shop, which still has a little merchandise left over, and a lot of books that nobody wants.
"You can have anything you want." I say to them. They both look around for what feels like a long time. John Fogerty walks out with a t-shirt, and a couple of books, Fire in the Sky by Travis Walton and Beyond Top Secret by Timothy Good. He notes that it is to find reasonably priced used copies of these books. Dan takes a copy of The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel, and The Silver Bridge by Gray Barker. He also takes a toy set of action figures featuring various cryptid creatures, like the Loch Ness monster, Jersey Devil, and Bigfoot.
They both get their equipment set up and ready to go for tomorrow's big festivities. A couple of cars drive in and out of the parking lot, bound where they roam. I drive them to their hotels with the promise that I pick them up in the morning.
***
I woke up the next morning with joint pain in my knees. I still felt tired, but I didn't care, because this was going to be the day that everything changed. I spent a lot of that loan money on an advertising budget, the first time I'd ever really spent money to get bodies in the museum. Everybody in the surrounding area knows what's going down at the museum today.
I make a couple of calls to Dan and John to make sure they're up and ready to go. I call Top Five Eddie to make sure he's ready to go, and I call Bryeanna to see if she wants in on this. She does.
In the car, I realize that I haven't eaten, but that doesn't matter to me right now. I make it to Dan and John's hotel, some two star dump, and we're on the road again. A quick stop to the drive through at McDonalds where they both put in the same breakfast order. I'm slightly disturbed, but don't have time to really care.
Pulling into the museum parking lot, I'm thinking about hope and prayers and if they come true. I rush to the doors while both of them continue eating in the car. When I walk in, my eyes don't register what is really before me. I stare into a blank, empty space for a while. I think I sit down, but I'm not quite sure. Wait, yes, I do. I sit down. Everything is gone. The exhibits, the spaceship, the hall, even the stage and the instruments. I know what all of this means. They repo'd it. They repo'd my museum. Those R. Kelly talk mother fucker's abducted my museum! They abducted my museum! THEY ABDUCTED MY MUSEUM!
I run outside. "THEY ABDUCTED MY MUSEUM! THEY ABDUCTED MY MUSEUM!" I scream. "They abducted my fucking museum!"
John and Dan rush out of the car, looking at me like I was a dying animal approaching its last breath of air quickly. "What do you mean they abducted your museum?" John asks.
"It's gone. It's all gone." I say
"What do you mean it's all gone?" Dan asks. He looks pissed. I don't blame him.
"It's been taken. It's gone. It's been abducted. IT'S ALL BEEN ABDUCTED!"
John Forgerty slaps me in the face. I'm seemingly back in the real world, but my museum has still been abducted. Who abducts a museum?
Eddie and Bryeanna pull in and see me sitting in the middle of the parking lot. "What happened? Eddie asks.
"They abducted the museum." I keep saying this even though it’s wrong. But they have. They have taken it.
"What about the instruments. I need those!" John says.
All I can think in that moment is I want to be in a place where I belong. It's selfish, because John and Dan have basically lost a part of their lively hood. All I can offer them is a trip.
"Come on, we'll figure this all out." I say. I'm lucid, but barely. Dan and John pile into my car. Top Five Eddie and Bryeanna pull out behind us and we drive to Roswell, to the one place that has its shit together, the International UFO Museum.
--
Bio: Rob Kristoffersen is a native of Northern New York and longtime resident of the Adirondack Park. He is an amateur UFO researcher, writer, and podcaster.
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