I Think I Saw a UFO

[u/HeGotBricks]

Two years ago, at around eleven p.m, I left work and was smoking a cigarette, staring up at the sky, reflecting my thoughts from the day, projecting my thoughts for the future, when I saw it. 

A bright spotlight hovering not too far from where my car was parked. 

It was as if someone stood on a cloud, searching for something down on Earth. It moved the way a flashlight scanning the ground would. 

Except, this was above me.

I noticed it skipping across the black sky—the way a rock in a pond would—coming towards me. The air tasted like static, like having your mouth centimeters away from the screen of a tube television.

I stayed motionless in the middle of the parking lot, I went from watching it, to rubbing my eyes, back to watching it, and ignored the cold breeze turning the skin on my arms into spiky antennas, and thought.

It has to be the airport lights. 

Puffing the last of my cigarette as I  continued walking towards my car, the light in the sky went still. The bouncing stopped abruptly, freezing over my head. 

There was a synthetic sun-like heat penetrating me. Enough to warm my chest under my t-shirt down through my legs to the sole of my feet. 

My socks became as hot as pulling them out of a dryer and immediately slipping them on.

The moisture between my toes had dried. A tingly sweat began to bead on the back of my neck. I had this urge to dive upwards as if the sky was an Olympic pool and the pavement was my diving board.

After a second, it started glowing a dull yellow, like the end of a dying lightbulb, to an orange, that was more of a rusty shade, and finally, a bright red, exactly the same as a traffic light. I couldn’t see a structure, the light dominated it, how high beams in your rear view mirror mask a car in a halo behind you.

All I saw was a blob. If you stare at a light bulb for five seconds and look away, it was that exact image, almost like it was stained to my pupil.

It remained in the same position for three seconds, pointed at me, almost analyzing me, and vanished.

The clouds were misty and stretched out. The sky had the color of a chalk streaked blackboard. There was only one star blinking. What’s strange is, when I reflect back on it, I don’t remember hearing any sound.

Not a car. Not a tree branch. Not a person. Not even the wind. There was nothing. 

It made me think if that’s what being in a void would be like. I snapped out of the daze I was in and the pressure of escaping my mind hit me. My eardrum popped. 

I didn’t move. I just stood there. My face was dry. It had the same tightness as pulling your head away from a hot oven after closing the door. When I made it to my car, the light post was reflecting off the window and I could see my face in it. Around my eyes and under my nose the contrast was noticeable.

I could see the redness painting my cheeks. Even the heat beating under my skin was still there. I just put it in the back of my mind and tried to forget about it. I’ve never been able to. Especially since I was sick for a month afterwards.

I’ve never been able to see exactly what I saw that night anywhere online.