What would you do if your peaceful stroll home from the gym turned into a particularly hasty jog to avoid alien abduction?
It was a bog-standard Monday night, and I was making my usual return home from the gym at around 8 o’clock in the evening. This ritual had become a habit to me, as I had discovered a newfound enjoyment for evening workouts and the mindfulness that came with them. I had got a bit of a sweat on, so the cool air in Sheffield was a rather pleasant sensation after my workout – little did I know, I wasn’t done running that night.
Now, I’m partial to gazing at the stars, in fact, I’ve always loved space ever since I was young, and the dimly lit street I was walking on allowed for an almost perfect view of the night sky above. It was a beautiful night, and the sky was clear, allowing me to observe the stars above free from street lamps and distracting traffic lights.
No moon. Odd, I thought.
Oh wait, no, there it is. Only it was hidden behind a thin cloud, which I also thought to be strange as there were no other clouds in the sky. Nonetheless, the moon’s familiar glow shone through brightly, although I couldn’t make out the circular outline of it.
No, wait, definitely not the moon. It looked as though the cloud, which was indeed not a cloud, was glowing and shifting in the sky, growing bigger with every step I took. I reached into my pocket and took out my phone to take a picture. I would show this to my housemates when I arrived back at home to see what they thought.
It wasn’t long before my phone distracted me from the sky above, and I quickly forgot about what I had seen, until 5 minutes later when I had nearly reached my house, and I looked up again. My mouth dropped open, eyes widened, and my heart started to thump. My feet refused to move and I shakily held my phone camera upwards again to capture what now met my gaze from above – a giant, glowing spiral moving ever so slightly in the sky, and right above my head.
Alien abduction. They were the only words bouncing around my head as I began to walk briskly up the path and closer to my front door which now shone like a beacon of safety to me. That was it! They’d seen me photographing their UFO and were coming to beam me up! Now, this may sound stupid to you, but until you’re faced with an impossible silhouette of a spaceship hovering above your head in the sky, I suggest you not assume what can and can’t be real. When aliens come knocking, you don’t hang about gawking in the street. The spiral was slowly moving across the sky, and I quickly decided that this wasn’t going to be the day I found out what lies outside the Milky Way.
I ran.
All of a sudden, my body went into fight or flight mode and I took off faster than you could say ‘alien abduction’. They were coming to get me, I was certain of it. I reached the door of my house after around 10 seconds of sprinting, and shakily let myself in, locking the door with urgency behind me. “I’ve just seen a fucking UFO. I’m not lying. Hannah where r u”, were the texts my housemate received. And she was just as shocked as I was.
When we searched it up on X, (because where else do you go for these sorts of things), there was nothing – for five minutes. After this, the whole app blew up with word of the mysterious spiral seen ALL OVER EUROPE. It was confirmed in my mind. The aliens had found us, and they were exploring our planet, deciding where to invade first. In hindsight, I must admit my mind ran away with this for a while, buzzing with the excitement and bewilderment of the possibility of little green men observing us far above in the sky.
Alas, an explanation followed suit in the morning: it was frozen rocket fuel ejected during a SpaceX launch.
I’ve got to say, this does make more sense than an alien invasion, but here at MindFckd the possibilities are endless, and I’m just not convinced rocket fuel would take the appearance of a perfect spiral gently patrolling the sky. But, then again, I’m not a physicist, and if the scientists are saying it, then it must be true. Unless they know something we don’t, or something even more sinister – something we weren’t meant to see.
