Tim woke up tired. It was 10:30 before he forced himself out of bed. He'd lost most of his enthusiasm to begin this summer's adventure. It had been replaced by an irrational sense of anxiety, an unshakable dread that someone needed his help.
Believing it would just be a matter of time before he felt normal, Tim drove to the village of Anvil, to stock up on household supplies. He wandered through the grocery store, mechanically filling his cart.
As he loaded an essential case of beer, two nubile coeds, the type that annually spent the summer as local camp counselors, also stopped for some brew. Coeds were a main source of entertainment and a big reason Tim relished summers in these mountains. Women who loved Mother Nature were always eager for fun in the sun.
The freckled faced redhead smiled, and asked, "Where's the party?"
Both girls giggled.
Tim stared blankly at her blond friend for too long.
The young women walked away with two six packs and a case of the creeps. "What's your problem? What a freak."
His own lack of responsiveness worried Tim. That was exactly the type of close encounter he longed for, excelled at, and had the notches on his bedpost to prove it. Opportunity rarely had to knock twice for Tim's lascivious exploitation to kick in.
'What the hell's the matter with me?'
While he waited in the checkout line, a middle-aged couple walked in, obviously chatting in sign language. This unlocked a clue in Tim's memory, and he struggled to figure out why sign language suddenly felt so important.
His next stop was the village library, and about the only place in town he'd never been before. The library kept one book on American Sign Language. He grabbed it, and sat down at a table. The first chapter covered simple finger spelling. The second chapter explained common words. The book explained how signs could be verbs or nouns or whole phrases, depending how they were performed. The successive chapters depicted signs for common words in alphabetical order. However, Tim never made it past the letter 'C'. The sign for 'chair' looked so damn familiar. He knew he'd just seen it, but where? The lack of total recall was driving him crazy!
Another first for Tim that day was obtaining his own library card. Sign language became his new fascination.
Back at camp, the rest of the day was spent studying. By eight o'clock that night, Tim had mastered the alphabet and many of the signs for common household items. Any sense of accomplishment was dulled by the morning's restless fear that seemed to be increasing, rather than decreasing.
The temperature hovered around 90 degrees all day, and he looked forward to his nightly swim. But once in the lake and cooled off, he quickly lost interest in the pleasure of feeling his naked body slipping through the water's icy tendrils. Instead, he sat naked on the dock with a nagging anticipation that something would soon happen to ease his mind.
An hour and a half later, Tim went to bed.
At 2:00 am, flashes of lightening woke him. They came in such rapid succession the room lit up like a strobe. Oddly, there wasn't any thunder. From the back window of the bedroom, he could see stars shining in a clear sky. Wide-awake now, he marched to the front door and slammed it open.
A thick fog hung just off shore. The far end of the dock disappeared into the mist. The lightening flashes that emanated from inside the cloud stopped when Tim stepped onto the front porch. The night air felt abnormally charged. The hair on his arms stood on end. There wasn't a sound, not even the ubiquitous cricket.
The fog bank boiled with some internal wind, but the cloud mass itself did not recede or encroach. It remained fixed, yet frenzied. Drawn to it, Tim wandered to the dock and stepped onto the first plank. There was no fear, just a sense of fascination. He knew this was what he'd waited for.
A familiar shape emerged from the cloud and stood at the other end of the dock. Immediately, Tim's memory of last night returned. After the initial shock, he hesitantly approached the alien, expecting to be whisked away at any second.
Instead, the tall, gray figure let him come within a yard and then held up its hand to stop.
They looked one another up and down.
The alien held up its right hand and began to finger spell, E-V-E.
"Eve," said Tim. "I understand."
It spelled 'Eve' again, then held out its hands, palms up, and slowly curled the fingers.
"I know what that means! That means 'want'. Eve wants."
The alien pointed at Tim.
It didn't take a rockets scientist to figure that one out. "Eve wants me?"
It nodded, and then dragged both hands down in front of its bug-eyed face.
"Eve's sad?"
'Yes. Come,' signed the alien, then turned and disappeared into the fog.
"Yeah, right," scoffed Tim, "I'm not an idiot."
After a minute, he decided the aliens could take him anytime they wanted. This time, it was an invitation. If they were being polite about it, the least he could do was be sociable. So, he stepped into the cloud and immediately stepped inside the white room.
The alien was standing by the examining chair and beckoned him over. Then it gestured for Tim to sit and put the video helmet on.
"What's playing tonight? Gone With the Wind? The Fog?"
Once comfortably situated, the video began with a rerun from the night before. It showed the meeting between Eve and Tim from the beginning.
After Tim's adamant rejection of Eve's physical charms, he suddenly disappeared from the room. Eve became distraught. First she jumped up and held out her arms, begging for him to come back. Then she began to weep into her hands and pace around the room.
The alien entered, and they had a heated exchange of signs that Tim couldn't follow.
Eve kept signing, 'Yes'.
