REM

Green Field Drive

Driving home late that night, my wife sat in the passenger seat, while our son was strapped in his child seat in the back. It was the first time since he was born that we had gone out together, so we went to see the new Disney movie.

The country road leading home wasn't well lit, but as I drove over the crest of a hill, I was about to find a disturbing scene. As the road disappeared and the field below came into view, I was surprised to see a sea of red tail lights at the bottom.

"What the heck?"

"Just drive through like everyone else," my wife suggested.

Going down the hill, I felt like I had no brakes, as if there was some sort of magnetic pull being used on the car. Cars were parked on the side of the road, while some still snaked their way along the road between them. From what I could see, the only cars that were moving were ones closest to us. The ones in the distance seemed to be stopped, which meant our drive home was going to be rather delayed.

"It's going to take us forever," I stated, as I noticed red glowing disks on the road.

"It's fine," Jessica assured me. "We don't have to work tomorrow, so it just means James will get to sleep a while longer in the car."

I didn't like the idea of waiting in traffic so late at night, especially considering the situation in front of us. As we became more level with the cars at the bottom of the escarpment, I realized the glowing disks were scattered all over both lanes. There was no way I could avoid them completely by driving around them, so my only option was to go over.

A white ring of smoke, or cloud could be seen up ahead, but I paid little attention to it because I thought it was low laying fog. It wasn't unusual for fog in the area, especially late at night.

Applying the brakes again, the magnetic pull I thought I felt at the top of the hill was no longer present. Finally slowing down as we got closer to the other cars, I tried to weave around the red glowing disks so I didn't hit them directly with the wheels.

As we came to a stop behind a car, another one of the cloud rings came quickly into view. I didn't so much as flinch while it passed through the car and then disappeared.

I furled my brow as I felt a tingling sensation go throughout my body. Taking my hands off the steering wheel, I examined my hands.

"Jess, do you feel that?" I asked, eventually turning toward my wife as silence filled the car.

To my horror she was gone. I twisted around to look at James, but he was no longer in his car seat either. Fear consumed my whole body as I thought about the possibility of aliens, or maybe me falling asleep at the wheel and this incident being a dream I had while the car was actually flipped over in a ditch.

"Oh my God," I muttered, turning back around as I looked at my hands again. "This can't be real. It just can't be."

Finally looking up again at the other cars in front of me, I noticed headlights approaching in the rear view mirror. More people were coming up to the traffic jam, which could spell bad news for them if people were actually disappearing at random from vehicles.

Just as I thought about stepping out of the car, another ring passed through the car and me. It happened so quickly that I wish I had been paying more attention so I could have ducked down to avoid it.

I soon found myself standing in the middle of the field, facing the cars on the road. There were so many just sitting there that I wondered if any of them had occupants. Considering I had just been teleported out of my car from a seated position and into a field in a standing one, I had to figure out if I was dreaming or not.

Aliens were talked about from time to time all over the world, but I had never encountered anything like this before. As I thought about how to confirm my greatest fear of losing my wife and son, another ring approached me as I stood in the open field. I had no where to run, so I closed my eyes and accepted my next destination, reality or dream.