Pleistocene
Well, which is it gonna be, young feller? Time travel or alien abduction?
Author’s note: When I read this aloud, it’s always in the broadest and thickest Wakulla County twang I can emulate. Bear that in mind.
All I remember before waking up in that flying saucer is drinking beer with Earl at Mashes Sands late one night, sucking down PBRs and watching a silent thunderstorm way offshore. I kinda remember sitting on the ground and I guess I passed out, and next thing I know I'm in some place with a bad smell and weird greenish light and Earl's shaking me, yelling, "Get the fuck up! Get up now, Sammy!" and I'm feeling like I'm gonna be sick—and then I see the alien, the Antarean or whatever, and it's just lying there on the deck, all big eyes and twitching tentacles and yellow stuff oozing out of its head, and then I do throw up, and right then another one appears from a passageway. And dang if Earl gets the drop on it with some kinda ray gun I don't think he even knows how to shoot.
Just two of them in that little ship, pulling a Close Encounter /Whitley Streiber on us and getting a little sloppy cause their abductees were shitfaced, not counting on the way Earl always comes out of a drug coma fighting mad. Within a minute he's at the controls and I'm waving the gun at the two crew members backed into one corner of the control room—the injured one pressing a bandage to its head and the other one, the really angry one, rolling its big squid eyes at me while Earl is fiddling with knobs. A map screen shows us twenty miles out in the Gulf. Out the viewport I see K Tower flash past fifty feet away. It’s getting dark.
And then Earl yells Dammit! And the water explodes into a geyser just ahead. We're being shot at, but whether it's F-35s from Tyndall or the Antarean fleet coming after their hijacked saucer I got no idee. Earl's jerking us around through the sky, pulling levers and mashing buttons, and I hear alarms. The deck jumps under my feet and I'm gonna throw up again—when suddenly it's calm and quiet and there's broad daylight coming in through the viewport, and Earl is pulling his hand back from a big knob, looking at it real funny. The injured alien starts moaning and the really angry one collapses and starts banging its head on the floor.
The map screen still shows us twenty miles offshore, but we're over land, cruising smoothly. I start saying something to Earl about can we please God put this thing down when he says, "Jesus, Sammy. Look at that." I look and there are brown animals, large ones, moving through open forest below us.
Elephants.
Furry elephants. With long, curving tusks.
Ahead, just beyond the trees, bright sunlight is reflecting off open water.
And right before the saucer loses power and begins to descend, I see the silhouette of a strange limestone city, with banners flapping in the sea breeze.