Close encounter of the spaceship kind

 

I was out in our back garden late at night with our dog. He was running here and there as he usually does. I noticed up above me, about 30 feet or so high, a UFO. It looked like a small plane, the size of a wheelie-bin used for trash. It was some 3 feet long and 18 inches wide. At first I thought it was a toy; but who would be flying a toy at this time of night? And it was not flying. It was standing there in mid-air about 30 feet up. It turned red, and then orange, and then green, and then red again. It took me a while to realise it was the reflection from the traffic lights outside.

Then a light shone on me from the spacecraft and I started to float slowly up in the air. I did not know what was happening to me. How could I possibly fit in a spacecraft so small?

I was suddenly in a room a hundred times the size of the spacecraft. It was well lit. There was a man there who looked like Charlton Heston as Moses in the film The Ten Commandments. He was actually dressed like Moses.

"Are you Moses?" I asked in trepidation.

He smiled as Heston did and replied, "No ... we can take any form that would be recognisable to the people we meet so as not to panic or frighten them."

How accommodating I thought; and I immediately started thinking of Marilyn Monroe, Gina Lollobrigida, Raquel Welch, Brigitte Bardot and any other desirable woman in the hope he'd turn into one of them; but he remained as Charlton Heston. Then, for some unknown reason, I thought of my mother-in-law and nearly had a heart attack.

"You're afraid of her," he said reading my mind.

"It's ... It's that she's everywhere," I stammered, "I sometimes get home from work and find her broomstick in the hall and wish I was still at work!"

"That's what we like about you earthlings," he said, "you have a sense of humour. Remember when you first started experimenting with space travel and you sent up a dog out there? We thought you must be really clever if even your dogs can fly a spaceship!"

I said nothing.

"Joke!" he said smiling again. "Apart from your humour, and one or two other good points, unfortunately overall you earth people are a bad lot. You are obstinate, you think you're always right, you do not forgive easily, you're violent, you settle your differences with wars and killings, you lie, you cheat, you steal, and you break everyone of The Ten Commandments by debating them and re-interpretating them to suit your selfish needs! Need I go on?"

"I ... I ... I'm sorry," I mumbled. I'd never seen Moses so angry even in the film he starred in.

"I didn't mean you personally," he said calming down, "but your whole human race. Although you're not a Saint yourself are you?"

"Is there no hope for us?" I asked hesitantly.

"I am not allowed to tell you," he replied.

And with that I landed with a bump in my back garden and discovered I was sitting on one of my dog's deposits.

Moses sure has a sense of humour!