Aunt Victoria's Secret

So many times I was over at my Aunt Victoria’s house. Sometimes it was just for a couple hours and other times it was for a week or more. I always loved going there and I let her know that on more than one occasion.

Now, my aunt was a stickler for cleanliness. I mean she would totally freak if we got the carpet dirty or dropped some food on the kitchen floor. But, for all that she was the sweetest woman you could ever meet and her kids, my cousins, were a lot like me. We were normal kids with muddy faces, scraped knees and a couple broken bones but she still loved us. But, despite all the love she had for us there was one room up on the third floor that, if we ever went near it she would be more than happy to beat our asses with one of the willow boughs from the back yard.

I was almost twenty five when she died. I cried for days before the job of cleaning out her house began. The first two floors were easy and with did find some unexpected treasures like a statement for a certificate of deposit for nearly $100,000 as well as a room that housed a couple hundred dolls. Yeah, they were freaky but we knew that she loved them more than life itself so we took them and donated them to a museum in New York City so thousands of kids could see them in addition to the fact that the entire collection would be kept safe from harm.

The place turned into an empty shell by the time we made it to that forbidden room. It was locked by one of the biggest padlocks I had ever seen. Luckily Sara, my youngest cousin, had found the key in an ebony chest my aunt kept in her bedroom. Now, that was one thing we were allowed to touch but we were too afraid of it. Even now, over twenty years after she got it, we were scared to open. I think it’s because we nicknamed it “The Coffin”. Mainly that was because of how it looked but who knows it could have been a coffin in a previous life.

Sara took the key from her pocket and held it out in front of her. “You know my mom is looking down at us right now,” she said with a smile. She paused a minute and asked who was going to break the sacred seal. After a couple minutes of debate my other cousin Theresa said that she would take the chance.

Now, none of us knew what the curse was that Aunt Victoria placed on that room and on anyone who had the utter nerve to be so curious that they would break her one and only cardinal rule. Maybe she didn’t put a curse on that room. We weren’t sure…after all Aunt Victoria was a strange old bird so she was capable of pretty much anything.

The key was loose in the lock. We could hear the grit of decades of nonuse as the teeth slid across the tumblers. Actually, the lock opened rather easy for its age. There was a cloud of dust that fell from the door frame as the last tumbler fell into place. The cloud was so thick that it was nearly impossible to see the door or anything else in the area and we were gasping for our next breaths. It took all of five minutes for the dust to settle but even that was temporary. Every time we moved we left a cloud behind us and our footprints became buried as soon as we made them.

I reached over to the doorknob. I saw that it was tinted gold but most of that had been worn off. It was cold to the touch. I don’t mean just cool as it should have been in the 50 degree air but it was colder, a lot colder. As a matter of fact my hand stung from the cold when I touched the smooth metal surface but it turned with just a little effort and the door swung open.

We looked in and there was a resounding, “What’s in there? What can you see?” from all three of us. It was almost musical but there was no music. Our voices almost had the sound of the times were telling ghost stories.

There was no light so Sara felt inside along the walls around the door and finally found an old gas light. She took her lighter, lit it and she stepped into the room. She turned the handle on the lamp and the flame shot to the ceiling before it settled down to a flame about four inches high. The inside was lined with shelves. I counted 10 shelves on the two walls. On each shelf were a large number of containers. Some were made of silver, some gold and more than a few made out of beautiful ornamental glass.

We walked in. The light from the lamp reflected back and forth across the room leaving rainbows of light across the walls. It was almost beautiful.

Theresa walked around. Now, she was usually clueless but, for the first time, she used her eyes and brain before she used her mouth. “Sara, Rob get over here and look at this.” We walked over and there was a plaque on one of the silver containers. It read “Elizabeth Marie Stone – 1924 – 1969.” The one next to it read “Paula Lynne Hannover – 1995.”

“That’s my sister,” I yelled. “She died at birth. I remember how broken up mom was. I was 13 and I had to hold her up. She was hurt so bad.”

Theresa and Sara looked at every container on the shelves. Each and every one of them had a name, a date of birth and a death date. There were a few that lacked any information and the lids were sitting next to them. Sara walked over and reached inside the first one. She let out a yell that sounded like she found a snake or, more likely, a spider but instead of either she brought out a letter.

I took it from her and looked at the front of it. It read “From Victoria Ann Stone to my eldest daughter.” I didn’t open it I just handed to Theresa.

She took it and fumbled with it a moment. “What do I do with this,” she asked in her normal confused state.

“Open it,” Sara responded. Theresa opened the letter and she handed it right over to Sara.

“What does it say,” I asked

“To my eldest daughter,” Sara started. “If you are reading this I must have passed on. Please know that I love all my children and my nephew. I do have one thing I have to tell you. You are standing among the ashes of every female member of my family. It has been a tradition in our family since the early 18^th Century. It is my hope that you will take on the responsibilities of maintaining this tradition. Please use one of the empty containers for my ashes – With all my love to all – Victoria.”

The next day Sara and I had Aunt Victoria’s body cremated and we did as she wished. Her ashes were placed in the silver container where the note was found. Sara bought out Theresa’s share in the house and, as part of the tradition, Sara hid the room away although she did make regular visits to clean and dust the room. Unhappily Theresa was the next to go. She was cremated and placed in an container right beside her mother and that is how Sara kept Aunt Victoria’s secret for decades to come.

Inside Area 51

God only knows how long, how many years, David Bencze spent on the desert mountains surrounding the secret military base called Area 51. He got the usual photographs of a usually empty, outside of some unmarked white planes, runway and several buildings that rumors said held any number of things from top secret aircrafts to flying saucers being reversed engineered and, the best of them all, the corpses of extraterrestrials.

He has tried a few times to drive up to the gates of Area 51. He was shot at, stopped and searched, taken to a local police station where he was held for nearly a month before he was escorted out of the state but most of the time the Men In Black usually just watched him from some black trucks parked on hilltops along the road. If he went too far they drove down and surrounded his car. The “guards” were huge…almost as big as some of the professional wrestlers he had seen on TV and man, were they scary?

Since driving in was basically out of the question Bencze started looking at how the civilians who worked on the base got in there day after day. The best way, he figured, was to “meet” someone who works at the base and share a few drinks with them. That really wasn’t as hard as you might think. There is a bar just across the street from the Las Vegas airport. He never did tell me what the name of the bar was but it is Las Vegas after all so there are probably fifty or more to search on that road.

He stopped in the bar a couple times when he glanced at a young woman he had seen boarding a Janet plane. Janet is the name of the airplanes he watched flying in employees to and from Area 51 as well as some of the other southwestern bases that no one supposed to know about. Yes, there are more. If you look at a map of the southwest and the bases were blacked out you would actually see more black on the map than you would any other color.

Her name was Sandra Lloyd. He got there one day at about 6:00 PM. She was there. Bencze walked over and introduced himself. He was a klutz at it but that seemed to relax her and she welcomed his to her table. They shared a whole bunch of drinks starting with wine and they ended up drinking Jose and Coke. By the time they were done the bar was closing and she was a lot drunker than he was so he walked her home all the time talking about her and her life.

Once he got her home they sat on the porch and talked. The sky above Las Vegas was clear so the air was cool, a lot cooler than normal so he put his arms around her and held her close. It only took a few minutes before they started talking about their jobs. He told her that he was a photographer for a research company. It wasn’t the truth but it wasn’t exactly a lie either.

Then she opened up. She said that she was a research assistant at Area 51. She added that she was working on an engineering project that has something to do with plasma propulsion. Then he asked her the question he really wanted an answer to…how did she get to work every day? It was a long distance between Las Vegas and Area 51. She looked at him and smiled then she said, “Well, I don’t have to drive. A bus picks me up here in the morning and we go to the airport. We get on a white plane from an airline named Janet. It flies us to Area 51 and then flies us home. The nice thing is we don’t have to pay anything for the ride.” She suddenly got real quiet and she asked Bencze to leave because she was getting really tired. He did as she asked and left but not before writing down the info about the airline and he was able to “borrow” her security name tag.

That night Bencze spent the night on Photoshop turning her ID into one with his name and photo. By the time he was done there was no way to distinguish his from the real thing. That was all he could do and he knew that even with the ID he might get caught and, possibly killed by the men in black.

He arrived at the Janet terminal sometime about five in the morning. Sandra was already there and she was searching like mad for her ID. Bencze walked over, lifted her from her seat and gave her their first kiss. He guessed that she was in some kind of shock or maybe her mind was on her missing ID but while he had her in his embrace he quietly put her ID into her left hand pocket. She didn’t feel him put it there but as he walked away he yelled back to make sure that she checked her [ockets. She found it right where he put and she got the biggest smile Bencze had ever seen from a woman. He just smiled back and sat down across the room from her.

Then a thought he should have had the night before came into his head. She knew what he told her he did for a living and it had nothing to do with Area 51. How was he going to get on one of the planes and actually get into Area 51?

As soon as that thought crossed his mind the loudspeaker calling passengers for flight N623RA to board the plane. Sandra got up and walked onto the tarmac, climbed the steps to the plane and within minutes the plane was in the air and she was gone. Then the announcer came back on and announced that passengers for Janet flight N273RH would be boarding in less than 30 minutes. That would be the one that would let him to “where no man has gone before,” to quote Star Trek.

The plane pulled up to the gate exactly 30 minutes later. Bencze showed his fake ID at the gate and without a single question he walked through the gate and onto the plane. Now, he said it was just a short flight but once the wheels touched down and he showed his ID couple more time he was on the base.

The first things he noticed were several warehouses for lack of a better word. They had windows but thick curtains were closed blocking off them view in as well as eliminating the chance of any employees seeing anything that was going on outside. All were painted white and each had guards at the doors. Behind them were barracks and dorms. Bencze figured that they were there to house the military and those black ops people that worked on some of the more delicate, sensitive experiments that Area 51 was working on.

He was walking when an Air Force Major approached him and asked him where he was supposed to be. “Sir, this is my first day on the job and I am not sure where I supposed to be,” he said. “They told me to report to Building 4 but I am not sure where that is.” The Major pointed a building down the way so Bencze thanked him and went on his way.

The door of Building 4 was locked so Bencze knocked and, within seconds one of those geeks who grew up living in their mother’s basement with just a computer as friend opened the door and he told Bencze that the building was going on lock down in less than thirty seconds. “What’s going on,” Bencae asked as he watched the curtains being pulled down of every window in the building.

Then the loudspeaker announced that anyone caught looking out of any window would be shot on the spot as a spy. Before it stopped whoever was on the mic ordered everyone into the center of the massive.

Again he grabbed the geek and asked him again what was going on?

“I heard that they were going to test a special plane from downstairs,” he said. “I heard that it used magnetic plasma for its propulsion.”

“That sounds like sci-fi,” Bencze said with a laugh.

“Everything you ever read it science fiction or saw on shows like Stargate maybe be sci-fi there but here more and more of it are coming true,” the geek said. “They even have a…” A Sergeant walked over and asked what they were doing.

“Sir, I am new here,” Bencze said. “He is just helping me get oriented.”

The Sergeant checked both of their IDs and told them that they had to go down to Lever 26. He didn’t say anything else. He just walked the two men to the elevator and waited for the door to open. Bencze asked why they were going down there and the Sergeant looked at him and only had once response…because they want two of you bookworms down there to analyze some data. That’s all I am going to tell you and that is all you need to know. Then he got coldly silent when the door opened and the three of them stepped in. The Sergeant hit the button, the door closed and they started the half mile trip down to Level 26.

After ten minutes the elevator stopped. The Sergeant hit a button on console and a moment later he heard two keys slide into the door from the other side. The tumblers clicked and the door slid open and before Bencze stood two guards. Both were well over six feet tall and Bencze estimated that they were both well over 300 pounds and they were armored to the teeth.

“Come,” one of the guards said. Bencze wasn’t going to be the one to argue.

They were led down a long, rather unassuming, hallway and escorted to a huge stainless steel door. Once again the Sergeant pushed a button and the door opened from the other side. All that faced them was another long hallway but this time the walls were not boring at all. All along the way there were glass cylinders. They were not clear galls in fact they looked kind of smoky and inside you could just barely see the contents. Inside of each cylinder was a body. Some of them were humanoid while others looked strange, but one thing he noticed was the way they were dressed. There were some of the stranger characters dressed in what looked like silver jogging outfits while the humanoids were dressed in everything from togas to bikinis to a Soviet space outfit.

“What is this,” Bencze whispered softly to his companion.

“I have never been down here before,” the geek said. “I have heard though that they are preserving the bodies of many ufo crashes down here.”

“What about the humans,” Bencze asked as his curiosity peaked.

“Supposedly all of them were taken by aliens all the way back in history,” he said. “When they were recovered they were so far out of their own time that they could not be allowed to wander around. They just wouldn’t fit in…after all could you see a Roman soldier suddenly showing up in Chicago? To tell the truth…I think some of them were lost in the Bermuda Triangle.”

There were people walking up and down the hallway. A few were stopping at each of the cylinders, checking some dials and making some adjustments.

“Are they..,” Bencze asked before he was interrupted.

“Alive,” the geek said finishing Bencze’s question. “Of course they are. They keep them alive until they can reverse engineer something from the ships they have down here so they can take or send them back to their own time.” Bencze didn’t talk any more about it.

At the end of the hall were two more of the base’s elite guards. They scanned both men’s ID badges and then closely checked a set of gold colored bars at the side of the badges. Both Bencze and the geek had five little and, since they were passed through without any problems, they assumed that having five bars meant that they were approved for entry into the final room.

As the door opened Bencze saw table after table after table. He guessed that there were thirty or more and each one had a piece of machinery on it with a team of men in white standing next to them, working on them. Bencze had never seen anything like what he saw resting on the tables except in science fiction movies.

On one of the tables was a small space suit hooked up to a pressurized tank of something called OsAr³. He thought back to his high school days and remembered the Periodic Chart. That symbol meant two parts argon and one part osmium. Those were gases that were rare on earth. He knew that if they were pumping that into the space suit there had to be a good reason. Maybe, he didn’t want to think about it but maybe the space suit has some kind of alien inside of it. That would be so cool, he thought as he started walking over to the table.

The minute he stepped away the Sergeant was right on him screaming in his face about the classified research that was going on in that building. One of the guards came running over and Bencze was escorted back to the others except he had a fully loaded .45 pointed at his back as he walked. He didn’t say another word to anyone as they approached a small room and locked inside.

It only took about ten minutes for a white gowned doctor walked in and handed them two folders. “We want the two of you to compare the figures in both of these folders and record any similarities and make note of any differences beyond a ratio of 1.75 millimeters,” the doctor said as he slid the folders of to the pair. “We need this done by 1700. Now get to work.”

The geek got right to the assignment while Bencze paused and played around be pushing the folder across the table and back. The geek looked over at him and told him to get started because they only had a couple hours to get the job done.

“What is all this,” Bencze asked.

The geek looked at him and told him that it was a biological comparison/contrast between a human and something they found or captured somewhere.

“Like what,” he asked as he finally opened the folder and started looking at the information inside.

“It could be anything. I have been here for aliens, people found after being missing for decades or centuries…hell one time I had to run the blood and DNA of a bigfoot that someone down in Virginia shot and killed. We are responsible to make sure that what they bring us isn’t what they really bring us. Hell, that bigfoot I looked over the information and I told them what they wanted. The official report said that it was a new species of bear. The unofficial report said it was exactly what it was… a bigfoot from Virginia. Now, what do you think they told the media...at least the media that heard about the event.” Then he asked a question that Bencze didn’t want hear much less answer. The geek asked him if he knew what he was doing.

Bencze paused for a second trying to figure out some way to answer with a lie but not make it so blatant that the man before him would call for security. It was almost as if his mind shut down and he could not believe what came out when he answered with a simple “no”. Now, it was out there so he figured in for a penny in for a pound so he told the geek everything, his plan, how he got the ID…everything.

Now it was just a waiting game to see if he would get turned in or not. Luckily, the geek didn’t go for the door and he didn’t reach for the phone all he said, “Good job.” Then he simply smiled and started helping Bencze do what he was supposed to be doing but while he did that Bencze was copying down all the information on the sheets as well as every detail the geek was telling him.

“See this…,” the geek said, “…a human’s would be at least twice, maybe three times the size of this one. This obviously came from that alien they were working on. If you look at everything theyt send us you’ll see exactly what they are doing. I will bet you that despite what I find here they will call it a hobbit or something like that. They did it a few years ago and the public ate it. They even did a whole TV special about the “hobbits” that someone found in a cave. Hobbit my ass! It was an alien that they didn’t want you to know about.”

“Do you think we can get a sample of the alien’s tissue that I can have examined,” Bencze asked.

“They never take tissue,” he said. “They don’t like to do that because of a video that someone snuck out of here showing them cutting open, what they called a ‘dead’ alien. I was here for that. That alien was still breathing. I swear that to God…it was still alive. Anyway, that caused such a stink that they stopped cutting about ten years ago.”

He understood exactly what the geek was talking about. Bencze had seen the video a couple hundred times and he had always wondered if it was faked or not. That man confirmed that it was a real autopsy even though the creature wasn’t dead at the time.

They spent the next six hours talking and looking of the information they were given. Finally, a general walked in and asked them what they had found but before they had a chance to answer he handed them both documents to sign. They were declarations of confidentiality. Bencze remembered one line that struck him as extremely serious. It read, “If in the course of time you speak of your efforts at any or all of the detachments of Edwards Air Force you shall be arrested and charged with treason and, without trial, you will be executed at the discretion of the base commander.” Bencze did sign the paper but not with his own name, rather he used the name that was on his homemade ID badge.

Then he and the geek explained to the general that the being they were investigating was, although a humanoid, not from the planet Earth. They said that they believed that most of the organs were propositional to a human of that height. However, the blood mass, heart structure and brain were vastly different in respect to their usability and the stress repulsion factors. Bencze had no idea what he was saying but it seemed to work.

Then the general handed them two more papers to sign. The first said that the creature being examined was a human of approximately nine years old. The other gave a detailed explanation of a creature from another planet with a lack of ability to survive within Earth’s gravity and atmosphere. They were ordered to sign both and not ask questions. They did as they were told.

A whistle blew. It was so loud that it could have been heard all over the base. The geek started gathering his things while Bencze parroted his every move. As soon as they were done two guards showed up and escorted back to the Janet plane they flew in on. A few minutes later they were in Las Vegas and getting ready to drive home.

Bencze went home and called his favorite author…me. He told me the story and showed me the notes he had taken. After a month of talking he had given enough of an interview to make an interesting story. That story is what you have been reading and in front of a priest he swore to God that every word written here is the truth.

After that Bencze disappeared. It was not clear if he just went off or if the men in black found him and he is locked in a windowless solitary cell in one of those buildings at Area 51. All anyone can do is wait and see if he ever shows up or at least contacts someone to let them know of his where abouts.

Get Out of the House Now!

Every year there was one day we celebrated and yet it was the one day of the year that each and every one of us over the age of six truly dreaded and that was the day the entire family, including the relatives that lived in Kentucky, came to visit my grandmother. Unfortunately, that meant that the Bakers (those relatives from Kentucky) would bring their 12 year old son Horace.

Now, Horace was a great kid…he really was except he never learned anything having to do with manners and that meant that he reached across the table for something he wanted, pushed Grandma out of the way so he could get into the bathroom first and even told off his mom and dad whenever he felt like it but, as we would find out was all kids play compared to his 12th year.

He showed up as usual kicking people in the shins and telling them off and he kept that up until Grandma called everyone to dinner. Of course he was the first in line and boy did he ever fill up his plate especially with my grandmother’s heirloom baked beans. No one had a thought about it. Hell, they were just happy the brat left food for anyone else.

We sat at a big table in the dining room. I am not sure where she got it but Grandma must have known that she was going to have a big family since the table sat 20 people in comfort. Anyway, Horace was at the other end of the table from me and I watched as he cleaned his plate in less than five minutes and then he rushed up and got another plate loaded with baked beans.

It was about a half an hour later when I saw people starting to turn green and rushing to the bathroom. It was like they were doing the wave the way it worked. Eventually everyone, including me, did their duty in the bathroom…the only exception was Horace. He just sat there and kept eating. The thing was, even the dog got up and ran from the room.

Uncle Fred and my grandmother looked at each other and then decided to call 911 since whatever it was may be killing all of us. I couldn’t hear what was being said but Grandma said we all had to leave the house and wait across the street until the house was cleared of whatever it was. So, we stopped eating and went across the street. The only person who seemed to be having fun was Horace who was simply smiling his ass off.

The police and Gas Company showed up first. They evacuated the homes next to my grandmother’s and taped the area off. Then the fire department showed up and, once they kicked the front door in, they went in and searched the house. The smell was still there when they came back out. The head fireman said they could not find a leak or anything that would cause the smell and they recommended that we get a hotel and spend the night out of the house.

Horace wasn’t smiling anymore he was laughing so hard that you could see blood vessels popping one after the other of his forehead.

“What in the hell are you laughing at,” Uncle Fred said with a very stern look on his face.

Horace looked at him. He was still laughing when he told Uncle Fred, “Dad, you know how I can’t eat beans? Well, Grandma made them so good I just couldn’t resist.”

“And…” Uncle Fred asked.

“I cut one during dinner. It was a great one. You used to call it silent but deadly. It must have really worked.” Horace had such a look of pride in his fart that it was hard to get mad at him.

The police, firemen and the gas workers filled out their reports and drove away after telling us that everything was safe and we could go back to having fun.

We all went back into the house. The smell was gone and amazingly the food wasn’t spoiled so we all sat down and we finally laughed about what had happened. It was pretty much the same as before everything took place except for one this…Horace was at his own table in the backyard as far away from the house as possible. We loved him…we truly did but why take a chance if you know what I mean.