Comet West

The alarm jingled in his ear. Templeton rolled quickly and slapped the clock off the night stand and onto the floor. It continued to buzz on the carpet as Templeton fumbled in the darkness, hanging his body off the bed, reaching blindly at the noise. He strained towards it, touching the metal with his fingertips. He fell hard off the bed, his legs tangled in the sheets, as the clock wound down and quit ringing on its own.

He laid quietly for a moment. Sleep drifted over him. Templeton relaxed.

Another alarm began to rattle across the room. Templeton lurched awake, sitting up. He wrestled the sheets, struggling to get up, though his feet were bound together. He stood and promptly fell back to the floor with a massive thud.

He lay there, waiting. The alarm clock slowed then stopped. Templeton breathed a sigh of relief.

Templeton sat up and slowly extracted his feet from the sheets that held them. He flipped on the red light that hung over his bed and examined his watch.

5:00 am

Quickly, he put on some jeans and a pair of slippers, and pulled an ugly Christmas sweater over his head. He grabbed his flashlight, which had a piece of red cellophane taped over the bulb, and switched it on. Templeton slipped quietly out of his bedroom and padded through the house to the porch.

He nearly fell over Charlie, his cat, as he passed through the TV room. Charlie meowed loudly.

"No Charlie. I'll feed you later," Templeton hissed as he stepped over the cat. Charlie followed Templeton to the door to the sunroom and waited, watching, as Templeton stepped through closing the door behind him.

The telescope sat near a north facing window, gazing toward the dark sky. Templeton removed the lens caps and aimed the telescope toward the horizon, then 20 degrees higher. The comet, called Comet West, was supposed to be there. Templeton smiled, seeing that the sky was clear this morning. Yesterday he hadn't been so fortunate.

He opened his notebook and began to read his notes from the previous night. A brilliant flash caught his attention and he looked up. A bright star had appeared out of nowhere. Quickly, Templeton aimed the telescope at it.

It was brilliant and green, and pulsating in a manner unlike any star or satellite he'd ever seen. He scrunched his nose. Was it an airplane? Or a spinning object, like a pulsar? It moved downward abruptly then vanished. Templeton scanned the field of view of the telescope, then straightened up, searching the sky through the window.

Whatever it was, it was gone.