He lifted his head and smelt the air. It was no mistake, something was defiantly burning. He ran to the kitchen, the usual source of such things, but it was perfectly fine. The microwave was silent, the toaster was empty and unplugged and although the oven could've done with a severe makeover or at least a scrub, it too was not the origin. As he quickly ducked in and out of each of the rooms, it slowly became apparent that nothing in his house was on fire, but the smell still grew stronger, occupying his sense completely and distracting him to disbelief. Stepping out the front door he noticed a small group of people on the street that had obviously been brought out by the smell of smoke and as he approached them he realized they were pointing to the sky. Still walking towards them, he looked over his shoulder briefly, but then needed a double take. Looming over his house and consuming at least a third of the sky was a spaceship pumping out smoke like nobody's business. Now outside, with the source confirmed, his other senses kicked in. A low hum was rolling across the suburb, occasionally changing in pitch as if it was playing out an unwritten bass line to a song with more meaning than lyrics would allow. He found it slightly odd that the spaceship, if its existence alone wasn't strange enough, that it didn't have any lights. Every story he had ever heard about UFO concerned flashing lights, or beams of light or a steady, glowing aura, but this had none of those. It wasn't even saucer shaped, something that he never could quite fathom the physics of anyway, not that he fathomed physics often. He supposed a teardrop or possibly a pear would be more accurate to it's curves, but the fact that it was so big made it hard to comprehend the half he couldn't see. The smoke's growing poignancy awoke him from his dazed awe of the floating machinery and "brought him back to Earth" in a matter of speaking. The group's chatter tugged at his ears and he turned to join them.
"Never thought I'd ever see one of those," he interjected.
"I saw one like it two years ago up north. My parents farm backs onto bushland so fires are always an issue during the summer," a lady replied,
"Yeah, radio says this ain't natural causes though," a man, presumably the lady's husband added.
"How could anything like that be natural?" he half scoffed, shocked at the others calmness.
"Well they say a plane downed in the park, a hundred and eighty or so people on board, huge flames and all that, such a shame," the man answered
"those poor families" the lady added.
"what about that huge thing! that's nothing from this world!" he starred at them seriously,
"I wouldn't have imagined that much smoke meself, but i guess it must've blown it's fuel tanks completely." the man answered again, looking worriedly at this new member to their little group, "Are you okay mate? don't worry too hard, the services are doing all they can, not much you can do."
"Are you serious? you don't see that, that spaceship?"
"Well I dunno about spaceship, I didn't see the plane fall or anything,"
"The spaceship floating there, there!" he frantically pointed to the sky, checking over his shoulder to make sure it was in fact still there.
"Look mate, there's nothing there, maybe you should go back inside and take a bit of a rest,"
"Are you crazy? there is a space, ship, right, there!" he tried to slow down his ranting, but panic was spreading through his body, sweat was beading on his forehead and his breathing had started to flow so quickly it was hurting his throat. Could they really not see the monstrosity hanging in the air above their heads?
"Are you okay dear? You've gone all red, you really should sit down" the lady said with a concerned face, lightly placing her hand on his shoulder.
"No I'm fine, I'm fine," he muttered, his pulse beating noisily inside his ears accompanied by that now terrifying humming sound. "It's you that should be looking at what's in front of you! Are you retarded or something? At your age you should still have enough vision to see that!" He pointed once again at the hovering spaceship.
"now that is quite enough mate" the man said in an aggressive tone "this may be distressful, but you have no right throwing around insults like that. you're seeing things, there is nothing there except a huge black cloud of smoke, go back inside,"
"I'm not seeing..." he couldn't talk anymore, his breathing was raspy and his eyes started to blur. The sound was deafening now, in seemingly perfect unison with the throbbing inside his head. He couldn't be sure if it was his face or palms that were sweating profusely as he clutched the sides of his head in distress. The world swayed, colours combining into a mess of sensations and representations and he fell. Looking up at spaceship with watery eyes from his resting place on the footpath he noticed that it did actually have tiny little lights running along the length of its belly, a pattern of some sort, a word perhaps. But it was never brought into focus as his eyes closed like weighted shutters and unconsciousness took him.