Kentucky Rain:

Part 1
I don't really know where to begin with all of this. In fact most of it is still one big muddle in my mind, well the last part any how. The place where all of this started is engraved into my mind and I suppose it will be for the rest of my life. But it all seems so weird to me still, they keep telling me I saved a life. What did I do? I'm not really sure, but I know one thing. I woke up in a hospital in friggin' Oregon. So it must all be real. But I'm getting off track here, I need to stay on the point of all of this and get it down before I leave and while I can still remember it all. So here goes... Like any good weird story, this one starts on a dark and stormy night, far from a city, on a lonely stretch of I-75.

It was around ten that night and I was in the process of heading to my home town for the annual family reunion. I have to be honest that I really cannot stand that stupid event, but I'm under standing orders to be there or die. So there I was, driving down the road in the rain, on a late fall night, wishing I would hurry up and get to my hotel room. I could have sped I suppose, but I have a little bit of a problem with people that bust the speed limit and so I try not to do it unless it's an REAL emergency. Besides all of that, my dad's words about driving on the interstate in the rain kept haunting me and so I did my best to try and live up to them.

It turned out to be a good thing I was going slowly, because if I hadn't been I might have missed it, though I doubt it. Any how the IT I am referring to was the wreck of a large semi truck. I could not tell what had happened to the thing, but what ever it had been it looked like it had been blown apart by something or some one and left there. The first thought that popped into my head was "terrorists!" Then it occurred to me that this was Kentucky and there was nothing here worth terrorizing, yippee.

So once my mind had worked out that it was most likely an accident, the good Samaritan side of me kicked in and I pulled my beat up little firebird off the side of the road and got out to take a look and see if there was any one in the thing that needed my help. The trailer on the thing was in about a million pieces and what ever had been in there was nothing more than a bunch of melted metal. That left me to take a look at the remains of the cab.

I walked over to it and peered into the shattered front window, looking to see if there was any one still in there. To my shock it was empty, 100, utterly and completely empty. I walked around to the underside of the thing and looked to see if he had crawled out or something, but once again I found zip. Now I was beginning to get freaked out. I was standing in the cold rain, and mud, looking for a trucker that apparently did not exist.

I was on the verge of getting back in the car and taking off when I heard, no heard isn't the right word, I felt something suffering near me. I stood there for a minute trying to see if it would happen again and it did, something was in pain some where, and it was close. I have always had what might be considered an instinct, about certain things. Sometimes I can tell when things happen, or I get a bad feeling, sometimes to the point of being physically ill, when something bad is about to happen. What I was experiencing that night in the rain, was something very similar to that. A feeling that someone some where needed me, and so I followed it, around to the top of the truck's cab and looked to see if that's where my missing trucker had gone. Nope, but I did find something. Though at the time I had no word to describe what I was seeing.

The thing lay there stuck under a jagged piece of metal, and just sat there. What it looked like was a plasma ball, and all I could think of as I hunkered down to get a better look at it was this. I HAD to get it out of there. And so I did, I got down in the mud, wiggled and squirmed, and stretched until I finally managed to get it in my hands, and get my self back up on my feet. So picture that in your mind, a 25 year old girl, standing in the rain, completely covered in mud, save for her baseball hat, holding what looked like a plasma ball. Pretty silly huh? But there I was all the same.

I looked down at the thing that I had succeeded in ruining my out fit for and again the feeling came over me that, despite the silliness I may feel, I had done the right thing. And there was something else when I had found the thing it had looked like it was on the verge of going out. But now that I had it in my hands, it seemed to be getting stronger by the second.

I probably could have stood there and looked at it all night, hell I probably would have, if at that moment I hadn't heard the sirens coming from some where down the road.

I looked up and could just barely make out the flashing red lights off in the distance. The mountains are like that at night, you can hear things before you can see them. I looked back and the wreck and then to the lights again, and decided that they could handle it. The truth was I didn't want to be around when they got there for fear that I may get blamed, so I took the thing I had found with me and I headed back to my car.

That was when I noticed the mud, the mud that I happened to be covered with. I sat the thing I had found at this point I still didn't know what to call it, down in the passenger seat and pulled an old blanket out of my trunk. I flopped it over the driver's side and finally pulled away from the scene.

Twenty minutes later I had made it into Stanton. It looked deserted, but of course it was a small town on a rainy night, in eastern Kentucky. Deserted was perfectly natural. I found Abner's motel and Pulled into the check in parking lot. The lady at the desk was nice enough not to point out the fact that I was covered in mud, and she gave me the room key. I drove around to my room and walked into it.

Five minutes later, my bags and the thing I had found were on the second bed in the room and I was looking the place over. Two beds, a microwave, a coffee pot, and a bathroom. More room than I really needed, but what the hell, it was mine and I had paid in full for the next six days.

That done, I tossed my muddy out fit into the floor and hit the bathroom in need of a shower, twenty minutes later I stepped out and felt much better. I had nothing but my towel on at the time, so any guy who could have seen me would have been getting a really good show. But to my knowledge there were no men around and so I picked up my muddy out fit and proceeded to souse it in a tub of cold water.

Five more minutes later I was in my jammies, and had planted my self on the first bed with my note books. I looked over at the thing I had found which was still just sitting there, and grinned.
"Well my friend, if you don't mind I'm gonna do some writing. So sit tight and do what ever it is you do."

I smiled over at it, and for a half a second I could have sworn that the thing flashed at me. I shook the feeling off and buried my self in my books. Now I tend to have the problem that all writers have, once I get my self started, I tend to loose track of time and can spend hours on end wrapped up in my work and completely for get what's going on around me. That was just what I did that night. My watch beeped at me and I looked at it, shocked to see that it was around two in the morning. Reluctantly I flopped my note book on the floor next too me and proceeded to try and get some sleep. Try being the operative word here.

I closed my eyes and put my head on the pillow, and expected everything to be peaceful. I was dead wrong. I had been dozing for about and hour when the sensation started. The horrible sense of pure energy, for that is the only way I can describe it, coursing through my body and trapping me in a neither world of hideous night mares.

Shots ripping my body apart, abject terror and pain as I was being pulled back. A horrible sense of loss as I felt my self forced away from all I had ever loved. And finally the ultimate blackness of oblivion as the craft I was piloting plowed into the alien world before me.

Sleep visions that tormented me all night but eventually subsided near dawn. I had pulled my self from the latest of my sleep horrors and was about to try once again to find some peace, when I heard someone knocking on my room door and realized that it was nearly nine am. I tugged my body out of the mangled nest of blankets and moved over to open the door for the person who was so determinedly pounding on the thing. I looked out the thing and found a close friend of mine standing there grinning at me. I had to smile at the girl. She was a determined little thing, despite the fact that her mother thought I was a bad influence on her, she still tried to be my friend. I never have figured out why her mom didn't like me, but I'm not gonna preach about that now. I looked at the girl in my door way and grinned.

"Hey kiddo, how goes?" I yawned, "What'cha doing down here? I thought your mom thinks I'm corrupting you innocent little mind."
She grinned, "I'm gonna ignore that for now." She came into the room and pointed at the TV. "Haven't you seen what's on the Tube this morning?"
"No, what's on there, more on the war?"

At this point in was in the process of heading over to my coffee pot while she was attacking my TV. I finally got it to the point of being fixed and turned to see what she had turned the tube too. That was when my mouth fell open and hung there for a second. On a very familiar stretch of I-75 was the largest collection of news people I had seen since the day the twin towers had come crashing down. All of them seemed to be in the process of clamoring around something that was surrounded by the oddest thing I have ever seen in my whole life.

Autobots... that's right folks... pack of them were running back and forth between something and the group of news people. In fact at that exact moment one of them had chosen to tell one reporter where to take it and stuff it.

"I dun told ya'll, we ain't tellin ya nothin' so jest go on and get lost!"

With that the red and gray one walked off and moved back over to the commotion that was going on. The reporter looked after him for a moment and then turned back to the camera.

"Ladies and Gentlemen though they seem to be unwilling to tell us, we can pass on this information too you. It seems a terrible tragedy has struck our alien visitors... the leader of the autobots... Optimus Prime... is dead."

The shot pulled back to a helicopter shot and we could see what looked like a white robot next to a very, very large body on the ground under a white sheet. All I could do was clap my hand over my mouth and stare at it in horror. I had always loved the stories of the giant robots from another planet, and had especially admired their leader.

My friend managed to get some kind of response out, "It just can't be... how he can be dead?"

I shook my head and tried to get some kind of answer out. That was when I heard it for the first time.

"No!! NO! I'M NOT! Please don't believe them!!"

I put my hand up to my head and had to sit for a moment. The sensation finally faded and I was able to get my bearings again. Then for some reason that I could not name I said, "There's no proof that he's dead. I mean what do a bunch of reporters know?"
She looked at me and nodded, but still looked at the picture on the squawk box, with utter dread and apprehension in her eyes. Finally I couldn't take it any more; there had been too much tragedy in this world lately. I didn't want to see or hear any more.

I snapped the thing off and turned back to my friend, "Kiddo, if it's true then there's nothing we can do, right? We're just a pair of human girls. But personally I don't believe that it is. He's too strong to let something like this kill him outright."

"Yeah..." She admitted, though the girl hardly looked convinced.

"Anyway," I continued, "Are you and your folks going to the festival?"

That one snapped her out of it. "Yeah, mom wants to go and this is the hotel you recommended."

"Humph! I'm shocked your mom took my advice. She thinks I'm such an evil person."

That one got her laughing again. "Hehe, Oh she dose not. She just thinks you're too wrapped up in stuff that has no real bearing on life."

"Like transformers." I gripped.

"Well, yeah..."

I snickered and looked at my friend, "Oh for heaven's sake, I'm just teasing."

I stood up and began tugging her over to the door intent on getting a bit more sleep before I faced the relatives from hell. She finally left and promised me she'd keep my opinion of her mom to her self, frankly I didn't care. I was an adult and it was my god given right as an American citizen to think who ever I wanted to was a putz.

I flopped back on to my bed and proceeded to try and doze back off, but the elusive state of mind seemed to be gone on that particular morning. So I got up and got ready to go face the family. My mom and Dad were at another hotel further up the Mountain parkway, and seemed a bit insulted that I had opted for my own room that year.

I hated to do that to them, but I have to be honest. It is IMPOSSIBLE to sleep in the same room as my parents. One keeps the TV on all night and one talked in their sleep, in Vietnamese. If they expected me to put up with the nearly two hundred nut jobs that were going to be at this place, the least they could do was to let me have some peace when I left.

But to get back to the point here, I couldn't sleep, so I got ready. This consisted of putting on a fresh out fit, of course, and mainly pulling this brown mass attached to my head into something that looked like a hair style.

While I was in the process of going about all of this I got the strangest sensation. The ole' "I'm being watched" thing. I had heard tell of some motels filming their patrons and so I took a quick look around for a camera, but found none. So I chalked it up to being tired, and freaked out by what I had seen on the news. I finished wringing out the outfit I had left to soak and then made one last inspection in the mirror.

That morning I had chosen, a black shirt, my gray baseball cap with the autobot symbol on it, and my favorite jeans, which happened to have a tear in the right knee. Yep I was all set to go and face them, and I could hear my mom howling over the jeans already. Though considering the fact she stopped buying my out fits years ago, it was really none of her business.

I gathered up my CD player and my note books and headed out the door. It was not until I was almost to my folk's motel that something occurred to me. The plasma ball thingy that I had found last night had disappeared. I shrugged it off and supposed that it must have rolled behind the bed.

I found them waiting as promised, and as predicted, my mom went bonkers over the ripped jeans. Again I could go into preaching about it, but I'm not going to. My dad found it amusing to no end and told her to get over it, shooed her into the car and motioned for me to follow him out. I did stopping momentarily to switch on the CD player that was connected to a small pair of speakers, the radio in my car having long ago gone to the great radio shack in the sky.

That morning I had a country music CD in and the haunting strains of "smoke rings" floated to me as I drove along. Once again, I heard it, this time it seemed much less panicked and simply commented on my choice in music.

"That's a nice song. Who is it?"

"Gary Allen." I answered. Then I nearly choked.

The CB in my car was not on, and there was no one else in there with me. I shook my head clear of the sensation again and got back to following the car in front of me. Slowly but surely we got off all of those god awful curves and made it to the town of Beattyville KY.

This town can only be described as your basic little small town, full of good ole' boys and good ole' girls, stingy old people, teenagers that wanted out, and God fearin' bible thumpin' rednecks. Right then, this wonderful hamlet was in the middle of the yearly party, one of those freaky festivals little towns have to pay homage to some odd thing or another. This one happened to be dedicated to wooly worms. Yeah I know, the only time of the year this place ever had any life in it was in late October and this was due to a party celebrating worms. For some strange reason every one up there wonders why I wanted to get away to school so badly.

We drove past this and headed out into the country surrounding the place. There would most definitely be an expedition to the festival that night, but we first had to go and show that we had made it to the family gathering, which is of course held during the festival, mainly due to the fact most people came back to see what went on at the party.

Personally the town and the party had little to offer me; I had never fit in there, or in my family for that matter. It had really bothered me as a kid, but as I got older and realized just who's opinion mattered and who's didn't, I had quit letting it bother me. Still there I was, being the good little girl for the sake of my mom and dad, the only people who had ever put out any effort in making me feel like I belonged a these things. I got out of the car, did the say hello to the relatives bit, hugged the grand parents, and then retrieved my writing to go and find some where that I could at least pass of as peaceful.

No such luck, out of all the family reunions I had gotten dragged to in my years on this planet, my sister had come to very few of them, yet this year she chose to appear, brats and husband number seven in tow. I wanted to vomit on my shoes when the women, my mother included began to gush over her newest kid. I never have been much for small children, but then the six years I spent as an unpaid sitter for psycho sibling most likely were responsible for that. And then there was my cousin, who had always been the little miss perfect of the family, blond, skinny, the favorite after my sister. Again I wanted to up chuck at the way they made over her. I had two degrees and was an award winning writer but never once had any one ever thrown that kind of fit over me. It was just as well, I've never been the type to get all emotional over things.

After all of that was over the reunion devolved into its normal two sections, the group of women talking about junk, and the group of men doing the same, only while getting plastered. It was the way it had always been, I didn't want to be around the women, because I couldn't listen to them talk about people and make judgments about them for no reason. I didn't want to be around the men, because as funny as they were, I am unable to drink alcohol and refuse to be around those who can. So once more there I was thrust back in to my role as a loner. I didn't mind and proceeded to plant my self under a tree and work.

Once more, I heard the voice in my head asking me questions this time.

"Why don't you go be with some of the others?"

I was irritated, I was disgusted, and I was bored as hell. So this time I answered it in my own mental voice, and chalked it all up to my writer's imagination.

Because, I don't like what they are doing, and I don't fit in!

"Don't fit in?"

Bingo. I don't wanna slap my sister, I don't wanna hear my aunt's mouth, I don't want my mom thinking I like that stuff, and I don't wanna have to kill that bitch.

"Ahh ... you don't want to be here?"

Oooo... got it in one!

"Hehe... well I suppose every one has moments that they want to be alone."

No kidding?

"All right, all right, I won't bother you any more."

Thank you.

At that point, back in Stanton a group had made it to my hotel room and was looking over my parking space. A young man, about my sisters age, 30's late 20's bent down to take a look at the muddy tracks there and then looked at my door. Some one came over to take a look at what he had found.

"Well?" the voice with a deep southern accent boomed, "Did ya find anythin'?"

"Yeah," The man answered, "This definitely matches those tracks we found." He turned to point at my door. "Who ever this car belongs to must be staying in this room."

"Then go in and take a look." This voice was a bit different, it still and an accent but was much lighter.

The man nodded and walked over to my room door. Of course it was locked, but then locked doors hadn't been a problem for this man in a very long time. He took a small device, placed it over the lock and in a few moments it clicked and the door slowly opened. He poked his head into the place and took all of the details in; the bed wasn't made, but looked almost mangled. My bags were neatly on the second bed, and my slightly less muddy out fit was dangling from a hanger in the alcove in the process of drip drying. He looked at round and did his best to be effective but disturb as little as possible.

He took a look in the bathroom but didn't find much that could be useful to them, so he concluded his search and headed back out the door. Once it was relocked behind him he turned to face those there and told them all he had found.

"So, according to the muddy outfit, she was the one who found it."

"Well, was it in there?" the voice with the heavy accent demanded.

"Not so as I could tell." He looked back in there, "I did the best I could with out making it look like I had been there. What we were looking for was no where to be found."

"Then there's only one of two things that could have happened." The voice with the lighter accent stated. "One, she took it with her, which is a possibility, we don't know this girl, she may be eccentric."

"And what's the other possibility?" the man wanted to know.

"She took it with her but she didn't know it."

"Come again?" The first voice got out, "How could she not know?"

"Very simple, if she had any PSI," Upon getting a 'What the hell' look from his partner he clarified this term. "Sorry, physic potential at all, then she would have been able to make contact with it. If she possessed a great deal of potential..." He stopped here and trailed off.

This got that speaker a look of amazement from the heavily accented one, and a gasp from the man. The latter of the two was the one that finally managed to get out, "You mean she absorbed it, into her body?! IS that even possible for a human being to do?"

"Oh yeah, it's very possible, but it would take a human with a high level of PSI potential and even it might kill them in the long run"

"If what Year telling' me is the truth, then we got to find this girl and fast!"

"Well I'm not certain it could just be that she took it with her." He paused and looked at the door of my room, "I need to see the young woman to be 100 positive."

There were a few more moments of conversation and the three of them finally decided to wait for me to get there and then find out which of the theories was the correct one. I however had no idea any of this was going on. At the time I was still chalking this deep voice in my head up to my over active imagination.