It was a Tuesday in late February.  I was walking home from work through bitter cold after work.  There was no ice or snow, yet I could see my breath, could not feel my nose and was forced into wearing leggings underneath my black work trousers.  I had managed to avoid wandering into any shops along my route as Christmas had, as always, done a number on my finances.  The temptation of Cadbury chocolate and Irn Bru was ever present and very strong, yet I somehow managed to make past the shops without caving in.  The regret that I still feel over that triumph is insurmountable.  What I would not give for a nibble of that creamy, brown block or a sip of that sweet fizz…
I digress. 
It was dark, the sky so overcast that the orange glow of light pollution made the stars invisible.
The streets were filled with people; teenagers dragging their feet towards home, business people picking up their shopping in that half hour between their work ending and the shops closing, pub and restaurant patrons puffing away amidst clouds of tobacco and candy floss flavoured smoke, hurried parents ushering children and prams, trying to argue with one another whilst on the phone to someone important and the odd fed up dog walker waiting, with little patience, for their canine companions to get on with business. 
I shivered and tucked my chin deeper into my scarf as I passed the last shop before the twenty minute trek past residential buildings that lay between me and my giant, blue, fluffy, doctor who dressing gown. 
I kept my eyes trained on the ground, gazing at the uneven cobbles that made up the path, intent on avoiding any unnecessary eye contact with the people that passed by.  It had gotten to the point that, when I was out and about, my brain did not like to let me know when I saw someone that I knew.  Instead it assumed that that person simply looked like a person that I knew and so I wound up ignoring them.  By the time that my brain told me, “that probably actually was so-and-so,” I would be halfway down the road and it would then be too awkward to go back and say “hi”.  It had even happened with my own mum, so I had resolved to avoid eye contact with everyone and hope that, if someone wanted to say “hi”, they would approach me.
So it was that I was looking at a patch of ground where the cobbles merged into pavement, that the spotlight hit me.
I stopped in my tracks, jerking my head back to discover a bright white light shinning directly above me.  I tentatively removed my headphones from my head, hooking the band over the shoulder strap of my bag.  Nothing seemed to be happening, so I took a few steps forward to try and see where the light was coming from. 
It moved with me.
The circle of light on the ground around me was only just a little wider than the space that I could step to.
I kept walking, head tilted back, hands clasped tightly around my bag as the alarm started to step in.  It stayed with me, moving as fluently as though it were attached to me. 
I started to walk faster and faster until at last I broke into a run.
The trees that decorated the street were all completely bare and offered no protection.  A little further ahead though, there was a bus shelter.  I made straight for it, seeking the covered protection if the metal roof.
Even as I was running, I could feel my body start to tingle , as though it were beginning to vibrate on a molecular level. 
I made it to the bus stop and dove into the shelter.
Still the light was on me.
It was shinning through the metal cover.
A couple of teenagers were sat on a bench there, when they had seen me running towards them they had started shouting.  When they saw the light shining through the shelter they jumped back and out of the way with cries of, “what the fuck is that?  Get away!”
Panic had taken ahold of me and I stumbled backwards, tripping over a discarded beer bottle.
My feet left the ground, I clenched my eyes tightly, raised my arms to protect my head and waited for the impact. 
Which never came.
Neither did a rush of air as I fell, nor the fall itself.
I opened my eyes to find that I was floating above the ground.
Both of the teenagers wasted no time in whipping out their phones and getting their camera apps rolling. 
“What is even happenin' right now?”  She appeared to be asking me, so I responded, “do I look as though I have the faintest clue as to what’s going on?”  My voice had risen to a shout by the end of the sentence.  “What’s at the top,” I asked them, pointing up, “where is this light coming from?” 
“ Dunno,” one of them angled their phone upwards, “”it's coming from the clouds.”
“Well that’s not good,” I tried to put my feet back down on the ground, only to discover that the action pushed my upper body upwards.
“What do'ya mean, ‘that’s no good'?” both cameras back on me, “you’re flying dude!” 
“Flying?”  My voice maintained a fairly high-pitched, shrill tone, “I think that it's more likely that I’m being abducted by aliens or something!  Can you please help me down.”
“Oh yeah, that makes sense,” one of them turned to the other, “keep filming, will ya, I’m gonna help miss…”. “I took the pause as a prompt, “Laura, my name is Laura.”
Phone back in her pocket, she stepped forward, hesitantly edging towards the side of the light.  Her hand stretched out towards me, risking the light.  It did not seem to have a reaction to her intrusion so she stepped forwards so that she was half in the beam.
She reached for my hand.
And passed straight through it.
“Woah,” we spoke in unison, “what.  The.  Fuck!” her voice rang out as she continued trying to grab me, “Megs, are you seeing this?”
She stepped back out of the light, “I think I’m gonna no be anywhere near this light, sorry Laurie.”
I could have corrected her, were it not for the blind state of fear that had frozen me in place, or maybe it was the light.  I never did find out.
Before I could think too much about it, I started to move.
Upwards.
All of a sudden I found that I could move again.  I started flailing around, trying to grab on to something, to anything.
My hand passed through everything at my level and each time I tried to stretch any part of myself down, the rest of my body would be pushed up.
Before I had realized it, I had passed through the roof of the bus stop, which now had a large hole in.  Looking up again I located the dark circle of metal floating just above me.
“Bye Laurie!  Good luck!”
The teenagers were waving at me.
“It’s Laura,” I shouted back at them, “and thanks for the help!”
If nothing else, I felt the need for my last audible sentence on Earth to be a sarcastic one.
“We tried,” I could barely hear her any more, “watch out for the probes!”
I gave a halfhearted wave and turned my attention to what was now around me.
Across the horizon, there were more beams of light.
Like bright strings reaching up, into the sky.
From where I drifted, there was no discernible pattern or distance between each of them.
The closest looked as though it were coming from my flat.
There were a few clusters, a large collection in, or around the town, and another further out in the industrial estate.
I strained to see if I could see other people in the beams, however they were too far for my pitiful eye sight to make out.
The further up I got, the more of them I could see.
Within a few minutes, I had reached the clouds.  I took one last look at the blinking lights and rolling hills of the Weald of Kent and passed into the fluff.
Moving through them was a peculiar sensation.  I could feel the moisture, yet it also passed through me, or did I pass through it?  It was only really at this point that I realized how not cold I was.  I could feel the air around me growing colder and colder, however I felt that I remained the same temperature.
Rising above the canopy, I came to behold the true night sky. 
An endless ceiling of stars that I had never seen before, stretching on around me for eternity.
And the beams of light.
I could see more now.  Many more.  Hundreds dotted randomly across the horizon.
The higher up I got the more I could see.  It quickly became clear that they all had the same destination.
Wherever these strings of light led, it was too far off to be visible.
I got quite a shock when something bumped into my back.
Considering that, for the prior few minutes, I had been less than corporeal.  So, that this thing had not simply passed through me, almost stopped my heart.
I managed to twist myself around to discover a small collection of rubbish floating along with me, including the glass bottle that had pushed me off the ground. 
I cursed the bloody thing and considered trying to throw it from the beam.
However, another thought occurred to me.
Where I was heading, was unlikely to be a friendly place, having a blunt weapon that could be made sharp or used as a projectile, would not be the worst idea.
I slipped my coat sleeve over my hand and grabbed the sticky, green glass stem.
And I waited.
I watched the world unfurl beneath me as Kent became the Southeast, became Britain, became Europe, became the globe. 
What felt like, and probably was, hours passed. 
I checked my phone, no service.
I took a few pictures, all of which were blurry.
I chewed at my cuticles.
I think I even started to drift off to sleep.
At which point I heard a noise from behind me.
I wriggled about until I was facing up again.
There it was.
A space ship.
As big as a town.
Made of chrome coloured metal and blinking lights.
I was too close to make out the shape, all that I could focus on was the odd clunking noise coming from where the beams of light met the hull.
Usually, when in space, there should be no noise because of the vacuum, however there must have been some sort atmosphere within the light, for no other obvious reason than I would be a bit more dead than I was.
The noise I could hear seemed to be from where some debris had got caught outside the ship.  There was no visible door or hatch.  My initial thought was that I would pass through the exterior of the ship, however if that was to be the case, then why were there items that were getting caught on the outside?  I hooked the strap of my shoulder bag over my head in and attempt to secure it more to myself, whatever was on the other side, I would not be without my bag, as long as I have that, I can survive anywhere. 
Within a few minutes my debris and I came to within a few metres of the surface.  The large metal circle that had been part of the bus stop clattered as it joined many other circles.  What quick glimpse I got, allowed me to see various circles of flooring, glass, plastic, as well as many random objects such as plates smeared with food, bits of paper, computer key boards, a games controller or two, the odd item of clothing…
Whatever had been picked up by the beams. 
Fortunately, there were not nearly as many clothes as there were beams.  The momentary fear that I would end up somewhere new whilst being naked subsided.
Getting closer and closer, I tightened my grip on the glass bottle, my entire body tensing up as I passed into the unknown.