There it was again. It was the middle of the night when I, gazing expectantly at my bedroom window, saw it once more. It had been showing itself every night for the past week, always around the same time. So you could say I wasn’t exactly scared to see the shadowy outline of a hand, that although had resembled a human’s, wasn’t one. Every night since it first appeared I’ve stayed in bed, looking at it from afar. From what I could see, the hand was long-fingered, seemed very stiff, and looked black. But then again, everything at night looked black.

I remember when I first saw the hand I had told my mother, who immediately didn’t think much of it. “Oh Gretchen, it’s probably just some irresponsible person letting their robot roam free. You did say the hand wasn’t human, didn’t you?” she said. I had said that it wasn’t human, but I didn’t believe it to be made of metal either.

Today, however, I decided to get a closer look at the hand. I opened the window and was immediately overwhelmed by a nauseating smell, before I found myself falling in to utter darkness.

When I woke I was lying on a very hard bed, circled by a strange crowd of – were they even people? Their faces could be mistaken for that of a human’s, apart from the two antennas on each side of their heads. They had a purplish tinge to their skin, long fingers on their hands, and long toes on their bare feet. They all wore what looked like black diving suits, and they stared intently at me.

I must have looked scared, because one came up and said, “No worry. Us… need your… help.” His English was very broken, and he spoke hesitantly. “You come… me.” The alien made strange gestures that were not helping his communication efforts whatsoever, and just made everything much more confusing. I don’t know why, but I followed quickly behind him.

We seemed to be in some sort of ship, judging by all the buttons and technological stuff everywhere. It was only when I looked out of one of the windows and saw the extreme darkness that I knew what kind of a ship it was. “Space,” said the alien, having noticed me staring outside. “Us far from… house.” He pointed at me. “Now come.”

We walked until we reached a circular room that I realized at once was the control room. I also knew right away that something was wrong. There were many flashing and blinking red lights on all the screens. The aliens turned to look at me and said, “You help me. Broken,” he gestured uselessly around the room. “Need you… fix.”

I looked around and almost laughed with the ridiculousness of it all. “How am I supposed to help you?” I asked.

“Us no good with tech-technology,” he said with difficulty. “But us good with finding people… helpful people… people we need.” I must have looked confused, because he went on. “You are Gretchen Donovan. You have 96% average in… science and technology within school. Your teachers all… l-like you. You top of class. Your father, NASA worker. You are knowing how to fix ship.”

I could have voiced one of the many things in my head, like, ‘How do you know this?’, ‘Who the heck are you people?’, ‘Do you spy on others for a living?’, or even the classic ‘You’re such a creep!’ Instead I settled for, “What’s your name?”

The alien smiled and said, “I Grawp.”

“Well Grawp, I don’t know who you are, or where you get your information from, but I can assure you, I am of no use to you.” But even as the words left my mouth, I knew I wasn’t leaving until I did something to help fix the ship.

“Just look,” Grawp persisted. He unlocked a sort of fuse box, and opened it. I looked close, and after a while, found the problem.

“This wire needs repair. And,” I said, looking at the words now flashing on the screens, “you’re low on fuel.”

“Can you help?” asked Grawp.

“Maybe,” I replied. “You know, a couple hundred years ago, people used their own kinetic energy to power things. We could use this as a lever,” I said, mumbling to myself as I picked up a long rod. The next two hours were a blur of metal, machinery, wires, and one painful thumb that I accidentally crushed with a hammer, in my hurry to fix the spaceship.

After I finished, I explained to Grawp that someone needed to push the lever up and down constantly to power the ship, so they’d have to take turns in doing so. Grawp seemed confused about this kind of energy, and I was about to say it is used to save the earth’s resources, but one glance at his antennas and I remembered that I was talking to an alien who was ignorant to what was happening on earth.

“Thank you,” said Grawp gratefully. “You are having our… blessing.”

“No problem,” I replied. “Can I go home now?”

“Yes,” Grawp grinned. I followed him back to the room I had awoken in; it was still crowded with aliens. Grawp talked rapidly to them in a strange language, and they all seemed relieved. He turned to me with one of his kind at his side. “Us want to thank you,” Grawp said, while his friend handed me what looked like a moon rock. “A stone from our… home. It is very… valuable on earth. It is for you, Gretchen.”

I thanked him and looked around, waiting for one of them to tell me how the heck I was supposed to get back home. I glanced at Grawp, and his smiling face was the last thing I saw before everything went black.

I opened my eyes what felt like seconds later, and found myself in my room once more. It was still night, and darkness was all around me. I blinked a few times before I remembered what had happened. It was all a dream. That must have been it. I’d dreamed myself seeing that hand for what seemed like a week, but in reality must’ve been just one night. And being on that spaceship was also a part of the same dream. It had seemed quite vivid at the time, but it couldn’t possibly have been real. What kind of aliens don’t know their own technology? Aren’t they supposed to be even more advanced in science and technology than us humans? It did seem quite unlikely that they’d need help from a human girl to fix their spaceship, assuming they did exist of course. But maybe they are real, maybe they actually do exist. I may never have known the truth about aliens, but I did know one thing. The sleep that I’d just woken from was not at all satisfactory. My eyelids felt heavy, and I almost immediately fell into a deep sleep. I didn’t even notice the very valuable and oddly shaped moon rock sitting on my dresser, but that would be quite the surprise in the morning.