Vasquez Rocks: Weird glow and a ring toss

By DENNIS ANDERSON
Valley Press Editor

Chapter Two - The Thing in The Rocks

Aaron Slingfact and Melba Trousdale were battered, yes. Bruised, yes. But were they beaten? Well, maybe.

The couple, who had only an hour or two before been summing up their prospects as young professionals transplanted to the Antelope Valley, found themselves in a predicament. A fine pickle. Only a little while before, they were dining on cheese and crackers, and wining on a decent vintage from a local winery when they found themselves targeted for assault by a giant lizard in the shadow of the dying light of the day at Vasquez Rocks.

There might even have been a marriage proposal, or, at least, one of those serial evasions that evolved males are known for in this day and age.

But, there was the giant lizard.

Believing they were in a close encounter of the third kind, Aaron shrieked. And Melba pummeled the chest of a giant movie grip named George in a losing battle with a boy wonder film director. George, the grip, removed the couple for insurance liability purposes from the set of "Revenge of the Gorn," and piloting the crafts services van had single-handedly driven all of them off a cliff. Or, at least a very small embankment.

It was dark when Aaron and Melba, bruised and frightened, emerged from beneath several trays of mini-pizzas and those tiny quiches favored by movie set caterers everywhere. They are tasty, yet cost-efficient by the unit, and you could pick them up at Costco or Sam's Club, but that is another story. Aaron and Melba had not suffered any broken bones, so they crawled out the shattered rear window of the van.

Melba, pluckier than Aaron, crawled round the driver's side to see if George the van driver was dead or injured. All she found was a prosthetic arm.

"A one-armed grip," she said. "Amazing."

"Where is he?" Aaron asked. "I thought he was the key grip."

Melba nosed around inside the driver's side of the van.

"Well, he left his arm, but he took the keys with him."

"I think we better get out of here," Aaron said.

Melba brushed her soft but firm hand across his bruised and dirty cheek. "When you keep a cool head in an emergency, you can be very attractive," she said. "Mmmm."

The subject had come up before. Something about an engagement ring. He had not been cool in that emergency. The whole subject made Aaron a bit nervous. But he was inclined to be a bit nervous about any number of things. This abduction and car crash thing was merely the latest.

"Let's go," he said, brushing dust, sage and bits of quiche off of his cargo shorts.

He began to crawl up out of the arroyo and Melba clambered after him. The pair looked up to see the night sky over Agua Dulce winking down at them, a spangled array of stars, with some of the light bounce from distant Los Angeles making for a kind of back-lighting on the tall slabs of Vasquez Rocks. Or, was it lights from the movie set?

Reaching the top of the little draw of sedimentary slab-like stone, they saw an aurora borealis of greenish-hued light bouncing off the shadowed rock formations that had been home to virtually every movie shot since Tom Mix, then the Captain Marvel serials from RKO, "Tales of the Bengal Lancers" for Golden Age TV and, finally "The Flintstones." Elizabeth Taylor, playing Fred Flintstone's mother, had lounged in cave woman attire among those rocks. Aaron knew that bit of trivia, and shuddered at it. Still, he kept climbing up the rocky draw toward the shimmering green light.

The strap on his Birkenstock tore and he gnashed his teeth.

"Great," he muttered. "First we get strong-armed off the movie set, then the driver crashes, and now we're right back where we started."

"It's all going to work out, honey," Melba said, climbing gamely up the draw behind him. "After all, we're together."

And that was when the giant metal tentacle lowered like one of those crane games in a Denny's, and it picked up Aaron as if he were a little stuffed bunny wearing only a "Made in China" tag. Forget "Eek!" This time Slingfact really shrieked a good one.

And he was lifted up and over the arroyo. This time Melba shrieked too.

"Stupid Hollyweird freaks!" she shouted.

Reaching the top of the stony draw, she began jogging down the slope side of the rocks toward the shimmering green light. She saw Aaron, wrapped tightly in the grip of the cable-like tentacle, just above the shimmering vortex of light that was, no doubt, the proud handiwork of the latest generation of light and sound technicians that made everywhere from the Acton grade on out to the forbidden zone of Edwards Air Force Base the prime location for filming. At the Valley Press, they called it "High Desert Hollywood."

Melba had written "stringer copy" for the weekly Showcase edition, and she was as starstruck as anyone growing up in Southern California, but this, really, was too much.

First they made a picnic, and it got spoiled before Melba could raise a toast and Aaron could "pop the question." Next, they got abducted by a big galoot working for the usual lame-o, twerp director. Then, they got in a crash, and before they could find the highway patrol to fill out a report, her boyfriend was being swung around like a stuffed toy.

And then, he got gobbled up in the vortex of green light.

"Cut! Cut! Cut!" Melba shouted, running toward the light. "I, Melba Trousdale, am calling a time out on this freakin' movie set!"

And she kept running toward the green vortex, determined to drop-kick her oddly attractive hiking boots in the director's hind end.

But there was no director. There was no movie set. And in a few seconds, there was no vortex of green light, and worse, there was no Aaron. There was just the desert, the stars, and the shadows of Vasquez Rocks. A dust devil little whirlwind was twisting in a circle where the green light and her boyfriend had been only a moment before.

For a few seconds, Melba wondered if it was all a dream. Then her hiking boot scuffed up against their picnic table. The one with the polystyrene wine glasses tumbled out of it.

She reached down for the picnic basket, to touch it, as if to get some tangible evidence that it wasn't all a dream.

A small box tumbled out of the basket. Melba opened it like Alice in Wonderland, regarding the "Drink Me" bottle. The box contained what looked very much like an engagement ring. Only, at the moment, her prospect for an intended was nowhere to be seen.

The stars blinked and the shadows of the rocks loomed like giants hovering.

To be continued Sunday, Sept. 27.