BUSHWICK — The Brooklyn Herald urges all residents of the outer boroughs to exercise extreme caution following multiple confirmed sightings of a genocidal space alien who has been observed loitering near the Bushwick roller rink and engaging young women in conversation.
The individual is described by witnesses as a tall, well dressed eccentric man speaks with an accent, and is known to approach women, often during moments of personal dissatisfaction or boredom, and invite them on what he calls "a quick trip." These trips, according to the few women who have returned, involve hurtling through the vacuum of space and across the full breadth of time across human history in some sort of magic box.
Some of the women come back. Some of them don't and some come back wrong.
The Herald has confirmed that at least one former "companion" of the alien, a six-year-old Staten Island women named Tina has been a resident of the Bushwick Asylum since the 1980s. She was committed in 1985 after telling emergency room staff that she had witnessed the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens, which everyone thought was totally possible. But then she told everyone she was briefly married a sentient cloud in the forty-seventh century where she was quickly diagnosed with acute psychotic delusion disorder.
Following the federal government's recent and reluctant acknowledgment of the alien's existence, the asylum attempted to discharge Tina She refused.
"Where would I go?" Tina told staff, according to records obtained by the Herald. "Back to my apartment? Back to my job? I held a dying sun in my hands and it sang to me. You want me to go back to Staten Island and do what? Make pour-overs?"
Tina reportedly spends her days in the asylum courtyard, telling fellow patients about the things she has seen: the glass towers of a civilization that communicates entirely through color, a library that exists at the end of time, a planet where the rain falls upward and tastes like copper. The other patients enjoy her stories. The staff describe her as calm, articulate, and completely untreatable.
She sits in the courtyard every afternoon and watches the sky just waiting patiently and saying every night: "Tomorrow" She says. "He'll be back tomorrow."
Dr. Clara Keene who's been trying to help Tina has become one of the alien's most vocal critics since the government disclosure. She spoke to the Herald at length.
"I have treated trauma for twenty-two years," Dr. Keene said. "I have treated soldiers. I have treated survivors of unspeakable violence. I have never seen anything like what this creature does to the human mind. He takes a young woman who is bored, or lonely, or looking for something more, and he shows her the entire universe. And then he brings her back. What is she supposed to do with that? How is a person supposed to bag groceries after watching galaxies collide?"
Dr. Keene paused.
"Does this amuse him? Is he lonely? Is this what passes for companionship in whatever ancient, terrible species he belongs to? Because from where I sit, this is not adventure. This is cruelty. He is torturing these women with wonder. He is breaking their minds open and then dropping them back in Brooklyn with a pat on the head and no follow-up care. The human mind was not built for infinity. He is stuffing the ocean into a thimble and then acting surprised when it cracks."
Dr. Keene added: "And he never visits. If he can truly do all these things what would it take to show up for one hour? He sounds like a narcissitic asshole to me."
The Herald has confirmed additional cases. A woman in Greenpoint who has not spoken since her return, and instead draws the same circular symbol on every available surface. A Bed-Stuy bartender who came back fluent in eleven languages, none of them from this planet, and can no longer remember English. A Red Hook woman who returned three seconds after she left but had aged seven years and will not discuss what happened.
The alien has been sighted most frequently recently in the Williamsburg area, though reports have placed him in Astoria, Park Slope, and once, inexplicably, at a Key Food in Canarsie, where he was observed purchasing bananas.
The Brooklyn Herald would like to note that Dr. Keene is reported as missing. The alien creature had recently visited Tina shortly after this interview. A witness at the asylum said that he and Tina had a nice day, even after Dr. Keene gave him a thorough scolding. We were told that the alien apologized to Dr. Keene and he explained how he killed everyone on his planet and it made him really sad and he's still working through it. Dr. Keene and he shortly left together leaving poor Tina alone and without a caring doctor. If you see him or Clara please contact the Herald tip line. Do not approach him. If you do and he tells you he can show you the stars, just go to the planetarium.