Chapter 1 - The Alien Among Us

When I first woke up, I was in Bridgend, South Wales—a quiet, unassuming place where nothing out of the ordinary seemed to happen. But even as a kid, I was obsessed with two things: aliens and making magazines.
The alien obsession stemmed from my first truly traumatising memory. I was walking home from school one day with a friend, chatting about whatever kids chat about, when they casually dropped a bombshell: "Aliens are already on Earth, hiding in human bodies."
I swear on my life, I saw one shortly after that. I can still picture it—something inhuman beneath a very human façade. My stomach turned, my heart raced, and from that moment, the world didn’t feel safe anymore. I was terrified.
For months, I couldn’t sleep. Every shadow was suspicious, every sound proof of some otherworldly presence. But when I tried to tell people, nobody believed me. My classmates thought I was crazy. The more I insisted, the harder they laughed. Even my parents decided it was all in my head.
Then, one night, they decided to teach me a lesson—or at least, that’s what they called it. My dad set up the most elaborate prank of my young life. Using a 20-foot piece of wood, he dangled a “UFO” made out of paper plates and a Maglite torch in the middle of the garden.
I remember standing there, wide-eyed, staring at this glowing, wobbling contraption, while my dad tried not to laugh. I couldn’t decide whether to feel validated or furious. They told me later it was supposed to make me “less gullible.” If anything, it just cemented my fascination.
Looking back now, I can see how it started a pattern. I was always searching for something bigger, something beyond the ordinary. And even when people laughed or doubted me, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more out there—more to see, more to create, more to become.