Catching my breath, I decided to pause mid-run about two miles away from my mum’s house. The gloam of a late summer’s evening had started to wrap itself around the sprawling Lincolnshire countryside; packed fields ripe with wheat and oil seed rape stretched towards the horizon as far as my eye could see. In the distance, I could just about make out the miniature silhouette of Lincoln Cathedral. And that’s when I began to notice it.

At first I felt the sensation: pressure building in my sinuses and eardrums followed by a steady, constant, mid-pitch hum ringing in my ears. Then I began to see—or at least perceive—the light at the periphery of my vision start to bend, as if a fish-eye lens had been placed over my eyes. About 50 metres ahead of me stood a copse of fir trees, the only thing breaking up the skyline for miles around, and from behind it, a small, dark, triangular object emerged as if from nowhere.

Slowly, ominously, it began to draw closer. The pressure in my face intensified, the ringing in my ears growing ever louder until it felt deafening. I stood there, motionless, my limbs feeling like they’d been cast in stone as the shape drew nearer still. But it didn’t appear to be moving, it looked more like it was growing, gradually cutting out all surrounding light as it did so. I watched, helplessly, as infinite shades of grey shifted amorphously around me, until I was completely enveloped in its darkness. I silently threw up in my mouth a little, still paralysed by fear as my stomach collapsed and cold sweat poured down the back of my sodden t-shirt. The sound and the pressure were now completely unbearable, the countryside fading away until there was nothing remaining but me, and the shape. I shut my eyes tightly, clenched my teeth, and began to pray to whatever god I thought might save me.

Then, as quickly as it had arrived, the sensation stopped. Opening my eyes to see what fate had befallen me, I found myself standing in a blank space surrounded by a shifting mass of what looked like dark grey and black fog. Slowly, the fog shifted and settled, forming into a group of angular shapes; smooth, dark surfaces became manifest, and from them emerged small circles of light in rows, resembling buttons on a keyboard. Above them, screens fired into life, suddenly displaying rows upon rows of incomprehensible text that darted across the screen like an army of marching insects.

Somehow, I found my feet, and began to step towards one of the screens of which there were now several. The black space now looked more like some sort of control room, with the dark, almost metallic surfaces that had appeared reflecting the red and yellow glow of hundreds of blinking lights and buttons, all of them operating in complete silence.

Standing in front of one of the screens, I lifted my right arm and slowly stretched out an index finger. As I drew closer I watched as yellow-coloured text shifted and changed before my eyes, which to my amazement, started to form recognisable shapes. I noticed characters in English, Cyrillic, Greek, Kanji, and Mandarin as more letters began to stream across the screen. But they were constantly shifting, changing, making no sense whatsoever. My finger drew within inches of the monitor, but just as I was about to touch whatever was in front of me, I noticed them.

I pivoted on the spot and took one stride back, expecting to feel the ballast of the control panel behind me, only to find there was nothing there. Stumbling, I drew a sharp breath, air filling my lungs as my heart pounded ferociously. And yet, I made no sound.

Ahead of me were two distinct columns of yet more shifting black fog, although this time I felt a distinct presence within it, as if I was being watched. Once again I found myself petrified, and looked on as the two black masses drifted slowly towards me, until they stopped about three metres in front of where I was standing.

““I stood there, motionless, my limbs feeling like they’d been cast in stone as the shape drew nearer still.””

Just as the control room around me had appeared as if from nothing, these shapes also began to take form. The fog coiled around itself, and from it emerged slender arms and legs, just black shapes at first, but then there was a texture to it: fabric, stretched black cotton slacks on long, thin legs. A skinny torso sat on top of them, with slender arms appearing from newly formed shoulders, wrapped in a fitted, buttoned-up suit jacket, behind which was a crisp white shirt, and a long black tie. From this emerged a pale neck and a milk-white face with a short, thin nose. Balanced on this was a pair of pitch black, circular-rimmed spectacles that covered what I sincerely hoped were eyes, although I could not see them. Atop the head was a perfectly centre-parted head of slick, short black hair, but I could not make out any individual strands.

The two, completely identical thin men stood at about seven feet tall, towering over me with their sinewy, suit-clad frames, an almost oily texture to their skin and clothes. They’d opted for grey pinstripes, “a nice touch” I joked internally, in a dismal effort to inject some levity into what I expected to be the final moments of my existence.

We stood there, motionless, in the blinking room’s perpetual silence. Then, suddenly, one of the thin men stretched out an arm, opened its greasy, white palm, and spoke with what appeared to be its mouth. If I could describe to you what I heard, I would, but it was not a sound in a conventional sense, more like a feeling, similar to what I’d experienced when the shape approached me in the field. I remember hearing four distinct waves of a flat baritone that did not waver in pitch, but it felt like there were layers upon layers of complexity to whatever the thin man had uttered.

In the entity’s outstretched hand one of the yellow lights appeared, the shape shifting, slowly at first, between four distinct patterns. These were much like the letters I had seen on the screen moments ago, although they were incomprehensible, taken from a language I did not recognise. After these shapes had repeated their cycle a few times, the thin man opened his mouth again, only this time the four tones felt louder, and carried more intensity.

I watched as the shifting shapes started changing faster and faster, staring into the yellow light hoping, praying, that I might be able to figure out what the thin man was asking of me. Intense panic set in, adrenaline surging as I scrambled for an answer. The cycle continued, gradually increasing in intensity until eventually the thin man spoke again, the four sounds now almost deafening.

As my state of panic reached its crescendo, I suddenly experienced a moment of pure, unfettered clarity. The first shape was not a letter, I realised, it was a symbol, a droplet. It was water. Steadying myself, I noticed the second shape was a thin line topped with four diamonds. Of course: barley. Third came an upturned cone, a shape I suddenly realised I recognised from a thousand and one lazily-thought-out brewery logos: hops. Finally I focused on the fourth, most confusing shape, slowly coming to the realisation that it was not a single image, but one composed of countless tiny dots that seemed to extend infinitely into the space resting above the thin man’s palm. Of course, yeast.

Still riding the wave of extreme lucidity my predicament had somehow induced, I quickly reached into the pocket of my shorts and pulled out my phone. The thin men flinched, growing taller and drawing closer in reaction to my movements, but in the same motion I raised my left arm and held out my own palm, as if I was merely gesturing to a motorist to stop while I crossed at a junction. It seemed to steady my new companions, at least momentarily, and so, quickly, with the stroke of a thumb I opened my maps app, mashed the phrase Augustiner Keller into the search bar, hit enter, and raised my phone towards my hosts.

As the map skipped from its current location in North Lincolnshire and dropped a bright red pin in the heart of Munich, Germany, I watched as the thin man who wasn’t holding the symbols drew closer to my phone, until its face was almost touching the screen. Without saying so much as a word, the thin man who conjured the four shapes closed his hand, slowly drawing his arm back beside its torso. Looking around, the control room seemed clearer now, more real, and although there was still no sound to be heard, I felt as though I could feel it whirring and buzzing as the red and yellow lights continued to blink around me.

Then, in a split second, the thin man closest to me snatched my phone out of my hand. As we connected I recoiled, a surge of energy rushed through my body as though I’d been jolted by an electric fence. Then, my phone hovering above its hand, it gestured towards it with its other appendage and I watched in awe as the map emerged from the screen and expanded into the very air around us. The map now suspended above my phone was composed of red lines of various shades enclosed in a three-dimensional bubble, hanging in the air like a neon sign. Looking carefully I could see hundreds of tiny yellow dots slowly moving around the red lines that I realised were the streets of Munich. “Were those people?” I caught myself mid-thought.

Suddenly the thin men became animated, each of them reaching out an arm towards one another, their pale fingers darting together in rapid, jerking movements. Then they turned to me, stepped forward, and the humming and intense pressure began to build once again. I closed my eyes, half-expecting my head to burst where I stood. But just as before, it stopped, without warning. Except now, to my surprise, my head was suddenly filled with the animated chatter of hundreds of people, the clinking of glasses together, of cutlery on plates, and wind rustling through the old leaves of late summer. In the distance, I could hear the revving of car engines and the beeping of horns. The smell was overwhelming too. Was that… roast pork?

Opening my eyes once again I was bewildered to find myself standing at the entrance of the Augustiner Keller in central Munich. Behind me stood the suit-clad thin men, now for some reason both wearing matching pork pie hats while also carrying a suitcase in one hand and an umbrella in the other. In addition to the return of sound and smell, I also felt a warm sensation beneath my nose. Instinctively reaching out my hand to wipe it, I noticed it was bleeding, and in a singular, unconscious motion I wiped the fresh blood on my bright orange, still sweat-soaked running shirt.

It’s then I noticed we had been approached by a young woman, who after a lengthy pause and delivering our party an equally long, puzzled stare asked us: “Tisch für drei?”

“Three, yes please” I muttered back in English, holding back the extremity of my exasperation as best I could. “Sorry, my German isn’t very good.”

She smiled. “No problem, this way,” she replied in English before leading us to the end of a long, wooden trestle table under the tall trees at the keller. As we took our seats she handed me a tissue, still smiling, undeterred, as I realised my face was encrusted with the now semi-dried blood that had erupted from my face as a result of my body having just travelled 1000 kilometres in less than a second just moments ago.

Hastily cleaning my face with a lick of saliva on my tissue, I realised the two thin men, their suitcases and umbrellas now placed at their side, were watching my every move behind the thick rims of their sunglasses. They seemed more human now, if that’s possible, their oily skin now a pale grey rather than white, their black hair now defined into several greasy strands, rather than a singular dark shape.

““‘It is the ideal,’ I thought to myself of Augustiner Helles. A perfect expression of beer: of hops, of malt, of yeast, of water.””

Another server, a young man this time, approached us to take our order. He asked, also in English, if we’re on holiday, and I awkwardly make up a story about how I’m visiting my two relatives here in Germany who’ve met me after a run around the nearby Englischer Garten, as I gestured towards the thin men across the table with my blood-stained tissue. He replied with a grin that was equal to my own awkwardness, which I attempted to diffuse by asking for three glasses of helles as quickly as possible. “Maßkrug?” The server questioned while making a big glass gesture with both hands. “Just half litres, please,” I replied.

Then it was just me and the thin men once again. We sat in silence and waited for about a minute before our beers were served. It was, I considered, perhaps the longest 60 seconds of my life. During it I began to think what might happen after we have our beers, what these not-of-this-world beings might do to me once I have attempted to answer their question. I had deduced from the four symbols, and the fact they have abducted me, specifically, a beer writer, that they must also be interested in beer. And so as a result of my heightened emotional state, I diligently brought them to the Augustiner Keller, a place where they serve what I believe to be the ultimate idea of “beer” in both concept and execution. If a cool glass of helles didn’t tick their boxes, I thought, there would surely be no hope for the rest of humanity.

But what if they didn’t like it? What if by inadvertently providing my hosts with the wrong answer to their questions I have doomed my own existence? What if, in fact, I’ve condemned the entire human race because I made a split second decision to take two aliens for a lager? Maybe they’d have preferred a pint of bitter, or an IPA?

My existential crisis was ended momentarily by the arrival of our three half-litres of beer, gleaming golden in the tall, gentle curve of Willi-Becher glasses, each of them topped with three, tight, perfectly white fingers of gorgeous-looking foam. Fearing this might be my last ever sip of beer I rushed to grab my glass, the sensation of cold condensation on its surface almost overwhelming after my brief spell in the black and grey nothingness. Immediately pressing it to my lips, I took one, two, three huge sips.

The act of drinking beer instantly induced a psychosomatic effect of relaxation; my heartbeat slowed, my shoulders loosened just a touch. As the haze of my apparent predicament cleared from my head, I noticed that it is still evening, and that the sun has not quite set. The three of us were surrounded by hundreds of people, laughing, eating, drinking, too busy to notice two very strange men and their exasperated abductee. And so, for a moment, I enjoyed the orange light as it creeped through long branches of the surrounding trees, and took another sip of my lager.

“It is the ideal,” I thought to myself of Augustiner helles. A perfect expression of beer: of hops, of malt, of yeast, of water. The first thing I noticed about it is how it felt; how the delicate body and gentle carbonation made it sing on the tongue. The second, most obvious character it possessed was a herbal, snappy, bitter hop note, that felt green, almost verdant in colour, and notably in direct contrast to how the thin men’s vessel felt oppressively grey and black. After another sip, I noticed a rich flavour of freshly baked bread, straight out of the oven; a marriage of malted barley, and the house yeast that gives Augustiner its wonderfully strong sense of identity. The water profile was present too: soft, with a light minerality that helped amplify each of the aforementioned flavours, while maintaining an inherently refreshing character. “I could drink an ocean of it,” I thought.

About halfway through my beer, I noticed the thin men hadn’t yet touched theirs, so I pointed to their glasses and made a drinking gesture. Acting almost in unison, I watched as both of them raised an arm, extended a finger, and dipped it about an inch deep into the beer, although the liquid within remained motionless, as though completely undisturbed. Then, as we sat in silence, I watched as the quantity of beer in each glass slowly began to decrease. Glancing to my left I realised a member of the adjoining party had noticed the thin men, with their fingers in their beer, and turned to look at me with an expression that sat somewhere between befuddlement and abject horror.

Quickly, again, I made the drinking motion with the glass and under my breath said “no, like this!” Thankfully, they seemed to understand, and with slow, jerking movements they lifted their glasses to their mouths and mimicked my gesture, albeit with their fingers still extending into the depths of each glass.

After a few seconds both of them placed their now empty glasses back on the table in front of us and I glanced across to our neighbour with an awkward grin. They had noticed the blood stains on my face and chest and were trying to get the attention of their friends. But I didn’t have to worry about this, as without warning the hum and the pressure returned. The thin men had started wiggling their fingers together once more. As the black fog descended the group next to us suddenly became visibly agitated, standing up, waving their arms and shouting at me in German. At that moment I instinctively grabbed my half-full glass of Helles and shouted towards the thin men, “wait, I haven’t finished my beer yet!” But it was hopeless. In a split-second I was once again surrounded by black and grey, as my physical form was wrenched from the Keller, and into oblivion.

Laying on the ground, motionless, I slowly opened my eyes and wondered what had befallen me. Only I did not find myself encased within the darkness of the shape, but back in the field near my Mum’s house, the late summer sun now setting behind the horizon, covering the surrounding fields with soft twilight. Pulling myself up from the dry patch of mud where I was now sitting, I noticed a gently warm, wet sensation around my mouth, informing me my nose was bleeding again.

Wiping my face with my left arm, I put out my right hand to hoist myself off the ground, except instead of earth I felt a startlingly cold sensation in the centre of my palm, and heard the gentle chime of rattling glass bottles. Next to me sat a bright blue plastic crate, within which were 24 bottles of ice-cold Augustiner. Gradually making my way to my feet I look at the fir copse in front of me, gently swaying in the evening breeze, the shape and the thin men nowhere to be seen. Everything is back as it should be, albeit I am now bloodied, and laden with a case of lager two miles from home.

“Did that really happen?” I mutter aloud to myself, considering that I could easily have face-planted and knocked myself out cold after tripping over a case of lager that for some reason had been left lying prone in a North Lincolnshire field, miles from anywhere.

Getting to my feet, I hoisted the crate to my chest, grumbling slightly about having to carry the heavy case up the road. “How am I going to explain this to mum,” I wondered, not noticing the small, silent, grey triangle folding into itself behind me, before shooting at great speed into the night sky above.