Abduction in the Second Sense
by InsertHere99 ©
Author's notes: Not going to say too much about this one, read it and find out. The title is a play on the "close encounters" scale, figure it out yourself (a good dictionary may help).
Disclaimer: The following is a piece of fiction. Fiction (in case you don't know) means it's made up, not real, a bunch of lies. The characters in the story are all fictional too, meaning they don't exist. While non-existent, if they existed and had an age they would be over 18.
Furthermore, since the characters aren't real they can't possibly be harmed by the stuff they do or that happens to them in the story. This would not be true in reality, meaning you should not think you can do the same things safely, legally, or ethically in real life. Just because bullets bounce off Superman (he's fictional) that doesn't mean they're going to bounce off you, got it? If you believe that the things fictional characters do in a pornographic story are a valid guide to behavior in the real world, then you have much bigger psychological problems than a story could ever cause and you should stop reading this and seek medical help immediately.
Becky pulled out of the IHOP parking lot and onto the interstate, heading east for home. It was after eleven and a new moon, meaning a night dark as sin, and one of the headlamps on Pa's old Ford was out. Not a problem on the highway unless the state patrol pulled her over, but she'd have to be careful driving the rutted lane that led to the farm.
She sighed. She'd have get to an auto parts store and buy a new lamp. She'd put it in herself, she was not about to pay a mechanic good money for something so simple. She just hoped it wasn't a sign of anything worse. Sooner or later the truck would break down in a way she couldn't fix, and that would put a big hole in her savings.
There were closer restaurant jobs Becky could have had than working at the IHOP, but those jobs would mean a lot more of the customers would be people she knew. People who would want to know why they hadn't see her at church lately, or try to fix her up with one of her hometown's remaining "eligible" (meaning no local woman in her right mind wanted anything to do with them) bachelors, or remind her that she was no longer a spring chicken and really ought to settle down with a man. Becky figured avoiding that sort of nonsense was worth a fifty minute commute each way even if it did put extra wear on the truck.
Except that the truck was no spring chicken anymore, either. Becky kept it running, but truthfully she needed a newer car. It guzzled gas and now was burning oil, both of which cost money, but to replace it would mean taking out a car loan and the interest would eat up more than she saved in maintenance. For now she'd just keep nursing it along and hope for the best.
Becky sighed again. That was all she did these days. Hope for the best.
[]
Becky was the youngest of the four Paulson kids. Five if you counted Danny, which Ma always had even though he died at age two. According to her teachers Becky was the brightest, too, as well as the best-behaved.
Fat lot of good that had done her. Pa didn't believe girls needed higher education. After all, their role in life was to marry and raise babies, and that didn't require a college degree. So while Pa sent her brother Jacob off to the state university and then law school, paying his way through both, Becky had to get a job and pay her own tuition at the local community college.
Becky did extremely well. Her organic chemistry professor was so impressed that she pulled some strings and got Becky a scholarship at the university.
Becky never went. Ma got cancer, a bad one, and Becky had to move back to the farm to take care of her. After Ma passed somebody had to look after Pa, who wasn't all that healthy either. Despite a constant cough he continued to smoke more than a pack a day ("those doctors don't know jack-shit") and ended up dying of a stroke two years later at age sixty.
At this point Jake was off in Pittsburgh with a law career at a big personal injury firm. Her oldest sister, Miriam, tired of rural life and their oppressive father, had fled to California years before. Miriam ended up marrying a Chinese-American guy, this being a "pollution" that made Pa so angry that he wrote her out of the will and his life, refusing to speak her name to the end of his days. Meanwhile her middle sister, Rachel, married a local guy who was one of the few who had a little ambition to better his life. He'd become a well-paid oil field worker and they'd moved to Oklahoma. But then Rachel got involved in a church that was even more into dwelling on hellfire and damnation than the one Ma and Pa had belonged to. Becky didn't talk to her too much these days.
So it was just Becky, alone on the farm. For a while she hoped this wouldn't last long. Pa's will put everything in a trust, but he'd been reasonable enough to realize that if no one wanted to work the land the best thing was to sell it and divide the proceeds between the three remaining heirs. But he'd also made Jake the sole executor of the trust, and Jake wanted to hold on to the property "until the market was better," a day that hadn't gotten any closer in the five years since Pa died.
Jake had leased the farm's cropland to other farmers, leaving only the patch immediately around the house for Becky. The money from the leases went into the trust and also should have been divided up after expenses. Except that according to Jake, there never was anything left after expenses. Becky didn't know what the "expenses" consisted of, since he never showed anyone the books. One thing she was sure of, none of the money went to repairs on the house or the barn, both of which were slowly decaying despite her efforts at maintenance.
Jacob had always been a sneaky kid, prone to telling lies to get out of trouble and cheating at games whenever he thought he could get away with it. Becky's opinion was that his going to law school hadn't improved his behavior, it might have made it worse.
So Becky got a job and saved her money. She never went anywhere, didn't buy new things, didn't eat out except for the free meals at IHOP. Eventually she hoped to have enough to hire a lawyer of her own to look into where the money was going, maybe force Jake to sell off at least some of the land. Once that happened she could move off the farm and enroll at a university, preferably one in a nice, big city with people who didn't think the modern era was the End Times and that Satan's rule on earth was around the corner.
But every birthday that passed made that goal seem more remote.
[]
Becky got out of the truck and opened the gate, then drove down the gravel road that led to the farmhouse. It was Saturday night and she had Sunday and Monday off, she was looking forward to a nice rest.
Five minutes later she pulled up to the old, worn house. Turning off the engine she hopped out of the truck and walked toward the front porch.
A brilliant light blinded her. It came from directly above and Becky looked up, using her hand to try to block some of it so she could see where it was coming from.
A great, dark disk-shaped thing hovered above her. It made no noise whatsoever, hanging motionless in the air as if it were pinned there. The light came from a point slightly to one side of its center.
Becky heard (felt might be a better word) a low-pitched throbbing sound. She went light-headed, then realized that was wrong, it wasn't her head; her whole body had become lighter and her feet were leaving the ground.
She blacked out.
[]
When Becky opened her eyes the first thing she noticed was that the light coming from the ceiling wasn't yellowish but had a distinct green tint. She didn't know what was going on, she mostly felt relief that it wasn't as blindingly bright as the light she'd just been looking at before.
The memory brought her abruptly alert. She was in a room with smooth rounded teal-colored walls and no windows. There were various pieces of strange - equipment? Furniture? - in various parts of it, mostly against said walls.
Becky lay on her back on a small bed close to the center of the room. The bed was sort of like a doctor's exam room table but larger, and (she had to admit) much more comfortable. She was completely naked.
Becky tried to get up, and couldn't. She tried to move her arms and legs and couldn't do that either. There were no straps or cuffs or anything, the surface of the table simply wouldn't let her go, meaning she couldn't move. It didn't feel sticky where it touched her skin, but she was glued to it like a fly to a fly trap regardless.
Struggling revealed that Becky wasn't strong enough to break free, but also that she could move one part of her at least. Some of her hair was stuck to the table but her scalp wasn't, meaning that within limits she could turn and lift her head to look around.
That was when she saw the ET.
It was interesting how close pop culture got to being right versus the things they got wrong. The alien was somewhat shorter than Becky, with long slender arms and hands and fingers and a narrow torso, but while the ET had a slight frame it didn't look spindly or misproportioned the way the body often did in drawings and movies. The head was indeed large and bald and the face was almond-shaped, but the wide almond eyes weren't dead black, they had a little white (though it was more a pale blue, really) around a huge purple iris with a normal-sized black pupil in the center. And the skin was silver-grey but otherwise looked quite healthy and supple rather than wrinkled and dead-looking the way most depictions showed it being.
The garment the ET wore was a long stiff purple gown. Becky noticed in passing that the shade matched the wearer's eyes.
Becky licked her lips. "You know, where I come from, when we invite someone to come visit we usually wait for a yes or a no before we drag them inside."
