Xenophobia

Jill tried to tell herself she wasn't crazy. She was seeing a psychiatrist, yes, and she had some...emotional disturbances that she needed help to work through. But lots of perfectly sane people had...issues. Lots of rational people sometimes had irrational thoughts. It didn't mean that she was crazy. Not so long as she could distinguish the irrational ideas from the rational.

"Come in," Doctor Lippman said. "Have a seat." He smiled disarmingly and gestured towards the comfortable-looking leather couch. Jill wondered if he was secretly an alien.

"Now, Jill," he said as she hesitantly sat down, then lay down. "You came to me because you said you've been having some bad dreams lately?"

She shook her head. "No, Doctor. It started before the dreams, maybe a year before." She paused, trying to put her thoughts into some sort of order. "It was...I started to think people..." She sighed. "I'm sorry, this is probably going to sound sort of crazy."

Doctor Lippman put up a hand. "Please, Jill," he said. "There's no such thing as 'crazy' in this room. There might be thoughts and behaviors that we'll want to correct, because they're making your life difficult, but 'crazy' is a word that implies judgment, and I'm not here to judge you. I'm here to help you. And I can't do that unless you know you can talk openly about whatever it is that's bothering you. So just go ahead and tell me everything."

Jill took a deep breath and nodded, as much to herself as to Doctor Lippman. "Okay," she said, psyching herself up for her next sentence. "I started to think that the people around me were aliens."

She waited for an outburst of some sort, but obviously, Doctor Lippman had heard stranger things than that in this office. "Go on," he said.

"It wasn't everyone," Jill elaborated. "I mean, I didn't think my mom was an alien, or my friends or my co-workers. I'd just...I'd be walking down the street, doing some shopping or getting lunch, just doing normal things, and I'd see someone in the crowd. I'd suddenly spot someone and think to myself, 'That man's an alien.' And I didn't know why. I mean, it wasn't anything about them physically. They looked perfectly normal, perfectly human. But I'd look at them, and I'd know that was just a disguise, that underneath that human skin, there was this skinny little thing with huge, black eyes and gray skin, watching me."

"And how did that make you feel?" Doctor Lippman asked.

Jill's eyes were staring up at the ceiling, but in her mind, she was right back there on that crowded street all over again. "Terrified," she said. "I remember the first time it happened, I turned around and started walking the other way, really fast. I was almost running, I was shoving people out of the way, I was so sure that he'd come after me, catch up to me and rape me."

"Rape you?" Doctor Lippman asked. He kept his voice even and professional, but Jill could still hear a bit of surprise in his tones.

"Yes," she replied, surprised at how calm she sounded. "It was always the same, whenever I saw them. I knew they wanted to have sex with me. I never thought they were going to use force, but at the same time...I was sure that if they decided to have sex with me, I wouldn't be able to stop them. They'd use something, some...alien device...and I'd just have to do what they said."

"You said, 'whenever I saw them'," Doctor Lippman said as he wrote something down on a pad of paper. "How often did you see them, these aliens?"

Jill frowned in concentration as she tried to think back over the last thirteen months. "Maybe once a week at first...sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. It's been happening more frequently, though. Now I see them almost every day, sometimes more than once a day. It's like...I dunno, like they're stalking me." She sighed. "God, I sound so paranoid."

"But you've never taken any action against these aliens? You've never acted on your fears?"

Jill shook her head. "No, never. I've been too frightened. All I could ever think of when I saw them was getting away before they had sex with me."

"I see," Doctor Lippman said. "Jill, have you had any problems with relationships?"

Jill smiled ruefully. "I think you need to have relationships before you can have problems with relationships," she said. "Sorry, Doc--do you mind if I call you Doc?"

"Not at all," Doctor Lippman said. "Whatever makes you feel more comfortable."

Jill nodded. "It's just--I'm not really looking for a relationship right now. I'm pre-law, and I don't really have the time to devote to a boyfriend. That's a decision I made four years ago, when I first started college, I don't think it's got anything to do with this."

Doctor Lippman nodded, but he wrote something down in his notes anyway. Probably something like, 'Patient hasn't been laid in way too long, is imagining alien sex fiends'. "And the dreams, when did those start?"

"I..." Jill chewed gently on her lip, an old nervous habit she'd never quite been able to get rid of. "I'm not really sure, Doctor Lippman. I don't usually remember my dreams, you see. But I've been having trouble sleeping for a while now, maybe nine or ten months. I think that I might have been having the dreams that long, and just not remembering them."

"What sort of trouble sleeping?" Doctor Lippman asked. "Were you having difficulties getting to sleep, or waking up in the middle of the night?"

"No," Jill said confidently, "I never have trouble staying asleep once I finally crash. I sleep like a rock. But I do have trouble getting to sleep. That started...six months ago? Seven? I'd get all tense, start finding excuses not to go to bed, but I'd just get so tired after a while that I couldn't stay awake. Sometimes I'd crash in the living room, or even at the kitchen table, because I was trying to stay up and got so tired so fast that I couldn't get up to go to bed."

"You said that was six or seven months ago," Doctor Lippman noted, "but you said your trouble sleeping started nine or ten months ago. How did the trouble start, then?"

"I'd wake up disoriented," Jill said. The words seemed somehow inadequate to describe the sensation. "It was like I wasn't sure if I was really in my own room at first, like I thought I was...somewhere else. I'd get panicky, I'd need to reach out and touch the pillows and blankets to reassure myself I was really in bed."

Doctor Lippman made a few more notes. "And then the dreams started...?"

"About...three weeks ago?" Jill said uncertainly. "Maybe a month ago, I'm not sure. Like I said, I don't usually remember my dreams, and it started with just little flashes of memory. I'd remember a fragment here, a fragment there. But it started getting clearer every night."

Doctor Lippman nodded. "Did you think about keeping a dream diary? Noting the dreams down while they were still fresh in your memory? Many people who think they don't remember their dreams find that they actually do remember on first waking, but that the dreams simply fade from their consciousness shortly after coming out of sleep."

Jill shook her head. "No, it's not like that. I remember them clearly now, but I didn't then. It was the same dream, every single night, but I got better at remembering it, better at fighting..." She caught herself. She'd been trying not to think of the events of the dreams as 'real', but they'd gotten so vivid that it was hard to keep track of the difference between fantasy and reality sometimes.

Hence her decision to visit a psychiatrist, she reminded herself. "Tell me about the dreams," Doctor Lippman prompted her.

"It always starts the same," Jill said. "I close my eyes to sleep, and then I open them, and I'm...somewhere else. Somewhere dark. The walls are dark blue, and there's a sort of a couch in the middle of the room. I'm naked, I'm always naked. Even if I've worn pajamas to bed, they're gone when I find myself in the room. I'm surprised to be there, I'm always surprised to be there, but...at the same time, it feels familiar. I get this strong sense of déjà vu, like I've been in this room lots of times, but I've just...forgotten.

"There are other people there with me, six or seven of them. Always men. At first, I'm relieved. I think, 'I'm in a strange place, but at least I'm not alone.' And then...they change." Jill shuddered as the memory replayed itself in her mind's eye. "They glow really brightly, like there's a light coming from inside them, getting brighter and brighter until I can't see the person anymore. And then the glow subsides, and they're all...aliens."

"Describe them for me," Doctor Lippman said, his pen scribbling rapidly on his note pad.

"I dunno," Jill said, "alien aliens. Like in Close Encounters. They're short, maybe four feet tall...skinny, too. Their skin is gray, it feels like a hard-boiled egg when you touch it. They're naked, and I can't see their penises, but..." She blushed slightly. "If you look close, there's a tiny little slit there, on their crotch. That's where their penis comes out when they get, um..." Her blush intensified. "Horny."

Doctor Lippman didn't react at all to her explaining the intricacies of alien genitalia. "Um...they've got big eyes," she continued. "Really big. Like, the size of a softball, but shaped like almonds. And huge heads, too. Big and bulbous. They look like, you know, aliens."

Doctor Lippman nodded. "It's the most popular cultural conception of what an alien looks like," he said. "They're generally termed 'greys', after the color of their skin. Many people have had experiences similar to what you're describing, Jill."

"I'm not stupid, Doc," Jill said sharply. "I know about that stuff. 'Fire In the Sky', 'Communion', all that. But this wasn't like that. They weren't talking to me, they weren't telling me about how we were all sky-children together or some bullshit like that. They were just standing there, looking at my body."

"And do you feel afraid, in the dream?" Doctor Lippman asked.

"Yes and no," Jill replied. "It's like my brain is split into two parts. There's a part of me that's just losing it, absolutely freaking out and wanting to run or cry or fight back, but it's like that part of me is behind a glass wall. I'm aware it's there, but I can't touch it. The rest of me, the part of me that's actually in charge of my body, feels...sedated. Just sort of placid and docile and passive. Like I'm accepting everything that happens to me. I think it's something they do to me when they take me to the ship." She paused, uncomfortably aware of how that sounded. "I mean, you know...in the dream, that's what I think."

"Of course," Doctor Lippman said. "And then what happens?"

"There are, um...variations," Jill said. "It always starts with the couch, though. They point to the couch, and I walk over to it and lie face down. There's a sort of place for my chin to rest, and it faces this bank of lights. And I look into the lights, and they start flashing. It's hypnotic, it draws my eyes into it. The patterns do things to my brain. Sometimes it makes me horny, sometimes it just makes me even more drowsy and passive. Sometimes I get giddy, euphoric and bubbly and just so happy to be the aliens' plaything. The little voice in the back of my head always tries to tell me to stop, but the lights just swamp it out."

Doctor Lippman made a few more notes. "And the aliens? What do they do?"

"It's always different. Sometimes they use devices on me." The memories were so intense that Jill felt like she was halfway in the dream even now. "There's all sorts of things that fold out from the couch. I can hear them, but I can't look away from the light. There's one they use a lot, it's a...a probe of some sort. It's thick, but it's got some sort of lubricant on it that makes it slippery, and they...they slide it into my butt. Sometimes they leave it there all night, just buzzing away inside me, while they do other things. Sometimes they use two probes, one in my butt and one in my pussy. I can't look away from the lights, but I can tell they're watching me.

"But they mostly fuck me," she continued. It felt a little weird, confessing all this to a total stranger, but once she started talking, it just all spilled out of her at once. "The couch unfolds these little stirrups that spread my legs apart to let them get inside of me. Sometimes they have me get up on my hands and knees. A few times, they had me lie on my back, once the lights had melted my brain down into mush. But whatever position they put me into, they almost always fuck me. Sometimes they use their fingers, but most of the time, their dicks slide out of that slit in their crotches, and..."

She shivered, whether from revulsion or arousal she wasn't quite sure. "They're prehensile. When they fuck me, I can feel their dicks, wriggling around inside me as they slide them in and out. Usually, I can't see them, but sometimes one will make me suck on its dick while another fucks me, and then I can see it. It sways from side to side like a snake, and it sort of wiggles its way into my mouth so I can suck it."

Doctor Lippman cleared his throat slightly. He sounded a little bit embarrassed, or maybe just distracted. "And how long does this last?"

"All night," Jill said. "One after the other, all of them taking their turns with me. When they're done, they change the settings on the lights, bring them up all the way. It starts making me really sleepy, like this white fog is settling down over my whole brain, and it's erasing all the memories of the night. Even the other part of me, the one in the back of my head, starts getting sleepy when they turn the lights up all the way. That part of me fights it, it tries so hard to keep the memories, but the lights just melt them all away, and I just get sleepy and empty and everything just fades to white...and then I wake up."

Doctor Lippman was quiet for a few moments. He finished making notes, and then he set his pen down. Finally, he spoke. "Jill," he said, "I'm going to ask you a question. There's no right or wrong answer, here, but it is very important that you be honest with me."

"Okay," Jill said hesitantly.

"Jill...do you believe what's happening in your dreams is real?"

Jill closed her eyes, clenching back a sudden and surprising burst of tears. "Sometimes," she admitted. "I'll wake up, and I'll be relieved that I managed to fight the memory eraser this time. Or I'll be studying, and I'll think of the dream, and I'll just get so angry--wondering what it is they want with me, whether they're studying the human sex drive, or whether they're trying to breed with me to create some sort of half-human hybrid, or--or I'll wonder why me, why I'm the one they picked for this. I'll start wondering if it was something I said, something I did, some factor that makes me susceptible to their control..." She trailed off.

"And then I remember that it's all in my head. It's just me, being cr--being irrational. It's not real." Jill wished she sounded more certain when she said that last sentence.

Her answer seemed to satisfy Doctor Lippman, though. "All right," he said. He picked up another note pad, and wrote something on that. "We'll talk more about this next time, Jill; in the meanwhile, I'm writing you a prescription for a mild sedative. It should help reduce the intensity of the dreams, and make them fade away quicker on waking. Understand, this is just a temporary measure. I don't believe in medicating your problems away. But this will help until we can make progress in your conventional therapy. Sound good?"

Jill stood up, taking the paper from his outstretched hand. "Yes," she said, her hands practically shaking in relief. "Thank you so much, Doctor Lippman!"

Doctor Lippman smiled. "I just want to get your life back on track, Jill. Don't worry. I'm sure that pretty soon, your nightmares will be a thing of the past."

Jill practically grinned from ear to ear when she heard that. She headed out of the office, a new spring in her step as she thought about a life once more free of nightmares, strange delusions and panic attacks in the middle of the street...

Doctor Lippman watched her go. After the door had closed, he sat there for a long moment, listening to make sure she hadn't decided to come back. Once he was sure, he relaxed his concentration and allowed himself to resume his true form.

He crossed the office to the bookshelf, and pressed a concealed switch. Instantly, the bookshelf slid aside to reveal a bank of computers and a video monitor. "This is Ensign Allippmiann, reporting," he said in his native language. "Commander, I regret to inform you that Subject: Jill Royce is beginning to overcome her conditioning. I questioned her while she was under a concealed Operant Conditioner on a low-level setting to ensure true answers, and from what she told me, it's safe to assume that memory blocks are already breaking down. I've given her a prescription that should suppress the process, but even so, I estimate that we have no more than four weeks remaining before she completely overcomes the Operant Conditioner's effects."

He winked at the monitor. "So basically, if you want to tap that fine human ass, Commander, you better get down here quick before we have to let this one go. Seriously, man, she is like...damn! I mean, we've had some hotties on the couch before, but this HILF has got it going on like Stacy's mom! Trust me, you gotta break off a piece of this, dude." Allippmiann practically popped a wiggly just thinking about her.

"Report concluded, Ensign Allippmiann signing off." He switched off the monitor and let the bookshelf slide back into place. And to think, his podmates told him that the Space Exploration Services would be boring...

THE END