I'd like to say the abduction was entirely unexpected. But the truth is, it had been a strange night all the way around. The gig had gone badly. Not quite "I wish I was behind some chicken-wire" badly, but not far from it. My bass amp had developed a tic that made it cut in and out unpredictably. The guitar player's new strings wouldn't stay in tune. The singer, thanks to free shots from his adoring girlfriend, stumbled over the lyrics to most of the songs in the last set. The drummer, who was in an increasingly pissy mood as the night progressed, decided to play everything at warp speed so he could make an early night of it. And that was before one of the jello-wrestling bimbos in the wading pool in front of the stage threw up on my shoes. Yeah, my favorite shoes.
So like I said, that night already had a weird little edge to it. But even so, when the engine of my oh-so-reliable brave little toaster suddenly cut out on a deserted road through the swamp between the coast and civilization, my first thought was of alligators, not aliens. The critters get a little feisty during mating season. I decided the best option was to stay in the car and call for road service. But when I pulled out my cell phone, it was dead. And my watch showed the time as 2:43 a.m. when I knew I had left the bar right around 2:30. The full moon, which had been lighting up my futile attempts to restart the car, suddenly winked out. Something was happening. Something really not good.
The swamp had grown oddly silent. No cicadas, no nightbirds. Not even a breeze through the palmetto. Just a vague, unsettling, subsonic rumble that I could feel, but couldn’t hear, like some faraway volcano getting ready to erupt. As I looked up through the windshield to see what had happened to the moon, I became aware of an immense matte triangle of black, unmoving and impenetrable.
It hovered noiselessly overhead, emanating pulsations of energy that shimmered like a road on a hot day. Waves of what felt more sonic than electric began passing through my body, tugging me upward. A few minutes before I had been a rather substantial form of flesh and bone, requiring size 10 jeans on a good day. Now I was a rubbery mass, apparently no longer bound to obey the laws of physics. I slipped upward through the seatbelt, through the roof of the car, steadily rising toward the blank black surface of the craft centered above me.
The absurdity of it hit me all at once. I wondered who had slipped something into my drink at the bar that had turned me into a freaking flying gumby, and when it would wear off. I wanted to believe that’s all it was. But the dread in what used to be the pit of my stomach wouldn’t let me. I knew that whatever awaited me inside that craft was going to change me forever. And I had a sneaking suspicion it wasn’t going to be a pleasant experience . . .
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