Novel by the Day

What Is Novel by the Day?

2010-04-29T01:38:00.003-04:00

Image based on graphic composed at Wordle.

TO BEGIN READING THIS BLOVEL,

PLEASE CLICK ON CHAPTER ONE IN THE APRIL ARCHIVE -->

When it comes to writing, procrastination is one of my biggest problems. Even in college, I waited till the last minute to put that term paper together, relying on caffeine and sheer panic to kick me into putting the words on the page. So although I've always wanted, like most English majors, to write the "great American novel," the sheer scope of such a project was overwhelming. And with no novel deadline looming in my immediate future, the idea always got tossed on the back burner. Until now.

On his blog, JungleG, Jorge Escobar issued a challenge to writers with procrastination problems to write a blovel--a serialized novel in the form of blog posts. All of a sudden, the task seemed doable. So I took him up on it, and created Novel by the Day. So far I've written a chapter a day. Not a monumental achievement, I know. Not even a habit unless I can keep it up for a significant period of time. But it's a good beginning. And just the practice of writing daily, of having a reason to "show up at the page" is bleeding over into projects beside the novel. All of a sudden, I'm excited about writing again, and looking for any and every excuse to do it.

So if you've been suffering from writer's block for days, months, even years, and you have yet to scratch "write a novel" off your bucket list, I invite you--no, I dare you to take the Blovel Challenge. You never know where it might lead you.

Chapter Nine--Dream a Little Dream

2009-05-05T21:37:00.011-04:00

I usually wrestle with sleep, uncomfortable in a strange room. But the events of the day had exhausted me. I slept deeply. And dreamed. Dreamed about Hunter. The way it used to be with him. Before he sold out.

When we met, he was an acoustical engineer (with a reputation as something of a maverick) working for a defense contractor. I was a temp for the same firm, trying to scrabble together enough of a living from odd jobs to leave me the freedom to worship the muse when I chose. Fate, in the form of a mandatory company holiday celebration, threw us together. We were an unlikely pair, him with his overstarched shirts and black-rimmed glasses; me with my untamed hair and a skirt rescued from the bottom of my closet that morning. But we were both geeks in our way, resistant to corporate socializing, and inclined to sit in the back of the room making snarky comments about the human resources department and their juvenile addiction to parties.

They say people bond over their dislikes of other people. Well, Hunter and I bonded over our common distaste for the division's vice-president, whose mother had had the foresight to name him Dick. We both agreed he was one--especially after he stopped by our corner to reprimand us for not participating in the gift exchange while rearranging the foil-wrapped hershey's kisses piled on the table in front of us into neat rows like good little soldiers. When he turned his back, our eyes rolled in unison. It was kismet.

For the remainder of the six weeks I worked there, we met daily for lunch and far flung discussions of soundproofing and standing waves and string theory and vibrational healing. It wasn't a big step from there to experimenting with a few vibrations of our own on his waterbed. Yeah, the man owned a waterbed. I said he was a geek. At least he didn't have a blacklight hanging over it. And it wasn't in his parents' garage.

As it happened, it was in quite a luxurious house in a gated community--one of those yuppie places with granite counters and stainless steel appliances and a fountain in one end of the swimming pool. It was sparsely furnished though--it looked like all he had was leftover odds and ends from his college days and the obligatory big screen tv. Until you went in the studio downstairs.

It had probably been the home theatre for the previous owner; or at least part of it had. There was still a screen at one end, but the room was at least twice the size of any home theatre I’d seen. In Hunter’s hands it had become a sonic utopia. Soundproofed, meticulously tweaked, it held both drum and vocal booths, editing bays, racks and racks of high-end effects gear, and an SSL board that would have been the envy of any recording studio in town.

Off to the side was another room I assumed to be an additional booth of some sort, but when I tried the door, it was locked. Hunter made a joke about it being for his “mad scientist experiments.” He said he kept it locked because the equipment he used was really sensitive, and he hated to have to recalibrate it. It all sounded reasonable at the time. It was years later that I finally figured out what kind of experiments he had been conducting in that room, and realized that I had never really known Hunter at all . . .

Chapter Eight--The Hunt Is On

2009-05-02T23:51:00.003-04:00

I had never seen Korak so excited. It was his first interdimensional hunt, and his small frame practically quivered with anticipation. Personally, I found the transference into physical form thoroughly annoying. Too much sensory input overwhelming the capacity for reason. But I am old and jaded. My son is not. I have led many of these expeditions, which have become something of a rite of passage for our cadet classes.

It was quite a task holding the concentration necessary to perform the reduction into three-dimensional space. The parameters are tremendously restrictive; the natural tendency is to revert to light forms to avoid the terrible pressure of atmosphere, pull of gravity, slowness of time. But we are a disciplined race and train long and hard for these excursions. And we have learned to use a body design optimized for survival in this primitive field while providing the least resistance to its forces.

The coordinates of tonight’s raid were familiar. I had personally visited this triangulation point numerous times before. We had engaged in repeated practice runs to ensure that all the cadets would be able to maintain form while guiding their craft. A minor slip in concentration could have devastating consequences, trapping the unlucky ones in this limited reality or, worse yet, ending their existence altogether. Our colony had not forgotten the Roswell incident. Neither had the primitives, from what intelligence we were able to gather.

The objective was simple. Materialize in an isolated area, execute maneuvers, engage in weapons practice on some of the less sentient beings, and return to our own sphere of existence. Ours was not a martial society on the whole, and the excursions into 3-D were frowned upon by those of the colony who were aware of them, but our own security demanded that we have the capability to function at this level if the primitives should ever mount a threat. Certainly, they had not evolved that far, and were not likely to, but it remained a concern. And the amusement factor provided a certain incentive for our young to serve in the corps.

The jump into slow-time was wrenching, but the formation held together as it had during previous exercises. The cadets were performing well, selecting an area unlikely to provide primitive interference and selecting their desired targets. Korak’s concentration was palpable; he wanted to be one of the top hunters, qualified to return with a trophy or two from his kill.

It probably wouldn’t have seemed like much of a challenge from a primitive’s point of view, downing cattle with laser weapons, but to a hyperdimensional, actively applying physical force to a 3-D target while maintaining body image and avoiding the unintentional use of thoughtforms to accomplish the project was a tall order. So if those who were successful at the task chose to memorialize their foray with some crudely chosen bits of the unfortunate target, we tended to turn a blind eye. Even among hyperdimensionals, boys will be boys.

A red beam flashed from one of the other craft in the formation. It was premature; I had not given the signal to execute. But the beast was already downed, and it was too late to remedy the situation. I authorized, making a note to admonish the first shooter on our return.

It was only a momentary distraction, but one with terrible consequences. While my attention was elsewhere, Korak’s earlier excitement had turned into frenzy. Unused to the emotions occasioned by physical form, he lost control, firing wildly in all directions. There was a chain reaction among the other cadets. I could feel their thought force surge and disintegrate.

Try as I might to regain continuity, the formation wavered and fell apart. Three quarters of the force simply dematerialized. The remaining craft were scattered in several directions, zipping well past the appointed coordinates. The beasts on the ground below stampeded into the trees, making it difficult to get a clear shot.

Korak, determined to return with his trophy, piloted our craft east, toward a small herd outside a primitive habitation. I fought him for control, but the boy had always been willful, and his single-minded purpose overpowered me. He held my mind at bay, and hovered over his new targets. As he readied his weapon, I had the barest glimpse in my awareness that we had become targets as well. The explosion rang in my ears and I remember thinking that of all possible physical sensations, falling had to be one of the worst.

Chapter Seven--The Cattle Are Nervous

2009-05-01T20:41:00.003-04:00

The rumors had started again. People were seeing strange lights in the skies above the Sandhills. On the prairie at night, the stars seemed so bright, so close that we were intimately acquainted with them We knew when something was out of place. It made us all uneasy.

You could feel the tension everywhere. At the lumberyard. The feed store. Bootsie’s Saloon. Even as far away as the Super Store in Kearney. It was an undertone, you know. A buzz. A whisper of suspicion. You knew what they were talking about. They were afraid the cattle mutilations were going to start again. I was afraid too.

The last round had been about eighteen months ago. Two Angus and a Hereford on Skelling’s spread. Organs removed with surgical precision. Exsanguinated. The old man had been apoplectic. When he arrived at my home shotgun in hand, I thought he might actually put me out of my misery. But Bert, my foreman, talked him out of it. He insisted that I had been in Omaha for the past week, and had just flown the Piper Cub in that morning. Which was the truth.

But Skelling would never believe it. None of them would ever believe it. All because of that incident years ago when I was 13. There had been a mutilation then too. Only that time, it was on my ranch. And there was a witness to it. Pop.

“Old Martin,” as the neighbors called him, was always something of an outcast. He had strange ways, they said. He saw things, heard things that others didn’t. He drank too much. He spoke too little. He didn’t participate in the social life of the town. He ridiculed the Lutherans who did.

So when his prize Charolais bull was found lying by the roadside, genitals removed, anus cored out, one-eared like some bovine Van Gogh, people wanted to believe the worst, you know. And when he told them aliens had done it, that he had seen them with his own eyes, they threatened to institutionalize him. That’s when I told the Big Lie. It was me, I said. I had done it. I had been reading about satanic cults and it was a ritual sacrifice. Pop was just trying to cover up for me.

They were satisfied with that. My weekly visits to the county library had not gone unnoticed. This was not a community of readers. And the librarian there was reputed to be a communist. So they had no doubt she had introduced me to obscene and occult practices.

My mother wasn’t sure what to believe. But attending the local high school had became an impossibility. So she convinced Pop to take a mortgage on the house and sent me off to be reeducated at a school for wayward youth high in the Rockies..

At first, I believed I had gotten the best of the bargain. I had arranged an escape from that evil little town for most of my teenage years. And managed to stitch up the tattered shreds of my father’s reputation. My mother began attending Lutheran services every Sunday. Religiously, you might say. She learned to make frothy jello salads with mini marshmallows, you know. And she seemed to revel in the pity she received for her family’s indiscretions. Eventually the town attributed Pop’s increasingly bizarre behavior to his disappointment in his only son.

They hadn’t counted on me returning. On living there for another quarter of a century. Neither had I. They tolerated me while Pop was alive. But when he finally succumbed to the alcoholism and the madness, and hung himself in the horse barn, my reprieve was over. The icy silences turned to outright rudeness and occasional attacks.

I don’t know why I stayed. Stubbornness, perhaps? A need to prove myself, redeem myself? Maybe I was just too stuck. Too stuck in the loneliness, in the despair, in the cloud of futility and failure that I had come to believe I deserved. I was still punishing myself for giving up the one person I had ever really loved for some misguided sense of filial duty.

The dogs were barking. Not a friendly kind of bark. Not a someone’s coming up the drive bark. This had a note of panic in it, a tang of fear. Before I even slapped the screen door open, I could hear the bellowing of the half dozen dairy cows in the front pasture. But I knew better than to look there. They wouldn't come that close.

Instead I glanced west, to the range where the main herd grazed. The lights were there, all right, moving in silently just above the windbreak of cottonwoods along the river. There must have been at least a dozen of them. Small craft, you know. The stereotypical flying saucers. They were back. And they’d brought their friends.

Chapter Six--Stan Moves from Cell to Cell

2009-04-30T23:12:00.007-04:00

I knew calling 911 was going to be a mistake. I just didn't realize how big a mistake it would be; or how costly.

To begin with there was the time factor. I expected the whole business to be wrapped up in an hour or so. That would still leave me time to get to the office before the auditors even had a good start on their coffee and donuts. Sherry, my assistant, was an expert at stalling people, and my e-mail was already in her inbox, giving her detailed instructions.

But when an hour had gone by, and I was still waiting for an officer to get to the scene, I began to get nervous. Traffic was picking up, so I had put the car in neutral and pushed it further to the side of the road. I made another call. The dispatcher was frosty.

"They're on their way, sir. We do have to prioritize our calls due to the cutbacks. Please remain in your vehicle, and wait for the officer."

Like an idiot, I waited. I thought about just taking off and forgetting the whole incident, but they had my cell number. They’d track me down. And beyond that, there was Alyss. Why it should matter to me at this late date, I’ll never understand, but I needed to know what had happened to her.

Exactly one hour and forty-eight minutes after I’d made the first call, a sheriff’s deputy pulled up behind me. He got out and made his way to the window of my car.

“License and registration, sir.”

“What?”

“I said, license and registration.” His hand moved nervously to the side of his Sam Browne. He looked to be about the age of my youngest son. “Lucky me,” I thought. “I got the rookie.”

I pulled my license out of my wallet and reached with exaggerated caution for the glove compartment to get my registration, explaining what I was doing as I went. He seemed twitchy. Fortunately the registration was on top of the pile of papers, and I handed it over respectfully.

“So, where’s the driver of the other car?”

“I’ve been wondering that myself.”

“What do you mean? Did they flee the scene?”

“They were never at the scene, near as I can tell.”

The muscle at his jaw twitched. "Mr. uh . . ."

"Helms. Stanley Helms."

“Sir, I don’t have time to play games.”

“I’m not playing games,” I assured him. “The car was sitting in the middle of the road when I got here. I damn near hit it.”

“So how come it’s on the shoulder?”

“I pushed it there. I was afraid someone else wouldn’t be as lucky as I was.”

He had begun taking notes. “And you never saw the driver?”

“No, she was missing when I got here.”

He gave me a quizzical look. “How do you know it was a female?”

“She left her purse in the car. And it just so happens, I know the person. She used to work for me.”

My brain was screaming at me to shut my mouth and shut it fast, but my body wasn’t getting the message.

“I don’t know what happened to her, but I’m worried. It’s not like her to just abandon her car in the middle of the road that way. I mean we weren’t always on the best of terms, but I still care about her. You know, as a person.”

Somewhere in the middle of this speech, the officer twisted his neck to his shoulder and made some indecipherable noises into his radio. Backup arrived in record time, considering how long it had taken the first deputy to get there.

“Sir, step out of the car, please.”

“Sure, officer, sure. But I haven’t done anything wrong.” I opened the door and got out.

“Come around to the front and put your hands on the hood.”

“Is this really necessary? I haven’t done . . .”

“On the hood.” The second deputy moved menacingly towards me.

I did as I was told. They had me searched, cuffed, and in the back of the squad car in a matter of minutes. “At least they’re efficient at something,” I thought wryly.

They made a cursory search along the roadside to see if they could locate the missing driver. It was fruitless.

“We’ll have to take you in for questioning. We’re holding you as a material witness. We have probable cause to believe there’s been foul play here.”

I didn’t argue. You just can’t fool fate. I had started out that morning thinking I could stay ahead of the system, and now I had no doubt that by the end of the day I’d be making a perp walk in an orange jumpsuit for something I hadn’t done. I just hoped they kept the TV cameras at bay.

Chapter Five--Alyss Meets the Aliens

2009-04-29T22:43:00.000-04:00

Okay, so the aliens weren’t at all what I expected. As I passed through the belly of the craft and regained some semblance of my normal appearance, I was thinking frail, bug-eyed little guys with skin like a half-cooked sausage. I figured I could take a few of them before they got me in restraints. The fall would be a bitch, but . . .

Wrong. These weren’t your run-of-the-mill Roswell aliens. These aliens had ties. Brown shoes. Bad comb-overs. Clipboards for crying out loud. They looked for all the world like clones of Donald Trump. One of them tapped his foot in time to the Neil Diamond music piped into the conference room where I had materialized. It was a scene straight out of the corporate job I had run screaming into the night from a decade before. All things considered, I believed an anal probe would be preferable.

A brown-haired clone who smelled faintly of cologne stood at my elbow. The name tag on his suit read "Perry."

"Mrs. Reisling is aboard, Commander."

“Have a seat, Mrs. Reisling,” the one at the end said. He was shuffling through about an inch and a half of papers in a manila folder. No comb-over here. This guy had a buzzcut straight out of the 1950s. For a brief second I considered doing the timewarp.

He looked unflappable. I decided to see if he was.

“That’s Ms.,”

“Huh?”

“I said that’s Ms. The divorce was finalized three months ago.”

“Oh, oh I see. Ms. then. Have a seat.”

“Have a seat??? Are you kidding me? You yank me out of my car in the middle of the night with some ubertechnology, hijack me into a flying boardroom, and all you can say is ‘have a seat?’”

“You can stand if you want to Mrs., er Ms. Reisling. But I think you’d be more comfortable in a chair. This may take awhile. You can rest assured that everything will be made clear in due time.”

“You’ve got a lot of damn nerve kidnapping innocent civilians like that. What about my gear? What if someone steals it? That stuff is irreplaceable. I’ve got a 1972 Gibson EB-0 in that car. Do you have any idea . . .”

Old Buzzcut sent a meaningful glance to the man sitting closest to me. “Perry, handle that please.” Perry stood up. By the time I saw the hypo, it was already taking effect. I sat down. Fortunately Perry had the presence of mind to scoot a chair under my butt before I did.

"Now where were we? Ah, yes." He made a steeple with his hands. "I was about to explain to you that your husband . . ."

"Exsh-hushband." I felt almost as rubbery as I did in mid-air. But my mind was working just fine.

"Ex-husband, then. Whatever you want to call him, Hunter Reisling is on board this vessel. And we want you to talk to him."

"Huntersh here? Whatsh he doin here? No. Wait jusht a minute. I don't want to shee him. I never want to shee him again. He'sh . . ." Damn, it felt like I had a mouth full of novacaine. "He'sh a traitor. He betrayed ush all, the mushic, everyshing . . ."

"That's enough. I won't hear him spoken of that way. Hunter was . . . is . . . one of my best men. He's sacrificed everything for his country. His work, his home, his reputation . . ."

"Hish wife." The tears started rolling down my face. I couldn't stop them. Yeah, I like to think I'm tough. But this pain cut deep. I was racked with sobs. The night's events had taken their toll and exhaustion was setting in.

The Commander was no dummy. He could see he wasn't going to get anywhere with me in this condition. He slapped the file on the table and gave Perry a brisk nod.

"Find her some suitable quarters. We'll pursue this in the morning."

Morning? Surely it was already morning by now. But I had no way to tell. There were no windows, no clocks, no natural light. My watch was apparently not rated for space travel. I wiped my face on the sleeve of my denim jacket. I thought about putting up a fight, but the heart had gone out of me. I let Perry half lead, half carry me to a small cubicle at the end of a maze of corridors, and flopped like a rag doll on the narrow bed. I wanted to take off my shoes, but I couldn't work up the energy. Man, those things were gonna stink in the morning.

So Hunter was here? When he disappeared, I thought he had run off with someone from the lab. Arabella maybe, or Jessa, the one who was always talking about her boob job. What in the world was he doing here? And what did they expect me to talk to him about?

I was crying again. Damn. I never do that. I buried my head in the pillow and let the grey fog of sleep fill my mind. Maybe when I woke up, this would all just be a bad dream. Yeah, sure. Like I'd be that lucky.

Chapter Four--The Commander and The Cataleptic

2009-04-28T19:06:00.011-04:00

My communicator implant crackled, then beeped. I scratched my head involuntarily. You’d think the engineers would have worked the bugs out of these things by now.

“Command.”

“We have her locked in the reverberator field, sir. Shall we bring her aboard?”

“Bring her aboard, Perry. Use your bosun’s whistle if you like. I know you’re a student of history.”

“Afraid it’s in my quarters, sir.”

“Ah., pity. Carry on then. We’ll be waiting in Conference Five.”

“Aye, sir.”

I fingered the thick file under my arm. This was going to be a difficult interview. The woman was an unknown quantity. Well, not unknown exactly, but certainly unpredictable. We didn’t know how much she knew. And she wasn’t likely to take this little interruption of her life graciously. No, this one was going to require finesse.

I wasn’t happy about this project; hadn’t been from the beginning. It went against the grain of all that I had been taught in grammar school about liberty and self-determination and constitutional rights. I was sure Jefferson had been spinning in his grave for some time now looking at what a mess we had made of the great American experiment. But this was a question of national security. And if the nation didn’t survive, what good would any of those high-minded beliefs do anyway?

On my way to the conference room, I took a little detour to the psychpods and looked in on Reisling. There hadn't been any change.

* * * * * * * * * *

I like the colors. But most of all I like the sounds. Sounds, rounds, wounds. Hehehe. I made a rhyme! It’s rhyme time. Rosemary and thyme.

I think I dated a girl named Rosemary once. In high school maybe. Rosemary. Rosemary. Yeah, Rosemary Daley. That was it. With the long brown hair parted in the center. And the braces. Good God, the braces. I used to be afraid to kiss her, afraid those metal contraptions would liplock us forever. That was a long time ago.

At least I think it was. It feels like it was. But something seems to have happened to my sense of time. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. A day? An hour? A year? It’s like there is no time and there’s all time all at once. What was that song Garrison Keiler sang on that radio show? It seemed funny at the time. See time, time, and more time hehehe. Here's how it went: ”time exists so that everything doesn’t happen all at once; space exists so that everything doesn’t happen to you.”

I seem to be in a place like that. No time, no space. It’s everything and nothing and there’s memory but is it memory or is it real? Wasn’t that a commercial? Memory? Memorize? Memorex? The guy sitting on the couch with his hair blowing back? Maybe I’m just imagining that. I. I. I. Imagining I imagined it. Hehehe.

I think about I, but I don’t know who I is. Is there an I if I’m the only one that talks with I? Is there anything outside of I? There must have been once. There was Rosemary, right? And Elaine, practical old Elaine. That lasted a long time as time goes. As time goes by--dum de dum-- I realize--dum de dum-- just what you mean--dum de dum--to me . . .

Alyss loved that song. Loved by my beloved Alyss. Alyss with the Cheshire Cat grin. Alyss with the Mad Hatter eyes. Chasing down one rabbithole after another. Maybe we chased down one too many. Maybe we . . . but I can’t remember. That’s where it gets foggy. White rabbit. White rabbit. Something happened. Something changed. An instant unraveled into an eternity and all the music went away . . .

I like the colors. But most of all I like the sounds. The sounds the sounds go round and round. Hehehe.

Chapter Three--Oh Pioneer

2009-04-27T20:37:00.003-04:00

I’m a rancher. My father was a rancher, and his father before him. I was born to it, you might say. Family tradition. We’re old Norwegian stock. Pioneers.

There was a time when I thought I could escape my destiny. Outrun the demons of my DNA. I would move to the city. Avoid the pitying glances. Evade the narrow minds. Walk down the street without someone saying, “There’s Old Martin’s boy. You’d never think it to look at him, would you?” Because they wouldn’t let me live it down, you know. Not then. Not ever. Small towns have long memories.

But I never quite reached escape velocity. Oh, I moved to the city. Got accepted into the pre-med program over to Lincoln. Met the most remarkable girl. Made plans for the future that didn’t include mending fences and fixing windmills and tending stock. I dared to believe I had put the past behind me. And while it lasted, it was bliss.

Alyss wasn’t like any other girl I’d ever known. There was no beauty there to speak of. She wasn’t tall or blonde or particularly well-endowed. She was small. Dark. Freckled. At first glance, she looked unkempt, frumpy even. She favored flannel shirts, torn jeams, buffalo sandals. But there was something in the way she looked right through you; something in the way she laughed. It was mesmerizing.

She seemed to have been born lucky, succeeding at everything she tried. Not that she was cocky about it. In fact, she did everything in her power to avoid drawing attention to herself. She just had this unshakeable confidence at the core of her being that she could do anything she set her mind to. She had me convinced that I could do the same.

And then my mother died during my senior year and my fate was sealed. Pop couldn’t take care of the ranch. Hell, he couldn’t even take care of himself. I was trapped, just as I had always known I would be. Penned in as neatly as a calf on branding day.

I never made it to graduation. Never got the degree. And I never said goodbye to Alyss. It was her eyes, you know. They were an amber sort of brown and deep, so deep you could lose yourself in them. And somewhere at the bottom, where even her laughter never reached, there was this terrible, wounded sadness that hinted at tragedy too great to bear. There were things she never spoke about. And things she never asked about. We were kindred souls. I knew she’d understand why I left so silently. And I knew she’d never seek me out.

Chapter Two--Stan Has a Close Encounter

2009-04-26T18:49:00.006-04:00

The drive from Merritt Island to Orlando is usually a peaceful one, something I look forward to, a time to think through my checklists of things to do for the day before I get to the office. I started out at 5 a.m. this morning because it was going to be a long day with the auditors. I wanted to make sure I had my ducks in a row. There were going to be questions about the vendor situation, and I wanted to be sure I had my answers down pat. They already suspected the fraud, and it was up to me to convince them that they were mistaken about the whole thing. I was going to need all my powers of concentration and persuasion to make this problem go away.

The road was still dark, with the sun just starting to break over the horizon, and I was lost in thought. Smoke from the recent muck fires obscured what visibility there was. So when I took my eyes off the road for a second to scan my blackberry for any early e-mails, I didn’t see the Scion parked in the middle of the road—at least not until the last minute. I slammed on the brakes, swerved to the side, and nearly rolled my SUV into the ditch trying to avoid the collision. Having escaped death by mere fractions of an inch, I sat for a moment gripping the steering wheel and trying to breathe. And then I let loose with a barrage of profanity the likes of which hadn’t escaped my lips since my football days at the University of Florida.

I jumped out of my car and ran up to the offending vehicle, intending to pulverize what I expected to be some drunken college kid who had fallen asleep after a night of carousing. But there was no one in the car. The driver’s window was open, the keys were in the ignition, there was a purse on the passenger seat, and what looked like half a ton of music equipment in the back. So where was the driver? No one in their right mind would leave all that sitting in the middle of the road where anyone could come along and take it. I reached gingerly into the purse and pulled out the wallet, looking for some form of identification. As I flipped out the driver’s license to take a look, I felt the shock of recognition. Alyss B. Reisling was the name on the card, but that wasn’t the name I knew her by all those years ago. And there was no mistaking that face—I had never met anyone else in my life who had that strange way of crinkling her eyes, that mocking twist to the corners of her mouth. It was Alyss all right. But what had happened to her? And what was her car doing parked in the middle of a road through the Florida swamp?

Chapter One--Alyss Becomes a Gumby

2009-04-25T11:46:00.008-04:00

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 . . .