The Abduction, a True Tale

Here is my story. You may laugh at my fears, thinking me a madman. You may try to debunk my tale, believing that such evil abductions simply cannot happen. You may claim swamp gas, paranoia, or indigestion from the bean burrito.

I know better.

Listen.

The first time it happened was six months ago. I woke from a deep sleep Sunday morning about 5:00 a.m. As though I were in a dream, I put my clothes on, went to the kitchen, made myself some coffee, and sat down, wondering why my normal weekend routine had been so radically changed. I almost never work on Sunday, and yet I found I had my briefcase and laptop with me - almost as if I had known that I was being taken away.

I tried to recall what it was that made me do these preparations, but the memories were simply too foggy. It may have been the three margaritas with the chicken mole at Garcia's the night before, but it could have been the mysterious swarthy stranger hanging around our table with the platter of food. Could he have drugged me?

I heard a sound outside my window and I looked out, expecting to see one of the dogs in the front yard. What I saw instead was something that even today, after six months and many vain attempts to drug away the memories, makes my blood run cold and threatens to send me over the razor precipice of gibbering insanity.

I recalled the reports from the Patriots in my correspondence circle. Reports that told of tHeM sitting there, the soulless zombies waiting and watching, under strict orders from their Reptoid masters, men in body only, with their very minds and decency stolen away and replaced with the genocidal orders of a truly alien race of overlords: Spray! Poison! Debunk!

I saw them there in my driveway, waiting, with the cold faces chill in the predawn light, in their chariot of Satan himself.

It was the White Van.

Unbidden, a whimper of terror rose in my throat. In vain! -- as though I were a marionette, I found myself moving to the door of my house, still carrying my briefcase and laptop. My wife, trembling in fear, threw herself at me, as though her professions of love could keep me from my awful destiny. Staggering to the front hall, I noticed a large black bag on the floor. I knew that I had to bring it with me, for what reason I am not sure even today. I walked dazedly out to the White Van. A blank-faced reptoid slave, never saying a word, took my bag, placed it in the Van, and silently held the side door open for me.

Time has not softened the hideous happenstance of the next three weeks. I was taken to a large collection area similar to the ones reported throughout cyberspace - a collection and refueling point for Chemplanes. Passing into the reception area, surrounded by armed police, I could see scores - no, hundreds - of people like me, all with their briefcases and blank looks, laptops and longing faces, suitcases and shudders of terror, herded into small waiting rooms.

The MegaSprayers came.

As one of the many sacrificial subjects, I was herded into a line, bound into a seat. We roared westward over the ocean, spewing poisons over the California coast, the Aleutians, then southwards over the endless sea. For over eleven hours we flew, I strapped to my seat in the poison-producer, trying desperately to maintain my fragile hold to sanity by gulping liquid drugs and attempting to submerge my terror in sleep -- but to no avail.

At night, its tanks of poison depleted, its hideous work done, the MegaSprayer touched down.

I cannot even speak of the sights I saw, a strange race of humanoids, shorter than I, most with straight black hair, curious skin, and almond eyes.

The alien alphabet, an indecipherable conglomeration of angled paint-strokes. The ride through underground tunnels and over alien landscapes, surrounded by the almond-eyed humanoids who looked at me wonderingly and spoke a strange patter among themselves. Onward into a huge alien city, as big as New York and Chicago combined. Entering a lobby of a behemoth structure and going to the seventeenth floor.

The "meetings" or "debriefings" followed, for eight hours a day, a total of three weeks. Always the same almond-eyed humanoids, some speaking a version of English, asking me questions about my work and my deepest secrets. They kept concentrating on "details of the low-rate initial production logistics approach", over and over again. I was forced to draw tables and schedules while all the time they simply looked at me silently.

Worse yet, I found myself beginning to speak in their incomprehensible tongue, mouthing phrases like "Sumimasen ... ano ... maguro-no-sashimi arimaska, kudasai?" or "Watashi-wa gai-jin des', Nihongo wo sukoshi-sukoshi hanasimas?, gomen-nasai."

Finally, drained of information, of no further use to the almond-eyed aliens, I was placed on another MegaSprayer. Hours later, I found myself at the same concentration camp, where the White Van waited. Without a word, the Reptoid-serf bore me to my home.

Three times this year I have been abducted! The same White Van, the MegaSprayer, the almond-eyed aliens, the constant questions. Each time I approach closer to soul-searing madness, each time I find myself speaking more and more of their strange language, eating more and more of their strange foods, answering more and more of their strange questions.

I had hoped it was past. I had hoped I could recover my wits and equilibrium. I had hoped ....

But it is not to be.

I am cursed beyond measure, chained to a lifetime of abduction to an unknown alien city, where the Almond-Eyed Ones ask me questions and listen impassively as I gasp out my story.

Sunday morning they will come for me again. God help me. God help all of us.