Field Observations Made During an Alien Abduction
1. Research Question
I’m having sex with an alien. He arrived around 2 am, stringing his hands around my neck to
slip me deeper into coma, like in the movies when the woman is screaming inside but sleep
paralysis freezes her, or in the X-Files when the bruises and the blackouts are from aliens
and Fox Mulder is the only one who believes.
The alien is tall. He moves purposefully, oil-slick eyes glistening. Can you see him?
2. Sampling Procedures
Nurses probe my body with hostile instruments. They’ve never been abducted by an alien.
One says, You have a very rare blood type.
Yeah, no shit, I mutter under my breath, probably caught that from alien sex.
Tensed in Exam Room 4, my rubber doll legs shifting the edge of my gown at
ridiculous angles, I feel the slime of grey cells spread upwards.
3. Control Group Study
The alien cries into my hair. I wonder if he remembers doing the things that put me in
hospital; his body caging mine against the bed until I couldn’t breathe.
I was a Sophomore, he was a Senior. On our second date, he boxed my hands in
hands and said, I will always protect you. Later, I wrote a paper on abduction experiences
and my professor said it was so good I could be a professor myself one day, but after college,
I was busy being a wife and I never had time for field notes.
The alien whimpers through sobs. I couldn’t stop.
4. Hypothesis
In my paper analysing the phenomenon of abduction, I included an appendix of photographs
of what are known as ‘scoop marks.’ When aliens take tissue samples, say people who believe
they’re abductees, they leave triangle marks, or a five-dot-circle.
Under the shivering bathroom strip light, none of my bruises look like triangles.
Back on the sour, rumpled bed, the alien sleeps deeply.
5. Situational Variables
I sit in the police station because a neighbour heard the dishes he sent crashing into the wall.
I wonder if these police know the right protocols for arresting extra-terrestrials, if his fingers
would even leave prints.
Once he said, I can see you when I’m not there. I can see through walls. I have X-ray vision. I keep a steady eye on you.
When the questions begin, I stare at the wall and say nothing. The alien behind the wall is pleased with my approach, I feel it.
6. Conclusion
Woman at gas station, eyes huge and dark-circled: Help me, the eyes say, I’m trapped. We are side by side, cooler doors enveloping us like some observation box up on the
mothership. Her fingers fluster a gallon jug of two percent milk. Her jacket sleeve skims my sleeve.
Over by the counter, her alien is drunk-shouting the scores to my alien.
Oh, they’re just so skilled at blending in.
It’s going to be okay, because you’ll get away one day, I want to say to her shaken
fingers, but can’t because now our aliens are buying Lucky Strikes and six-packs of Broken
Skull lager, fitting in perfectly. Tricky to spot if you’re not Fox Mulder.
I turn my head to the woman and stare as wide and fierce as I can. I believe you, I say with my eyes.
I believe.
Kate Horsley’s short fiction has appeared in a number of anthologies and magazines and placed in competitions including Bath, Bournemouth, Bridport, and Oxford. She’s a creative writing lecturer. www.katehorsley.co.uk