My dinner ready, I settle into the corner of the family room couch with my plate and snap on the TV. But as I navigate the home screen, none of the apps seem to work, just black screens on all of them. I finish what I can of my sandwich—it doesn't taste as good as I wanted it to, eating alone—and head to my mother's study. I’m hoping there's something in there, a scribbled note or calendar, that will give me a clue as to where she is.
Ignoring the door to my stepfather's study, which is usually locked anyway, I find hers open. I half expect her to be sitting at her desk, glasses perched on the end of her nose, reading from some science journal or another about how microwaves affect animal reproduction or something like that. Her head would pop up and she'd say something like, “Did you have your dinner already? I can whip us up a couple of cowboy omelets.” But she's not there, and my heart sinks a little further. I never thought I could miss anyone this much.
The books are floor to ceiling in her study, even more than the M.G.'s. And I know for a fact that she's read each and every one of them. She once told me that since she reads so many books, every time she finishes one, she signs her initials in the corner of the front page, that way, if she forgets, it'll remind her later that she's already read it.
I let my hand glide over the polished wood shelves and choose a book at random. Sure enough, there's her signature inside. I even think I can smell the scent of her perfume—gardenias—her favorite flower. Her white sweater is folded over the back of her desk chair. I pick it up and bring it to my nose. That's it, her perfume. I put the sweater around my shoulders and flop down in her chair. The leather is soft. The sweater is soft. At least I can imagine that she's here.
One of the drawers in her desk sticks out and catches my eye. The rest are closed. I pull it open and find old cassette tapes inside. Beneath them is a cassette player. I used to have one in my room when I was little, only mine was white with pink and yellow swirls decorating it. Two of the tapes are labeled in her hand writing—Monday, May 12, sixteen years ago, two months before I was born. The second one says Friday, June 13, a month before I was born, sixteen years ago. Dr. Plonkey is written below each date.
I pop in the first tape and press play. The voices are grainy and sound far away, but I can make out what they're saying just fine. My mother's voice sounds worried.
“We don't know what's wrong with the animals at Earth-Skylabs. We've narrowed it down to some sort of gene mutation that makes some of them susceptible to a virus we haven't identified yet.”
“Then you know nothing?”
“I wouldn't say that, doctor. But we don't know what's causing it. Every scientist has the same mindset going in about the ever-changing history of physical laws. Part of the in-training for a scientist is to set firm boundaries around what you know is the nature of reality and not let anything sway you from that, not religious beliefs, not popular opinion. It's comfortable that way, to maintain this arrogant belief that you're going to explain everything in the universe sooner or later, to keep a rather narrow set of fences around yourself.”
“What do you think is going on?”
“I have a hypothesis, but I could never tell any of my colleagues about it.”
“Does it have anything to do with what we've already talked about?”
“Yes, it relates to... them.”
“As your psychiatrist, I have to say that I would never agree that you were actually taken on board a spaceship. That would be just as irresponsible for me to do that as you were just saying it would be for you to let religious beliefs interfere with scientific discovery. But that being said, I think the phenomenon is worth studying.”
“As your patient, I have to remind you that I am not paying you for your opinion. You're paid to listen.”
“But you must consider that our society has made an innate fear out of alien invasion. The Cold War, out of body experiences, child abductions, have all followed and been influential in shaping the way we view reality. The fact is that most alien abductees don't recall their experiences outside of hypnosis. And I have serious misgivings about that especially when most can be explained by sleep paralysis coupled with the sensation of being awake when in fact still in a dream state. Haven't you noticed that most of the stories end with the abductee awakening in their own beds with no physical evidence of having actually been through the ordeal they claim?”
“Stories? You make it sound like fairy tales. And yet, despite being dismissed by the medical community at large, some have physical traces.”
“Didn't you say that your migraines started afterward?”
“Yes. And being a sixteen year old with migraines meant missing a lot of school. It caused a lot of problems for me.”
“Tell me about what happened that night.”
“I remember the sights more than anything. My body was numb. It was almost like I was moving underwater, slow and without effort. My mind was not my own. You know that feeling when you've had too much to drink, but you still have all your faculties? It's like you're in a tunnel and you just want to reach the end, so you do what they ask of you. You know you don't have any recourse. So, you sit, you lie down, then you close your eyes and try not to feel while you wait for it to be over.”
“I notice that you're speaking about your experience in the third person.”
“There's a good reason for that. The person that this happened to all those years ago doesn't exist anymore. It's not me. I was a teenager then. Today, I’m a wife, a scientist, and I’m going to be a mother. My past has no place in my present.”
“Does your past have no place? Or are the past, present, and future all responsible for making you who you are?”
The tape winds to a stop. I sink back in my mother's chair, feeling numb.
Sixteen years ago, she talked to her psychiatrist about when she was sixteen. But what happened to her? Was she abducted by aliens? Is this where I get my fascination with extraterrestrial life, from her?
The second tape, this one dated a month before I was born, is staring at me from her desk. Part of me doesn't want to hear anymore, but I can't help putting it into the machine. I'm compelled to hear it, like seeing a scary movie to the end even though you're afraid of how it's going to turn out.
My mother's voice comes through clearer on this one.
“I know it's not our usual appointment, doctor. But I felt this couldn't wait.”
“What did you want to see me about?”
“It's something that happened today at work. I guess you could say I had a breakdown.”
“Does this have anything to do with your pregnancy?”
“No, everything's still on schedule for Lily's birth.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I just froze. I couldn't do my work anymore. I left and came straight here.”
“Tell me about it from the beginning.”
“You know it's my job to observe animals in experiments. Well, this one in particular, a bear cub, was injured, frightened, and unresponsive, not that that's so unusual. But after a while, they all calm down. It's almost as if she didn't respond to the intervention like all the others. It seems to have altered her permanently.”
“What kind of intervention?”
“Our field scientists go out into the river basin and bring back new specimens for testing, observation, and tagging.”
“We're talking raccoons, possums, squirrels, that sort of thing?”
“Sometimes reptile, but yes, anything that lives on land. Sometimes the occasional amphibian, but we don't touch the river. That's a different group.”
“Why does your lab conduct such research?”
“I'm not at liberty to say. I could give you the standard answer, but I feel that would put a wall between us.”
“Thank you.”
“I started questioning what I was doing, saying to myself, I don't think I can be a part of this anymore.”
“Why not?”
“What we're doing isn't right
, separating animals from their families, their homes, and bringing them into the lab.”
“It sounds to me like you're experiencing a perfectly normal reaction to becoming a mother for the first time.”
“I considered that too. But that's not it, at least not all of it.”
“These are just animals we're talking about, not humans.”
“That's what we're all supposed to think, isn't it? That it doesn't bother them, being abducted.”
“They're hardly being abducted.”
“Aren't they? I mean consider a more advanced civilization than ours with weapons more powerful and the ability to navigate space coming here to conduct experiments on us. The human race, even with our constant want of more and better, would be no match. I know first-hand how it feels to be taken from my home, my bed, where I was as safe as I knew how to make myself, alarm system, surveillance camera, police protection. It's all no use. It's no good at preventing someone from being taken against their will. No amount of preparation or self-protection can prevent it.”
“Let's not get paranoid. Your fear is perfectly natural, considering you're about to bring a new life into the world, a life that's vulnerable and dependent on you. You're scared, that's all. How are you sleeping?”
“I'm sleeping fine, considering that I could be taken anytime they wish.”
“There's nothing in our scientific world that can account for what you're talking about. It's all in the imagination, the mind. There's no real threat.”
“That's what I've tried to tell myself, but it doesn't work. Have you ever had your senses taken over so that your body becomes incapable of fighting?”
“Of course not. That's science fiction.”
“What about the mother bear? Perfectly capable of protecting herself and her cub against predators. She's done it so many times, she doesn't doubt her ability for a second. But she's never met a human being in her lifetime, never stumbled across one in the woods. But she's heard the stories from other bears about being taken against their will, about being unable to fight, having to submit to unwanted medical examinations, then returned to their dens, supposedly unharmed and unaware that anything out of the ordinary happened to them. But she didn't believe the stories, for her own sanity, she couldn't. Until one night, they show up to take her cub away from her.”
I hear my mother sobbing on the tape and it's almost too much for me.
“That's just what happened,” she goes on.
“We have no scientific evidence for abductions.”
“You mean none that's been acknowledged, don't you? Doctor, just because an enemy is unknown, does not mean it doesn't exist.”
“It seems to me that you're describing your abduction story. Are you ready to tell me exactly what happened?”
“What good would it do? Alien abductees usually never recover fully from their experience, even with therapy from a trusted professional. They sometimes retreat into their own world because no one believes that anything actually happened to them, that it was as you've said before, sleep paralysis, hallucination, or simply a bad dream.”
“I seem to recall reading a book by a prominent psychiatrist who specialized in treating victims who suffered paranoia or developed phobias after their abduction experience. I wasn't convinced that they would not have suffered these things even without their attached abduction story.”
“You keep calling it a story. It's not fiction. Anyone brave enough to talk about it risks alienation from society, possibly friends and family, loss of their jobs, or even their homes. Why would anyone risk so much to tell a story they won't profit from?”
“I would never think that of you.”
“The lucky ones like me have family to support them. But sometimes, just so I can sleep at night, I have to take drastic measures.”
“What kind of drastic measures?”
“Did you know that some aliens speak at eleven kilohertz? Their voices will trip an alarm. If they speak, that is.”
“What do you do to keep yourself safe at night?” The doctor sounds annoyed.
“Staying awake all night to make sure it doesn't happen again, or—once, when my husband was out of town, I tied my wrist to the bedpost so if they tried to take me, I would wake up.”
“Were you successful?”
“Do you mean does relocating to a new home in a new state throw a determined hunter off your scent? Would it work against a human abductor? At the lab, we laugh at tactics like that. An animal with a tracking device under its skin can be detected anywhere at any time.”
“Animals are different than we are. They're not as complex.”
“That's just how we justify our actions against them. Survival of the species, the health of the planet, all depend on the almighty human, that our superior intellects know best. We rectify, in our minds, walls between us, the human animal and the wild animal. We convince ourselves that we don't hear their pleas for mercy, that they're simply reacting in a state of fear, like a child who must get a vaccination for their own good. But we can't reason with the animals the way we can with children. We can't communicate with them anymore than an alien species intent on studying us can communicate with us. We say that we are responsible for the animals, that such simple creatures don't know what's best for them. We even take it a step further and say that our survival depends on the animal kingdom, that without a healthy balance, our species is at risk. Can we not imagine the extraterrestrial saying the same?”
“Surely you're exaggerating the cost to the animal.”
“Am I exaggerating the cost I've had to pay?”
“As you said, you're not a victim. You're well adjusted, have a successful career, a supportive family. You don't fit the abductee profile.”
“I think you're wrong to assume that there is one. Does the bear choose to be abducted?”
“If it's not your baby's impending birth, then what do you think may have triggered this response in you today?”
“Something one of the young new hires said brought it all back to me, like I was living that night when I was sixteen all over again.”
“Anytime we experience strong emotional reactions, there's unfinished business there. Tell me about what was said.”
“She said that our generation has it all wrong. We ask if it could happen. And her generation asks why.”
“Do you ask yourself why?”
“Every day.”
“You still haven't told me what actually happened.”
“I haven't wanted to bring it up before. I was more comfortable talking about marital problems. I was afraid that once I told you about it, it would dominate all of our sessions. And sometimes, I just can't think about it. I won't.”
“Are you ready now?”
“I don't have any choice now.”
There is a long pause in the tape then my mother's voice returns.
“I was in my bed alone. I was sixteen. I had just turned out the light. I’d been reading. I hadn't even fallen asleep yet. I remember seeing a bright light outside my window. I thought it was the hospital helicopter flying over our house. But there was no sound, and the jet engine on the helicopter was always so loud. I couldn't move. I wanted to, but I felt paralyzed. I must have blacked out because the next thing I remember is waking up in a foreign room. It was sterile, like a hospital. One of them hovered over me. They didn't look reptilian. They looked human with wide set eyes. I shut my eyes and tried to close out everything I felt and heard. It's been enough years now that I only remember bits and pieces. It's all disjointed. Nothing fits together.”
“It sounds to me like an abduction, but possibly not of the alien variety.”
“I never called it abduction before.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I never wanted to think of myself as a victim.”
“You're not a victim. You're a scientist, a wife, and soon-to-be mother. These are all respected roles in our society. Is it possible that you never told anyone becaus
e you knew you wouldn't be able to prove your story was true?”
“It's probable. If what the young woman at work says is true that our generation's got it all wrong, then we shouldn't be asking if people are being abducted by aliens, we should be asking why.”
“Does your husband know about what happened to you?”
“Of course not.”
“Why haven't you told him?”
“He's religious. I was afraid that it would frighten him. He tends to break all things down into good and evil. He's like my mother that way. He can't see in shades of gray.”
“CERN's Higgs Boson hadron collider illustrates that the nature of the universe exists along the middle path, neither chaos nor symmetry.”
“I'm impressed, doctor.”
“The Bible speaks of Jonah being taken away in a fish with skin of bronze. That suggests to me that a submersible craft, quote, swallowed him and spat him out. Then there's Ezekiel who was taken aboard a craft propelled by a wheel within a wheel and told of the future. Then there's the whole account of the Nephilim, the men who came down from the sky and bore children with the women of the Earth. Elijah gets abducted by a flying chariot of fire.”
“You sound like a believer, doctor.”
“As I said, I think it bears study.”
There is silence, then the doctor speaks again.
“You would be believed among other abductees.”
“Why did you say that I was possibly not taken by the alien variety?”
“Even though your story fits the typical scenario, it's possible that you weren't abducted by aliens from another world.”
Another moment of silence follows my mother's sigh.
“Doctor, there is nothing typical about what happened to me.”
The Bodyguard: an alien romance Page 7
