Kidnapped by Aliens

Alien Sighting by Nina Zolotow

First they gave me meds, antidepressants, sleeping pills, Xanax, stuff like that, it was a pretty classic case really, they said, all the symptoms, sleep disruption, loss of appetite, uncontrolled crying jags, anxiety attacks, usually the result of stress, body chemistry, hormones, childhood trauma, what have you, the drugs will help but you also need to talk to someone—so, I talked, it was like this: first there was this spaceship and I was staring at it, just kind of mesmerized and then, before I knew what was happening, a couple of aliens grabbed me and dragged me into their ship, where they did all kinds of bizarre experiments on me and it went on for days and days and they wouldn’t let me eat or sleep until I finally hit the absolute bottom, shivering with terror and wondering whether life was even worth living, the pain was that bad, I tell you, ending that pain, that anguish, was almost all I could think about, but I just rode it all out, surfed that wave, surfed that f***ing tsunami like the strong man I was, until they finally let me go, dropped me back on the Earth, broken, cracked wide open, sobbing, and it took me all night to walk back home, miles and miles of slogging through the mud in the pouring, icy rain, over two mountains and through three valleys, until I got back after all that to my own front yard where it had all started, and I have to say that they must have done something really weird to me because I just haven’t been the same since then, it’s like I’m a complete stranger in my old skin, and that’s it, pretty much the whole damn story—well, no, but the truth is just a dried up, overcooked turkey like the one we make every year at Thanksgiving because it’s been a whole year and we’ve forgotten about all the mistakes we made the last time, and when I consider that it was my own mind that betrayed me, that the self I thought I knew is gone forever, and that, goddamn it, this all might happen to me again, that’s all I want to say.