THE ALIEN ABDUCTION OF KATE AND ALAN

 It was unbelievable.  The saucers were real!

 The saucer looked like it landed in the woods.  Kate and Alan quickly changed clothes and went searching for it.  The next thing they knew, they were being worked on by aliens, getting their bodies changed, and their brains prodded.

 

 

 

They were finally returned to Earth, causing a news sensation.  They had trouble speaking, garbling their words which had a hollow sound.

 

 

After scientists examined them and kept them for days, they were finally allowed to go home.  The hardest part will be to learn to live like this for the rest of their lives.

 

 

 

Then one night a strange man came to Kate and Alan's door.  And the couple were never seen again.  There house was left vacant, their front door open.

And they lived happily ever after.

THE WHOLE STORY: 

       Kate first saw the light, and looked out the window.  It was not like any airplane, nor a star, nor anything that belonged in the ordinary sky.  It hovered without sound above the dark line of trees.
       “Alan,” she said quietly.
       Alan came to the window, wiping his hands on a dish towel, expecting something trivial.  But when he saw it, he stopped.  The light shifted, not drifting, not falling, but moving with intention.
       They stood together, saying nothing, because there was nothing sensible to say.  The world they knew had just loosened slightly at the edges.  “It’s real,” Alan finally said.  Kate nodded. 
       They went outside.  The night air felt unusually still, as if everything—crickets, leaves, even the distant hum of the highway—had been quietly turned down.  The object lowered itself into the woods.  It was not loud. It did not roar or blaze. It simply arrived.  A flying saucer.
       They felt no urge to run.  Instead, they felt somehow drawn to it.  The woods were thick and full of underbrush and stickers, so they quickly ran back inside and changed clothes, hardly speaking to each other.  They then went to the woods and carefully stepped their way to the strange light.
       Coming to a small clearing, they saw the large craft sitting there.  A seam appeared along its surface.  It slowly opened, and turquoise light spilled out.  They stepped closer.  And then—they were no longer standing in the clearing.
       Figures approached, holding objects that shined a light on them.  Kate reached for Alan’s hand.  They could not move because of the strange light.  Something pressed gently against them—not forceful, not violent, but absolute.  The beings led them to seats.  On them they lay back and could only accept what was happening.
       Tools were used on them they couldn’t understand, with methods that seemed to pass through them—seeing, measuring, altering.  Time lost its meaning.  There was no sense of minutes or hours, only a continuous unfolding of experience.  Kate felt something taken.  Alan felt something changed.  Neither could have said what.

       When they returned, it was morning.  They were lying on the ground near the edge of their yard, the grass damp beneath them.  Everything looked exactly as it always had.  Except it wasn’t.  They looked very different, with some large, tubular part on their faces, taking the place of their nose and mouth.  But their minds were fuzzy from the night’s experience, lessening the shock of their appearances.
       They stood slowly, walked back to the house, and sat at the kitchen table.  Kate tried to speak, but the words came out wrong.  Her mouth seemed full of tongue, which garbled her speech.
       Alan tried too, but the same thing happened.
       They looked at each other, understanding without needing to say it: Something about them no longer matched the world they had come back to.

       Doctors were called.  Tests were run.  Questions were asked.
       Kate and Alan tried to explain, but their bizarre faces and speech made people uneasy.  They told how they had been taken into a flying saucer, and this time it was believed.  
The many tests showed nothing conclusive.  No injury.  No illness.  The tubular features apparently were part of them, made of a stiff flesh, yet could be slightly extended or retracted at will.  Deep inside they still had regular mouths, but their tongues were long enough to extend to the edge of these tubular parts.
       Eventually they were sent home.

       Life resumed the best it could.  Kate and Alan managed to control their tongues enough to make their speech more understandable.  But they were of course self-conscious and knew how bizarre they appeared to others.  They were freaks.  So many reporters and the curious wouldn’t leave them in peace, so they no longer answered their phones or their door, but did agree to certain arranged interviews.  Although Alan was too introverted, Kate actually agreed to appear on a late night TV show, which had an audience of record numbers.  Flying saucers do exist.  A photographer took their portrait, which the couple actually hung on the wall in protest of their new earthly alienation.

       Then one evening, there was a quiet knock at the door.  Neither of them went to answer it.  But the knocking kept on, and quietly, so finally Alan opened it.  A man stood outside.
At first glance, he looked ordinary. But as Alan’s eyes adjusted, something became unmistakable.  The man’s face was formed like theirs!  He wore a long brown robe of unusual material.
       Kate stepped closer.
       The man looked at them both, and in his eyes could be seen friendship, even love.
“You are ready,” he said.  His voice carried the same shifted quality as theirs, but clearer, more certain—like a version of speech that had finally settled into itself.
       Kate and Alan did not ask questions.
       For the first time since their return, they felt something that had been missing—not fear, not confusion, but belonging.
       They stepped outside with him.  And they walked slowly and carefully through the woods.  In the clearing a different craft waited.  The door opened.  This time, there was no hesitation.  They entered.

       The journey was not felt in distance or time, but in change.  The world they had known fell away—not suddenly, but completely.  When they emerged, it was into a place unlike Earth.  The sky was deeper. The light softer.  The air carried a stillness that was not empty, but full and easy to breathe.
       And they were not alone.  Others were there.  Men and women, old and young—once ordinary, once human—now bearing the same tubular feature, the same subtle alterations. Their movements were calm. Their speech, though strange, was fluid and understood.
They gathered around Kate and Alan.  No one stared.  No one turned away.  No one found them unusual.  They were greeted, welcomed, and understood.
       In time, Kate spoke—and was answered without confusion.  Alan laughed—and was not met with silence.
       They learned that the others had come from Earth, taken as they had been, changed as they had been—not damaged, but adapted.  Here, nothing about them was wrong.  Nothing needed explaining.  They were no longer out of place.  They had friends.  They had purpose, though it unfolded slowly, gently, without pressure.  And they had each other—no longer isolated within a world that did not fit, but part of one that did.
       On Earth, their house stood open and empty, a quiet mystery, an unfinished sentence.
But elsewhere—far from that clearing, far from that sky—Kate and Alan began again.
       And they lived happily ever after.