by Jonathan Fletcher

When I learned it wasn’t aliens who’d taken you from me, I was still in middle school. The school bus had just dropped me off at the end of the block. Dad was still at work; Mom, at her weekly church gathering. They had given me a key to the house. Everything I needed or wanted, I had. Except you.

Though only four when they told me, I’m still surprised I’d ever accepted their story: a brilliant beam of light that flooded our house, a saucer-shaped outline in the sky, screams from your bedroom, the levitation of your body, a wrinkle through the stars as whatever took you lifted and whizzed away.

But I believed it in enough to build a homemade crystal radio. Using a towel roll, aluminum foil, printer paper, wire strippers, and masking tape, I built one and mounted it outside my bedroom window. Regularly, I’d check for radio signals, hoping to locate your abductors, hoping to find you. “Come in, Emily, come in. Can you hear me? Are you there?”

The first time our father found me adjusting my antenna, he tore it down, then tore it up, all the while rebuking me, “She’s gone, Andrew; she’s gone.” My mother, on the other hand, never mentioned you again. Instead, she grew more involved with her church. With Bible studies and adult retreats, I think she tried to fill the large hole in her life.  That hole, though, wasn’t cruciform; it was you-shaped. But its need to be filled just as strong.

Though still surprised I believed our parents for so long, I wonder whether I secretly accepted that a UFO took you because the story made more sense emotionally. Surely, no earthling would intentionally expel one of their own. Surely, humans were more humane. Surely, extraterrestrials wanted contact only to harm us.

It’s only when I put our dumpster back in the garage that I wonder. Or spot a letter stuck to the bottom that I suspect the truth. Or open the envelope addressed to me that I know it. Or read the letter that I grit my teeth: you’re sure that Mom and Dad will hide this letter, too, and you’re sorry they haven’t let you see me. Or your child. Though far from me, you’re safe and well. I’m an uncle, and my nephew’s middle name is Andrew. Though he’s dark like his father, he has dimples like me. He likes to chase seagulls and build sandcastles at the beach. When I’m older, maybe I can sneak west and meet him. You’d love for me to stay with you both a while.

As I fold the letter and place it in my pocket, I brainstorm all the things I want to say to our parents but probably won’t when they return home. Toward them, never have I felt such a feeling as intense in my body as rage.

Or, for that matter, as alien.

Image by Derpy CG via Pexels