Cosmic Captain: Chapter 2

Derrick sat on my couch with no complaints, but I wished I had gotten to vacuum it before he did. “A few years ago, my sister—Michelle—went missing for a week.”

“That’s how long I was gone.” I couldn’t stop myself from cutting in. My social skills had started to wane a bit since I didn’t interact with people too often anymore. Derrick just took it in his stride and kept talking.

“There was nothing physically wrong with her when she got back, but she didn’t remember what happened. Kept saying she was beamed into a spaceship and had been studied by aliens. Eventually she just lost it and we had to check her into an institution for her own safety.” He sounded guilty as he said it, and I noted that he spoke as if she hadn’t been telling the truth.

“Can I ask where she was abducted?” I assumed every abduction story was true until I saw signs that it wasn’t.

“Not that far from here, actually. Just outside of Houston.”

I had to stop myself from getting too excited as I hopped up and walked over to my cork board. “Me too.” Sticking another pin in the map, I realized just how big that cluster had gotten. Almost as big as the jumble of pins near Roswell, New Mexico.

If I’d had known that moving to Texas—to Houston—to be closer to my job’s home base would have resulted in being abducted by aliens, I would have stayed near my parents in New York. As it was, I couldn’t bring myself to leave; not when I knew I could find them again.

And what? I always asked myself. Prove that it’s true? Maybe that would be enough. I just needed to know I wasn’t crazy.

“Lot of abductions in Houston?” Derrick was looking over my shoulder at the map, and I skirted away from his nearness. I didn’t know why I’d had the stupid idea to be ‘normal’ by going on a date. Touching people had sort of been out of the question since my experience, and I didn’t even like people being too close.

“Yes, it’s a hot spot for ET.” Chagrined, I bit the inside of my cheek. Wasn’t I trying not to sound crazy? As it was, I was one loose screw away from have a ‘The Truth is Out There’ poster. “Do you mind telling me what Michelle remembered about the aliens? Or what happened to her?” I knew what I remembered, but I always made sure to have other people tell me their experience first. It was how I sniffed out the liars.

Derrick shrugged. “Michelle didn’t really talk about how they looked much. Other than that they had too many eyes. She talked a lot about the smell, though. Said that the chemical smell was like nothing on Earth.”

I nodded in sympathy. That sounded all too familiar. There was something about the scent of something completely alien to you that you never forgot. Remembering that smell was part of why I was so sure it had happened. Too many eyes tracked as well. I could vaguely remember tall, gray shapes with bald heads and slanted, solid black eyes. They’d also had a secondary set of smaller black eyes directly below the primary pair. I’d drawn the creatures multiple times, never doing them justice; my memories of the aliens’ appearances were pretty hazy.

Already, I thought Derrick’s sister’s story could be real.

“You said you had to institutionalize her, though? Because she was getting violent?” At the question, all that shame and guilt filtered back into Derrick’s face. For some reason, he seemed to feel responsible for the situation.

“I was babysitting her at my parents’ house—they never wanted her left alone—and I talked to her. She was so rational and level-headed about her story that I almost believed her. And then she took too long in the bathroom and I didn’t notice.” He got a sick look on his face and put a hand over his mouth.

“If you don’t want to—”

“No, it’s good to talk about it. Maybe you have insight?” Derrick looked almost hopeful, then continued. “When I checked on her, she was totally different. She ranted and raved about how the aliens had microchipped her and that she didn’t want to go back. I couldn’t stop her from trying…trying to get it out. She cut her own ear off before I was able to get the razor blade from her hands. She was hospitalized the next day.”

My hand involuntarily flew to the back of my left ear, fitfully tracing the gnarled scars from when I’d tried to remove my own microchip. Countless times I’d dug under the skin for it, certain it was just below the surface. After nothing had turned up on x-rays I’d been promptly prescribed therapy and schizophrenia medication, and I’d learned to live with the thought of it being there.

Whatever it was couldn’t be detected by human equipment, and I doubted I could get it out unless I was very lucky. For all I knew it was embedded in my skull. I didn’t know what it meant or what it indicated about the extraterrestrials’ purpose for me. All I knew was that every time I thought about it, my skin itched and I wanted to reach for a knife to try and dig it out one more time.

“I still have mine, I think.” My voice rasped, and Derrick’s brows drew together. “Look, I know you think your sister is delusional. You think I am too. But I can’t provide any insight that she hasn’t told you. Her experience is the same as mine.”

He looked a little disappointed. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted me to tell him that aliens were real, and was more interested in getting someone to help him understand what he thought were his sister’s delusions. But then his expression became more determined.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay. How are you going to prove it?”

I balked. This was ridiculous. “I can’t tell you that. It’s not safe, they could be listening at any—”

“All this is to find them, right?” He waved over at my disorganized mess of a cork board wall that looked like something straight out of a psych ward. “How are you going to do it?”

I studied him for a long moment. Derrick seemed surprisingly genuine, and I was having trouble wrapping my head around it. Just like that, he believed? “I’m…trying to pinpoint the conditions under which they abduct. I have a location, just not…look, you don’t even believe in any of this.”

“I’m a skeptic, sure. But I’m open to being convinced. If you can show me that aliens are real and you’re not just some whack job, then maybe I’ll have the courage to visit Michelle. Maybe I’ll have the balls to tell her she was right.” In that moment, Derrick expression became so incredibly pained. Had he not seen his sister since she’d tried to remove her chip?

“We’ll find proof. I have to.” My voice nearly cracked. So much of my life revolved around this now.

“Then fill me in on what you’ve got.”