Cosmic Captain: Chapter 3

We spent the next several days going through everything I knew. How I’d talked to several people who I believed had truly been abducted because they’d had almost the exact same experience as me. I suspected that the locations of alien abductions were fairly consistent, and it was the conditions that I had to figure out.

For example, most—if not all, depending on who you believed—true abductions happened at night. People were either alone or in pairs and obviously spaceship or satellite launches were avoided. I was trying to dig deeper, discover more of a pattern to the time of year, the locations of the planets and stars in the sky. The tendrils of thought just hadn’t quite come together yet.

“Think it has anything to do with Venus?” Derrick mused, studying the cork board like we both hadn’t been staring at it all day. He may be a skeptic, but he’d thrown himself wholeheartedly into the research aspect of all this. I appreciated that he didn’t treat me like I was crazy, even if I knew he thought it. I thought that he might just be enjoying trying to solve a mystery more than anything.

“Nope, see?” I pointed out a half-hidden chart where I’d tracked the travel of Venus through our sky compared to the dates and location of abductions. Nothing even close to a correlation.

“There has to be something.”

He was telling me? I snorted, “No shit, Sherlock. There’s a pattern, I know it.” Pausing, I glanced over and took him in. Derrick was studying the star charts, brows drawn, arms crossed over his chest. The sleeves of his button down were rolled up and he really was quite attractive. But I was finding that I enjoyed having a friend more than anything. Having a human being around grounded me; I didn’t want anything more.

Anyway, I’d promptly deleted the dating app after the Derrick fiasco. And flushed all my meds and canceled my next meeting with my therapist. Both were probably bad ideas, but I didn’t take the medication anyway and my therapist really didn’t do anything but tell me the same shit over and over. I was right about extraterrestrials. And Derrick was starting to see it too.

“Derrick…do you think we could visit Michelle?”

He stiffened up and gave me a wary look. “I don’t know, Gray. I…I told myself I wouldn’t visit her until I was ready to let go of how guilty I feel. I don’t think I can do that without knowing whether or not she was right about all this.”

“But her story could bring all this together. If I knew exactly where she was and what she was doing, maybe the pattern would make sense.” I didn’t mention that I wanted to hear her story from her own mouth. I knew Derrick had told me his version of what she’d told him, but if he’d been wrong about any details then she could be an outlier in my research.

“It’s a bad idea.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to yet.”

And that was that.

We pulled up outside the mental institution where Michelle was being cared for the next day. After parking, Derrick sat in the driver’s seat and pouted for a full five minutes before I convinced him to come in with me. I wasn’t much sure they’d let me visit Michelle without Derrick anyway, considering I looked a little haggard and maybe a bit like a junkie.

He moped enough about it as we walked in that I was starting to feel bad. But talking to Michelle was essential, and he knew it too. We’d stayed up the entire night looking for the pattern, and I was so close to figuring it out I could taste it. Mostly I was hoping Michelle could remember the exact date she’d been abducted. Derrick had sheepishly admitted to me that he couldn’t remember the specific day, and I was too scared to try hacking the police station’s network to find the missing persons files.

At the front desk, Derrick reluctantly said, “I’m here to see my sister, Michelle Lyles?” Judging by the look of surprise and then mild judgment that crossed the receptionist’s face, no one visited Michelle very often. If at all.

I shuddered a bit that the knowledge that this could be my future. That at any point Derrick could say I needed to be hospitalized for the safety of myself and others and I could end up in an institution. I knew mental hospitals served a good purpose, but…I was sane. I had to be. And I hadn’t even tried to cut out my microchip in a while.

After assurances from Derrick that I was a close family friend, we were lead down a back hallway into an open room. Many people were scattered around what seemed like a common area. There were bookshelves and some board games and a TV running in the background. Mostly there was just seating of all types.

We were brought to a couch seated opposite a wheelchair that faced the window. In it sat a woman with deep brown skin, braided hair, and a vacant stare. Her eyes were as deep and beautiful as Derrick’s, and I knew instantly that this was Michelle. Except Michelle was clearly heavily dosed with medication.

Derrick looked a bit choked up, and when he spoke, his voice broke. “Hi Michelle. It’s me.”

She turned her head to look at him, eyes blank. “Who?” Her head tilted slightly to the side, and when her braids fell away from her face, I could see the scarring and hole where her ear had once been. I shivered, knowing I could have done the exact same thing in my desperation. Every single day was a struggle to not try and rid my body of the chip.

“Your brother. Derrick.” Heartbreak lit up in his eyes when Michelle’s brows drew together in consternation. “I know it’s been a while, and I’m sorry…I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.”

“Oh. Derrick.” Her eyes darkened a bit. “Do I know you too?” She looked at me with wide, brown eyes, and I hated how clear it was that there was nothing behind them.

“No, uh, this is Grayson. He’s a…friend.” Derrick sounded choked up, so I didn’t linger on his hesitation before calling me a friend. Maybe he thought it was a little more than that—or a little less than that—but I didn’t really care either way.

“Nice to meet you, Michelle.”

“You’ve seen them.” Suddenly her empty eyes didn’t seem so empty, and when I just stared at her slack-jawed, she simply tapped the spot where her ear was missing. My hand flew to my own scarred ear, untucking the hair behind it to cover the entire thing. Most of the scarring was hidden behind my ear, so I didn’t know how she’d picked up on it so fast.

Derrick cleared his throat. “We actually want you to tell us about your experience, Michelle.”

Her gaze hardened, eyes snapping to her brother. “What experience?”

“Your abduction.” I kept my voice low. There was probably lots of crazy talk around here, but I was acutely aware of the nurse hovering nearby, not quite within earshot. “I was hoping to hear a few details from you about it.”

She looked at me for a long moment, then back to her brother. “I wasn’t abducted. Something bad happened to me and I replaced the memories with a made up story.” It sounded robotic and rehearsed. Something I was sure a therapist told her over and over and she’d repeated to herself countless times.

“Can you tell us about it anyway? Even if it was made up?” Derrick’s voice was gentle, but I could see Michelle’s distress growing.

“Too many eyes and a chemical that burned my nose.” Her chest rose and fell a little faster than normal. “I made it up so I wouldn’t have to see the face of the person who took me. I still can’t see them. I made it up.”

She was getting worked up, but I needed more. “Michelle, look at me. I know what you’re talking about. The same thing happened to me.”

“Nothing happened to you like nothing happened to me. They didn’t take me, didn’t put their hands on me, didn’t put a microchip in my head.” She shook her head adamantly, but her descriptions were all too familiar. Michelle was one of the ones telling the truth but she’d been too brainwashed and drugged to believe it anymore.

Or she was too scared to say.

“Grayson, maybe we should go—”

“When were you taken, Michelle? Please, it could help us.”

“Wasn’t taken. Wasn’t taken.”

“If you remember the date—”

“September 14th, 2021!” She shouted, then sucked in her breath. “September 14th, 2021. They put…a chip in my head and I can’t get it out. I can’t get it out!” Michelle’s hands were tangling in her hair and the hovering nurse rushed over to her side.

“I think it’s best if you leave.” He hissed as he grabbed Michelle’s wrists to stop her from trying to self destruct and started to whisper soothing words. Derrick looked woefully in his sister’s direction as we booked it out of the institution. My skin was crawling as we climbed into the car in silence, and I was terrified I’d just seen my own future.

“I hope that was worth it.” Derrick spoke through gritted teeth as he started his car and headed back towards my condo.

I hoped it was too.