Cosmic Captain: Chapter 4

My eyes were crossing as I studied all my charts, certain the pattern was there. I’d just finished lining up the chart for where the planets were on the date Michelle was abducted. Derrick had been silent, lost in thought on the couch. However, he hadn’t thrown his hands up and washed his hands clean of me yet. Seeing his sister had clearly been a difficult experience for him.

It made me feel like a dick, but all I could think about was how her information could help me finally get the proof I needed to have some closure. If I could just see that aliens were real, I could maybe find a way to accept what had happened and live life as best as I could. I didn’t have many relationships with friends or family anymore, but Derrick had made having a friend seem so much more attainable.

An idea formed as I laid out every chart I had on the cleared coffee table in the living room next to some Chinese takeout. That couldn’t be healthy all the time, but I never had the energy to cook. Shuffling things around, I thought it was time to accept I was dealing with some outliers. Was it possible there were abductions that were completely random? Sure. But there was enough evidence of a pattern that I didn’t think that was the case most of the time.

So I had to find the ones that didn’t fit. I spent the next several days poring over everything at night while I worked my real job during the day, barely getting any sleep. Derrick came over whenever he could in between work and other obligations, and I was scared at how used to his company I was becoming. What if I got attached and it turned out I was crazy after all?

One day, as I was finally starting to give up, I gasped. “Derrick…I think I have it!” I pulled out three of the charts that didn’t match; they’d been in an unusual location too, so maybe they were a different kind of abduction. I didn’t care about that at the moment though.

“You do?” Derrick came to look over my shoulder, cradling a cup of coffee. I shifted away from how close he was to me, almost subconsciously.

“Yes!” I moved around the charts so he could see better. “Look at Mercury and Jupiter. For every one of these, they were abducted in the night when Mercury and Jupiter are visible.” It seemed too simple, but the stars aligned, as the saying went. My own experience in December of 2023 lined up perfectly.

“No other factors?” Derrick looked impressed, but skeptical.

“One or two people alone at night in the middle of nowhere?” I offered, to which Derrick snorted with amusement.

“Okay, so what do we do?”

I rifled around for my laptop, flipping it open and looking for a planet visibility chart. “Next time this happens is…the end of February 2025.” My breath caught as I realized that was only a week or so away. For the first time in over a year, finding proof of what had happened to me seemed tangible and in reach.

Derrick was studying me hard. “You want to go out there. See if you can get them to try again?”

My blood ran cold at the thought. “Yes. But I’ll catch them on camera, record audio, anything I can. They’ll return me just like last time.” I didn’t know that was true; there were plenty of missing persons that were never found. And I didn’t want to revisit my experience with the extraterrestrials. But I had to be certain. I needed the clarity.

“That sounds dangerous.” Rubbing the short beard along his jaw, Derrick plopped down on the couch. “I’ll come with you.”

“No.” I snapped, closing my laptop. “It could mess up the pattern.”

“They take people in pairs too, if you’re right.” He argued. “And maybe we can get proof without you actually being taken again.”

I felt a little bit of fondness for him in that moment. Not only was he looking out for my safety, but he was also treating this all as if it were real. “Fine, I’m convinced. We can set up a camera. That way if we’re both somehow taken there may be some evidence left behind. I also need a way to record them even if I end up…exposed.” Just the thought sent goosebumps along my skin. I remembered being completely naked, suspended in midair, and so, so cold. Sometimes the bone-deep chill still reared its head, like it never went away.

Like I never left.

Derrick made a face at my ‘exposed’ comment. I’d never gone into full detail with him about what had happened to me. But he knew it had everything to do with why I didn’t like to be touched. What they had done had been intimate yet clinical. I didn’t believe it had anything to do with sex and everything to do with examination and study. Those dots as to why hadn’t fully connected yet.

At the moment, they didn’t need to. I was so close to the proof I craved.

I had the jitters as we drove to the outskirts of Houston, the sun hanging low in the sky. We’d prepared in every single way we could, evidence of such packed away in the trunk of Derrick’s car. He listened to me diligently as I had him pull off into a grassy spot on the side of the road and start setting up cameras.

Three tripods with different types of cameras were triangulated on where I planned to sit and wait. At my behest, Derrick waited in the running car since it was freezing out and I wanted to lessen his chances of being abducted too.

Would they even come for me? I wondered if the chip I’d never been able to remove would keep them from taking me again. If they’d gotten all they wanted. Instead, would they take Derrick? I found I didn’t want that. Not only because no one deserved to experience what I did, but also because I selfishly wanted to be the one to gather the proof for myself. I couldn’t remain stranded on Earth, waiting for Derrick to return—or worse, waiting for a return that never happened.

My hands were clenched into fists as I craned my head back to stare at the sky. Mercury was already visible, just after the sunset, and Jupiter soon would be. I could hear the faint sound of the radio from Derrick’s car, and I couldn’t bring myself to look over at him through the windshield.

What if I was wrong? Or what if I was right and they took some poor other soul and didn’t want me anymore? Not that I wanted extraterrestrials to want me. I wanted to be right. And I thought I was ready for them. My mouth still ached from where I’d had whole tooth replaced with a tracking and recording device—perks of knowing a dentist who experienced alien abduction as well as being a really fucking good programmer myself.

It seemed ridiculous, but I thought maybe it could work. At minimum, maybe the abduction would be caught on the cameras we had set up. Just as I was starting to lose heart, the radio changed stations. My head jerked towards the car, and Derrick just had time to shake his head before the radio started crackling, going in and out as the headlights flickered.

A moment later, a blast of sound from the radio made me jump, and Derrick fell out of the car with his hands held over his ears. My breath caught at the charged feeling in the air, and I dragged my gaze back to the sky. Colorful lights flashed as the car cranked and stopped over and over, the headlights flashing, the wind picking up.

And then the sky rippled, revealing a huge, round metal object with bright, blinking lights. A UFO. I was fucking right. Emotions overtook me as I stared at the ship, tears streaming down my face. I was right, it was all real. I’d been abducted and Michelle had been abducted, and all of a sudden I didn’t want this anymore. I didn’t want them to take me again.

Then the air around me shifted. Primal instinct demanded I run away, but I was frozen in place on the grass, too afraid to do anything at all. And then everything snapped into focus, a low electrical sound permeating the air as my body started to feel wrong. Like it was disintegrating.

The very atoms of my being were pulled apart and I gritted my teeth in agony as my head started to pound. I remembered this, I realized, the horrible feeling of being sucked up into the ship, and my whole body shook with the pain of being torn to pieces. I wanted to look for Derrick, to see if he was okay, to make sure the cameras hadn’t blown out and were catching some of this. But everything hurt too much, skin itching, my insides burning.

And then it ended, and I felt nothing at all.