ONE

- sedona -

Naturally, the restraints were the first thing I fully noticed.

The pinching around my wrists and ankles. The steady weight across my chest. And the stern clasps around my skull. I squirmed and pressed against them to no avail. My eyes slowly opened as everything brightened to a searing light. It was then I realized I was lying on an ice-cold, flat surface— a table?

The fear rose in me as I thrashed harder. I opened my mouth to call for help, but all my parched throat produced was a hoarse honking sound. A second later, as if called by my fruitless screaming, large blobs appeared in my vision. Their movements were jerky and unnatural as they hovered above me.

What are they? I desperately needed to know what I was facing. My initial impression was that they were humanoid, but as they moved in to block the light, my eyes finally focused enough to understand this was not the case. My blood went cold and my mouth fell open in abject, silent horror. My very soul seemed to scare from my body.

Praying mantises.

They were fucking giant praying mantises. Despite still being slightly bleary-eyed, there was no mistaking the rounded prisms of the mantises' eyes on either side of their triangular heads, protected behind their unyielding, plated exoskeletons. They all wore dingy white tunics, giving the vibe of a creepy nurse cosplay. At the ends of their multi-jointed arms were uncomfortably long dual-fingered appendages. The serrated edges of their fingers each came to a blunted point.

One twitched forward and peered closer to me. My fear made me whoosh out a breath, still terrifyingly silenced and unable to scream. I was living in a nightmare as the mantis seemed to observe me, cocking its head to the side before looking up to its partner and opening its mandibles. I flinched back, thinking for a moment it was going to chomp right into me. But instead, it began to…talk? Well, I assumed that's what the sounds were. All I heard was the eerie clacking of the mandibles against each other, like the sound of tiny sticks being hit together in rapid, erratic rhythms overlaid with strange throat noises seeming to come from a ball on its esophagus.

Its partner answered and all I wanted was to be able to cover my ears to block out the horrible-sounding conversation. After exchanging several back-and-forth clacks, the second creature reached out its clawed two-fingered hand toward me. I pushed back against my restraints again, trying desperately and failing miserably to avoid it.

The touch of the creature sent a chill through my bones so deep the table suddenly felt warm. It put its longest claw finger to the middle of my temple ET-style. Then, just as quickly, it pulled back but remained looming over me like a dark cloud.

Suddenly, I heard rattling next to me that sounded like a crab shell hitting a metal cracker. I strained my eyes to the very corners trying frantically to see what the hell was going on just out of my peripheral; my efforts were for nothing. I couldn't turn my head even a centimeter, which meant I only saw the aliens' heads as I felt pressure at my neck, before something sharp and piercing punctured my skin. A needle , I thought, just as it injected me with god knows what. I could feel the foreign substance coursing through my veins, sending waves of agony rippling through my body.

Oh god, the pain . It was like nothing I'd ever felt before. I wanted to scream, to beg for mercy, but no sound escaped my lips. Please. Please. Please. I chanted in my head to any deity who might wish to have mercy on me. I was trapped in a nightmare, helpless and alone, at the mercy of otherworldly beings.

The first monster's hand suddenly came into view holding a scary clasping contraption. It was a weird blend between a hand mixer and a pair of salad tongs. The thing was fucking macabre in appearance and I immediately felt myself growing desperate again. As it moved closer and closer to my left eye, I practically vibrated the table trying to shake out of my restraints and my lips parted in another futile attempt to scream.

Two rough but flexible fingers reached for my lids, prying my eyes wide open. Another round of clacking as it voiced what sounded almost like a harsh laugh, and then it brought the contraption closer to its mark, and I—

—jolt violently, waking up all at once with my heart pounding in my chest. For a brief moment, just a second, I believe that I am in my bed, in my house, having wine-drunk nightmares in safety. But, then the real-life cold seeps into every place the chill of my dream has left unattended. My eyes snap open and my throat closes as the dream merges into my reality.

My eyes grow wider and my mouth drier the more I take in. This is not my fucking house. I am not in my bed. What is going on? I scramble to my feet and do a three-sixty. The ceiling barely clears my head, a feat since I'm a whopping five foot, four inches.

The walls and floors are one seamless piece of hard metal coming to meet at a small door with an even smaller opening slit. There's one raised hole in the metal in the corner, something that looks kind of like a toilet, and two benches bolted to the floor against opposite walls.

Where the fuck am I? My eyes desperately continue to roam the room—if you can even call it that—as my throat begins to cut off my own oxygen in pure panic. Consciously forcing myself to breathe, I smooth my hands over my hair nervously, and then freeze.

Rubbing at my hair, I realize that it's not braided the way it was when I went to sleep. I'd spent three hundred bucks getting goddess box braids, so why the hell am I feeling my hair pulled back into one single braided ponytail at the base of my neck? Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh. My. God.

My body trembles as I fight to stave off the panic attack. Whatever the hell is going on here, I do know that I am not safe. Looking down I realize I'm wearing something between nurse's scrubs and a pajama set. The outfit is bright yellow with short sleeves and matching pants.

So, not at all the oversized Tupac sweatshirt I remember putting on before going to bed.

I need to get out of here. Stumbling toward the door of the metal room, I scream, "Hey! Anybody!"

I almost immediately hear the sound of something sliding against metal on the other side. A lock. My throat bobs as I swallow hard and rush to the corner of the room. Curling in on myself, I wait for whoever did this to come in.

I'm expecting a man, honestly. It's not a large leap to make the assumption I've been kidnapped. Probably drugged in my own home and then taken here in a stereotypical white, windowless van. I wince, tears springing into my eyes as I grip at the garments wrapped around me. Who knows what else happened while I was out.

I'm expecting to have some kind of Black Phone moment with my captor, but then the door slides open, and I see them. Three black, spindly creatures walk into the room, ducking under the ceiling. Their exoskeletons glisten in the harsh artificial light, and their large, compound eyes glint with an eerie intelligence. The praying mantises from my dream.

This is so much worse than your average kidnapping.

My mind and body seize up as I prepare for the worst and it takes me several long moments to realize they don't even bother looking at me. Instead, they're all looking down at what they're carrying. I drag my eyes from their faces to follow their gazes, and I realize an unconscious woman lies in each of their multi-jointed arms.

They haphazardly lay the women down on the floor just a couple of feet from me. When they get a step too close, I flinch away, pressing myself even more into the corner, trying to be as small as possible. But, they still pay no attention to me as they all straighten, having offloaded their burdens. Each one turns and moves with jerky precision towards the door.

One stops at the exit, turning to face me.

My body shudders as my eyes nearly bulge out of my head in the face of the creature's prism-shaped oculars. It stares at me before slowly tilting its head to the side as if analyzing. To my horror, it opens its manacles wide and makes the same clicking sound I remember from my dream. The weird laugh-gurgle. Mercifully, it turns away and leaves. I hear the slide of the lock and then a scurry of legs against the floor. And then silence.

Feeling like a deer in headlights, my eyes shift to the girls on the floor. I see each one's chest give a small rise and fall, and I feel a grain of relief that they're all alive. But it hits me then. I may not know exactly where I am, but I do know one thing with complete certainty. I've been abducted.

By aliens.

***

They'll probably foreclose on my house within the year.

For some reason, it's the thing my mind continues to circle back to after the hours I've been stuck in this caged room. At least it feels like hours; there isn't exactly a clock in here. But, what about my house, though?

After spending my entire life giving everything to other people, whether my family or romantic relationships or friendships, my house was the first thing I ever did for me. And to have bought a house at twenty-five? I am— was so proud of that little place.

No one else liked it. It was a fixer-upper, old, and had a lingering mothball smell from the elderly woman I bought it from—but it was mine, I bought it just for my enjoyment and I loved it.

So my brain keeps circling back to thinking about what happened to it. Who would have finally gone to my house and figured out I was missing? I could guess it would be someone from my job conducting a wellness check when I no-call, no-showed multiple times in a row. It's not like Perfectly Reliable Sedona Branco to up and disappear. I'd been teaching at that school since I graduated college. In three years, I'd only missed two days, both of which I had a doctor's note to excuse.

Sometimes, my mind flits over the thought of what my mom said when she found out. We'd been no-contact for almost five years. What a way to break that streak. "Hey, I know you haven't seen her in years and didn't even know where she was located, but your daughter appears to have been abducted. No biggie."

I clutch my hand to my heart, trying to squeeze hard enough to push away the pain creeping into my chest from my thoughts. I'm quickly realizing that thinking about my life on Earth is a no-go. Who I was and what I had before this moment just seems frivolous now. I'm no idiot; I know that I won't make it back home and the girl that I once was is light years away. Literally. Now, I have to figure out how Space Sedona survives. Besides, stewing on it can make you hysterical.

"Please be a dream. Please be a dream. Please…" The sudden, repeated plea breaks out, and harsh sniffles quickly follow before a broken sob echoes off the metal walls.

Hysterical like that.

The other girls had finally woken up and we were all coping…differently. There's the town crier, an absolutely gorgeous brown-skinned girl with wide eyes and round cheeks. She's the one repeating the litany of pleas. Then, there's the stony silent one who looks to be the oldest of us here, maybe in her thirties, with long locs and sharp faerie-like features. And the last one is the curvy pixie-looking woman with shorn curls and tanned skin. She's been staring calmly at her hands the whole time. Of all of us, she seems the least surprised or bothered to have ended up here.

For my part, I've been curled in the ball I'd been in since the aliens left, trying my best to process that I am never getting home and that my life as I knew it is over.

"Where are we?" The question comes out of nowhere and completely derails my existential thoughts. I look up at the speaker, the older girl, in surprise. She's looking directly at me, so I know the question is meant for me. She was the first of the three to wake up, so she knows that I woke up before everyone else.

"I don't really know." I hesitate, wondering if they'll think I'm crazy with what I say next. "I think we were kidnapped by aliens."

I expect everyone to scoff at me and call me a liar or insane. But instead, they each look around us and it's as if I can see the belief settle over them as they take in our surroundings. The crying one actually looks…relieved?

"Aliens did this?" she asks, her tears slowing.

"Yeah," my voice is hoarse and I clear my throat, "these praying mantis alien things."

"You were awake the whole time?" Pixie Girl asks me.

"Not for everything. I woke up here just like you guys, but I was alone. Then they brought you all in right after I woke up."

"Do you think they can understand us?" Cryer questions. "Should we try to tell them there's been a mistake?"

Giving a shrug, I say, "I don't know if they can speak to us. They make clicking noises when they talk."

"Besides, I don't think they kidnapped us by mistake." It's Locs Girl who says this, giving Cryer a raised eyebrow.

"Oh, right." Her words are forlorn but for now, the tears seem to be gone.

"If I had to guess," Pixie tells Cryer, "I'd imagine that they can't hear or really understand us. They probably only sense vibrations." We all look at her and there's silence followed by her sheepish addition, "I am—was an entomologist back home."

"Wow, well, we should come up with a plan, you guys." Locs Girl moves to sit near me and the other two girls shift creating a circle of the four of us.

"Is it even worth trying?" The entomologist picks at her nails as she speaks.

"Everything feels pretty hopeless right about now," Cryer adds in a forlorn voice.

"Yeah, also those things were scary as heck." I shudder thinking about them. It would be too much to hope that I never see them again.

"I'm not giving up. Have you guys thought about why we would be abducted by aliens?" She pins a glare on each of us. "I have. It's all I can think about right now, and none of the ideas I've come up with are good, so I refuse to just accept this is my fate."

I think about what she said and realize that I never got to the ‘why' part because I was stuck on ‘why me.' Back on Earth, I loved sci-fi in all of its forms, so it doesn't take long for my brain to draw up reasons why I'd be kidnapped by aliens. Those range from images of green people dissecting me alive to a flash of me at the feet of some horrific monster in a Princess Leia slave costume.

"Okay, fine, I'm in," I reply, getting on board.

"I don't know if I want to take on alien bug monsters with a bunch of complete strangers," Cryer says, looking at us almost apologetically. "No offense, of course."

Locs Girl makes a humming sound and then says, "What's your name?"

She sniffles and replies, "Um, Amari. Amari Bennett."

"Cool, I'm Renata George." She looks expectantly at the curvy one, the entomologist.

"I'm Sabrina Tanaka." Finally, everybody looks at me.

"Sedona Branco."

"Great," Renata gives us all a wry grin, "we all know each other now, so let's talk about a plan."