Chapter 3

Chapter Three

M y feet were on fire, and the battery on my phone was almost dead. I tossed the useless cell in my bag when it died. Bye-bye flashlight. I could vaguely make out the lights from town, so I knew I'd be fine. I just had to keep going.

The dryness of my sore throat was the worst. My stomach was growling, and my purse felt like it weighed fifty pounds, but I kept going. Any time I'd thought about taking a rest, a coyote would howl, or something would rustle in the ditch.

Fuck no! I wasn't staying out here to be eaten by a wild animal.

And then things got weird. A light zig-zagged across the sky in front of me and then disappeared. I shook my head, sure I was seeing things from being overly tired, dehydrated and freezing cold.

A loud whoosh came from overhead, and I was suddenly standing in a bright white light. When I saw a giant floating UFO, I screamed and took off running, clutching my purse. And then I was floating, being pulled upward. My sandals fell off, one, then the other.

"Mike! This is your fucking fault, you mother fucking piece of shit. Like having sex with you wasn't punishment enough! Now I'm being abducted by motherfucking aliens because you left me out here. I fucking hate you," I screamed into the abyss.

An even brighter red light washed over me, and then there was nothing but darkness.

A sudden clanging noise startled me awake. "Shut up," I moaned out. My asshole neighbours were always doing all kinds of weird shit, so I figured they were probably at it again.

"Shh. You don't want to piss them off," a soft voice whispered from beside me.

I jerked my head up and realized immediately that I wasn't at home in my bed. "Wha–"

"Be quiet. Please. I don't want them coming back," the voice whispered urgently.

Slowly turning my aching neck toward the voice, I found a woman curled up on her side in a cage. A fucking cage. Holy shit, I was in a cage, too.

"What's going on? Where are we?" I whispered.

"They're aliens. Two nights ago, they took me from just outside of Toronto. They got you a couple hours ago," the woman replies quietly. "We're so screwed." I watch as tears flood her eyes.

Shock holds me immobile when a memory comes back of floating upward in a blinding light. Oh my God. Fucking aliens had abducted me. My chest felt tight, and my breath came out in short, sharp puffs.

A sniffle on my other side caught my attention, and when I turned toward the noise, I found another woman. Tentatively sitting up, I waited for the world to stop spinning before scanning the rest of the large room. Cages. More and more cages, each one containing a woman.

"What do they want–"

"Keep it down," another voice hissed out.

"They have a taser-like weapon they use on the women who make too much noise," my neighbour whispered at me. "Nobody knows what's happening. They don't speak English."

A loud beep sounded throughout the room and a panel on the wall lifted. The thing that walked through was a living nightmare. It was bright red, had a shit ton of tentacles coming out of its torso, four beady eyes across a watermelon shaped head and its mouth was a huge row of sharp pointed teeth. It floated through the room, rattling cages and chittering at us in a weirdly high-pitched tone.

As it got steadily closer, I remained frozen in place, unable to move. The woman beside me huddled in on herself, visibly shaking in fear. When it passed by me, I didn't so much as breathe. I was wrong about four eyes. It must have hundreds. Eyes covered almost every inch of its tentacles. I'm sure he saw everything going on in the room as they waved through the air.

I let out my breath once it was at the end of the row my cage was in. Holy fuck. I continued watching until it was back to the open panel. He stepped out, and the door slid shut. The overhead lights changed to an eerie shade of green. A hissing noise caught my attention. Women screamed. A blue cloud of vapour fell from vents on the ceiling.

This was it. I was going to be knocked out and ass probed by aliens. Motherfucker, my life could not get any worse.