We had not always coexisted but the aliens are clever. We did make the best of it, though. We are of earth where evolution is the order of the chaos. We learn to adapt. I have to admit – the takeover was intelligent. We never realized what was happening. First, they took some of us, then they took more of us… When intelligence was the design of the being, it is almost impossible to resist. Nature was always on their side. It was like the earth was waiting for their arrival.
That was a long time ago, something we have pushed to the footnotes of not even history but perhaps anthropology. Cohabitance and Coexistence have become so normalized – the aliens and us, living together.
My mother often told us about losing her own to them. She said she used to remember them clearly earlier but maybe they do something to us when they take our kind away because she could no longer remember what they even looked like. My father says nothing of the sort ever happened, that it was all an old wives’ tale. He said if abductions were truly a reality, there would be clear signs. Memory wiping was always too clean and neat a solution for him.
If they could only see me.
It is strange but my mother seems to have been right after all. I wonder if they remember me, because I can’t. If I met them right now, I would not be able to pick them from a row, like in those movies with police and criminals. We watch those movies a lot. My abductor is very fond of them. Then when we see someone that looks like me, she’d pat my head and say some gibberish. I never know what she means. But I like to think she says something like: hey that’s you! I don’t know. It hardly matters.
Everything I used to know is so far away from me now that all I know is her and her world, this strange new universe that I am not sure how to navigate.
I have made myself at home here in her world. I never knew such places existed. Every time it changes. Every few moon cycles, we change locations. The first time she put me in her Transport Pod, I nearly puked, I was so disoriented. But it has gotten easier with constant repetition. I also think perhaps that first time has to do with me not knowing what to expect. I was just chilling with my mother and my elder brother and younger sister when she randomly appeared, picked me up and away we went in the Transport Pod.
These days, I actually like the experience, although any movement that’s prolonged for too long becomes taxing on a body. That should be understandable. I get very fussy. And she makes soft apologetic noises so I try to be understanding but honestly, transport should be easier with their high-tech environment.
Besides, she often travels through portals. She has a lot of them. I never know which ones are the travel ones, though. Movies like to portray portals as circular or oval but her portals are always rectangular. Sometimes she does take me through them and we explore her world. I seem to thrive better in her natural habitat than she does, something that always seems to amuse her. I run faster than her, I hear better than her, I interact with her world with more enthusiasm than her, I even make friends with her kind easier than she does.
She does not engage with her outside environment very much except to large bodies of liquids. Different colours – blue, brown, one time even green. Maybe her job has something to do with liquids. We’d take the Transport Pod and go to these places. I like the places but they are not very friendly back.
We visit the hills sometimes as well; that is always a friendlier trip. She’s not very adaptable to the outside environment at all. She gets out of breath very quickly; I think her kind was meant to stay indoors. Maybe they colonized a wrong planet that does not support them as optimally as they require. Maybe one of the reasons they abduct so much of us is also because it reminds them that once upon a time, they were good with their environment as well.
She also has a few portals that she does not allow me to cross. I can’t ever tell which one is which. And the house is big and scary without her in it because she is all I really know. Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps. I sometimes cry for what seems like hours and days and then she calmly just reappears at the other end of the portal, sometimes with no visible change, sometimes smelling different, sometimes in entirely different outfits. It is very disorienting.
You have to understand why I do this. She is my best friend and over time, my whole world. We may not understand each other’s language. But she did pick me among many others. She feeds me, she exercises with me and she takes care of me when I am sick. This is my life now. Maybe my life might have been better left to me and my own kind, but how would I know? You cannot live two lives in one.
She does a lot of experiments with me, her and this one man who always wears a white coat. Sometimes they give me injections. Sometimes they put me in strange metal platforms. Sometimes they push at my bottom. It is never pleasant. But I take it as perhaps my labour to her – maybe I am performing some sort of medical tasks for her studies. So I bear it, even though I don’t enjoy it. I don’t think she likes these visits either because she always makes gentle shushing noises to me when the experiments begin until they end.
One of the strangest parts of living with your strange alien abductor is that we sometimes randomly meet people like me! My mother was right, after all. These creatures do abduct a lot of us. I’ve never seen my exact kind, though. We maybe a dying race. Or the creatures never came abducting in our part of the world. I meet people larger than I am, smaller than I am, never my exact kind. I even made a friend although we don’t speak the same language and he’s a bit dumb. He tries to escape constantly and I try to tell him to just remain where he is because this world is not kind to our kind. I don’t think he understands me.
My other friend is an old man who I think gets lost sometimes. My best friend talks to him and he just smiles at her. I don't think he understands her either. And then there are these three siblings who always aggressively shout hello to us, then run away if we approach them; weirdos. Most other friends of my kind are transient. They come and go, each with their own aliens.
Sometimes when we are outside, her vivid purple sky calls to me. I remember things I should not. But more like dreams in the morning than actual memories. I am in a world I probably should not be. And my best friend is an alien who came to my world one day and just straight up abducted me.
And then I wake up from my reverie and return to this world. She pats my head and murmurs in her language to me things I don’t really understand but it clearly soothes her to talk to me, so I just listen. She protects me from others of my kind who are hostile to me and waits for me when we meet friendly ones and I interact with them. In return, I choose her above all the other aliens, even the ones who treat me as warmly as she does.
We play games together. She tries to teach me things that are silly to me but I comply because they seem important to her. I try to teach her survival methods but that is all lost on her. She is afraid even of the rain! I can’t even teach her that during sunshine is the best time to run around outside for exercise. I fear she will never learn how to survive in the wilds without me.
The stars have changed positions since she first brought me to our home. She does not seem to have aged a day. Meanwhile, I have grown from a fat little toddler to a fluffy but otherwise well-adjusted teenager. I am close to my prime, and can protect her when she needs it. I worry about her when she goes off to the world outside alone because she barely knows how to navigate it. However she often insists on it. I argue my case but alas, she does not understand me.
I am her family, and she is mine. It is her and me against the world, my best friend my abductor.
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