Fiction: Aliens

This was written for the 10 Weeks 10 Stories class given by Grub Street Writers. The assignment was to write a story in one, long sentence. Take a deep breath and away we go...

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I listened to her in increasingly slack jawed amazement, as she told me what it was like to be abducted, about the first time it happened when she was just a little girl and how she wasn’t expecting it, but now it was a regular thing that she almost didn’t mind, even felt lonely when it didn’t happen for too long in spite of the indignities visited upon her when they took her away, and I tried not to notice the glances and snickers around us, the growing silence as others grew still to eavesdrop (I felt a slight shame remembering all the times I grew still and silent so I could eavesdrop, thinking I was unknown and unnoticed - I never knew I was so obvious) but she continued unabashed, maybe even welcoming the extra attention, because, I was thinking, that’s what this is all about, the attention, when they come and take her that makes her special, that means she’s different from the rest of us who have to get up every day and go to work, slog through our lives and come home to everyday chores and the same beds we’ll probably die in, when I realized I wasn’t quite listening anymore and she was leaning across the table, saying in that particularly breathless tone she has, “You know, I think I remember seeing you there once, that’s why I wanted to talk to you, are there ever any nights you just don’t remember, when you don’t know where you were?” and all I could think was of course, who can remember every moment of every night, I think that’s a blessing, I would hate to remember every moment, in fact I wish I could forget this very moment right now but instead I just sat there stock still (recognizing, too, the tiny wish to be special the way that she thought she was) and not wanting to hurt her because of all the years of not-quite-friendship but not-just-acquaintances either, I just kind of shrugged, told a half lie by not answering and knew that I was about to become part of her story that she would begin by leaning across some other table in a growing listening silence, where she would start by saying, “I know this sounds crazy, but I have to tell someone and I need you to believe me when I tell you…”

(c)2010 Laura S. Packer