"I was sleeping in my bed when they came for me.”  Jonah Mills sat
nervously on his old sofa, his slender hands shaking softly.  He fumbled
through his jeans pocket for a cigarette and lighter.  His face lit up as he
found them, followed by a toothless smile as his lungs filled with the acrid
and saccharine smoke.  He closed his hollow blue eyes and drifted off for a
moment.  “I was so scared, man,” he continued.  “There were lights
everywhere and I couldn’t move a muscle.  I was so scared.”
	The thin young man sitting across from him scribbled a few notes
down on a pad, nodding approvingly.  He adjusted his glasses, settling
them back on his sharp nose, and looked up at the nervous man in front of
him curiously.  Jonah was a slender backwoods man with ghosts for eyes. 
Distress shown on every pore of his face, the big purple bags under his
eyes, the week’s growth of stubble on his chin, the way his lips quivered
before he spoke.  He was wearing an old pair of blue jeans, the kneecaps
worn out until they were white.  His shirt, an old light blue T-shirt with the
fading words LOGGERS DO IT BETTER on the chest, hugged his body
like an old lover.  An old TORONTO BLUE JAYS baseball cap finished
off the outfit.  
	“Then what happened?  Did they use some advanced form of
telekinesis to carry you to their ship?”
	“Naw man, Mr. Hawthorne, they wasn’t kind to me like that or
nothin.  They smacked me on my head with this big glowing stick  It
looked like, uh, what did my wife call them things?  A vibrator?”
	“Wait a minute,” interrupted the young man, who had stopped
writing.  “They hit you over the head with a glowing vibrator?”  There was
an impatient tone creeping into William Hawthorne’s voice as Jonah
continued his tale.  The interview of the fragile-looking gas station
attendant was the young reporter’s first assignment for his new,
extraterrestrial website.  What he had hoped would have been a solid
report of an alien abduction was quickly becoming a cliché.  Six hours of
travel, grumbled William to himself.  Six hours to this remote town in the
middle of the Pacific Northwest.  Six horrible hours just to speak with a
smelly drunken hick in a trailer park.
	Jonah frowned at the young man, the wrinkles on his face mapping
a long and stressful life.  He took the sweat-stained baseball cap off his
head and bent forward, placing his bald spot close to the reporter’s face.
	“Right there,” the tense old man said, pointing to a large red lump
in the center of his head.  It looked more like a severe mosquito bite,
thought William.
	“So they pummeled you about the head and shoulders and then
what happened?”
	Jonah slumped back down into his chair and took a long drag. 
“Next thing I remember I was on board their ship.”
	“What did it look like?”
	“It was, uh, like one of them sex shops in the city.  There were
these big chains and these black whips on the walls.  And a poster of that
playboy chick, the blonde one with them big ole tits.  I remember it so
clearly because my wife had me drive her down to Portland to go to one of
them places.  I told the old gal that we should get the Internet hooked up
so she could do it discreetly online and have em delivered...”
	William stared blankly at the old man as he continued speaking,
wondering if that strange glimmer in Jonah’s eyes was the remains of a
strange extraterrestrial torture or the beginning of mental illness.  “Now
Jonah,” he interrupted, cutting off the old man’s diatribe on the benefits of
buying sex toys from an online retailer.  “I’ve heard some wild stories
before, but are you sure about this?”
	“Man I swear to ya, as the day is long, this is what happened to
me.”  He put his right hand over his heart and raised his left one as if he
were testifying before a judge and jury.
	“Okay,” the reporter sighed.  “Please continue.”  He started
doodling on his notepad while the hollow eyed man in front of him
searched for another cigarette.
	“They tied me down to this table that was like glass, but not. 
Yanno what I mean?  It was like ya could see through it, but it didn’t feel
like glass or plastic or nothin.  Then they stripped me bare, left me nekkid
to the world.”
	William looked up and rubbed his chin as if he were still listening
intently.  In truth he was already thinking of the fastest route home.  “What
did they look like?”
	“Ugly as sin,” Jonah roared, hopping up from his seat and
wandering around the room, the most animated he had been since the
interview began.  “Big black eyes on these tiny green heads.  They had
these skinny little bodies and big round bellies, like them starving children
ya see on the tube.  Yanno Ethiopians or Somalians, yanno what I mean
right?”  
	“Yeah I know,” assured William with a nod.
	Jonah crept about the small room, looking frantically for another
cigarette.  His fidgety hands knocked over old stacks of magazines and a
few empty beer cans.  “And man between their legs was the scariest thing I
had ever seen till then.  Each and everyone of them bug eyed things had a
dick the size of Florida and balls like grapefruits.”
	“Excuse me?  They had what?”  He knew he shouldn’t encourage
him but he just could not resist.
	“Big dicks!  Like out of a porn flick or something.  And they all
curved to the left.  It was fucking scary man.”  Jonah fumbled through the
pockets of an old pair of pants and found a few mangled cigarettes.  He
tried his best to shape them back into a proper form, eventually giving up
and lighting one as is.
	“So what happened next,” asked William, who was working on a
sketch of Jonah’s aliens.  
	“Bigfoot!”  The old redneck’s eyes lit up as he spoke the name. 
Two streams of smoke came firing out of his nostrils as he looked up into
the air to emphasize the size of the creature.  
	“Bigfoot?”
	“Bigfoot, man bigfoot.”
	“As in sasquatch?”  The young reporter rubbed the sides of his
temples, a look of agony on his face.  He sighed heavily, feeling the first
stages of a migraine coming on quickly.  “Bigfoot was on the alien ship? 
You’re sure about this?”
	“As sure as I am that you’re sitting in that chair.  He was a big hairy
son of a bitch, with the face of gorilla.  Twice as tall as any man, and with
these huge boobs.”  Jonah opened his hands wide to emphasize the size.
	“Huge boobs,” William repeated, his lips curled as he tried to fight
back the laughter.  “So,” he continued, wiping away a tear.  “This was a
female sasquatch?”
	“You think what happened to me was funny cityboy?”  Johan
stepped forward, his chest heaving.  There was desperation in his voice,
and a grim seriousness took over his face.  “You think this is some kinda
joke?”  Jonah’s left shoulder twitched violently as a look mixed of rage and
sorrow came over him.  “My own wife left me.  She said I was gay now,
that she couldn’t sleep with someone who been fornicatin with bigfoot and
aliens.  She was afraid to look me in the eye.  I lost my job at the lumber
mill cuz my nerves are so shot.  Fifteen years I was working there, making
good money.  Now cuz of this I’m pumping gas like some teenager. 
Pumping gas!”  Tears came rolling down his wrinkled cheeks as he spoke. 
His voice had cracked and he threw his hat at the reporter, missing him by
a few feet.
	William’s heart sank as he watched the old man’s teary display. 
The young writer sat stunned, not knowing if he should comfort him,
apologize or just leave quietly.  “Uh, I’m sorry.”  His voice came softly,
and was drowned out by Jonah’s heavy wailing.
	It took a few minutes for the old man to compose himself.  When
he did, his already hollow eyes resembled the empty black sockets of a
skeleton.  Without a gesture he slumped down in his couch, as if trying to
disappear.  He wiped the tears off his face with the back of his forearm and
sighed heavily.
	“They fucked me,” he uttered.  “Hard and fast up my ass like I was
their bitch.  It went on for hours ‘til I couldn’t feel my legs anymore.  I
wish I coulda blacked out or something, but I wasn’t that lucky.”  Jonah
shook his head, his jaw quivering.  “Then bigfoot made me suck his
boobs.”
	“Uh,” interrupted William.  “Don’t you mean she made you suck
her boobs?”
	“No,” the old man stated flatly.  “It was a dude.  It had a big brown
hairy dick.  Even bigger than the aliens.”
	“Did he, umm, sodomize you as well?”
	“Yeah he was the first.  The others watched, as if learning how to
do it from him.  When they were done with me, they hit me over the head
again with them glowing sticks.  Next thing I remember I’m back in my
bed, next to my wife.  She slept through the whole freaking thing.  God
Almighty was I in pain.  My Doc said I had internal bleeding and shit
ruptured and what not.”
	William cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses once more. 
“And were there any lasting effects of the experience?  Any mysterious
burns, improved mental ability, a heightened sense of your environment?”
	Jonah stared coldly at the young man.  Without a word he shot up
from his seat and moved toward the lightswitch on the wall.  He turned off
the lights and the room was plunged into darkness.  The young reporter
gasped, a small bit of fear sneaking into his stomach.  The sound of clothes
rustling and a small metallic thud hitting the floor, made William spring
from his seat.  “Jonah?” he called into the darkness.
	Suddenly a bright light appeared in the center of the room.  It
glowed vibrant green, but did not illuminate the rest of the room like any
normal light.  It was shaped like an upside down heart and about the size of
two grapefruits.  It barely moved, but occasionally a crease would appear
in its center and flaw its perfection.
	“Good god,” William gasped, his notepad and pen falling out of his
hands.  He realized as he came closer that this object before his eyes was
Jonah’s butt.  “It’s like two glow-in-the-dark balls.  I’ve never seen, never,
anything like-good god!”
	“There’s your lasting effects cityboy!”  Jonah roared, spit flying out
of his mouth.  
	“You were buggered by bigfoot!”