The afternoon matinee did little to calm Susan. Whenever Susan would tell Carol "they" were coming again, Carol would take Susan somewhere, anywhere, in an effort to distract her from the horrible ordeal she was about to face. But it never worked. It didn't matter what kind of activity Carol had cooked up for her, Susan could not be distracted from the reality of her impending nightmare. And tonight Susan was more exhausted than usual because she knew that Carol had this time made an extra effort to keep Susan away from her whiskey bottle as long as she could -- to keep her away from the mind numbing poison as long as she could. But Susan was desperate. Even though the shock of her experience with the "beasts" instantly sobered her up when they took her, she at least could drop into bed dead drunk until they came.

Susan began to panic: she was too sober now. She had been with Carol too long today. She would have to slug the booze down fast if she was going to provide any emotional protection for herself.

Susan went to the kitchen and pulled a fifth of whiskey from the kitchen cabinet. Then she took a water tumbler and poured three fingers of whiskey into it. She took a swallow. "Mmm," she mumbled with satisfaction as the whiskey burned like fire on the way to her stomach.

She sat down in front of the television. Already she was feeling the effects of the alcohol as it began to creep into her brain. A late-night talk show host blared his silly jokes from the screen. The image began to swim slightly as Susan slowly moved her head from side to side. Good -- the alcohol was beginning to dull her senses. She could handle them now. She could live with this.

She looked at the glass, her head moving lazily as if she was now in a very safe place. The three fingers of booze was already gone. Somewhere back in Susan's brain she panicked at the amount of alcohol she had ingested in such a short amount of time, but the more aware part of her brain, the part that was terrified of what was to come, told her she was handling this problem in the only way she could.

* * *

"Ingesting alcohol is harmful."

"Yeah? Your clammy hands in my body is harmful too," Susan barked. She was here again. They had taken her again. The shorter ones stood around her table, looking at her with their huge black bulging eyes. They stood like school boys attentive to the taller one -- the taller beast who was telepathing his displeasure to her. The taller one always expressed his displeasure. It was impossible to please him.

"You are a willful human."

"Let me go," Susan said. She began to cry now. "For the love of God, let me go. I can't take this anymore. You've examined every possible part of me since before I was three years old. Haven't you learned enough by now? Please let me go and let me live a normal life." If Susan would have had the strength to get up off the table she would have grabbed the thin neck of the taller being and choked the life from him. But she didn't have the strength. Whenever they would take her, they would also paralyze her. Only when they returned her to her bed would she regain her strength, and only after they were well away. And then it would be too late.

"You have been an interesting experiment."

Hope flared in her. "Does this mean you've finished with me? Are you going to stop taking me?"

"I did not imply this. You have been an interesting experiment and you will continue to be."

Susan began to cry again. She didn't want to. She knew these beings were extremely interested in the emotional side of her, and her crying only added fuel to their mad experiment. But she couldn't help it.

The tall one moved closer to her. As he had done many times before, he quickly took a sample of Susan's tears.

"Stop it! Stop it!" Susan screamed. "You know what's in my tears! You know... you know..." She sobbed uncontrollably now, so deep was her desperation and grief.

"Don't cry, Mother." A child, barely four years old, was now at her side. The child looked somewhat like Susan. She had seen the child many times before. The beings had told her that the child was hers, but Susan didn't believe them. She couldn't allow herself to believe them.

Susan could turn her head far enough to see the child, but she had no strength to reach out and touch it. Each time the child was brought to her Susan felt anguish for it. She wanted to take the child home with her. She wanted to hold it and raise it as her own. What could these alien beings possibly offer this child who looked so very human?

And now, as if a switch was activated in the child, it abruptly turned and left the room. The tall being moved very close to Susan and touched her nose by slowly leaning his flat, gray face into her face. The being didn't breathe. It simply was. Susan gagged at the closeness of the nightmare. Even though she had endured this act hundreds of times, she couldn't get over the horror of it. She felt as if she was being dropped into a nest of beetles.

"I am the same as you, Susan," the being telepathed, as if it picked up her revulsion. "We are both beings in this three dimensional space. We must learn to co-exist, you and I."

"Never!" Susan spat.

"Have either I or my people ever hurt you?"

"Yes! Many times! Are you totally stupid to what you do? Do you think you can just take us from our homes and treat us like animals? Are you people nuts?"

"We are the keepers of the garden. The garden is ours and the plants that grow within it also belong to us. We are a superior race who is taking care of you."

Susan didn't know how long she screamed, but when she awoke, her throat was so sore she could barely talk.

* * *

Susan didn't particularly care for her job. It was demanding. At times it was even challenging. But teaching calculus to university students was almost impossibly difficult when she would find herself standing at the blackboard, the explanation of how to find the first derivative using the chain rule ready to spill from her mind, and the memory of her brutal abduction the night before literally grinding her class presentation to pieces.

A hand went up. "Susan," the student began, "couldn't we just feed this problem into our handy little graphic calculators?"

She liked it when her students called her Susan. They liked her and she wanted them to be comfortable with her. "No, Helen. You won't learn anything if you just push buttons. I want you to write it out..." Susan pulled a pencil from her pocket, "with one of these." She made a funny face to the class. The class tittered.

A voice from the back of the room said, "You mean with one of those compressed graphite field plotters?" The class broke into laughter at the student's English term referring to a common wooden pencil.

Susan smiled. "Yeah. Use a compressed graphite thing-a-ma-jiggy." As the class continued to laugh, Susan again turned to the board and carefully worked through the problem. She looked at her watch. "Whoops, we're out of time. Do the odd problems at the end of this section and tomorrow I'll introduce you to even more of the wonderful world of calculus."

The students, some right out of high school, others in their forties and going for a change of career, packed up their book bags and left the classroom. Susan sat down. She didn't have another class for two hours. She welcomed the break. "Wanna break with me?" A woman, smiling, stuck her head in the door. "Hi, Alice. No. Not today, thanks. I've got some work in my office. Maybe tomorrow."

"Sure. See ya tomorrow." The woman left.

Susan picked up her textbook and walked towards her office. Students called her by name as she walked down the hallway. She re-evaluated. The job she had was a good job. The people she served made it worthwhile. If only... But she had no control over that. She had pleaded with them countless times to let her go, and each time they answered her in the same way: "We are the keepers of the garden. The garden is ours and the plants that grow within it also belong to us. We are a superior race who is taking care of you."

She walked into her office and slammed the door. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee. Maybe she was drinking too much. She downed a slug of the hot coffee. It tasted good. She needed the caffeine to kill the last remnants of the hangover she woke up with.

Susan quickly looked up at a quiet tapping on her door. Setting the coffee cup down, she opened the door. A man, a stranger, stood in front of her. "May I help you?" Susan asked.

"I... I don't know," the man stammered.

There was something alarming in the man's manner. He wasn't threatening. He was confused and Susan knew this instinctively. So without hesitation, she said, "Please, come in."

Copyright © 2000 by Alan McGregor