The Abduction

Genre by Author Name

None of us were home that time our parents got abducted. We were on a school trip down the shore, one of those long-awaited, end-of-year field trips when the weather’s too sticky to stay indoors and just wearing shorts made us want to jump out of our skin. We were supposed to be learning about tide pools and plankton and squiggly things that only showed up under a microscope, but instead we took off our shoes and ran around in the sand and chased the gulls screeching over our heads. When Mr. Brown finally got everybody corralled back on the bus it was well past five, so we hit rush hour going up the Garden State Parkway. And by the time we took exit 5A into town the aliens were long gone.

We knew something was wrong by the way the back of Mr. Brown’s bald head crinkled when he rubbed his hand up and down it. The bus started going real slow and we got quiet and stared out the windows. There were cars blocking the roads everywhere but no one was in them. Finally the bus stopped and Mr. Brown told everybody to stay in their seats. But when the bus driver opened the doors Mr. Brown was gone.

We were hungry and sandy and tired. We wanted to go home. Tony Morelli was the first to stand, but we ended up following Lisa Cohen because she told the bus driver even though we were kids we still had rights and school was over and we were supposed to be home by now and not on a stupid bus and if we weren’t let off right this minute her dad would sue. Yeah, we said, ours would too.

But some of us didn’t know where we lived because we were driven everywhere and our parents never let us bike outside our driveways. So we followed Lisa as she led us past the wrought iron fenced graveyard while light sliced through the lime green oak and maple leaves and into our eyes. The first house we came to was Donnie Pepper’s, which was flat and small and didn’t look like ours. We watched him run up the brown lawn to the front door and use his key. We marveled at this awesome responsibility, then worried: did we also need keys to get home, we who always went into our houses through three-car garages that opened like spaceships and closed us in tight? We never needed them before.

But Donnie ran back saying everyone was gone. His whole family gone.

We went quickly to the next house. Up the hill from Donnie’s, where we lived, the houses were much larger and had sweeping circular drives and columns around the front entrances and back basement doors for our nannies and live-ins and au pairs. Here were the wide green lawns and close-trimmed rhododendron and azaleas we were used to, where the mulched-in flower beds exploded with echinacea and hydrangeas and black-eyed Susans. It was Lisa Cohen’s we came to first and she had no key and no button to open the garage so we rang the bell six times and pounded the door with our fists.

Then it was on to Beth Zimmerman’s but this time we tried the door in the back because she said the live-in always forgot to lock it. We walked inside, all of us, just as the light started to turn to gold and we were glad because none of us, even Donnie with his key, were supposed to be out after dark.\

Beth’s house was empty too. Her mother and father and older brother and the live-in were gone. We waited for Beth to stop running through her house screaming for her family. Her basement looked like most of our basements: off-white Berber carpet, TV with Atari in the corner and cartridges spilling everywhere, electric cars, a thousand board games half out of their boxes, and basketballs and tennis balls and volleyballs and baseballs and soccer balls, and a million toys we no longer played with. Not much to see, but Donnie walked around with his mouth open touching everything.

He could not stop talking about how big everything was which was weird because it was all the regular size and he said something about Beth’s parents having so much money. Then Tony brought up how hungry he was, like just by saying it someone would bring him some food. We waited expectantly because in our houses someone did. But our live-ins and nannies and au pairs weren’t there and we didn’t know what to do. But Donnie did. He pulled out milk and apples and soda and string cheese from secret drawers we’d never seen before. He found chips and pretzels and cookies in a high cabinet we’d never noticed. He kept saying something about each thing being the good kind, the best kind. He even found popcorn and we clustered around to watch as he pushed at a microwave that beeped back with importance.

We tried calling our parents from each of the five phone lines in Beth’s house but no one answered. It was now dark and we could see our porch lights on and the sprinklers going up and down the neighborhood but we remembered how two summers ago everyone got those things hooked up to a timer after Robyn Glasser’s parents did. No lights were on inside and the houses we knew so well hulked in the night like monsters.

When we couldn’t eat anymore we went to the den and sat on the leather sofas and watched TV. Donnie couldn’t believe all the channels on cable but we’d seen them all before. But then Gremlins came on HBO and we all loved that movie. And after that was Nightmare on Elm Street, which our parents wouldn’t let us watch, except Donnie said his uncle took him to see it one Saturday when his parents had to work. He told us when to cover our eyes before the really scary parts so we got through it no problem. And then came Indiana Jones but a lot of us were asleep by then, either on the couches or the deep pile carpet of the floor.

What came next? We don’t know. We all woke up in our own bed. Except everything was different. It was a Saturday, but none of our live-ins or nannies or au pairs made breakfast. Instead our parents were in the kitchen looking worried but determined, doing things like pouring juice and making eggs.

After breakfast our parents ran around our houses putting things in boxes labeled Goodwill and Catholic Charities and B’nai Brith. They made us go into the basement and put all our toys and games into boxes too. Sunday was even worse. They had us go to our rooms and pick out just the clothes and toys and books we really needed and put those in small boxes with our names on them.

We were moving. Most everyone in our town was. Whole neighborhoods like ours clearing out.

We couldn’t figure out why. Except maybe it had to do with all that time everyone else spent with the aliens. When we cried and screamed and stamped our feet we got long lectures from our parents and brothers and sisters, and even from our nannies, au pairs, and live-ins, about excess and greed and the emptiness of material goods. But we couldn’t see what that had to do with our TVs and computers and video games and Barbie dolls and GI Joes and Monopoly sets and Nerf guns and My Pretty Ponies and Lite-Brites and Easy Bake Ovens. Everything we loved was going away.

Donnie Pepper was staying. He didn’t have any boxes to pack so he walked up the hill to help us pack ours. We didn’t want to be inside. We wanted to run in the thick grass of our yards and jump on our trampolines and swim in our pools. But our yards were full of tables and couches and chairs, and our trampolines were hauled off in trailers, and our pools were covered and drained. Donnie barely noticed. He just sat in our basements and bedrooms and dens and held each of our toys close to his face, like he could breathe them in, before we dumped them with the others. Soon there was nothing left but Donnie still found the Monopoly top hats, and the Clue candlesticks, and the Candyland gingerbread men we’d lost under our beds and nightstands and dressers and he slid them into his pockets when he thought we weren’t looking. And when it was time to go he stood outside our houses crying and watched us disappear.

Jennifer Walker writes short stories. They can be read in issues of Bewildering Stories, Fleas on the Dog, Idle Ink, and Not One of Us. She lives in the Virgin Islands with her girlfriend and their two exquisitely beautiful and understandably narcissistic dogs.