Alien Abductees Anonymous

 

'My name is Zog, and I've been abducted by aliens.'

'Welcome, Zog.'

'My name is Bzzzz, and I was abducted by aliens.'

'Welcome, Bzzzz.'

'I'm Grub.'

'I'm Vimu.'

'I'm Xyler.'

'Welcome, all of you to this inaugural meeting of AAA – Alien Abductees Anonymous. My name is Qetta and I am the leader of the group. Who would like to tell their story first?'

Vimu raised a tentative tentacle.

'Go ahead, Vimu,' said Qetta. 'Tell us what happened to you.'

'I was undulating down the street late one night, minding my own business, when I saw a flash in the sky. There was what looked like a star, descending slowly in a cloud of smoke. As it got closer I could see it was some kind of space craft that looked like a metal Bgrumb, all geometric, except it only had four legs. There was something painted on the side. A square with red and white stripes on it, with another, smaller square in the corner which was blue, and covered in stars.'

'That's exactly like the one that took me!' Xyler exclaimed. 'So it wasn't my imagination!'

'So it had that,' Vimu continued, and some black shapes which could have been writing.'

'Can you remember what they were?' Qetta asked. 'Could you draw them for us? I have some vellum here. How's your ink supply today?'

'Fine,' Vimu said. He extended a tentacle and carefully squeezed ink onto the page. He held up the vellum to show 'NASA USA'. 'Like that,' he said. There was also a picture of a kind of green plant with four leaves.'

'Then what happened?' Xyler asked, his antennae quivering with excitement.

'The door opened and two creatures got out. Were they ever ugly! They only had four limbs, two of which they used to walk with. They had tiny eyes and bulbous noses and dark tufts growing out of their heads. No antennae. Their skin was a disgusting pink colour, like puke.'

'Mine were exactly the same, except the tufts on their heads were a kind of pale yellow.'

'One of the ones who took me had red tufts,' Zog added.

'You say they had pink skin?' Bzzzz asked. 'Mine didn't. Mine had skin that was dark brown.'

'I was taken by a group of about six of them,' said Grub. 'Their skin tone ranged from pale beige to almost black. Not one of them was green, or even blue.'

'So they took you into their ship?' Qetta prompted.

'Yes,' said Vimu. 'They tied me up and put me in a cage. They chattered amongst themselves, all excited, and I noticed something else. Some of them had deep voices and others had high voices. They put a container of water in the cage with me. I mean, water! I knew then they were probably trying to kill me. I was parched, I could have murdered a nice cup of sulphuric acid, but there seemed to be no way of communicating that to them.'

'The ones who took me actually drank some of the water, and it didn't even harm them. They must be pretty damn tough, those things. Anyway, they got out a bunch of little black boxes and pointed them at me. I thought they were going to shoot me but they pressed all these buttons and nothing actually happened.'

'I had the same thing,' Bzzzz said. 'Black boxes. Only there wasn't a square with stripes. They had a blue square with a circle of yellow stars and...' Bzzzz reached for the vellum and wrote on it 'EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY'.

'What does all this mean?' Grub wondered.

'I confess, I have no idea,' Qetta said. 'All I know is, when we try to tell our stories, nobody ever believes us.'