There were four hours missing from
that day. The day it happened. The drive from Big Bear back to Los Angeles should have taken two hours. They left at ten in the evening and traffic
was light, as they’d expected. They rolled into the driveway at home at four AM.
Sarah insisted that they must have
pulled over beside the road. That David had become too tired to drive
and that she had already fallen asleep. That he fell asleep too and dreamed the
whole thing. David, for his part, could never accept that story as he was sure he
would have remembered all of it. The pulling over, the waking up, etc.
Then there was the problem of explaining
how they both had the same dream. Of a light that penetrated the roof of the car as if it were made of glass. The feeling of
flying. The buzzing. The hands and faces. Faces with unnaturally large eyes. The samples taken from each of them and commingled.
And though they disagreed, they both tried
to bury the entire episode in the far corners of their minds. Sarah mostly
succeeded. David didn't. He was haunted by the feeling of fact. It had
happened. He and his wife had been abducted. He needed to know more. He began
to dig into ufology. It angered Sarah. He couldn’t help it.
They did their best to live normal
lives. They continued on in their jobs. They had a child they named Oliver after her late father. And after ten years of David continuing quietly to insist it had
all been real and Sarah resisting, they prepared to divorce.
Until the night a light streaked across the sky. And Oliver’s double showed up at the door.
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