Among the Cattle

For a while after the aliens came and started sucking everyone up into their little space ships there was a tremendous panic, but eventually it just became a thing that happened sometimes. At the beginning every street had a few people a day suctioned into the air and taken away forever. Then it died down to one or two a week, and then to just a couple every month.

Some Jesus people got on television claiming that the rapture had started, but we soon realised that our visitors were aliens of the archetypal variety. They zipped over our motorway junctions and car parks in silver space ships shaped like frisbees with domed roofs and tripedal landing gear (though they never landed), and they sucked you up in a big cone of yellow light, just how we had all expected that they would. Some people claimed to have seen them, and those who did said they had big grey heads with bulbous black eyes and little mouths.

There was a period when all the world’s governments spent lots of money doing things with fighter jets, bombers, nuclear warheads, scientific and/or diplomatic landing exercises, unusual radio frequencies, anthrax bombs, and so on, but none of it ever made a difference to the aliens and often it just made a mess. If there’s one word I’d like to associate with the aliens it would be “unperturbed”.

Sometimes the person who got sucked up was an important figure like the Prime Minister of Canada, but more often it was someone like Jo from the car wash, who was only important to me.

Although the Jesus people who believed that this was literally the rapture were no longer taken seriously, having been debated out of the public sphere by an uneasy alliance of popular scientists and photogenic theologians, in many ways they never left, as the secular public remained more or less in agreement with the core tenet of the Jesus people’s beliefs: that being sucked up by an alien never to return in one way or another represented a moral judgement made by the alien, a consequence of how the person sucked up had lived their life prior.

Even so, the finer points of this assumption remained up for debate. One group closely aligned with the Jesus people believed that the aliens were here to reward the virtuous for the good things they had done; that we should live virtuous lives to increase our chances of being taken to an extraterrestrial paradise. They were referred to as Pseudo-Rapturists by marketing departments and in the academic literature.

The other main group, which was slightly larger than the first, believed that getting sucked up by an alien was a terrible thing that only happened to those who deserved it. They were known as the Retributionists.

Between them, these two groups contained about 65% of the global population. Although the exact balance of demographics varied through different regions due to culture and other specifics, it was to a remarkably small degree. At a large enough scale, everywhere was about the same.

I think for a lot of people which camp they landed in depended on who got sucked up first out of the people they knew. When it happened to my step dad, I found quick kinship with the Retributionists and thanked the aliens for taking him away. I remember coming home to my mum and seeing her relieved, as if a heavy weight had been sucked up with him.

That night I got on my bike and pedalled out to Jo’s house. We lay on her trampoline with a bottle of gin I had taken from my step dad’s hidden cupboard. Gazing up between the stars to look for space ships, we laughed like I hadn’t in years.

She got sucked up a month and a half later and after that I wasn’t so sure.

A lot of people, when presented with conflicting information, would try to explain to themselves why it fit in with what they already believed, even if it didn’t feel like it should. My mum only met Jo in the weeks after my step-dad was taken, but they got along well, and that made me happy. But when Jo got sucked up, my mum was quick to start casting aspersions.

I don’t believe Jo was a saint but I know she was a better person than me.

The reason for this is that I was with Jo when the cone of yellow light shot through the ceiling and lifted her until her toes dangled a centimetre over the linoleum. She reached out to me. She was terrified. So was I. I didn’t move to take her hand, and then she was gone. I knew then that if the aliens were taking away bad people I would have just sealed my fate.

Among those who were neither Retributionists or (Pseudo-)Rapturists, one of the most striking groups was the Absurdists, who thought this was all a huge cosmic joke. There was an Absurdist group at my college, led by a philosophy lecturer who would smoke rolled cigarettes out the window when other staff members weren’t around. In the numbness that immediately followed Jo’s departure, the detachment of the Absurdists felt like a balm.

As time went on, they lost their appeal. I felt like I wanted to be an Absurdist more than I was sincerely able to, so I stopped pretending. They mocked the self-assurance of mainstream thinkers, but in many ways they were no different. I don’t think they understood that everyone was grieving in their own way. If any of them had family who had been sucked up, they would either not discuss it or pretend they didn’t care. For as much as they talked up the cosmic inexplicability of it all, they clearly wanted to feel in on the joke.

As I grew detached from the Absurdists at college, I began to realise I was harbouring an agenda of my own. I had failed Jo before and had to make it right. I needed to get an alien to take me to her.

I set about finding a network of people who could help me. There were three groups whose desire to get sucked up by an alien aligned with my own. Most prominently, the Pseudo-Rapturists believed that you would get sucked up if you lived a virtuous life. However I knew from my step dad that this was not the case, and it made me sick to hear his name in their mouths.

Next, the Left Behind were people in my position, who had lost loved ones and wanted to be reunited with them. I went to one of their support groups but the atmosphere was maudlin.

In the end I fell in with the Fetishists, who didn’t claim to know what was happening but found it hot, and were desperate for the aliens to take them to wherever it was people were going. Everyone else hated the Fetishists but I didn’t care. After the Absurdists and the Left Behind, they were a breath of fresh air.

The rate of abductions picked up again, so by now there were less and less people. Lots of cities were deserted. Seven of us would drive through them in a mint green campervan, siphoning petrol and looking for yellow lights on the horizon. Whenever we saw something, I would slip off while the others had their fun. They knew I wasn’t along for the same reasons they were but they looked after me all the same.

It took around three years for 90% of the world’s population to get sucked up, and in that time a lot of things changed. Since most people believed the aliens were the only real arbitrators of right and wrong, legal systems became obsolete. And since no one felt like they had any agency, narrative fiction went out of fashion, replaced by meditative poems and lyric essays. Everyone’s story ended the same way, but for some it took longer than others.

When everyone else from the campervan had been taken I started spending a lot of time with animals. Cows were never abducted – or mutilated, for the record – and I would lie against them to feel the warmth of other bodies, making sure to leave their gates open so they could find greener pastures once the humans were gone. It became sort of a mission to free as many animals as I could. When I slept among them I would dream of my mum and my step dad but mostly Jo and the look on her face when I didn’t grab her hand.

Sometimes I would stand up on a cliffside and scream into the night: “Why haven’t you taken me, aliens, why have you left me to die here alone all by myself?”

But I never got a response.

15 ways to process your trauma following an extraterrestrial abduction

1.

Say nothing about it to anyone for your entire adolescence. Let your grades slip in school. Inspire worry or frustration at random in each of your teachers. Shut down if coaxed to open up. Feel as little as possible.

Repress all associated memories. Avoid thinking any words that trigger them. Stay in well lit urban areas. Sabotage your parents’ holiday plans so you don’t have to leave the city. Never stay out after dark.

In fact, stop talking to your parents altogether. Refuse to acknowledge their glances over the dinner table. Let them ruin their marriage as they each struggle to untangle what happened to their smiling boy. Let suspicion fester in your family until it rots apart like so much dead wood.

2.

When it comes time to piece together a new mask to wear around others, do it slowly. Your chance to be normal has passed. Grow your hair long and don’t wash. Befriend the kids who huff solvents behind the bike sheds and listen to Slipknot. They are your people now – get used to it.

When younger kids call you a “little emo boy” on the bus, don’t let it bother you, but ask yourself whether subcultures preoccupied with the morbid and the extreme are inherently more accomodating, or if you just feel more comfortable around other outsiders. It could be that all your friends are all dealing with something inexpressible that makes it impossible for them to feel at home in everyday society, but it’s unlikely they’ll trust you enough to share the specifics.

When your friends joke about freaks who say they were abducted by aliens, laugh as if it came naturally. Learn to resent the uncomplicated soul you once were.

3.

You may find sleeping difficult, and that the fragments you do catch are wracked by nightmares so horrific you will wish you hadn’t bothered. Rest eyes-open in the amber glare of imageboards, desensitising yourself to cruelty. Try to last until dawn without looking out the window.

4.

Glaze your eyes whenever someone talks about their problems. If this allows you to blank out your mind entirely, take every such moment as a blessing. Bask in the emptiness for as long as you can.

5.

All memories bubble to the surface eventually, no matter how deeply submerged. When they do, run through every moment of what happened to you while lying in bed. Have you tried convincing yourself that something was implanted in the skin at the top of your back? You might feel it move against your spine. Spend the night in the bathroom setting up mirrors and twisting your neck. Get a knife from the kitchen but chicken out before breaking through. When your dad comes in at dawn to brush his teeth, blink at him without speaking. Hide the knife in your shirt.

To succeed, try again the following evening. When you cut out a black metal object the size of a pound coin that glistens like spilt oil under the fluorescent lights, be sure not to take your eyes off it. By no means should you place it on the edge of the sink while you scrub your blood off the linoleum, as it will have vanished by the time you are done, and you will have to resign yourself to never having physical evidence of what was done to you.

6.

In contrast to the greater reality you were briefly exposed to, ordinary life will feel like a plastic bag over your head: paper-thin but suffocating.

You may find yourself drawn to art that fixates on the cracks in the everyday veneer which so many accept as the sum total of existence. Certain pieces seem poised to break through it entirely, and these will make you feel something almost religious, transcendent. Seek them out. Read widely, wildly. Mention Georges Bataille in your English coursework. Surprise everyone by coming top of the class. Get told that if only you could believe in it, you might have a future after all.

7.

After a long summer, move city to study Literature at University. Be sure to notice the relief in your dad’s eyes when he shakes your hand after helping to unload your belongings. Realise he always helped as much as you let him.

When you have a panic attack after walking in on your housemates watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind, refuse to explain why, but know that it is normal to feel flattered by the tenderness with which your new friends broach the subject the next day.

8.

The next few weeks are your chance to start hinting towards your history in the vaguest possible terms. When I was thirteen, something very bad happened to me – this is how you have to talk if you want to be taken seriously.

It will be hard not to feel guilty about implying your trauma is something more conventional, especially after you share an awkward moment of intimacy with a girl called Anne, who assumes you were both victims of rape. Try not to beat yourself up for lying to her, if only by omission, for stealing her sympathy under false pretenses. Quiet the bitter voice inside you that laughs when she puts her hand on yours and says “it’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it”.

She will call you again to hang out, so be sure to have some excuses prepared in advance. It’s better for both of you that way.

9.

Just when you thought you were getting better, try getting worse. Have you alienated your housemates by screaming uncontrollably in the middle of the night, then refusing to talk about it? How about not leaving the flat for a month, piling up takeaway boxes in your room until they start to smell, and going entirely mute when you run into someone in the hallway?

All these and more are worth a try.

Better still, find yourself an addiction. If you’re old enough to buy alcohol in your jurisdiction, try drinking every day. You will be surprised how quickly you can get through 70cl of gin. Learn to use the dark web to order xanax. If Anne won’t stop calling you, drop your phone in the sink.

10.

Convince yourself there are more microchips hidden under your skin. Terrify everyone. Make a mess. Wake up in hospital, handcuffed to the bed frame, as if in terrestrial recreation of your recurring nightmares.

11.

Find yourself surprised by the persistence of those who care about you, even when you have no idea why they would. It will be harder to ignore everyone’s calls after your dad drives two hours to bring you a replacement phone. When he strokes your head and tells you how he wishes you felt comfortable opening up to him, cry in front of him for the first time in eight years, but say nothing. 

Wake up at 2AM to see him sleeping in the chair by your bed. Feel unfathomable guilt for every suspicious glance he got from the neighbours who witnessed your pre-adolescent transformation.

The psych ward is a dangerous place to admit your particular truth, but it will be easier once you realise you have nothing else to lose.

12.

If you need a reason to smile, keep an eye out for the awkwardly respectful interactions between Anne and your dad when she arrives with flowers the following morning. Imagine happier circumstances in which they might meet again, once all this has passed.

When he leaves to give the two of you some privacy, take her hand and thank her for coming. Realising she doesn’t expect you to say anything else will be a lifted weight all on its own. Before she leaves, she will reach into her jacket pocket and take out a purple rock on a string. Hear her say: “It’s amethyst. To help you sleep.”

13.

After everything you’ve been through, confessing it all to Anne will be surprisingly easy. “That’s fucked up,” she’ll say, after listening in silence. “I’ve never met someone who’s experienced that, but I did know a girl who got possessed by a demon. Freaky fucking shit happens all the time, man, people just like to pretend it doesn’t. But I’m really glad you told me. It’ll be okay.”

14.

Get drunk on your birthday and tell the rest of your friends. Make sure Anne is there to back you up – everyone knows she’d fight anyone foolish enough to disrespect you in her presence. Let those go who would drift away. Cherish those who’d remain.

15.

Write sad poetry. Throw rocks at trains.