09 Mar 98

By Paul Ford

Abduction

Right. Little gray men, and they've got this thing, a knob with spikes, they say it won't hurt. And at this moment, I'm not predisposed to believe them--

Let me back up. I was walking home, and a perfectly nice looking woman outside of a boring looking building in the East Village asks me if I'd take a marketing survey. And I don't have anywhere to be--in fact, I'm trying to decide if I would really sleep with a 50 year old woman if one asked me, because it's gotten desperate lately, lately being eight months. So I say, "sure," and she leads me into a small office. I sit at a desk. The room is white. She comes back with a questionnaire about white rice. She's about forty-five and a little, uh, aquiline in the facial features. Not a beak, but definitely crooked, and so I decided I wasn't that desparate, and the cutoff was still around thirty-five.

So I try to keep it entertaining. I write in that I buy Uncle Ben because I find Uncle Ben stimulating, arousing. I made up a rimjob fantasy with Uncle Ben on the back.

He looked so sore, so ready, but so sad and sweet. I pulled out a silkly pillow and placed it under his middle. I knew that he was long grain, and enriched. I wanted to show him how grateful I was for all of the nutrition he had introduced into my short-grained life.

Later, I write that Minute Rice takes too goddamned long. In the "Occupation" box, I write "Sherpa."

And right as I check off yearly income, the room went white, and a rushing noise came into me, and I wake up strapped to a green table.

"What the frig--"

But one of the grays, a little guy, all wrinkled, sneers with his pointy teeth and says, "Shut up." And outside the window, it's Earth. Half covered in shadow.

It's too painful to continue. I'll write more later.