Let's Get Abducted

     Soft white light just barely poked through the cloud cover over a quiet campground. Liz and Zee, two young women and seemingly the only people around, were hiking back to their campsite after a long hike. Fatigue was setting in for them. They’d walked all the way around the lake and were now headed back up the hill towards their campsite. A moment’s silence was filled by light huffing breaths and the sound of their boots on the wet, springy grass.
     “Do you think you can be friends with someone you’re attracted to?” Liz asked.
     “Is this your way of telling me I’m hot?” Zee said.
      “I would just say that. No, I was thinking about that girl Kate,” Liz said.
     “With the worship kink,” Zee said.
     “I didn’t think of it as a kink… I just wanted to worship her. Truly. I felt like it was the least I could do. She made me feel so good, so special, and it was genuine, too. So we were friends. And she’s so hot that it just felt natural to me. She was perfect. I loved everything about her body — her back muscles, her long arms, her curves. About her mind, about her energy,” Liz said. “The way she cared about people. She devoted so much of her time to others, volunteering. So many times she’d go over to someone’s house and cook a giant meal for them, clean up, everything. And, god, her sense of humor. She could seem a little aloof, because she was never desperate for a joke. And then she’d say something that could have you laughing for hours—“
     “OK, I got it,” Zee said, interrupting. “You’ve told me all this before. You wanna go back and just be friends now? You treated her like a goddess walking on Earth and now you can just go get a pizza and a cocktail?”
     Liz made an exasperated sound. “I don’t know, but it’s not like we didn’t have good times. Just because she’s with somebody else—“
     “Not married, you’re about to say,” Zee said.
     “— and not even married, doesn’t mean we couldn’t be friendly, even without the sex and the worship part,” Liz said.
     Zee scrunched her eyes closed. “Does she want that?”
     “I think so,” Liz said. “But I haven’t exactly asked.”
     “Story of your life,” Zee said.
     They set up their chairs, downed their various substances, and watched as the gray sky turned a light pink and the clouds started to part. They got lucky that the weather decided to cooperate, and the clouds were still visible along the edges of the lake. A little viewing window had opened up just for them.
     “You can’t just say, ‘let’s be friends’ again, though, right?” Liz said.
     Zee rolled her eyes. “Not usually. Maybe with her. She likes direct stuff, clearly. She liked you a lot. Do you just have a thing for her, I mean, is it genuine?” she said.
     “Genuine friendship or genuine attraction?” Liz said.
     “Are you being weird about it,” Zee said, with no emotion.
     Liz thought for a second. “No more than usual.”
     “Probably fine.”
     Darkness swept over the campsite. With the lack of nearby artificial light, they needed lanterns to see their immediate surroundings. The stars started to spark into existence slowly, as some clouds drifted out of the way and the last remnants of the sunlight fell. Both women were quiet, relishing in their breathing and in the subtle changes in the sound and light. It didn’t take long for them to be fully shrouded by the night sky. They each felt as if they could float away at any moment. Waves of darkness came in like the sea, and iridescent purple ink filled the empty space.
     “I think I’m in love with Kate, actually,” Liz said, after a long period of silence.      “I don’t know. It’s probably not good to befriend her again without also telling her. But that’s impossible, right? I can’t just say that. That changes the whole tenor,” Liz said. “But I don’t care. I just want to be in her presence. It wasn’t a kink to me, I meant that. Worship was just my natural reaction. And I’ve known her a long time, so you know it’s not infatuation, it’s not impulse. It’s just the reality of how she is, to me. How we fit together.”
     “You two do fit together, is the thing. I believe it. But you can’t just hang around waiting for her to break up. That’s no fucking good, girliepop,” Zee said.
     “Yeah,” Liz said. “So I should get over her?”
     "I think you should just let things happen,” Zee said. “Say a UFO came out of the sky right now. Flying saucer zooming in. Lights all over. And it lands a beam on us and I get lifted up. They take me in and they experiment on me. Remove my piercings and analyze my tattoos, maybe shave my head. They study every nook and cranny, every response I could have. If I’m lucky, they keep me alive. They might keep me up there for hours, days, or years. Did you ever hear about those people who showed up in New Mexico in 1993, with period clothes in perfect condition and no memory of how they got there? I could show up in the future and never see you again.”
     “What,” Liz said.
     “I couldn’t change it,” she said. “And it might be good for me.”
     “You want to get abducted by aliens?”
     “Why not?”
     “The weird torture stuff you just talked about!”
     “You want to worship, I want to get… probed. Don’t kink-shame,” Zee said. They stared at the sky as the clouds shifted and filled their view like dark ink in a water glass.
     “What if she knows and doesn’t care?” Liz said.
     “She probably does. Doesn’t care, I don’t know. ‘I’m flattered, but I’m taken’ I bet she’d say,” Zee said.
     “Let’s get abducted,” Liz said. “You’ll enjoy it and I won’t have to think about this again.”
     “You’ll just find an alien to worship,” Zee said. “Maybe we could make it work.” They laid there, in agreeable, peaceful silence, waiting for a UFO that never came.

     The next morning, the clouds had gone completely. Golden morning light bathed their camp and glowed through Liz and Zee’s tents. When Liz woke up, Zee was making coffee. She was the more practical of the two, which came in handy.
     “I told her,” Liz said. “She said just what you thought. ‘I’m flattered, and I appreciate it, but I’m taken right now.’”
     “She’s normal,” Zee said. “So there’s one less thing she has in common with us, I guess.”      “You think?” Liz said. “I feel like I’m normal.”
     “Being weird is normal, Liz, so yeah,” Zee said.
     “What does that…?”
     Zee laughed. “Let’s go back Earthside, space girl.”

© Jessica Umbra, 2024
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