moved to
Columbia, and now she’s living with a...” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “...a Mexican . Our little granddaughter, growing up in the city with a bunch of Mexicans. Probably
eating burritos as we speak!”
“Judge says we can’t do a thing about it,” Bret’s dad said.
“Back to the bright lights over town,” Rudley said. “Did you see any? Or any glowing
objects at all, perhaps parked in a cow pasture?”
“Didn’t see nothing like that,” Bret’s dad mumbled.
“Well, I do have a little self-help brochure I wrote, for people who’ve been abducted,
and for the families of the abducted, too. It’s normally $5.99, but I’ll let you
folks have one for free.” Rudley handed over a thick booklet with a flying saucer
on the cover.
“What is this?” the crying mother asked.
“Aliens?” Bret’s dad scowled. “Is that it? You come here to talk to us about aliens?”
“Well, yes, sir,” Rudley told him. “There’s an epidemic of Americans being abducted
and studied by extraterrestrial visitors, you see...they’re not from our dimension.
They’re from a different Earth, in the ninth dimension.”
Mr. Daniels stared at him for a second, then stood up, raising his fists. “Get out!
Get out of my house!”
“Sir, you should know there are alien-abduction support groups—” Rudley began, before
Mr. Daniels punched him in the mouth. The man threw a punch at the camera, too, and
it blacked out.
The video skipped back to Rudley in his basement.
“Okay, well, that’s all the footage Beauford bothered to edit this week,” Rudley said. “Check this website again for future updates
about our trip to Fallen Oak...where the alien visitors got a little too greedy for
their own good, methinks!”
“No, please, no future updates,” Jenny said. “That was bad enough.”
“I know.” Seth closed the laptop. “What if other people, not I-have-a-webcam-show-in-my-basement
types, start looking into it?”
“There’s still no reason to come looking for us,” Jenny said. “We died in the fire
at your house, right? We’re dead.”
“Except we’re not.”
“Nobody knows that.”
“Plenty of people know it, Jenny.”
“Then what do you want me to do about it?” Jenny was surprised to hear herself scream.
She made herself speak more calmly. “I mean, there’s nothing we can do.”
“I just thought you should know about it.”
“Now I know about it. Now what?” Jenny chewed her lip, worried. She grasped his
hand in hers.
“We could make out,” Seth suggested.
“Maybe.”
“You could tell me what happened to us.”
“What do you mean?” she looked at him.
“The carnival, the tent revival. Did we get away? The last I heard, I’d done this
really awesome thing, rescued you and carried you away on horseback, and it made you
super-horny.”
“Maybe I should keep more of my thoughts to myself,” Jenny said.
“And then you ripped your dress in half for me.” Seth grinned.
“It wasn’t for you, it was for the horse.”
“Gross.”
“Do you want to hear the story or not, Seth?”
“I want to hear it. I like stories where I’m the hero.”
“Maybe I should stop where we were,” Jenny said, laying her head on his shoulder.
“Things go downhill, just like all our lives.”
“Sounds promising. Too much happiness is boring, right? Make sure you talk more
about how much I turned you on.”
Jenny took a deep breath and continued the story.
Chapter Seven
Juliana and her mysterious, sexy, handsome rescuer rode on through the night and the
rain, Juliana holding him tight. After a long and cold lifetime without touching
anyone, she couldn’t get enough of feeling his warm body through his wet shirt.
They followed a small stream westward from the Mississippi, staying in the wilderness.
He finally stopped the horse in a meadow full of tall grass and wildflowers and