“
Wait a goddamn minute!” Rick snapped. “You have to tell me about the fucking spaceship!” “Will your ride be waiting?” Jerry asked. “He’ll wait!” “Well, okay then. I was camping with a couple of friends. We were in Arizona, way out in the middle of nowhere. We’d been in Sedona, but we moved out into the desert. When my friends woke up in the morning, I was gone. I woke up—I don’t know when—inside this spaceship. I had no memory of being snatched. It was like silver glass on the inside and the people—the aliens—had on suits that covered them from head to toe, breathing like Darth Vader, and I was stripped bare and lying out on a silver table. They were studying me and poking at me and talking in what sounded like high-pitched squeaks. Like dolphins. “My friends got a search party going back in Arizona, but after two weeks of not being able to find me, they all gave up the search. They assumed I’d wandered off and died in the desert. But at some point, again in a total blackout, I found myself back in the desert of Arizona—alone. A park ranger found me and picked me up. The story goes that I wandered off from our camp and hallucinated due to dehydration, but that isn’t what happened.” “Maybe it did,” Rick said. Jerry shook his head. “I wasn’t dehydrated. And after weeks of being missing in the desert, my clothes weren’t damaged. Not torn or dirty or anything.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve researched—mine is not the lone account of such a thing. I’ll be glad to give you what other details I can remember at the end of our next session, if you’re interested.” Rick sat back in his chair and just stared at the guy. “How often does this spaceship trick work for you?” Jerry grinned. “Every time.” *
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