Brice opened the garden shed door. A one-room shack, he generally felt like a giant inside. He intended to live there for fifty dollars a month on money gained from a student loan that he no longer intended to put towards his education. With no other commitments, no classes or job, he figured he could live five years in this shed. He called himself a homesteader.

Accustomed to his relative proportion, he leaned into the ensuing dark. It was cool and dank; it felt like a cave. The shed seemed different suddenly; while he’d slept well in the cot in the corner, he was suddenly uncomfortable. It did not feel like a home. The compass of his personal effects was unapparent. He couldn’t make out his property. Instead he blinked, his pupils still small from the light of midday. There was a dark smell that engulfed and then dissolved everything within it.

Brice felt someone watching him, an external scrutiny; felt also that the darkness was holding its breath, waiting to see what he might do in order to pounce. To shoot him. He cleared his throat. Considering aliens and anal probes, Brice wondered why the two were linked: abduction implied penetration, but why?

He raised his voice in an attempt to conquer what he couldn’t see. “I’m angry with you,” he said, pointing a finger first at the door and eventually at the darkness just beyond it. “You bit me.” Brice was breathing and noticed. He felt his heart hammering in his chest. He wished his voice had been deeper.

He coughed.

 

+   +   +