Claimed by the Ruthless Alien Lords

Every family has its share of problems, and I am well aware of that fact. It simply appeared that mine had a greater number of them than most other families did. All of my uncles had spent some time behind bars, and now none of them were able to find work. My mother was a drunk, and my dad had never been part of the picture at all. Saying that we were dysfunctional would have been a serious understatement. Somehow, despite everything, mom had managed to buy the house that we were living in. It was quite small, with only a few bedrooms and a single kitchen and living area combined. Even so, it was completely full of people. We turned into the crash pad for any family member who had nowhere else to stay, and that was pretty much everybody. They put the blame on the poor state of the economy. I, on the other hand, blamed the stuff they kept snorting up their noses. The fear of another beating was what kept me from ever saying anything like that out loud. I had my own bedroom until my last uncle moved in with us. Uncle Eddy told mom that he "needed" to have a comfortable bed. He was creepy enough that he probably would not have cared one bit if I had stayed in the room. My mother told me I could sleep on the couch, but she spent most nights there passed out drunk. Every now and then I found myself sleeping in a chair out on the front porch. It came as a real shock when I actually managed to graduate from high school. Once I finally turned eighteen, I got out of there as fast as I possibly could. I took a job cleaning rooms at a seedy motel several hours down the interstate. My boyfriend gave me a ride to the motel, carrying along the few meager possessions I owned. What he wanted in return was a quickie, taken on the motel's squeaky, uncomfortable bed. After he walked out that day, I never laid eyes on him again. The manager at the motel wasn't exactly a nice man, but he accepted my money just the same as anyone else's so that I could stay there. At least I had a bed of my own, along with a small television to watch. I was the one who did the cleaning, so the place was kept spic and span. It didn't take long before I learned to steer clear of Mr. Pensky, the manager, in much the same way I had once avoided my uncles. The work I did at the motel was hard and thankless. Mr. Pensky wouldn't even buy me simple things, things like gloves. My hands were red and raw from all the chemicals I used. After a couple of months, the dry cracks that spread over my fingers and palms simply became part of me. Most of the motel's clientele were old, grimy men. They tried to grope me every day, but I was quick enough to get away. I had learned years earlier how to dodge my uncle's unwanted touches. I managed to keep myself out of trouble. Even so, the basics of living at the motel were still an improvement over what I had known. I got to eat three times a day. For once in my life, I could lock my room, so nobody stole the things I bought. I rarely had fresh fruit or vegetables, since canned foods kept better and cost less. I knew I couldn't go on eating like that forever. Even so, for me it still counted as an improvement. I really enjoyed the days I had off. I caught the bus and rode it down to the coast. There was a spot there that the tourists never visited. If you made your way down the steep slope, you ended up with a private rocky beach all to yourself. I would spend hours diving and exploring the deep bottom of the water. It was quiet beneath the water, and the fish never gave me any trouble. I taught myself to hold my breath for a really long time, and I explored the underwater caves and crevices as far as I possibly could. If I ever managed to save up enough money, I thought about taking scuba classes and renting the equipment. That kind of money was still a long way off for me. That was my life, and at last I was happy. My little world wasn't all that exciting, but it belonged to me. After work, I did my shopping at the mini mart a block away. Late one night I came back to the motel and noticed a faint glow coming from around the back. I set my groceries down in my room and went to see what it was. Behind the building there was a small wooded lot. Sometimes drunks started fires back there. The manager didn't pay much attention unless things got out of hand, and then we called the police and the fire trucks. I'm not sure what made me go and investigate. I should have gone to get Mr. Pensky and let him check it out. I made my way into the lot, crunching over empty beer bottles and stepping carefully around discarded syringes that lay scattered on the ground. The light appeared to be coming from somewhere near the center of things. I moved carefully between the trees, keeping my eyes fixed on the light as I went. It wasn't flickering the way a fire would. It was much more like a steady, rhythmic pulse. That is the very last thing I ever saw on Earth. I woke up, and I honestly had no real memory of ever having gone to sleep. Everything around me was remarkably clean, almost sterile, and completely foreign to anything I recognized. I sat bolt upright and suddenly realized that I was naked. The room I was in was a bright, uniform white, and that included the small bench I had been lying on. There were no windows anywhere in the room, and the light seemed to be radiating from the walls themselves. I set my feet down on the floor, and it felt like hard plastic beneath me. I reached out and ran my hands along the walls, but I couldn't find anything resembling a seam that might indicate a door. My breathing was coming fast and shallow, and I figured I must be hyperventilating. All at once it felt as though the room were moving, a sensation that was slight but unmistakable. My arms and legs were stuck fast, pinned in place by powerful currents of air. The air drew my arms out away from my sides and pulled my legs apart. I turned my head and watched the bench melt back into the floor. The walls simply disappeared, and that is the best way I could describe it. One moment they were there, and the next they weren't. I was standing on the white lighted platform, looking out into oblivion. My eyes gradually grew accustomed to the darkness, and now I was able to make out faces. My small platform was drifting slowly along, carried through a sea of faces. Most of them were humanoid in appearance. Others looked like the kind of beings people described when they recounted stories of alien abduction. I struggled to stay conscious. My mind simply wanted to switch off and be back at the motel cooking Ramen noodles. There was no way this could actually be happening.