Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Fiction Works

Nonfiction Works

The Disappearance

of Ray Delgado

by

J. C. Cauthon

The Disappearance of Ray Delgado

Copyright 2017 by J. C. Cauthon

Cover Art by J. C. Cauthon

Kindle Edition

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.

J. C. Cauthon is a full-time author. She has always been a story-teller, taking her first plunge into the writing world with a short story written in kindergarten. She held onto this urge to write as she grew up, always keeping her nose in a book that she was reading or in a notebook where she was scribbling her stories. J. C. majored in English: Creative Writing at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.

She now resides in rural Eastern North Carolina with her husband, four kids, and a farm full of animals.

For information on upcoming releases, book giveaways, or just to drop J. C. a note, please visit the following links. She'll be pleased to hear from you!

Website: http://jccauthon.wordpress.com/

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/cauthonj

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/JCCauthon

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/cauthonj

Chapter One

“Now, tell me what really happened,” Joe demanded from the seat across from Jake.

Jake heaved a sigh. “It was just before sunrise, like I said when I came in.” He squeezed his trembling hands. They were still shaking from shock. “Ray and I were in the woods behind Lee Simpson’s farm. He hired us to clear out a tree that fell during the hurricane two weeks ago.”

Joe leaned back in his chair, scribbling on his clipboard. “What happened after you arrived in the woods?”

“Ray used the interior lights of the truck to check the oil and gas in our chainsaws while I set up the generator and the floodlights so we could get to work. It was really foggy when the lights came on, but neither of us remembered seeing fog anywhere else on the ride out of town.”

The two men standing behind Joe shifted their positions, straightening up to make themselves look more intimidating. If Jake had not just emerged from a crime scene, he would have snorted at the ridiculousness of it all. These two looked like they had just stepped off the set for Men in Black.

“Mm hmm,” Joe mumbled, absently scrawling something in the top corner of his clipboard. “Then?”

“We cranked up our chainsaws and set to work. The sun wasn’t up before we were blinded by floodlights from above, so we couldn’t have been working for more than ten or fifteen minutes.”

Joe shook his head. “Lee was already awake when you drove into the woods. He said he saw your tail lights through the trees. However, he never saw any bright lights coming from above the trees, and air traffic control hasn’t had anything other than normal airport traffic in the skies since last night. You also stated earlier that these same lights took your friend because you haven’t seen him since. Are you sure that is what you saw?”

Joe looked up from his clipboard when he asked that question, leaning forward to look Jake in the eye.

Jake’s mouth dropped. He stared at Joe, replaying everything that had occurred since he and Ray left the hotel. He remember every minute of it, so why was Joe acting as though it was all a lie. Focusing on his friend’s face, Jake noticed something off. With the amount of light in the room, Joe’s pupils should have been as small as pin points. They were dilated, and his eyes were unfocused.

“Yeh, I’m sure.” Jake cocked his head to the side, studying his friend intensely. “Joe, you feeling alright?”

Joe ignored him, turning his attention to the folders on the table between them. Shuffling through them, he selected one and opened it on the table in front of Jake. Ray’s ugly face stared up at Jake from the folder.

“This Ray? Ray Delgado. The same man that these two agents have been searching for for over a week.”

Jake froze, his mouth gaping open. This was unbelievable. “Yes, this Ray. You know, the same guy who robbed you of four hundred dollars when we played poker on Monday. Christ, Joe, you’ve known him for five years!”

This was not making any sense. Jake pulled the folder closer to him, and he read over the report. Ray Delgado, last seen at work September 15, 2015. Jake swallowed. That was ten days ago. They had poker night at Jake’s apartment five days ago.

“What the hell is going on here?” He tossed the folder back on the table. “Joe, you saw Ray five days ago at my place, the same night he took most of your paycheck. How do you not remember that?”

Joe leaned back in his chair, his eyes still unfocused in an odd way. “I haven’t seen Ray since our last poker game at the beginning of September. I think I would remember losing that much money.”

Jake stood up and started to pace the room. The two agents pushed themselves away from the wall where they were leaning and watched him with suspicion. He spun towards Joe and bent over the table to look at him.

“Fine, you have some kind of amnesia. I’ll play along. Did you send anyone down to the woods? Ray left all of his stuff behind when the helicopters or whatever the hell that was arrived. There should be plenty of evidence that he wasn’t a missing person until a few hours ago.”

“The only thing we found in the woods was your truck and your logging gear. Nothing else was disturbed.”

His heart stopped. “You shitting me? They were firing what sounded like a large caliber machine gun from the helicopter. It should have ripped holes in the surrounding area.”

“There is nothing there,” the inspector continued, leaning back in his chair confidently. “See for yourself.”

He slid a second folder across the table to Jake, and Jake opened it. Ray's profile was on top. He flipped it over onto the other side of the opened manila folder then did the same with the crime report that he had filed. Crime scene photos were piled behind the crime report. He spread them out in front of him.

There was his chainsaw, but Ray's was missing. His truck was still parked alongside the fallen tree. The next picture showed the interior of his truck, which should have shown Ray's lunchbox that he kept his “munchables” in, but that was missing as well.

He flipped the photo over, growing warm from the heat building up under his collar. They were making him out like he was crazy.

The next photo was a panorama of the entire area. Aside from his truck, the floodlights, and his chainsaw on the ground, it could have been any scenic forest in North Carolina. It was pristine, verdant. Large clumps of moss hedged up against the base of the trees. Deep green shrubs covered the ground, and in the middle of the whole scene was a fallen pine tree tree.

No signs of damage, no signs of gunfire, and no signs of human interference other than his belongings.

His hands shook. He pushed back from the table and stood up again. “This is right,” he yelled, pacing the room again. Stopping in front of the table, he slammed his fist on it hard enough to make the folders bounce across the surface. “It’s bullshit, Joe! I know Ray was there, just like you should know that Ray cleaned out your checking account on Monday. Check your bank records. You should have four hundred dollars that you can’t account for if you can’t remember Ray beating the pants off of you.”

Joe did not flinch. He seemed to be staring off into space, listening to a conversation that only he could hear. He jerked his head awkwardly to look at Jake. “I could go do that, Jake, but I am always forgetting to record some expense, so that missing money wouldn’t necessarily prove anything.” He placed his hands on the table and looked down at them. “But I do remember seeing you on Monday night, just not Ray. And you said that you were going to be pulling a lot of extra hours this week, so you wanted to enjoy your one night off. I know you are exhausted.”

Jake straightened himself. “I am tired, Joe. Tired of this shit you are pulling. What the hell is up with you? Why do you have a false missing persons record for Ray?” He pulled the missing persons folder across the table to him and opened it. Flipping through the pages, he stopped when he found what he was looking for. “This is Libby’s signature, but it’s not her handwriting. Who signed this?”

Joe yanked the folder back across the table to him, closing it tight. “I was there when she signed it, and she was under a lot of stress.” He picked up the folders and stood up. “Why don’t you call her after you leave here? I think with your long work week that you may have fallen back into your past recreational habits, and maybe you have forgotten that you are supposed to be helping her look for Ray.”

Jake’s heart plummeted. Joe thought he was back into the drugs. He had not touched that crap in years, not since he was a college student.

He stepped back from the table and away from the situation. A subtle movement caught his eye.

The taller of the two agents had been standing with his hands in his pockets the entire time, his index and middle fingers draped over the outside of the pockets. In a quick movement, he waved those two fingers towards the door. To most, it would have looked like he had simply tapped his fingers on his legs in impatience, but Jake knew it was a signal.

Joe turned, pivoting clumsily, towards the door and walked out.

The shorter agent caught the door as Joe passed through it, and he held it opened. They followed Joe out the door.

Jake scrutinized them, replaying the simple motion he saw, Joe’s unfocused eyes, and his jerky movements. Something was going on here, and somehow, those two men were controlling Joe.

He had to get out the precinct before they came back. He had to find Ray.

Joe picked up his jacket from the back of the chair and crossed the room to the door. Opening it, he peeked out in the hallway.

He did not see anyone.

He glanced at the corner mirrors at the end of the hall. The main office area of the precinct was full. The two agents stood off in the corner while the officers and the secretary went about their day.

He was through with this bogus investigation. He slid his jacket on and stepped out of the door into the corridor. He did not want to walk through the main office, but he had to. Trying to keep in character with how the conversation ended, he flipped up the collar of his jacket and stomped out of the precinct.

Darting his eyes up at the mirror in the corner of the foyer on the way out, he saw the taller of the two agents smiling at him.

It was the most feral smile he had ever seen.

Chapter Two

Jake slammed the door to his truck and trudged across the parking lot. All he wanted to do was get into his room, grab a cup of coffee, and figure out what in the hell was going on. Ray was with him all week, so why did Joe have a missing persons case filed for him? It just did not make any sense.

He slid his card key in the reader and shoved the door open. He frowned, slamming it behind him.

Someone besides the maid had been in this room while he was at the station.

Everything that belonged to Ray was gone. His suitcase that was sitting on the dresser when they left, the scattered shaving kit that was sitting on the cabinet by the sink when they trudged out the door—none of it was there anymore.

Jake locked the door behind him and stepped closer to the table where they had eaten pizza the night before last. He leaned in close to inspect it, using the light to search for traces of fingerprints. It was wiped and polished clean as well.

He jerked upright, his eyes immediately glancing around the parking lot outside his room window. Were they watching him? Paranoia washed over him at the thought that their hotel room has been searched and cleaned.

Backing away from the window, he collapsed on the edge of the bed, sighing in exasperation. What was he going to do?

He rubbed the sides of his forehead. He did not even know who he was up against. He had heard that the CIA and the FBI had some high-tech tools, but mind control seemed a bit out of their league. And Joe was definitely following that agent’s commands when they left the interrogation room.

Joe’s memory had been altered as well. Had anyone else’s memories from the last week been tampered with? Libby’s? The girls?

Libby and the girls.

Jake froze. Had they been taken as well? That was Libby’s name on the missing persons report, but it was not her handwriting.

He snatched his phone from his pocket and began a frantic search through the contacts for Ray’s house phone. He never could remember it.

He pressed the call button and waited. It rang twice.

“Libby?” he shouted into the phone.

“Jake?” She sounded groggy, her voice hoarse from dryness or from crying too much. “Is everything okay? Have you found any leads on Ray?”

Jake released his breath slowly to calm himself. She was okay, but she was under the impression that Ray was a missing person. He rubbed his knuckles against the side of his head. Deciding to go with what she had been brainwashed to believe, he took a deep breath and started talking.

“I think I have found the last place he was seen, and it’s not that far from the house. A waitress in the local diner here says that a really big fella came this morning and drank a whole pot of caffeinated coffee by himself.”

Libby half-snorted and half-sniffled. “Sounds like Ray. Did she say anything else?”

Jake raked his memory for something that would prove Ray was with him. He smiled. The cash in his wallet. “Yeh, she did, actually. She said the man had a lot of cash in his wallet when he paid. Do you still have your ATM card and your checkbook?”

He could almost hear her looking around the room.

“Um, I don’t know. Let me check my purse.”

He heard the jangling of keys on the other end of the line, then she paused.

“I have my ATM card in my wallet, and my checkbook is still here, but I am missing the check and carbon copy for check 1726.”

He mentally cursed whoever took Ray. That check would have been dated for Friday, and it would have been written out to Ray. Proof that he had been around at the time that it was written, especially if it was cashed. Which it was. But he would have preferred the carbon copy in his hands.

“Okay, Libs. I want you to call the bank before the end of the day and find out if he has cashed that check, and if you can, find out where he cashed it.”

She grew quiet on the other end. “What if he drained the accounts? I have to take Kadyn to the doctor tomorrow morning.”

“If you need money, Libs, run over to my house. Go to the set of cookie jars that are lined up on the counter. The next-to smallest one has some cash in it. Take what you need and pay me back when you can.”

“Okay.” Her voice shook.

He ran his hand through his hair. “Don’t worry, Libs. We’ll find him, and I won’t come home until I have him in the passenger seat of my truck, okay? You just take care of the girls. I’ll have him home as soon as I can.”

“Just bring him home, Jake. Please.” She hung up the phone on the other end, and the line went dead.

He took the phone from his ear and stared at the screen until it went dark. She sounded like she had already given him up, although she continued to urge him on.

Burying his head in his arms, he felt like crying. If she had already given up, then how long would it be before he was driven to the same conclusion? He did not understand why anyone would take Ray. Most petty crimes would have been solved by a simply arrest, but the incident in the forest brought images of Black Ops operations and CIA to Jake’s mind.

But they could not alter people’s memories.

Libby did not remember writing that check. Joe did not remember seeing him at the poker game. But Jake remembered him. Why?

Was it simply because he had not given them the opportunity to change his memory? Or were they expecting the helicopters and overbearing agents to be enough to keep him quiet?

It really did not matter to him either way. He was going to find out what happened to his friend, and he was going to bring Ray home.

Chapter Three

Jake stood up, exhaustion starting to sink into his bones. It had been a long week, and he really could use some sleep, but he had to find Ray. Whoever took his belongings from the room had to have missed something. A hair, a toe nail clipping, anything. They could not have found every single trace of Ray’s existence and wiped it from the room.

He yanked the sheets off the bed where Ray had slept, examining the pillows and sheets for any of his jet black hairs. He would even take a pubic hair at this point. Something to prove that his DNA had been in this room when it should not have ever been here to start with. There was nothing. The sheets had been bleached to within an inch of their life. The scent filled the air every time he moved them, burning his nose and making his eyes water.

His head spun.

Sitting on the edge of his own bed, he shook it to clear the dizziness. The fumes were strong.

He stood up again and walked over to the dresser where his luggage sat, shoved to one end. Ray’s sat beside it when they left that morning. Walking down to the end where Ray had placed his, Jake lifted the dresser and peeked behind it, hoping that a shirt, a sock, or maybe he would get really lucky, and Ray’s work ID would be behind it.

He sighed. It was cleaner back there than it was on Ray’s bed.

Squatting down beside the dresser, he studied the surface. There was nothing. It looked like a brand new piece of furniture. No streaks, no dents and dings, and worse yet, no fingerprints.

What was he going to do? Whoever took Ray knew what they were doing. Ray had been erased from the room.

These people were much more advanced than any governmental bureaus he had ever had to deal with.

Jake stood up and perched on the edge of the dresser. Those men at the police precinct still bothered him. He had never seen anyone give off a vibe like that, and he had been in and out of jail too many times to count. They gave off the appearance of being part of law enforcement, but something about them seemed wild, dangerous. And the way they were covering up what happened in the woods made Jake worry about Ray even more. What if they are the ones who took him?

Jake could not give up on him. He had to be somewhere, and there had to be proof that he was, in fact, here in the last day.

Gazing around the room, Jake looked for anything that seemed out of place. Anything that was not his. Other than his junk on the side table and his suitcase on the dresser, anyone would walk in here and think that this room was unoccupied and had been renovated and refurbished recently. Everything looked brand new. The hotel staff could never get it this clean alone.

His eyes started to close, and his head began to droop. He jerked it back up and shook it to clear the sleepy fog that wanted to overtake him. He had to wake himself up.

Jake stumbled into the bathroom area and stopped at the coffee pot. He flipped through the complimentary coffee sleeves. All of Ray’s favorites were still in the basket. Jake flipped on the track lighting over the sink and inspected the packages closely. Frowning, he put them back in the basket. They were new packets. No fingerprints on them anywhere.

He sighed inwardly and ripped the top off a packet of standard coffee, dumping it into the filter inside the top of the coffee pot. He filled the reservoir and turned it on to let it run while he showered.

Stepping into the bathroom, Jake turned the hot water on and let the room steam up before he slipped behind the shower curtain. Placing his hands on each side of the wall beside the shower head, he let the hot water run over his head and down his back, relaxing him.

They had to have missed something. No one was perfect.

He closed my eyes and retraced their steps over the last few days. He picked Ray up on his truck Friday morning, and they rode into work together. They worked side by side all day at the plant and left work together at five to drive here. They made a couple of stops for snacks, but that was all paid for in cash, so no way to track his steps there.

This was making him angrier than he had been in a long time.

They had only been in town one night. Very few people had the opportunity to see Ray between then and now, and Jake was certain that if Joe’s memory had been wiped of Monday’s events then the hotel manager’s had most likely already been cleaned of any memories of Ray as well.

He smacked the wall with his fist. Who on Earth has the capabilities to tamper with the human mind and erase people from events? Joe remembered game night, just not Ray being there. Jake did not understand it.

Ray was a hard guy to forget once you took a good look at him. He was a lot taller than most people and huge. Not fat, but broad. He looked like a lumberjack. Jake smirked. He called Ray “Paul Bunyan” because he looked like the lumberjack from the old tall tales.

But he loved people. He would talk to anyone, friend or stranger, and they were usually friends before they parted. And he was genuinely interested in getting to know them. Jake saw that goodness in him the first time they met, and it made Jake believe that he could make his life better if he really wanted to.

He owed Ray. He had to find him.

Jake quickly ran some shampoo through his hair and scrubbed up. The shower did little more than relieve the stress and tension in his shoulders, but at least he was awake again. He dried off, put on some clean clothes, and returned to the coffee pot.

He leaned over it and inhaled, closing his eyes for a moment to really enjoy the scent. Dumping two packets of sugar and a packet of creamer into his complimentary paper cup, he filled it with coffee and stirred it all together. He carried it across the room and sat at the table by the window, opening the blinds to let what was left of the sunlight in.

Involuntarily, he scanned the parking lot. It had been a while since he felt like he was being watched, but today, his skin was crawling with the feeling. A man in a suit was propped against the side of the building across the street from Jake’s window.

One of the men from the police station.

Jake resisted the urge to yank the curtains closed again. He knew that would give away the fact that he had seen them. He flipped on the television and leaned back in his chair, sipping at his coffee. He wanted to appear nonchalant, to make it look like he was simply going about his day.

He continued running through everything that he and Ray had done together since they left home. Most of the stops had been for Ray and his need for a snack refill. He and Libby both joke with Ray that if he quit eating all those snacks, he would just melt away, but he says that he burns right through the food. Jake wished he had the same metabolism.

They stopped at a diner when they got to town, a little five-parking-spot place that he and Ray frequented when they drove out to this side of the county. They stopped for dinner, but Jake had paid for both meals with his debit card. Ray said he would spot breakfast for both of them.

Jake took another sip of his coffee, and he saw the second agent ease up against the edge of the hotel manager’s office out of the corner of his eye. Hopefully, they were only making sure he wasn’t going to cause any trouble.

And right now, he wasn’t. Not until he had something. Something to prove that Ray was with him all day the day before and that morning.

His coffee cup stilled halfway to his mouth. Ray checked them in. He had taken Jake’s credit card and checked them into the room while Jake called Lee to confirm that they would be arriving at his farm before sunrise to start working on the tree. Ray’s name would be on the credit card charge slip.

Jake carried the cup to his lips and took a slow sip, then he lowered it to the table. He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and pulled out the credit card Ray had used. The receipt was still wrapped around it for Jake to record in his expenses later. Unfolding the receipt, he grinned.

Ray’s name was scrawled across the line, legible and as pretty as could be, with the date beside it.

Jake had his proof.

Chapter Four

Jake held the receipt up in the morning light. It was still there. He had gone to sleep. He did not have a choice on staying awake any longer, so he had locked his door, drawn his curtains, and gone to sleep. In his clothes. With his wallet in his back pocket, which he had laid on all night.

He had proof. Not undeniable, but still proof. Ray’s signature was perfect. It was a hard one to forge. He should know; he had tried often enough. Ray always caught him.

But at least now, he knew he was not the one that was wrong. Ray was with him in the woods, and someone had taken him and covered up the fact that they had made him disappear. But why?

Jake rolled over and sat up, placing his bare feet on the carpet beside the bed. He slid his socks on and shoved his feet into his boots. He laced them up tightly.

The weather was turning cooler, and he really did not want to wear a jacket today. He pulled a flannel plaid shirt over his t-shirt, and buttoned it. He had to get moving. He wanted to check out of the hotel before he went down to the precinct with his proof. Circling the room, he made sure that everything was still turned off, then he started to pack his stuff.

He grabbed his toiletries from the bathroom, tossed his clothes in his suitcase, and zipped up his luggage. Carrying his suitcase outside, he tossed it in the bed of his truck, just like he always did when he was traveling with Ray. For a moment, he considered moving it to the passenger seat, but he was going to find his friend, one way or another. And it was going to be today.

He climbed into the driver seat and put the truck into reverse. All he had to do now was check out. Scanning the parking lot as he meandered through it, he noticed that neither of the two men were watching him today. At least not from places where he could easily spot them. Either they had gotten smart and hidden themselves better, or they had moved on to their next task.

Stopping at the hotel office, Jake hopped from the truck and ran inside. He turned in his room key and hurried back out to his vehicle, eager to get to the police station.

All the way there, he glanced uneasily into the rearview mirror, expecting a black sedan to pull in behind him and start a tail. That's what they always did in the movies.

But there was nothing back there except the usual Sunday morning traffic.

He pulled into the police precinct and took a deep breath as he parked in a parking spot. There were only four cops in there. It would not be that hard to win one over with his receipt.

He pulled it from his pocket and traced his thumb underneath the signature. It was Ray’s, without a doubt. He was the only person that Jake knew who wrote his cursive letters exactly like they were taught in school. Ray’s handwriting was perfect.

Jerking the door open, Jake stepped out and into a thick mist, just like the one that enveloped him and Ray in the woods. Something was going on here. He slammed the door behind him and ran up the two steps into the front door.

He paused in the foyer. Something felt off.

The four cops, the police chief, and even the secretary who gave him the once over more than three times the day before were all up and moving about, but their mannerisms seemed odd. They passed each other but did not speak, and Jake saw Judy bump into one of the cops, but he did not act like he even noticed beyond the natural recoil the human body makes when hit.

Jake slid up against the wall and used the mirrors in the corner to see what was happening inside the main room of the precinct.

Their elongated images filled the mirror. The agents did not move, did not speak, but they stared intensely at the policemen and secretary as they moved from one task to the next, their eyes vacant and lost.

Jake spotted Joe and watched as he crossed the room to a computer. He did not sit down, but instead, he stood erect, straight as a stick, and dropped his arms down to the keyboard to type. It did not look remotely comfortable or normal for a person to type that way, and Jake had known Joe since they were in high school. He would have plopped down in the chair and sprawled out to type in comfort. That was just the type of man he was.

Suddenly, everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and turned to face Jake in unison. He forced himself further against the wall, resisting the urge to run out of the building. One of the agents stepped through the doorway that separated the foyer from the main office.

“What do you want?” he asked, his English rough and irregularly paced.

Jake found his courage. “I want Ray back. I know you have him, and I know that he was with me on the job site yesterday. Where the hell is he?”

The agent’s mouth spread into a feral grin. “He is no longer a concern of yours, and as far as the world knows, Ray walked out to his truck and never came home after work eleven days ago. No one will believe your word against all the proof that we have surmounted to back the missing persons report.”

“It only takes a little proof, and I have just that. I can put him with me at the hotel last night when we checked in. You missed something when you wiped down our hotel room.”

The agent continued to smile at him. “No, we didn’t. We never miss anything.”

Jake’s mouth fell open. Every agent he had ever had to deal with would have denied ever being in his hotel room, but this guy admitted that he was there and bragged that they never miss a thing. Who were these people?

The second agent stepped into the foyer with them, and Jake forced himself to stand up from where he was pressed against the wall.

Suddenly, he felt confident. He had physical proof, and everyone in this town had the type of proof that even these guys would have a hard time cleaning up.

Memories.

“Nobody’s perfect,” he said with a smile. They thought they had every piece of evidence that pointed towards Ray, but they did not.

Jake opened the door to the parking lot. “You can remove video footage, DNA evidence, and physical evidence that someone was around, but you can’t remove memories. Somehow, you managed to make Libby think that her husband left ten nights ago, but you can’t have erased the memory of every single person who saw him with me. It’s too many people, and even if they only saw Ray at a passing glance, they would remember him. It’s impossible to forget Ray.”

The agents glanced at each other.

Jake had them, and he knew it. He stepped out of the door, calling over his shoulder. “Nobody is perfect.”

Chapter Five

Jake climbed into his truck and slammed the door behind him. Glancing towards the precinct door, he smiled. They had not bothered to follow him. They were probably already trying to retrace Ray’s steps since he arrived in town.

Jake had the advantage. He had been with Ray every step of the way since they passed the city limits. He knew someone who would remember Ray immediately.

Cranking the truck and backing out of the parking space, he took a left out of the parking lot, heading to Rosie’s Diner on the edge of town. They had stopped there for Ray’s first dinner around 5:30 Friday night, and the hostess had flirted with Ray the entire time they ate. She had given him her phone number. Ray was not the type of man that she would forget. Jake was certain she would remember.

Jake glanced over his shoulder to make sure he was not being followed. He turned right onto a side road and cut through an alley to get back on course for the diner. He never saw anyone behind him. Letting out a sigh of relief, he pulled into the parking lot of the diner, scoping out the counter inside as he drove by. He grinned as his luck.

The hostess from Friday night was working the main counter. A younger waitress was working alongside her, and a customer sat on one of the stools at the counter. Otherwise, the tiny diner was empty.

He yanked his truck into a parking space and slammed on the brakes, making the truck rock hard as it came to a full stop. Leaping out of the truck, he slammed the door and hurried inside the diner before he could be seen. If he had someone following him, he did not want to make following Ray’s trail any easier for them.

The younger waitress looked up at him when the bell over the door dinged.

“Well, if it ain’t our local lumberjack. Where is your big friend?”

Jake slid onto a stool at the counter directly across from her. “You remember seeing him? When?”

She gave him a strange look, placing a coffee mug in front of him. She poured coffee in it from the coffee pot in her hand. “Friday evening, early. Ya’ll were heading out as I was clocking in for the dinner shift.”

A glance. She remembered Ray from a glance. He looked at her name tag. Maggie. If she remembered Ray, the older waitress would remember him. He exhaled in relief.

“Have either of you seen him since Friday night?”

The older waitress turned towards Jake. “Seen who, hon?”

“My friend, Ray. Big guy, jet black hair. You gave him your phone number Friday night.”

She stopped moving for a moment, lost in thought. “No, sorry, hon. I remember serving you Friday night, but you were alone. Our cashier overcharged you, too. Almost thirty-five dollars. Let me get that money charged back to your card.”

She bustled off before Jake could process his shock and stop her. He stood up to go after her, but the younger waitress stopped him.

“She doesn’t remember him. I asked if he had called her when I came in this morning, then we spent half an hour arguing over me being mistaken.”

Jake fell back onto his stool.

“Where is your friend?” she whispered.

“He’s missing—disappeared under mysterious circumstances yesterday morning. But there are men dressed like secret agents in town doing their best to make it look like he disappeared eleven days ago.”

“ Who would want to do a thing like that? What was he up to?”

Jake picked up the mug and hugged his hands around it to warm them. “As far as I know, nothing. He has a wife, two girls, and a happy life. He and I got out and get beers on Friday nights and we play the occasional game of poker, but he wasn’t up to anything that would be considered no good. He was a good guy.” He stared at his mug. “Even Joe down at the station has forgotten him, and Ray won most of his paycheck in poke on Monday.”

The woman at the end of the counter interrupted him. “You talking about those two men in black suits at the police station?”

Jake looked up from his mug and gave her a nod.

“Those two are odd,” she said, returning her attention to her plate. “I stopped in there this morning to get a few final details for a news report that I have to turn in by five today, and I could not get anyone there to acknowledge I was in the room. And those two stared at me until I ran out of the place.” She set down her fork. “My skin was crawling, and my hair stood on end. I’m not going back in there any time soon.”

“They freaked me out, too,” Jake added. “We had a staring contest before I came here, and they have been following me all over town since I tried to report Ray missing yesterday morning. I hope Delores would remember Ray, but I’m glad this girl does. I was beginning to think I was going crazy.” He turned back to Maggie. “You a hundred percent sure that you remember the date and seeing Ray here.”

She set the coffee pot down on the counter, making her gold bangles clink together. “Absolutely. He’s a hulk of a man. Who could forget him?”

Jake sighed, running his fingers through his hair. He would be bald before he found his friend. “They erased him from his wife’s mind for the last ten days or so. She thinks he walked out of the supervisor’s office at work and never came home. And Ray would never do that, not to anyone, and especially not to Libby.”

“You don’t mind if I report this, do you? I can’t run my story for tonight without my details, and this seems important” The news reporter took out a pad and a pencil and began to scribble down what they were saying. “From what you are saying, it looks like those two men took Ray and are doing everything they can now to cover their own tracks.”

“Exactly.” Jake took a sip of his coffee, forgetting that he had not adding cream or sugar. He grimaced at the bitterness. “Write away. I need all the help I can get right now, and making this public may cause them to make a mistake.”

She continued to scribble on her pad. “Do you have anything to prove that Ray was with you once you got to town?”

“All I have is the hotel check-in receipt that he signed, and this young lady’s word. Those guys cleaned out my hotel room while I was at the police station filing a report. Took everything that belonged to Ray. They showed up later while I was giving my statement. Anything I said, they contradicted and shoved a piece of paper under my face to prove they were right. And Joe has been acting weird since then, as well.”

“This is such a conspiracy,” she muttered with a suppressed giggle. “My boss is going to eat this up.” She pulled her phone from her purse. “May I take a picture of the receipt?”

Jake pulled it from his wallet and flattened it out on the counter. She took a quick photo with her phone and checked it for clarity.

“Perfect. I’m going to write this up and run it tonight. Maggie, I assume it’s okay to mention you seeing him?” Maggie gave her a quick nod, and the reporter continued. “I will make sure this is on the front page of the local paper first thing in the morning.” She stood up and walked out of the diner, tossing a twenty on the counter to pay her tab.

Jake shoved the receipt back in his wallet and returned to his coffee.

“You eaten anything yet?” the waitress asked, subdued.

He shook his head.

“I’ll get you a stack of pancakes and some sausage. Some food might help you calm down.” She scribbled his order on her notepad and placed it on the kitchen window counter.

Jake barely noticed the cook picking it up and tucking it into the order rack above the window. He looked around the diner. It was quiet. He was the only customer here. The breakfast rush had already come and gone, and most people were sitting in church. Ray wanted to be back home by now so he could make it to church and see Ashley’s Sunday school class sing for the congregation. He made Jake promise to be there.

Jake sighed. He missed Ray, and he knew Libby and the girls were out of their minds with worry, strung out over a lie. He was not going home until he had Ray back, even if it took days.

At least now he had someone on his side and someone who remembered seeing Ray. He was not crazy. It was obvious that these agents were more advanced than he was—they could control minds and erase memories. They were always one step ahead of him, so they could probably read them as well. He had to get ahead of them somehow, and hopefully, the newspaper article would help him do just that.

Chapter Six

Jake stood up and staggered around his new hotel room, dodging odd-looking stains that he did not dare to put his socked feet in. It was not the worst one in town, but it was close. He paid for it in cash, hoping to keep himself below the radar. He intended to check-out as soon as he showered and dressed.

He stopped at the sink in the bathroom area and stared at his face in the mirror. He looked like crap. Dark rings were beginning to form around his eyes. He needed to find Ray and get back to a normal sleep cycle. He did not even care about finishing the job for Lee anymore.

Casting his eyes to the corner of the sink where a coffee pot would have normally sat, he sighed. No coffee to get his engines going this morning. He stepped into the bathroom and turned on the hot water.

He stripped and stepped into the shower. He let the hot water run down his face, hoping it would refresh him in some way. His shoulders sagged as he picked up the complimentary shampoo and poured it in his hand. All the hope from yesterday had already faded away.

Lathering up his hair, he paused. He cocked his head to listen. His cellphone was ringing in the other room. He scrubbed faster, rinsing the soap off as quickly as he could.

He stepped out of the shower and wrapped the towel around his waist as he ran into the other room. Pulling his now-silent phone from his pocket, he saw he had a new voicemail. He called his voicemail, keyed in his passcode and put it on speaker. Drying off, he grabbed his clothes and dressed while the voicemail narrator announced the new message. The news reporter’s excited voice erupted from the phone.

“We’re on the front page! Grab a copy as soon as you can and read it. I told everyone to meet us at the diner for lunch, so you have to be there. Just get a copy, now! Bye!”

He snorted and picked up the phone, shoving it in his pocket with his truck keys. Grabbing his hotel key card off the dresser, he slipped out the door and hurried down the sidewalk towards the newspaper vending machines by the hotel office. He pulled a handful of change from his pocket and started shoving quarters, nickels, and dimes into the machine. It clicked when he reached the correct amount of change, and he pulled the door open, lifting a copy of the paper out of the bin.

His article was indeed on the front page, headlining with “Government Conspiracy Rocks Our Community.” He smirked as he scanned the article. She was good. With four more eyewitness accounts putting Ray in town as late as Saturday morning as they were heading out to the woods, Jake no longer felt like a crackpot. One guy even remembered seeing him standing on the sidewalk as he drove by. It really was hard to miss Ray.

Jake folded the paper and tucked it under his arm, heading back to his hotel room to grab his stuff and check-out. He wanted to stay on the move. So far, those two agents had not caught up with him, and he wanted to keep it that way.

He stopped beside his truck and tossed the paper in the driver seat. He had to grab his hoodie from the hotel room. He had everything else. He had not taken his suitcase inside, knowing that he was only staying one night. He had even used the complimentary soap and shampoo, which made him smell more like a gigolo than a normal man, but he could deal. Slamming the door shut, he ran into his hotel room to grab his hoodie off the chair by the door.

He opened the door, freezing as a blue light filled the interior of the room.

“You are proving to be quite problematic, Jake, Friend of Ray,” one of the agents spoke.

Jake slung his arm over his face as the blue light grew brighter, blinding him. He could not see anything. The air hummed around him, and he felt himself being lifted from the ground. It was odd, the feeling of being weightless and unable to control your movement. He dropped his arm and squinted to see the agents in front of him.

“Quite problematic, indeed,” spoke the other, his voice coming from somewhere by the bed.

Before Jake could pivot in his direction, he and the agents were swallowed by the bright blue light.

Chapter Seven

Jake fell. He flung his arms out, trying to catch himself, but he landed with a hard thud on his stomach. His chin scraped against the cold metal floor.

He inched across the floor, struggling to focus his eyes and rid himself of the spottiness caused by the blue light. He gasped for breath, choked on the taste of stagnant air. It reminded him of the taste of cold air coming from a mildewed air conditioner. Around him, he could hear hissing and grinding, the sounds of metal rubbing against metal and air being pushed through pipes.

Where the hell was he?

Eight hands grabbed him, yanking him to his feet. Jake thrashed around to see who held him, but they kept his back to them. His vision blurred, watering from the intensity of the light, but he continued to train them to make out a few things nearby.

A control panel was lit up near him, but the writing was in a language he had never seen. The console looked odd, foreign in ways that Jake could not even begin to describe. It looked like he had been carried to a discarded set from Firefly or Star Trek. Everything looks futuristic, consoles and machines that were far too advanced for humans. But it looked old as well, castoff and outdated.

The hands jerked him around, leading him up a metal stairwell in the center of the room. Jake started struggling. This was not what he expected when he insisted on tracking down Ray. He was expecting cops, maybe drug dealers or mafia connections—something to explain his missing past before Libby “rescued” him. But there were only two of these guys. There should not be eight hands holding him. They were not human—it was clear now. He did not want to know what they looked like. He just wanted to go home.

Jake pushed backwards against his captor, using the stairs as leverage. The being holding him was much stronger than he was though, and Jake was lifted off the ground entirely and thrown forward into the corridor, away from the room where he had landed when he arrived.

The corridor was large, wide enough for Jake to lift his arms out to his sides and possibly touch the walls around him, but his hands were constricted so he could not find out for sure. Metal buttresses circled around the walkway, giving the corridor a cavernous feel. Lights lit up along the hall as they walked. Jake slowed, taking in his surroundings. It was all surreal. His abductor pushed him past a window, and Jake’s jaw dropped.

It was a deep bluish-black outside the porthole. In the distance, a large orb hung in the blackness like a blue and green Christmas tree ornament. White puffs rolled over its surface.

Jake looked around the rest of the black blanket beyond where he stood. It was speckled with millions of bright pinpoints of light.

Stars.

Earth.

“Holy shit,” he breathed.

He was in space.

He could not breathe. Gasping, his knees buckled out from underneath him. He had to get out of here. He had to get home. He struggled against his captor, kicking his legs out and grabbing at the hands gripping the neck of his shirt.

His captor slammed him against the wall, smacking Jake’s forehead against a metal buttress.

Jake’s vision blurred again and started to blacken. He went limp and slid down to the floor as he passed out.

Chapter Eight

Jake groaned, pressing his fingertips against his throbbing forehead. He pulled his hand back to look at his fingers, expecting blood. There was not any blood. He frowned, remembering hitting his head on the metal frame of the corridor. There should be blood.

He sat up slowly, dangling his legs over the edge of the padded slab where he had been placed. He groaned and buried his aching head in his hands.

“They healed your forehead,” a disembodied voice spoke.

Jake looked around, but there was no one in the room with him.

“They said you were concussed, but I’m fairly certain you have brain damage. What in the heck are you doing here, Jake?”

“Ray?” Confused, Jake looked around the room again. “Did they hurt you? You sound funny.”

“It’s probably the ringing in your ears,” he said defensively. “You rang your bells fairly well.”

Jake shook his head. Whoever it was talked like Ray, but the voice was too nasal, much higher-pitched than Ray’s usual baritone. And Jake’s ears were not ringing.

He took a deep breath, closing his eyes to calm himself. He was on a spaceship. In outer space. With aliens. Real aliens. His crazy uncle was not so crazy after all. He smirked. No, his uncle was still crazy, tin foil hat and all.

The chuckle helped. His chest felt a little lighter.

Opening his eyes, Jake took in the compartment where he had been placed. It was not furnished beyond the padded slab he had woken up on and a strange fixture attached to the wall to his left that he could only guess was a toilet. There were no windows, but only three walls. The fourth wall opened into another room.

Jake stood, gained his balance, and walked towards the other room.

At the threshold between the two rooms, he was slung backwards, across the compartment he was in, sliding beneath the padded slab.

The shock paralyzed him for a moment. When it wore off, every muscle in his body felt like it was burning.

“Holy hell,” he spat, rolling to his side to stand up. He fell to his backside as his muscles began to tremble.

“You tried to walk out of the room, didn’t you?” Ray chuckled from the other room.

Jake could not speak for the agony in his muscles.

“It will wear off in a minute or two. I’ve never seen one of those force fields shock someone as small as you. It may take longer.”

Jake could hear the laughter in his voice. “I’m not short,” he forced through his clenched jaw.

Ray chuckled again. “You really have no idea how small you truly are compared to me.”

Jake took a deep breath. Most of the pain was gone, and what was left was bearable. “Your only like seven inches taller than me, and by human standards, I’m tall. You’re the freak show at six foot seven.”

“Yeh, by human standards,” Ray spoke wistfully.

Jake did not know what to say, so he said nothing. Ray was acting weird, almost sad, and Jake did not know what to do. He had never seen Ray like this. He did not have a solution to that problem, so he decided to worry about that one later. For now, he had to get out of this containment cell.

He returned his focus to the interior of the room. There was an inlaid panel on the wall beside the doorway. There were no small buttons on this side, but he was certain the door control console was on the other side of that wall. Looking through the doorway towards Ray’s cell, he located the control console.

“Hey, Ray,” he called. “On the right hand side of your doorway, are there two square metal panels instead of one ceiling to floor rectangular panel?”

There was a moment of silence.

“Yeh, why?” Ray asked.

“Because the door controls are on the other side of that panel for your room, so it should be the same for mine.”

“You’ll never be able to get that panel off. There is nothing in these rooms.”

Jake patted his pockets and cursed. He had left his pocket knife in the cupholder of his truck. Leaning forward, he lifted the leg of his pants and grinned. Those two jerks had not found his hunting knife. He kept it sheathed in the side of his work boots at all times.

He pulled the knife from its sheathe. “They obviously didn’t search me.”

“You’re a primitive and puny lifeform, Jake. Why would they?”

“Now I’m primitive and puny?” Jake harrumphed. “See if I let you out once I get this room unsealed.”

“Har har, Jake. What did they leave on you?”

Jake stood up, hurting in places where he knew he would have bruises later, and he staggered over to the wall panel. “My good knife.”

He started scraping around the edges of the panel with his knife tip. “Did they search you, Ray?”

Ray sighed. It echoed in the rooms. “Yeh, and they took everything. Even if you let me out, I can’t go home.”

Jake stopped, lowering the knife. “Why the hell not? Libby is freaking out right now. You can’t just abandon her.”

Ray sighed harder in the other cell. “I know she is, but she can’t see me like this.”

Jake jumped up, anger building. Libby was his baby sister. He had stood by her decision to bring home some strange man who needed help. He had been by both their sides when Ray told her he could never father children. And he had been there when they adopted both their daughters. His sister was truly happy, and he was not about to let Ray break her heart.

“Like what, Ray? What do you think Libby can’t handle?” He wanted to throw something, punch something.

Ray sighed again. It was the loneliest, saddest sigh Jake had ever heard. The sound of a man who knew he had lost everything.

“She can’t see me like this, Jake.” And Ray stepped out into the light.

Chapter Nine

“Sweet mother of…” Jake muttered, stumbling backwards.

That was not Ray.

The figure in the doorway was at least eight feet tall. It had leathery reddish-brown skin, and its two eye stalks stuck out from the side of its face just above its floppy ears. Its mouth formed into a snout, protruding from its jawline like a cow. And the figure stared at Jake with great interest.

Jake shook his head in denial. That was not Ray.

“It’s me, Jake, truly. The bounty hunters took my filtering device so you can only see the real me, not the image I project to everyone on Earth.”

Jake could not find the words. So many questions and responses ran through his head, but he could not settle on any one thing. A look of terror crossed his face.

“You had sex with my sister!” It was gross, revolting. Jake fought the urge to vomit.

“We’re anatomically compatible. I’ve never heard her complain. Have you?”

“Eww, man. Just plain eww.” Jake glared at him for a moment. “Fine, prove you are Ray.”

Ray cocked his head, giving Jake a questioning look.

“Wife’s name?”

“Libby.”

“Daughters?”

“Two. Ashley and Kadyn.”

“When were they adopted?”

“Ashley on March 8, 2006, and Kadyn on August 15, 2009.”

So far so good. Jake had to find something that only Ray would know.

“When we checked into the hotel room in Little Washington, what happened right after I opened the hotel room door?”

Ray chuckled. “You tripped over the sill of the door and you fell, face-first, onto the carpet. Right in the middle of a mysterious stain, I might add.”

Jake was stunned. That was Ray. No one else would have seen Jake fall, and not many people would have rubbed his face in his own clumsiness, either. Not like his best friend could, anyway. He stared at the being in front of him and sighed. He was too much of a softie like his sister, and staying mad at Ray was not going to get them out of this mess. And this mess explained so much about Ray—like how he did not know what anything was when Libby found him.

He took a calming breath, closing his eyes. He was safe behind the force field, so he could take a moment. In the last forty-eight hours, he had been harassed, abducted, and assaulted by aliens. They were mean, ruthless, even. But Ray? No, Jake and Ray had been inseparable for almost ten years, and Ray had never shown any signs of being vicious. It was just Ray. A lizard-cow Ray, but it was still Ray. He could deal with this. He knew he could. He opened his eyes.

Now he had a million questions he wanted answered.

“What the hell, Ray? This is what you have been hiding? What are you?”

“I’m an Atraxian. I was born on a planet four galaxies away from here, but I was sold into slavery before I could even walk. All I knew was the prothomiun mines. I was on a transport ship with many other slaves when I saw Earth through a porthole. I didn’t want to go back to the mines. The conditions were horrible on my old planet, and we were being moved to a new planet that was rumored to be worse. I just….life isn’t meant to be that way, Jake.”

Jake could not imagine a life like that. Slavery on Earth was abolished years ago, but it still marred the world. He knew the history of slavery, but he did not know the realities of it. He had never lived as a slave.

“So,” Ray continued, still standing in the doorway, “I managed to get my shackles off and made a run for an escape pod. There were so many of us crammed on that ship, I am surprised I was ever missed. I got away, though, and I landed in the middle of the Great Dismal Swamp. My pod sank to the bottom of the swamp, and I was stranded. I was lost, alone, and I was terrified.”

Jake continued to listen, but he walked back to the panel beside the door and started working on it again. “What did you do, Ray? I’m guessing you still looked like this, so you had to avoid towns.”

“Well, I starved for about two days before I found anything to eat. And I thought water was poison when I first drank it. I had never had water so clean before, so my body had to purge all the nasty stuff out of me before water sat well with me. It was a week before I wandered into a town. I had figured out how to work the filter I found in the pod by then, so I didn’t scare anyone, which is good, because Libby found me in an alley behind a grocery store two days later.”

Jake smiled. “And like a stray cat, she brought you home?”

Ray chuckled, the sound of it echoing in his cell. “Pretty much. She took me to a burger place and got me a meal first, then she set me up in the room over the garage while she got me help. She gave me a chance, though, and a place to shower. God, I smelled horrible. I don’t know how she rode home with me in the car.”

Jake tucked the sharp edge of his knife beneath the top corner of the panel. Using it as a lever, he started prying the panel off the wall. “I want to make you sit in the trunk bed most days when we are riding together, so I can’t imagine how she did it, either.”

“Ha ha.” Ray crossed his arms, standing up straight. “What are you doing over there?”

“Probably working on getting myself electrocuted, but if it works, hopefully getting the door open so we can get out of here.” The other top corner of the panel gave away from the wall. Jake dropped his pocket knife on the floor and grabbed the panel with his fingertips.

“With a pocket knife?”

“Yep.”

“We are screwed.”

Jake gave the panel a good yank, and it fell away from the wall, exposing circuits and wiring. “Got the panel off. Tell me more, Ray. What was the mining planet like?”

“Red, filthy, smelled like a restaurant dumpster on a hot summer day. It wasn’t pleasant, Jake. We were prisoners to the Thosians. They mostly sat in their comfortable, cushy homes in the large cities and let their cyborgs do all the dirty work down at the mines. The cyborgs would wake us up when the sun rose, and we would go back to our cells when the sun set forty-two hours later. It was hell. I wanted out.”

Jake leaned the panel against the wall out of the way and picked up his knife. “You realize that you and I work construction all week and chop lumber on the weekends, working sun up to sun down. And we get sweaty and disgusting every day.”

“Yes, but I chose to do that job. It was not forced upon me. I’m working outside in the fresh air, not down in some mine shaft that smells of piss, vomit, and dead bodies. And ‘sun up to sun down’ here is about thirty hours shorter than on Corso. As much as you bitch and complain about how industry is destroying this world and the air smells horrible, Earth is so much cleaner than anywhere I have ever been on Corso. And it was worth risking my life to escape that transport vessel to be here. To be with Libby and the girls, and to have a friend like you. Someone I can really count on.”

“I’m as unreliable as a coon dog with no sense of smell, Ray.” Jake squinted at the wiring in the console, trying to determine the best place to start.

“You didn’t stop looking for me, did you?”

“Hell no,” he said, splicing a wire and touching it to a connector. The padded slab behind him folded itself into the wall. “You owe me forty bucks for all that food you ate Friday night.”

Ray snorted. “Like I’m paying that back any time this year.”

“After all this shit, you owe me a lifetime supply of pizza and beer.”

They fell into a silence while Jake fiddled with the wiring inside the console. It was all foreign to him, and he really did not have any idea what he was doing. He just kept plodding through, keeping his fingers on the insulation and hoping that he did not nick any of the wires with the tip of his knife, trying out connections through trial and error. He touched the end of a wire to a connector and all three of the rooms went dark, but the force field did not lower.

Ray sighed. “I’m glad you didn’t give up on me, Jake.”

Chapter Ten

Jake paused, holding the bundle of wires. “Yeh, well, I knew that if I had, Libby would skin me alive if I came home without you. She’s a mess, Ray. And the—did you call them hunters?-- have her believing that you took off almost two weeks ago. As soon as we get outta here, you need to call her.” He looked around the room the settled his widened eyes on Ray. “Just whatever you do, don’t tell her the truth. I don’t think she could handle it.”

“How are you handling it?”

Jake yanked on the wires, pulling them out of the console. “I almost feel normal, Ray. I mean, I’m on a spaceship in outer space with my best friend, who is my brother-in-law, and he’s an alien. I’m not in hysterics, and I’m not thinking about anything other than getting home and getting you back to Libby. So, I think I’m handling it well.”

Ray frowned and sat down on the floor by the door. Somehow, that did not make him appear any smaller. “I can’t go back.”

Jake stopped working. “We back to this again?”

“They took my filter. I can’t make anyone see my human form without it. I’ll be put on exhibit looking like this.”

Jake focused his attention on the console again, poking another wire against the connector. The lights came back on. “We’ll find you a new one. I know those two hunters had some on them. They were in the police department and following me all over town while I tried to prove that I wasn’t crazy. Thank God for your massiveness, by the way. A lot of people remembered seeing you from a single glance.”

Ray snorted. “Those two hunters would have to have filters. You think I am ugly, wait until you see the teeth on the one in charge.” He shuddered. “I may have nightmares for a while about it, and I’ve seen some screwed up shit in my lifetime.”

Jake rested the hand holding the knife against his knee. “How old are you, really? I mean, like, do Atraxians live a really long time, or is your life expectancy similar to us humans?”

“On Corso, if a slave lasted four years, it was considered a good purchase. I survived there for forty-two. Atraxians live about a hundred and twenty Earth years, though, I think. I’d have to get out a calculator and convert Corsian years to Earth years to get an exact number.”

Jake laughed, jamming the knife point into the console again. “You are totally going to be the oldest living human at some point. Guinness Book of World Records and shit.”

Ray chuckled. “Shame you won’t be there to see it.”

Jake gave Ray a huge grin. “We can celebrate your old age and longevity as soon as we get back on Earth. Which should be anytime now.”

Ray looked up, trying to see what Jake was doing.

Jake rammed the knife into the circuit board deep in the back of the console, and the force field on his cell dropped.

Chapter Eleven

Jake leaped up from the floor and ran across the room that connected their cells. He stared at the access panel for Ray’s cell.

“What do I press?”

“Hit the blue circle at the top of the panel. It controls the field.”

Jake hit the button and the force field fell away. He stepped back as Ray ducked to step out of the cell. Now that they were closer to each other and standing in better light, Jake could really get a good look at his friend. Jake had to lean back to look up at Ray’s face, and he was stunned when he looked at Ray’s feet. They were shaped similar to an elephant’s foot. He was massive.

“Christ, your even larger up close. I didn’t think you could get any taller.”

Ray snorted. “I’m a runt. That’s why I was thrust into slavery.”

Jake shook his head in disbelief. “You’re a small one? Shit… Your people gladiators or something?”

“Gladiators? No. We are peaceful beings that commune with nature and sing ‘Kumbaya’ all day.” He gave Jake a sarcastic glare. “The Atraxians are the dominant species on my home planet, and they run their civilization similar to how Earth’s Spartans did. They pick and choose who gets to grow up free, who is sent to slavery, and who never makes it out of the nursery. I was born small, not defective, so they sold me.”

“Ouch.” Jake looked around. The hunters had carried him in here so he had no idea where they were or where the teleportation room was. “Where do we go from here?”

Ray crossed the room to a table that looked like a doctor’s examination table and leaned over the small container beside it. “We need weapons. There are only two of them on the ship as far as I can tell. If we can take them out, find me a new filter, and rig this place to blow, we can use the teleporter to get back to Earth and the bounty hunters will never bother us again.”

“Do you know where the teleporter is from here? They knocked me out in the corridor just outside of it,” Jake whispered, stepping towards the container. “And I don’t even know what I am looking for? What do their weapons look like?”

Ray looked up at Jake and glanced around the room. He pointed towards several cabinets on the far wall.

Jake passed Ray on the way to the cabinets.

“This is a stunner.” Ray showed Jake a small boxy device that he had found in the container.

Jake took it from him and studied it. It looked like a Gameboy, a mobile gaming system he had when he was a child. There was no trigger as far as he could tell—just a sliding notch on the side and a button on the lower half of the top side.

“Slide the button on the side to the fourth notch.”

“That’s the max setting.” Jake gave his friend a concerned look. He did not want to outright kill someone.

“It will only knock them out for about twenty minutes. Unlike Star Trek stunners, these truly only stun. Our bounty hunters are Rwaddis. I saw them without their filters. They’re nasty bastards, tough as nails, and they’re mean. You will only get one chance to hit your mark. If you miss, you will probably die.”

Jake gulped. That sounded promising. He looked between the stunner and his best friend. Bounty hunters, aliens, filter devices, and stun boxes. This was starting to become a little too much for him. He had to save his friend, though. That’s what he set out to do. Ray disappeared, and Jake knew that the agents were covering up something. So he went looking, and he found Ray. Just not Ray as he knew him.

He took a deep breath, steadying his nerves. He could do this. He and Ray could get off this ship, and he could get his friend back home to Libby and the girls, and they could live out their perfectly normal lives—with his brother-in-law, the alien.

“Get your head in the game, Jake, or we are both dead. There are no second chances with Rwaddis. These two will rip us apart if we don’t take them out first. And believe me when I say that their bite is a lot worse than their bark. Stay away from their mouths.”

Jake crouched down and began to search the cabinet beneath the counter for another stunner. “Believe me, I wasn’t thinking about making out with one of them.”

He knew Ray rolled his eyes. Or eye stalks. Jake shook his head. He was not going to get use to this, and he was sure that the image of Ray as he was now would stay in his head for the rest of his life.

“Found a second one, Ray.” He lifted it out of the cabinet and tossed it to his friend.

Ray wrapped his three fingers around it and adjusted the setting on it. Jake watched as he closed his eyes and seemed to meditate in front of him.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s an Atraxian tradition before going into battle. We pray, we focus, and we find our center.” Ray opened one of his eye stalks and rolled it around to look at Jake. “Internal pep talk, Jake.”

Jake raised an eyebrow at him. “Figured with your height and girth that you would bang on your chest and make gorilla noises or something.”

Ray cast Jake a dirty look.

Jake shrugged and crossed the room to the door that he believed to be the exit. “We doing this, or are we going to start singing hymns and shit next?”

Ray let out his meditative breathing with a rush of air and stomped across the room to Jake. “No respect at all.”

Jake gave him his goofiest grin and held his stunner like he had seen Captain Kirk hold his in every Star Trek episode. “Ready when you are.”

Ray shook his head, slid his hand over the access panel for the door, and stepped back as the door opened. “We are so going to die.”

Chapter Twelve

Jake poked his head into the corridor and glanced around. It was all clear. He waved his hand to signal to Ray that they could move, and he slipped in the hallway.

He tiptoed as he walked down the metal grate that covered the floor. There were several doors leading off the corridor. He stopped at the first one and quickly glanced through the peephole in the door.

It was a storage room of some sort. Wooden crates and metal cases were stacked against the wall and secured behind a mesh screen to keep them from moving around when the ship was cruising. There was no one in the room, so Jake jerked his head towards the next door, and he and Ray continued down the hall.

Jake peeked through the porthole of the new door. The room was filled with large machinery and a lot of smoke and exhaust clouds. He scrunched his face in puzzlement.

“Engineering,” Ray whispered. “That’s the engine on little ships like this.”

“Not very high-tech looking,” Jake whispered back, hoping his voice did not carry. “It looks like the diesel tank on my dad’s farm with a lot of pipes and cabling coming out of it.”

Ray shook his head and signaled for Jake to move down the hallway. Jake tightened his grip on his stunner and led the way to the open doorway at the end of the corridor.

Something large growled in the room on the other side of the threshold.

Jake flattened himself against the wall to avoid being seen, and Ray did the same, his bulk not flattening as much as Jake wanted it to.

The grip on Jake’s gun felt slippery, his nerves beginning to hum as the reality of what he was about to do set in. He was about to shoot two sentient creatures. Not deer, not bear, but two beings who could walk, talk, probably enjoy sex. Who knew?

Ray held up two fingers then swam his hand in a curve in front of him to show that the two hunters were tucked out of sight on the other side of the wall separating them. Jake nodded that he understood, and he closed his eyes to prepare himself.

“Lean in, find target, aim, shoot, and pull back out. You can do this, Jake,” he whispered to himself.

“Go, Jake.” Ray wrapped his hands tighter around the handle of his stunner to lean in behind Jake. “Now.”

Jake leaned around the corner and froze. The hunters were unfiltered, their human form turned off while they were on the ship. They were hideous. Their skin was a bumpy shade of purple, and they each had a shell of armor attached to their backs like a turtle. He could not tell if it was part of their body or just armor they were wearing. Their heads disturbed him more than anything else. They were shaped like a pterodactyl’s head, but instead of a beak with upper and lower jaws, their mouths consisted of four jaws that opened and closed in the shape of an X. And those jaws were lined with hundreds of razor sharp teeth.

“What the hell?” he breathed.

Ray leaned in behind him and fired his weapon at one of the hunters. The hunter dropped.

The second hunter leaped up from the table and hissed at them, opening its mouth wide to shred whatever was threatening it.

Jake raised his stunner and started firing. His first shot went wide, striking the table and leaving a scorch mark on the surface. His second shot hit the Rwaddis directly in the chest.

It paused mid-hiss, then it fell to its knees and collapsed to the floor.

Ray rushed forward and snatched a small opal-like stone off the belt of the hunter that he shot. “Got a filter. We have about fifteen minutes to set the self-destruct and get the hell off this junker before those two wake up.”

Jake stumbled backwards, in shock from seeing what the agents looked like beneath their disguises. He could not believe that he had shot another being. Technically, they were only stunned for now, but Jake knew that the only way to keep these guys from taking Ray again was to kill them. He turned his head slowly towards Ray, struggling not to puke all over the floor of the ship’s canteen.

“Come on, Jake. The bridge should be this way.”

Ray turned away from Jake and charged up the steps into a corridor on the opposite side of the canteen. Jake looked between the two aliens on the floor and Ray, then he passed his eyes around the room, trying to make anything appear normal.

Nothing felt normal, though. Not at the moment. He did not think it would ever feel normal again.

He looked down at the hand that held the stunner box. He gulped. He would never be able to hunt again. Tightening his grip on the stunner, he took a deep breath to calm his nerves and followed Ray to the bridge of the ship.

Chapter Thirteen

When Jake climbed the ladder into the bridge area, Ray was pressing buttons on the main console as quickly as he could. His back was to the door, and his stun box rested on the console beside him.

Jake stepped into the room and froze as his eyes fell on the view of Earth through the front windshield. Earth was framed in a beauty like he had never seen before. It looked so alone, a large mass of blue and green in the middle of the darkness of space. For a moment, he forgot how to breathe.

“Wow. I didn’t think it would be this beautiful.”

Ray looked up from the console and out at the planet below. “It really is. Now imagine seeing that out of the porthole of a slave transporter after you have spent your entire life on a planet that is red, brown, and dark all the time. I saw it, and all I could think about was how life could not be ugly on a planet that was that beautiful.”

Jake nodded numbly. He could understand completely.

“I knew I had to get there,” Ray continued. “And now, I have to get back.”

He pressed a few more buttons on the console, and then a red light began to flash, filling the room.

“We have ten minutes to get to the cargo hold where we teleported in and get out of here. Back to the other end of the ship, now.”

Ray picked up his stunner and climbed down the stairs that led up into the cockpit. He barely squeezed through the doorway to get back out.

Jake followed him just as quickly, rushing down the corridor and back through the canteen where the two agents were still unconscious.

Ray did not give them a second glance, but instead continued through the next doorway and down the hall past the containment cells where they had been held before.

“This way, Jake. And hurry. I don’t know how long it is going to take me to get the coordinates to connect on Earth.”

Jake fell in step behind him as they ran out onto a gangway that overlooked a large cargo hold. Ray took the stairs two at a time as he ran down to the main floor of the room and over to a machine. He was already typing commands into the console of the machine when Jake stepped down from the staircase.

“Keep an eye on the door above. That’s the only way those two can get in here,” Ray said without looking up from the screen. “And don’t hesitate to shoot this time. I just have to get some coordinates to lock so we can get out of here, and I would appreciate it if it was somewhere close to home or at least close to where your truck is.”

Jake set the grip on his stun gun and aimed it loosely up at the doorway above, watching it for any sign of movement. He was ready for this nightmare to end. Above him, the ship’s computer announced that they had five more minutes left before the ship self-destructed.

“Could you hurry this up some, Ray?”

“Yeh, yeh. I’ve almost got it. Stand on that circle on the floor there.”

Jake glanced over his shoulder to find the circle and began to back up towards it. Ray punched a few more buttons on the console then ran across the room to join Jake in the circle. The room was filled with a bright blue light, blinding Jake. He closed his eyes against it. At this rate, his retinas would be damaged forever.

When he opened them, they were standing in an alleyway next to a large black dumpster. The sky above them was just beginning to redden from the sunset. Jake scanned the alley to make sure they were alone.

“Ray, get your human suit back on, quick.”

Ray fumbled with the filter while Jake kept a lookout for anyone coming. He heard a soft hum come from behind him, then the sound disappeared.

“Do I look and sound right, Jake? I don’t want to throw Libby off by looking different.”

Jake turned around and gave his friend a long once over. “You’re still ugly as hell. She won’t be able to tell the difference.”

Ray chortled. “Can you still see the other me?”

“Does it matter if I still do? Whether you are a large, reddish-brown, leathery Atraxian or a giant, black-haired lumberjack, you are still my brother-in-law. I can deal.” Jake glanced at the sky above them. “How much longer before it blows? Will we be able to see it?”

Ray tucked a strand of black hair behind his ear and looked up at the sky. He pointed to the right of their position. “We should see an small explosion over there when it goes up, and that should be any second now.” Ray continued to look up at the sky.

A small fireball erupted in the sky, surrounded by two concentric rings. Jake stared in awe. Relief washed over him. They were safe. It was over.

“We won’t be seeing those two ever again.” Ray looked away from the sky and started walking down the alley.

Jake dropped his eyes to his hand and realized that the stunner was still there. “Yeh, probably not, but will more come looking for you? Should we hold onto these?”

Ray looked down at his and slid the button to the lowest setting. “Hide them in a lockbox in the truck or something. Just make sure you turn it off because I have no way to recharge them.” He gazed up at the sky. “And I don’t know. More may come looking for me, but honestly, I didn’t think that anyone knew I was here to start with, or even cared. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Jake slapped his friend on the shoulder as he passed him. “You didn’t get lucky with that face of yours. What makes you think you’ll get lucky with anything else?”

“Libby loves me. That’s all that matters.” Ray gave him a grin and followed him out of the alley.

Alien or not, Jake did not mind. He had his brother-in-law back, his best friend, and to him, that was all that mattered.

“Hey, how about you start paying me back by getting us some beer and pizza?” Jake called over his shoulder with a laugh.

“Not a chance, Jake. Not a chance.”

FICTION WORKS

Short Stories

Refuge

The Music Box

The Wickerman

Truth or Dare

A Penny for a Dream

Novellas

The Anonymous Gift

NONFICTION WORKS

The Daily Prompt series

The Daily Prompt: 2016

The Daily Prompt: 2017

Case Files: Whodunnit? Series

Case Files: Whodunnit? - Volume 1

Chills, Thrills, and Kills series

Chills, Thrills, and Kills - Volume 1

Moonlight and Love Songs series

Moonlight and Love Songs 2017