In Search of Life Among the Stars

By Cesar E. Cisneros

/ Fiction /    

The long winding creak and loud clank of the apartment gate rattles us awake. “Mom?” my brother calls out, brushing the sleep out of his eyes. 

No scratching of the keys against the lock, no jingling of the doorknob, no yelling to put away our shit—only silence at our door. I yell at him to go back to sleep, smashing the pillow against my ear, but he peeks through the window blinds to find her. It’s still dark out. He puts his head back on his yellow, drool-stained pillow. 

The metal gate slams throughout the rest of the night with neighborhood crackheads coming in and out of our apartment building. The shadow of the iron gate breaks up the rays of light entering our room, twinkling the glow-in-the-dark stars and planets and moons on the popcorn ceiling. We’d usually sleep through this clanking and creaking and coughing. But with mom gone, each creak and clank and cough could be her. My brother couldn’t stop whining and complaining and asking when she’ll be back. I tell him we just have to wait. She’ll be back. 

It’s been two days since our mom got taken by aliens. She was supposed to be snoring in her bed while we watched the Saturday Toon-a-thon in the living room at the lowest of volumes, but she never came back from her shift of screwing lids onto bottles of pills at the vitamin factory. We watched the whole Saturday morning block at full blast when we finally realized she wasn’t coming home again. 

Somewhere out on the edges of space, she’s worried and wondering how to get back to us. The last time she got abducted, we got to miss an entire week of school and eat frozen waffles and pop tarts the entire time, with no one there to stop us. 

Dr. Shaklar says abductees are 100x more likely to get abducted again compared to the general population. Signs of abduction are obvious: funny-shaped scars, unusual behavior, feelings of being watched, fantastical dreams, implants, nosebleeds, memory loss. Abductees are subjected to experiments for the rest of their lives, dealing with the chance of another disappearance disrupting their lives at any time. Kinda like those turtles in the Caribbean that get pulled out the water. Some government science nerds take them away from their group. Stabs a tracker in their flipper. Throws ‘em out back into the vast blue ocean. Scientific method and stuff.

* * *

In the morning, our rumbling stomachs wake us up. We turn over every inch of the fridge and pantry scouting for breakfast. I assemble us some jelly sandwiches topped with everything we need to grow: whipped cream and gummy bears and Lucky Charm marshmallows. My brother washes down the jelly and whipped cream sandwiches with a glass of Coke and lets out a loud burp. I let out a louder one. We keep going at it until he spits up some jelly. We plan out the rest of the day. We’ll take turns trying to unlock all the levels on Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. 

Ms. Jinez, or Ms. Jinx as we like to call her since she’s bad luck, has been asking more and more questions about the absences that have kept me from learning about the California missions and the Indians. Way too many questions, like she’s the po-po or something. Does she also know? She can’t know that I know, so I lie instead. Family visiting. Stomach flu. Car issues. A growing list of excuses to explain why I was home sitting with my pals, Ricki, Maury, Jerry, when I could be sitting in class with her instead. She scoots her big ‘ol glasses up her nose whenever I give her an excuse. I feel like a secret government agent, like I know the truth about Roswell but not telling a single soul. But Ms. Jinx still likes me even with all my lies and absences and tardies and not raising my hand. She likes how I give answers to all the questions on my homework and even my handwriting. Very nice! she marks on my homework in sparkly red ink. 

I’ve gotten so good at lying, I even lied to the feds. They came to my school one day asking questions about mom. Does she feed us? Does she hit us? Does she leave us alone? Are you sure she feeds you? Are you sure she doesn’t hit you? Are you sure she doesn’t leave you? You’re a good kid, they compliment, trying to probe for more information to take us away and tear us apart for something not even her fault. 

She takes us to school, feeds us, hasn’t hit us once, not once. Repeating words my mom trained me to say. Like Sarah and John Connor. Terminator and stuff.

I head out to the corner store as my brother does a kickflip onto a neon ramp in the secret level, Skate Heaven. We’ve been playing all day and we’re craving some snacks. The corner store is the only place that lets us put snacks on credit; they’ll get paid back on the 1st. Our grocery list has Milky Ways, Hot Cheetos, Moon Pies, and Slim Jims. 

“Don’t open the door to no one. Remember the code: one knock, four knocks, two knocks,” I remind him.

“Don’t open the door, one, four, two,” he repeats, still staring blankly at the screen. 

* * *

Two years ago, after eating some bad old pizza, I blew chunks out my butt for a whole school week and was hospitalized for another two, that’s when I learned the truth about abductions. I felt as bad as the time my brother deleted my saved game for Pokémon Gold. Hooked up to an IV and eating as many blue popsicles as I could, I watched the TV play non-stop reruns of Maury telling deadbeats whether they’re a dad or not. It was the first time I didn’t share a room with no one, all mine’s. My room had painted flowers all around me like I was in a cartoon garden, not a serious room with wheezing ventilators and beeping machines, just the chatter of the TV. 

Mom sat by my bed the whole time, holding my hand, promising that she’d never leave again. Her lip still fat and purple, like a wad of chewed up Big League grape gum, after getting whacked by dad before he left for good. 

That was the summer she first got abducted. I was still little back then and dad had just left. At first, we thought she ran away with him. I ordered a large pepperoni and mushroom and jalapeños just like mom taught me to order that we ate throughout the weekend. Old enough to make a phone call she says.

The nice old white nurse that smelled like wet dirt would squeak up and down the hall all day. She squeaked her way into my room with a stack of books and magazines. TV will rot your brain, she says, plopping the stack on my nightstand. At the bottom of the stack, a copy of Weekly World News. PATRIOT BATBOY SEARCHES FOR OSAMA: Uses echolocation in Afghani caves, say scientists. LOVE HAS NO LIMITS: A 400-pound man that found love with a 500-pound woman. END OF THE DOLLAR: Nostradamus predictions for American economic collapse. ELVIS LIVES WITH THE ALIENS…The King remarried and happily gay! Extraordinary evidence. I read the whole issue from front to back, and again, and again. All the secrets that adults were keeping from me. 

On the way back home from the hospital, mom let me take out a bunch of books from the library. The librarian helped me find every book on UFOs in their collection. The Big Book of Aliens, UFOs, and Space Mysteries, Unresolvable Mysteries: The Truth is in Here, The Unexplainable , and, of course, Aliens: The Untold Story by Dr. N.F. Shaklar. The cryptozoologist who wrote an entire series of books on all types of paranormal matter, including one about his own alien abduction, Cold Fingers, Colder Nights. You don’t really believe in this, do you?, the librarian asked, sliding each book over the scanner. 

I read all the books over a weekend and my brother looked over all the pictures. The abductees had the same sad eyes my mom had. The more I read, the more the stories sounded familiar. Staying up all night. Forgetfulness. The bruises and marks. 

* * *

I knock, pause, knock four times, pause, knock twice. Stomping comes from behind the door. The locks click and the door swings open. “Where’s the Moon Pies?” he yelps, rummaging through the bags I threw on the floor.

We gobble the moon pies, and we’re almost done with the Skate Heaven level when we hear a knock.

Knock, knock, knock. No pauses. 

Her thick, square glasses peek through the blinds. Frozen and stunned, slowly we hit pause our game and creep to hide in the hallway until the knocking stops. In front of our door, a bag of McDonald’s and a folder of homework for me to answer all the questions. On a sticky note, she has written, we miss you and her phone number in red sparkly ink. I crumple the note and bounce it off my brother’s head.

The boxes of nuggets and fries are scattered across our room. We dunk the nuggets into equal portions of BBQ sauce and honey mustard, beaming them into our mouth holes. 

She hates it up there, he says, spitting pieces of nuggets. Too cold, she’s always running too cold. She also can’t watch Maury, they probably don’t get reception. Maybe she’ll bump into Elvis. Boring ass white people stuff, he says. 

My brother and I do our best Elvis impressions. Karate chopping and air humping and hoo-hahing and crooning like the king. We crash onto the floor, our bellies full of nuggets and moon pies. 

We lie in our room and stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars as they glimmer green. My brother sticks his finger out like ET and draws in the air. A square, then a line. The Little Dipper. The PS controller. My brother names all the constellations he sees on our ceiling. I stick out my finger. The Big Stripper. We giggle. 

“Do aliens have brothers?” he asks. 

“For sure,” I say, “ that’s why they’re always coming to Earth—some peace and quiet.” 

“What about moms?” he asks.

* * *

Since that first summer, she’d been getting abducted more often; each time she came back, she looked a little worse than the last time. She almost started to look like them. Skinnier—her head looked larger, and her eyes bulging through her skin as if her face was a bad mask. 

The last time she was here, she didn’t say a single word to us.

“Her brains got jumbled this time,” my brother said. 

She did act worse than usual. 

My brother and I inspected her for signs of abduction while she was knocked out on the couch.

Once she finally woke up, I’d asked her all the questions I’ve been saving. What are aliens like? Did they poke you? Did you see Elvis? She whacked me across the face. My face stung, and tears rolled down my face.

I ran to hide under bed. My brother followed me to our room. He kneeled down and looked under the bed and reminded me she’s not the same right now. 

Imagine those turtles with the tagged flippers. All shook. Scared from all of the needles. The poking and the prodding. Angry at its captors. Thrown back, unable to explain what happened to them. They violently snap at the other turtles. 

Lost time syndrome. That’s what paranormal investigators call it. Minutes, hours, whole days, completely forgotten. Confusion is expected. At least for a few days. Don’t disturb them. They can be violent. Watch for signs of brain switching. Keep them hydrated. Lots of water. Most importantly, keep calm. Abductees need love and attention as they get used to Earth’s gravity again. 

One minute you’re driving home in your little red pickup out on an abandoned, dusty road in New Mexico, it’s almost always New Mexico, and then the next you’re being smothered by a white light. A blinding beam that shoots down from the sky. You don’t know what’s going on. You think you’re driving into a car and try to swerve, but the engine has no power. It all happens so fast. That’s what they say. You get pulled straight up. It feels like going down on a roller coaster. Your guts going one way, the rest of you the other. Then there you are all confused. Like that turtle. Naked. Scared. Freezing. Missing your brother even if he annoys you. A cold white room. Beeping coming from all directions. Then you see them squeaking their way towards you. Just like the ones on TV. Like the ones from Roswell. The size of a kid. Big ol’ heads. Pale, white creatures. Big ol’ black eyes. So black you can see yourself all scared and naked and freezing. You all just stand there blinking at each other. That’s what they say. 

* * *

His body slams onto the floor and his head bounces twice off the hard floor. His eyes roll back, pupils like saucers coming into view. He squirms around all funny, chomping at the air, fighting for each breath. Kinda like a turtle on its back. Stuck on dry sand. Heat beating down on it. He stops moving. I hold him up and shake him, but he’s still staring off into space. 

It’s our third Saturday watching the Toon-a-thon at full blast and mom still hasn’t come back. The corner store wouldn’t let me get anything else until I paid him back, so for the last week, we’ve been eating the extra ketchup packets and sauces we’ve been collecting over the years. We’ve been drinking as much water as we can so we don’t feel as hungry. My brother had been sleeping non-stop, even through most of the cartoon block. He got up to drink water cause he was feeling hungry again. And then, he just fell down. 

I pull him towards the couch. He’s light enough to pull easily from the kitchen to the living room. I place him on the couch, his body slumps to the side like when he falls asleep in mom’s car. I straighten him out and push his head back to a point where he stops wheezing. I look for Ms. Jinx’s note amongst the trash strewn across the floor. The sparkly red ink is smudged, but I still try calling the number, and again, and again, but there’s no response. 

His name isn’t enough to wake him up from his state. He stares out as if he’s playing a video game. 

I put in the Tony Hawk disk and turn on the PlayStation. The TV shimmers on. 

“Here you can play first,” I tell him, handing over the controller, but he still doesn’t budge. 

I pull up his eyelids, his eyes are empty pools. I tell him it’s not funny and to stop joking and it’s been going for too long now, but he sits there silently. The bump on his head is the size of my fist and pokes through his hair as if to say hello. It doesn’t go away no matter how hard I push it down. 

I place his hands on the controller and I sit with him to help him hold the controller. We ollie over a trash can. I tell him I forgive him for deleting my Pokémon save. We do a Ghettobird flip and go into Hurricane grind. I apologize for not being a better brother. We do a Casper flip into Feed Me Volcano. I tell him mom’s back and brought dad with her. His drool drips onto the controller and oozes over the X and the O button. 

We play until it gets dark outside, when soft tapping comes from the window. Past the blinds, I see Ms. Jinx’s glasses cupped by her hands peeking through. 

* * *

I listen to the rain tapping on my window over the gentle snores of the other boys in the room. The room is cold. My knees are up to my chest as I hug my legs under the thin blanket. The quiet of the room is disturbing. 

The other boys say I’m stupid for believing in abductions and Batboy and Nostradamus. All lies that adults tell to make the world less sad. One of the boys threw out my copy of Weekly World News that I hid under my mattress. The biggest one laughed the loudest when I lifted everyone’s mattress looking for it. He said my mom and brother aren’t coming back. That I’ll be there forever, even when I’m as big as him. 

My eyes follow the lights on the ceiling from the cars whizzing by. The ceiling is bare and white, except for a water stain in the corner that’s been getting bigger throughout the night. 

The rain outside starts to pour, cleaning all the badness out of the sky. Flashes of white streak across the window. The little drops of rain on the window race down, colliding against other drops, making even bigger drops. I watch as one goes from a little tiny drop to a big one taking everything in its path with it. 

Knock. I turn my ear out towards the door. 

Knock, knock, knock, knock. I sit up. Everyone else is still snoring in their cots. 

Knock, knock. 

I stomp down the stairs towards the door and swing it open to the empty courtyard of St. Kolbe’s. Just the stillness of the night and a couple of pockmarked stars peeking through the clouds. As I step outside, the icy cold concrete chills the soles of my feet. 

I slosh across the wet grass, out to the center of the courtyard. The soft drizzle strokes my hair into wet snakes. The rain feels nice splashing on my face. Toys left behind in the courtyard drowned in the pour down. My toes wiggle in the wet grass as my feet sink into the mud and it cakes up between my toes. My PJs sop up the rain water and I stay standing there, letting the rain wash me down.

And in an instant, the rain stops and the sky is dark. 

All the lights of the courtyard flicker on and off, the long shadows of the forgotten toys dancing and swaying back and forth. The tops of the trees curl and spiral. For a moment, the bulbs brighten to an intense whiteness before popping into blackness.

Above me, the mouth of the ship. A smooth opening into the jagged belly. The outer shell is a dark, clumpy overgrowth. Across the bottom of the ship, a patchwork of colorful mosaics. It hums quietly over me. 

A blinding light surrounds me, igniting my skin. I hold my hand up to shield my eyes from the light. Strands of my hair float up like little sprouting plants. My stomach sinks towards my toes. 

I no longer feel the cold, wet grass on the bottom of the feet, just the warm embrace of the light.