In the dream, it's always the same. I'm out in the night, the high grass rising to my hips and swaying in the wind. I can taste the wild, and the sky is so crisp and clear I even imagine I can catch the scent of the distant stars.

Then a new light, brighter than the moon but colder than the sun, rises over the horizon. Bright and fierce, stabbing through the darkness. And I hear something, a low rumble that swiftly turns to a roar.

The sweeping light finds me and for a moment I am caught in its brilliant white circle, held fast by shock and terror, unable to move. The craft races toward me, descending over the hill.

Now I can move, and I run with no thought of dignity. There is only the pounding survival instinct, the fear of the unknown. I run through the grass, feeling it lashing at my sides, but everywhere I turn, the light finds me again.

Seeking shelter, I head for the trees. But even as I do, I know that no creatures such as this are going to be tricked, or give up and go away. They want something, they want something from me, and they mean to have it.

Although it is a lost cause, I keep fleeing, trying to evade. The craft screams alongside me and the strange heat of its passage engulfs me. Then it is ahead and looping back.

A shadow briefly blots the light, a shadow unlike any shape I have ever seen before. It is horribly tall and elongated.

I feel the sharp bite, a quick sting like the drilling of a wasp, in the place where my neck and shoulder meet. I voice my pain and keep running, afraid to stop and find out what it is that jabs into my flesh.

Then my legs falter. My head swims. A terrible wakeful sleep sucks me down into its clouded embrace, and when I fall, I am not even aware of the impact of my body on the earth.

I lay immobile, on my side. My eyes remain open, my breath hissing in short panting gasps between clenched teeth. My limbs will not obey my commands. I cannot move, cannot struggle or fight as the craft slows and settles to a stop nearby in a whirl of dust and dry grass.

The light that pins me is joined by others, bathing me in radiance bright as day but with none of the sun's golden warmth. Figures disembark, tall shadows like the first one, and approach me in a cautious circle.

They are hideous. They have flat, flat faces with bulging eyes divided by long fleshy bumps. Their skin is baggy in places and taut in others, and patched with hair. Despite some differences in their markings, they all seem to be of the same general sort.

Their mouths first close into slits then open into round holes filled with teeth so short and blunted that they might as well have none. Even so, I fear them. I fear their bite.

When they do this moving of mouths, incomprehensible sounds flow from them. It is their communication, fluid and eerie. If they are discussing me, I cannot make sense of it. But their pale fingers, so long and dexterous, indicate me in gestures.

I can only utter a thick grunt, but even that is enough to startle them. For a moment I feel hope; if I could only frighten them off! But it is a useless thought. I am helpless, and they surround me.

Some of them carry devices that gleam in the blinding light. I cannot even begin to guess at their purpose, but the sight sparks new terror in me. Curved, straight, serrated with rows of shining thorns ... each is more horrifying than the last.

The creatures bend and touch me. My skin seems to contract, to crawl, but I remain unable to move or react. They continue their liquid speech as they examine me.

Three study my head, and I fix my attention on these rather than think about what the ones I cannot see might be doing to my paralyzed body. I know they pierce my veins, draw out my blood. I sense they are doing other things even more unspeakable.

Another light, this one small but piercing, is beamed into first one eye and then the other. My lips are pulled back. Gleaming devices scrape my teeth, the roof of my mouth. Long-fingered hands pinch my ears and swab inside of them.

I endure.

Oddly, throughout it all I do not fear for my life. Maybe it is because, as I tell myself, if they wanted me dead they would have done so straight from the beginning. But I do fear that they will take me away in their craft, away from my home and others of my own kind, for some purpose so mysterious and sinister it defies my every imagining.

They produce another device. This one is very small, so small that I can barely see it when one of them grips it in long and abnormally agile digits.

It reaches behind my ear and there is a tiny flash of pain. When the creature withdraws, the device is gone, and I understand that it has somehow been affixed ... embedded ... implanted in me. I am still numb but I can feel it there, hidden inside my flesh, clinging like a tick.

Sensation is gradually beginning to return to my body. My legs twitch, as if reminded that they were running when I was so suddenly struck down.

The creatures stand around me a bit longer, watching me and communicating in their way. Then they turn away, and leave me in the grass. I do not let myself believe it until their craft, which had been silent, resumes its unnatural noise. The light slides away from me and I am in darkness, my eyes so dazzled that it takes a long time for my vision to function normally.

They are leaving, leaving. Gone.

My legs jerk and tingle. I am able to rise to an awkward crouch, my head hanging nearly to the ground. The grogginess is swept apart like mist on the breeze. I am clear in thought and action, and the pain I feel is only the mild remnants of their exam. A tenderness here, an ache there.

I cannot even feel the alien device. It is positioned so that I cannot see it either, and when I attempt to touch the place where it is buried, I realize that there is no way I will be able to dig it out of myself.

I will need help.

That is when I awaken from the dream that is really a memory. That is when my hope turns to desolation when I realize, as I always must, that no one believes me. Those claiming to have experienced such encounters, as I have, are considered insane.

I try to convince the others, try to show them the strange hard thing buried beneath my skin. But they do not want to see, do not want to know. To believe me would be to accept the incredible, the impossible. No one wants to think that there are such creatures out there, able to descend on us at their whim, able to study us and take samples from us as he are trapped and helpless.

What could they want?

Why do they do this?

The device they left in me, what is it for?

I wonder and worry sometimes that it is a means by which they can track me. That it gives off some sort of call that my ears cannot detect but theirs can. So that if they ever wanted to find me again, they could. And return.

I've met others who claim to have been through the same thing. Some of them feel that the creatures are generally benevolent. That they only want to monitor us and learn about us, and even help us to survive, if they can.

But others believe in places where those like us are forced to live in confinement, forced to breed, even forced to perform for the amusement of their captors.

That is the shadow hanging over me. Suppose they return and this time they do take me with them? Suppose they take me away to one of those places, a zoo, a hideous circus?

I want my life to be as it was. I want to be free of this constant dread.

I want to be able to run through the night without thinking that the brightness on the horizon might not be the moon but something more ominous.

I want to hunt and kill and then doze with a belly full of warm meat with my mate's sleek-furred flank pressing against my side. I want our cubs to grow up safe and without fear. I want the freedom of the jungle, of the plains.

That doesn't seem so much to ask.

The End

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