A One-Armed Woman Gets Abducted by Aliens

Good morning. happy 44th. You lost your home and your right arm in a fire, and by the end of the day, you will be abducted by aliens.

You don’t love mornings, especially your birthday morning, but you prefer your dad’s house before he’s awake, so you get up early. A beam of sun slices the lace curtain and illuminates the urn on the windowsill. The pet urn.

Your dad wanted your arm cremated so that when the rest of you eventually dies, you can go, whole, into your grave.

“Why does it fucking matter?” you asked.

“Darling,” he said.

Your mangled arm waited in the freezer for a couple of weeks while your dad found someone who would cremate just one body part. He made you talk to her on the phone.

“What I suggest you do, dear, is go online and start browsing urns to put it in,” she said. “You can put it in porcelain, marble, stone, or wood. And the wood, can, of course, be oak, mahogany, hickory, beech, or pine. It’s really up to you. Your choice. Now, how much did the arm weigh? Make sure you buy one small enough, otherwise there will be unfilled space, and you don’t want that. A small cat.”

“A cat?”

“Your arm probably weighed like a small cat.”

                                                                                                                   *

The worst thing about having a right arm that is crematory remains in a pet urn on the windowsill is not the disabling. It’s the ugliness. You don’t, in fact, feel disabled. You can do almost everything you did before. You get dressed, you drive, you talk, you walk, you ride your bike, you play with your nieces, but people wonder if you can do these things, and that’s an ugliness. And then you have to prove you can, and that’s another. The asymmetry is ugly; the flappy space where pain twists and claws and pulls at the stump makes you feel sick. You can’t look at yourself. And, also—this is something people don’t usually consider—an arm really does weigh something, maybe like a small cat, and you don’t always account for its loss. Sometimes you wake up in the morning and you think it’s the time when you had a set of arms, not just one, and you fall. Or you get absorbed and, for a moment, you forget and then you topple, or you trip because you were expecting a weight like a cat and the cat weight isn’t there. The imbalance, it’s ugly.

It’s when you’re looking at the pet urn that you see one. An alien. By the window holding the curtain with one hand. It waves at you. You wave back. You’re pleased they didn’t abandon you.

People disappear when you lose an arm and a house. Before, you had a lot of friends, but you found out that some of them must have only liked you because you had two arms and a house. Now it’s just your dad, a few friends from work who still make the effort, and the people at the bike shop.

You always liked the bike shop. You like being around men. You were ashamed of this before, but now that you have no arm and no house, you don’t care. The bike shop guys researched one-armed riding and installed an uninterrupted handlebar on your Merlin, and you go on morning rides by the river with them. You keep up. In the afternoons, you watch them drink beer, you watch them watch golf, you watch them fix bikes. They don’t mind you. One of them, Ned, is even having sex with you.

You started having sex with Ned two months before you lost your arm. You wouldn’t have started the love affair if you’d known. Being in love with only one arm is frightening.

You met him at the bike shop when you criticized his choice of music, and he told you that you seemed spoiled and pretentious. You were cocky, though, before you lost your arm, so you took it as a challenge.

He’s an artist. A large, hairy, competent maker of things with terrible teeth. He lives in a treehouse he built himself, and his soft voice reminds you of your first love—the boy who hooked you on adoration, the first one you’d had sex with.

You had sex with Ned a few weeks after you met him. You suggested driving to the coast together, so you did, and you rented a house, and you went inside. It was clumsy, and, in the end, neither of you had brought condoms, so, instead, he put his penis in your butt crack and rubbed it around. After that, you ate food in a diner and then drove to a CVS. He waited in the truck while you went in and bought condoms. That was the first time you saw the alien. Standing in the condom aisle. It was small, with small shoulders and a placid, handsome face. It was pink, unlike the color you would expect it to be, and it had three fingers on each hand. It plucked a tube of lube from the shelf and examined it. You asked it, “Are you real?” and it nodded.

In the truck, you told Ned about the alien.

“Oh yeah. I’ve seen them too,” he said. “The little guys? I’m surprised you did, though. I kind of thought you had to be an artist to see them. You know, artists’ brains are different from normal brains. We just see things in a different way. Insight. I figured it was because of my past with psychedelic drugs. Well, it’s all linked, the hallucinations, the sensitivity, the art, the aliens.”

“Well maybe I have an artist’s brain,” you said.

“I’ve decided that for the exhibition I’m going to make a tiny but deep well. A deep well made of stone. And there will be a soundtrack—the old internet dial-up sound.”

Those underwater beeps and trills.

You rolled down the window. Breathed in the salty air.  “What does it mean?” you asked.

“Art doesn’t have to mean anything!” He got frustrated with you sometimes. “Nothing I’ve made has ever meant anything. For my degree, I got a bunch of glass and broke it. I got grant money and MFA offers and recognition for that project, but did it mean anything? No. You know why? Because nothing ever happened. Not even this.” You considered that statement as you watched Atlantic waves leap up and smash the craggy coastline. “Jack Kerouac said that,” he added.

You think he’s self-centered, but you don’t mind. You like hearing about the art. In fact, you started to fall in love with Ned that day with your set of arms even though you knew he wasn’t likely to fall in love with you.

You sent him a clip from a Bukowski poem because you thought he’d probably like it.

“There’s a place in the heart that

will never be filled

And even during the

Best moments

And

The greatest times

We will know it

We will know it more than ever.”

He wrote back:

“Or not.”

You would go to his treehouse, or he would come to your real house. One time when he was in your house he said, ‘Why are the walls so bare? Put some pictures up!”

“Pictures of what?” you asked. “Then I’d have to keep looking at them.”

“So?”

“I like them bare.” This may have been the only time you stood up to Ned.

When you called Ned to tell him that your house burned and that your arm was probably going to be amputated, he didn’t say much except that he’d spread the word at the bike shop, and then your arm did get amputated, and everyone called you up and sent you cards and flowers and visited you except him. You didn’t see him for two months, but then you showed up at his treehouse, and you watched him clean out the flatbed of his truck. He was glad to see you. He helped you climb the ladder into his tree house by kind of nudging your butt up there with his shoulder because you now had only one arm, and he helped you into his bed. He was relieved, you think, you both were, that losing an arm doesn’t stop sex. In your mind, it makes it more necessary. In his, well, you don’t know. Interestingly, the sex became less clumsy with only three arms in the mix, and that was the only thing that changed.

You continued your love affair with Ned for the next four months. You saw him every few days at his treehouse, of course, because you no longer had a house. One time you asked him, Have you ever been in love? thinking of him, right then, right there with his hazel eyes and his chunky arms and the balding spot on the top of his head, and he said, “Yes, but it was a long time ago. Have you ever had a threesome?”

“I’ve had a three armsome,” you joked, but he didn’t laugh.

“I did. It was awesome. Two girls, they were friends. One was a little shy but—” And because he started telling you about the threesome, you knew he wasn’t in love with you.

But you still obsess about Ned. You have your bicycle, your bike shop friends, your dad, and Ned, but, really, in your mind, you only have Ned. Is it possible you could still be attractive with one arm? Sex with Ned suggests yes. Are you too old to have a baby? Let’s have sex with Ned and find out. You’re sure he’s having sex with other people. You don’t ask because you don’t want to.

The reason you don’t eat very often is because Ned likes skinny.

The reason you bought a Brooks saddle is because Ned likes Brooks saddles.

Though you can’t exactly be sure of this, it feels like the reason you’re breathing this next breath is because if you do, when you finally see Ned after the long trip he took to build another treehouse—this time for some of his friends in the mountains—he will nudge you up the ladder with his shoulder to his bed and he will pull your clothes off, and he won’t mind the stump.

                                                                                                                  *

Your dad comes downstairs.

“Hello, darling,” he says, and leans over and kisses you on your forehead. “Happy Birthday.”

He makes coffee.

You should start looking for a job so that you can be of use.

You should start reading books so that your mind doesn’t turn into mush. It’s already happening. You can’t remember words. You can’t remember details.

You should go to yoga or something.

Family is coming over. When they arrive, you’re dressed and looking prim. “Happy birthday! How are you feeling?” your cunty sister asks you. You think she’s a cunt, but she thinks you’re the cunt.

You hug your older brother. You hug your niece with the curly hair. She gives you a picture she drew. It is a tree, with a glowing pink figure standing next to it. It looks just like the alien.

“Who is it,” you ask. She doesn’t answer you. “Have you seen them, too?” you ask. She nods.

You hug your nice sister. “You’re too skinny,” she says. “You have to eat something.” She carefully puts the baby in your one arm.

You bring the baby’s head to your lips and kiss her light, downy hair. You rock her and smell her.

Everyone admires the baby. “Oh, look she’s staring at the light shining through the window,” that’s what they’re saying. “Look, she can’t take her eyes off it.” You look out the window and see a couple of the aliens looking in, holding hands. You look at your niece with the curly hair. She looks back at you.

Your dad takes the baby from you and holds her in front of him and talks to her, “Hello, darling,” he says, and brings her to his face and kisses her. He places her on a blanket on the living room floor. You sit down there with her.

“Mom is mad,” your cunty sister says. “She’s mad because you never call her.”

“Mom could call her,” your older brother says. “She’s only got one arm!”

“Mom doesn’t call,” the cunty sister says. “We all know that.”

“Happy birthday,” your nice sister says, handing you a present. You would have to make a big awkward shift to reach for it because you are leaning on your arm.

“Oh sorry,” she says, and tosses it into your lap. It just sits there. You don’t want to try to open it in front of everyone.

You look down at the baby’s soft, fat fists pumping upwards into space.

“When are you getting the prosthetic?” your older brother asks.

“It hasn’t been six months yet,” your cunty sister says.

“Mommy, there’s no toilet tissue,” your niece with curly hair is saying.

“Who says ‘toilet tissue?’” your cunty sister asks. “It’s ‘toilet paper’.”

Your dad is cooking.

Lunch happens for everyone, and then you take a nap with your curly-haired niece. You cuddle her with your one arm, and she picks up the empty sleeve, wraps it around herself, and goes to sleep.

“Tell me a story,” she says when she wakes up.

“Once upon a time,” you say. “Once upon a time there was a pink and green snake that came along and made me put my fingers in his mouth.”

“How did he make you?”

“He made me by telling me all the worst things about myself. He kept telling me all the worst things, and he said he would keep talking until I put my fingers in. He just wouldn’t shut up.”

“So, you put your fingers in?”

“Yes.”

“And then what happened?”

“He suddenly rose up and bit off my whole arm.”

“And that’s why you only have one arm.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to go to my school anymore. The teacher is shouty.”

“You don’t have to go,” you say. “I’ll tell you stories instead. We’ll eat chocolate and draw pictures.”

“Call my school and tell them I’m not coming there,” she says.

You call the fancy school your cunty sister has your niece in. You leave a message. You pretend to be your cunty sister, which is easy because you know her, and you sound like her. You want her out. Some other kid can have her spot. You’d like to give her school uniform to some other kid who needs it.

Your niece is satisfied. You go downstairs.

“Any luck with the job search?” they ask.

You say, “I still have money.”

                                                                                                                *

Later, after everyone has gone, you take the pet urn outside and sit on the back porch. You think about when your house burned, and you lost your arm.

It was a Saturday. You were soaking in the big old iron tub in the upstairs bathroom, listening to music, drinking wine from a mug. Between songs, you heard the beep of a message, and that’s when you remembered—your niece was coming over for a sleepover. You dried off and threw some clothes on, and you ran out to your car, calling your sister, telling her you were on your way, you were nearly there. She was waiting in her nighty with her backpack behind the front door. She talked about Rapunzel as you buckled her little body into the car seat. She talked all the way back to your house.

When you got inside, you dragged a mattress into the living room, and, together, you watched the Rapunzel movie because that’s what she’d been hoping for, talking about, and you fell asleep curled together under blankets.

You were half in a dream when you opened your eyes to see smoke crawling out from the ceiling fan above you. Before you had time to wonder what was real, the big iron bathtub, the one you’d been soaking in, dropped through the ceiling. You briefly recognized its black underbelly as it fell. It missed your niece. It mostly missed you, but the clawfoot landed on your right arm, punching through muscle and bone, pinning you to the floor. You hadn’t drained the tub, and cold bathwater slopped all over you and the mattress and your niece.

The bath really was why you bought the house. And the bathroom. Never before had you seen one like it. It was square and the size of a bedroom, with an enormous sash window with clear, not frosted, panes. It’s a room, you had thought, an actual room, and you hung curtains and put an armchair in there.

Lying, pinned, and nearly on fire, you could see bathroom burning through the ceiling floor hole, the mug from earlier not far from its edge.

“The problem with you,” your mom had said, “is that you’re a hopeless romantic. Ridiculously impractical.  Buying some big old house because you think it’s pretty—what do you know about remodeling?”

“Run out to the backyard through the kitchen,” you shout so that your niece can hear over her screaming—the back door because that was the one she knew how to unlock.

You dreamt you were riding a cow into a crematory. “But will the cow die?” you asked no one. “Because if so, I’m turning it around.” But the reigns didn’t work on a cow. And for a moment you wondered why it wasn’t a horse you were riding.

You should not have bought that house. Old wiring. Rotten floorboards.

You should have looked into that warm, fishy smell that you now know must have been electric.

“She could have burned to death!” you thought you heard your cunty sister scream as the medics put you in an ambulance. “She could have died!”

It’s too hot outside on the porch with the afternoon sun on your face. You look at the urn in your lap, and you cry a little bit. “I’m sorry,” you whisper.

Then the aliens appear. Two of them. They hold out their pink little three-fingered hands. You give them the urn.

                                                                                                                  *

In the evening, you meet Ned at The Mile where you often eat together. You don’t tell him it’s your birthday because he told you before that he doesn’t really believe in birthdays. “When you’re an anarchist,” he said, “you start to realize that all these things—birthdays, Christmas—are all a way for capitalism to consume you.”

You’re catching up. You’re hearing a lot of stories. You hear about the friends, the tree, the wood, the design, and the build. You see pictures of the retro climbing frame that he seated in concrete for the friends.

“They’re turning it into a sculpture.”

“It’s rusty,” you say.

“It’s cool,” he says. You don’t like to order anything you would normally pick up with two hands, like a burger. You order a warm farro salad. It’s a fork meal.

It’s still hot outside. You feel like you’re contained inside a cushion of air. Like the inside of a zeppelin.

“And,” Ned says pausing with his hamburger poised in front of his mouth. “And, something else pretty significant happened while I was away.”

You see a couple aliens then. They’re standing outside the wrought-iron fence of The Mile. The sun is going down, but, oddly, the taller one is wearing sunglasses. They point up. You see a flying saucer above The Mile. It’s flat and round, just as you’d expect, but it looks like it’s made of liquid, not metal. It’s glowing and floating like a jellyfish.

“Wow,” you can’t help saying.

“I met a woman,” he says, “and that ‘thing’ happened.” He takes a large bite and chews.

The bottom of your belly flips and drops then, and a steely mouthful of farro corrodes your throat, and it feels like you’re going to choke, but, thankfully, the aliens take control of you, pulling you upwards into the air, placing a body double on the seat in front of Ned.

The double is pretty good, petty accurate, but her shirt is the wrong shade. It’s yellow instead of orange. Doesn’t Ned notice that your shirt’s changed color? No, you remember that Ned doesn’t notice much, or remember much. Minutes before, he’d asked, “Did we ever go to the mountains together?” You’d never have forgotten the swim in the river, the tacos you ate in the flatbed of his truck at sunset, those peculiar window shades in the room you slept in. Now you will forget it all, including Ned himself.

The aliens suspend you in midair above The Mile. You have two arms again. They flip you up first so that you can see the underside of their ship. You see the big, alien eyes blinking at you through the mercurial belly; then they flip you down so that you can see Ned and the double talking.

“I met a woman,” he says, “and that ‘thing’ happened.”

Calmly, the double puts down her fork. “You’ve fallen in love?” But she doesn’t need to ask. You know what “that thing” is. “Well,” she says, looking into his eyes. “Well, I’m glad you told me. And, honestly, I’m happy for you.” And it seems like she really means it.

The aliens, however, shove a thing up your butthole. They begin “stirring,” which is not that painful, but it’s making you want to poop really badly.

“It’s crazy. I’ve never before had such a connection with someone,” Ned says to your body double. “I’ve never felt like this before.”

“Is she an artist?” the double asks. You were never artistic enough for Ned. She doesn’t take any more bites of the warm farro just as you wouldn’t have either. She listens sweetly, as you have always done.

“I’m sorry,” Ned says to the double. “I was worried about telling you.”

Your phone is vibrating in your pocket. It’s your cunty sister. You answer it. “Hello?” She starts shouting. You hang up. You still really have to poop. You hope there’s a bathroom on board. The thing is out of your butthole, but now the aliens are pulling you up towards their hovering spacecraft.

Ned and the double are getting further and further away. You can hardly see them now. You’re being pulled through the membrane of flying jellyfish saucer. You’re not scared. You’re so glad to have your arm back, and you do have to poop.

You see the urn, the one that had the crematory remains of your right arm in it. One of the aliens is holding it. “What’s in there?” you ask them.

“It’s empty,” they say, and it’s the first time you hear them speak. “There’s a place in this urn that will never be filled. And even during the best moments and the greatest times of your life, we will know it’s empty. We know it now more than ever.”  That’s what they say.