Alien Abduction by Brian Stableford

Author:Brian Stableford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, alien, abduction, regression, comedy
ISBN: 9781434443915
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2013-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

HAVING SECOND THOUGHTS

When the meeting broke up, Steve thought that it was only polite to offer Janine a lift home, but she turned him down. That didn’t surprise him overmuch, but the reason she gave left him flabbergasted.

“I don’t need to trouble you,” she said, “Walter’s giving me a lift.”

Steve hadn’t been under any illusion that Walter Wainwright actually lived with Amelia Rockham, even though he still suspected that they must have had some kind of a fling some time in the dim and distant past—doubtless before he had been born, and probably before there’d ever been a Mr. Rockham or a Mrs. Wainwright—but that knowledge had somehow never translated into the idea of Walter Wainwright getting into a car and driving home, let alone the idea that he might offer Janine a lift.

Steve wondered, momentarily, whether he ought to revert to his first impression and reclassify Walter as an old lech, but he couldn’t do it. He had seen and heard enough of the old man by now to be certain that Walter’s charm was genuine, in spite of its quaintness, and his caring attitude sincere. If Walter was giving Janine lifts to and from AlAbAn meetings, his motives had to be as pure as the driven snow.

Milly wasn’t too pleased about Steve making the offer to Janine. “You mustn’t rub salt in the wound, Steve,” she said, carefully not specifying whose wound she was talking about.

“I just thought she might tell us what she was doing here,” Steve said, lamely. If the truth didn’t always seem so lame, he thought, he wouldn’t be forced to tell so many lies.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Milly said, knowing full well that it obviously wasn’t.

“Go on, then,” Steve said, as he unlocked his own car and opened the driver’s door. “Explain it to me.”

Milly waited until she’d got into the front passenger seat—Janine’s seat, as it had previously been—and buckled her seat-belt before saying: “She wants to hear our stories. She probably intends to keep on coming until she hears them, but she’ll get bored eventually if we decide to wait it out. She wants to know why fate brought you and me together, instead of you and her. She wants to know why there’s such a powerful bond between us, and why neither of us could ever be happy with anyone else—but she’ll never really understand it.”

“Oh,” Steve said. “Is that why?” It hadn’t been what he’d expected to hear. He didn’t believe for a minute that it was true, or that Milly thought that it was true. He switched the car stereo on as he pulled away from the kerb, but the music didn’t start him dreaming of turning to stone. In a way, he thought, it might have been better if it had. He had a sneaking suspicion that there might be a powerful dose of sadness waiting around the corner, which would affect his coming night of passion almost as much as the bleak weeks to come. He tried to put on a brave face, though, for Milly’s sake.

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