The crazy man was walking the sidewalk when Valerie came out of the office building. If someone had tried to draw an illustration of a “crazy person” they could not have done a better job. He was dressed in a tattered old bathrobe and rain boots. His scraggly hair, black now mostly gray, was wild and he had at least several days stubble across his face. His eyes were wide and red. He even had a homemade cardboard sign stapled to a wooden pole.

“They’re out there!” He screamed, at the top of his lungs. “Their terrible craft visit this planet, taking anyone they please!”

As he turned, Valerie saw on his sign was a crude sketch if a green face with a bulbous bald forehead and beady black eyes. A large ‘X’ had been scrawled across it in wide brushstrokes of red pain. She laughed. She couldn’t help it.

Hearing her laugh, he turned toward her, pointing with a finger. “Be careful, Missie! You’re the kind the like most, a pretty specimen to take back to their planet! Watch the skies!”

“Sure...I’ll be careful.” Valerie said, hurriedly moving away from the crazy man. She found her car and hopped in, driving off. Pretty soon, she’d put him and his crazy rantings out of her mind.

Valerie’s house lay well outside the city, out in the countryside. This late in the year, it was well after sundown before she was through driving. Once she was off of the main roads, she was all by herself, her headlights and the lights of the occasional house breaking the darkness down below.

Above, the sky was all lit up. Valerie couldn’t remember a night so clear and crisp. Without the lights of the city to blot them out, she could see thousands of stars overhead, with the moon dark as well, the stars seemed all the brighter. “Wow...” She thought, eyes wide. “It’s so bright, it’s like the sky is lit up!”

It took the young woman a moment before she realized it was very bright, in fact, it was getting brighter and brighter. A ring of light, bright with a greenish tinge, was centered around her car as it wound up and down the winding country road. After a few seconds, the car’s engine sputtered and wheezed. She just managed to pull to the side of the road before it died completely. As the headlights flickered off, she could no longer ignore the odd light centered on her.

“What the...!?!” Valerie exclaimed, as she got out of her car and looked up. Some...thing hovered in the air above it. It was round and most of it was dark, only visible as a black form, blocking the light of the stars behind it. But a shaft of green light came from the center of the circle, shining down directly onto her.

Valeria turned and started to run for the trees, to escape whatever...that thing...was. She’d barely taken too steps when the intensity of the light grew. An odd lifting sensation took hold of the young woman. Her long, light brown hair began to lift up first, followed by her business clothes. The next time she took a step, her foot didn’t make it all the way down to the ground. Her other foot soon followed and she found herself floating in midair.

“Whoa!!! Help! Help!” Valeria screamed, her legs windmilling in the air as she continued to rise. The light grew in intensity, blinding her as she shot up into the sky…

When her vision returned, Valeria found herself in the center of a brightly lit chamber. It was round, maybe fifteen or twenty feet across. The walls were of metal and covered in strange, smooth protrusions that seemed to suggest technology of some unknown, but doubtlessly highly advanced kind.

“I must be going crazy!” Valeria said to herself as she turned around, this way and that. She couldn’t quite tell how she’d gotten here, into this room. “I mean...” she continued talking to herself. “I don’t feel crazy...” But then, how would she know what being crazy felt like? She didn’t have an answer for that.

Just then, a section of wall shifted with a hiss, the noise attracting her attention. As she spun around, the gleaming metal seemed to vanish into thin air and a trio of figures stepped through. Valeria might have laughed, if she wasn’t still so shocked and confused.

They were short, barely coming up past her navel. Their heads were large and bulbous, with a green skin tone. The only features on the hairless domes were a pair of large black eyes and slits for mouth and nose. Below, the creatures wore silver suits that covered the rest of their bodies. Held in their hands were devices that, though unearthly, were clearly rayguns of some sort. She’d been abducted by little green space men!  

The trio marched directly up to her. One of them opened its mouth, revealing a row of small, pointed teeth and said something that was halfway between a series of barks and honks. But from the tone and the way is thrust its ray gun forward, it was pretty obvious what it’s intent was. Stick ‘em up! Compliantly, Valerie raised her hands.

“Wha-what do you want?” She asked, but of course the only answers came in the form of the strange honkings from the aliens. Eventually, she worked out that they wanted her to start walking towards the odd opening they’d come through. Afraid of what they might do to her, she obeyed. As soon as they’d passed through the opening into a long hallway made of the same contoured silver metal, the wall faded back into existence, leaving no trace, she could see, that there had ever been an opening there at all.

With more barks and gestures with the guns, the aliens set Valeria marching down the hallway. It seemed to curve around to the right, following the contours of the round saucer she’d seen at the start of her abduction, Valeria guessed.

Along the way, they passed several more of the green skinned beings, going about other tasks, carrying strange and odd devices. They glanced up at her as she shuffled past, hands still raised. She felt a little foolish. Her she was, a grown woman, being led along as prisoner by little green men from outer space. If anyone had told her this would happen to her, she’d have thought they were crazy.

Valeria wondered what the space men wanted with her. Why had they picked her? Surely she couldn’t be the only person they’d abducted. But if so, where were they? During the short march, she saw only other space men, no humans. Then, they reached their destination and she got her answers.

As Valeria was brought to a sudden halt by more barks, another of those stranges openings appeared in the wall. Through the other side, they entered a large room. Valeria stopped, eyes going wide with horror. Along the long, narrow room were rows of glass tubes, stacked three, four high, up to the ceiling.

About half of these were occupied and each of these held a single female human. All of them were young, between 18 and 30 years of age, Valerie guessed, and all of them were quite pretty. She could tell easily because, she blushed, all of them were completely naked. Aside from this, they had a wide range of hair colors and skin tones, forming a tableau of every ethnicity. The prisoners were alive and quite conscious as well. A few banged on the glass of their containers. There mouths were wide open, but whatever it was they were saying, the glass muffled it completely.    

Caught up in the horror of what she was seeing, it wasn’t until Valeria felt the jab of one of the ray guns in her back she remembered she was no passive observer, but a prisoner as well and likely about to join the rest of the women. Her mind raced, trying to form some plan of escape, but it came up blank.

Numbly, she was led down the rows of capsuled women to some sort of platform. In the center of it was a metal ring, the same dimensions as the tubes containing the prisoners. It was obvious she was meant to stand in the center of it to be tubed herself, just as it was obvious she had no choice in the matter.

As soon as Valeria had done so, a loud hum filled the room. A bright green beam of light appeared around her, like the one which had abducted her so recently. But this one, rather then lifting her up, pressed in one her from either side, squeezing her tight into the center of the ring. She found she was unable to move.

She gasped in horror as one of the space men raised a ray gun, slightly different from the ones they’d threatened her with previously, and fired. A bright ray shot forward, enveloping her. To her surprise, she didn’t appear to be harmed, aside from an odd tingling, almost like an entire pillows worth of feathers were being run across her skin. She stifled giggles.

Then, after a few seconds, she saw to her horror, her clothes had also been affected by the beam and unlike her, they were starting to disintegrate. Trapped in the beam, there was nothing she could do as the tatters of her clothes started to fall off, most reduced to dust before they touched the floor. In moments, she was as naked as the rest of the captives.

Another machine was then switched on. From above, a glass cylinder started to descend over Valeria. She screamed, but in seconds it had reached the floor. At that moment, the beam was shut off, allowing her to move again. Not that it mattered. She was completely trapped.

Another, different beam now came on. Like the first one, it started lifting the cylinder, with Valeria trapped helpless inside, off of the platform. Swiftly, she was moved over and slotted neatly into place between two other occupied cylinders. One held a short, freckled redhead, the other a scared blonde girl. The three prisoners could only exchange terrified looks as they wondered what their strange captors had in store for them.

Below, the aliens turned without a second glance and headed back out the way they’d come. While they’d been dealing with Valeria, the saucer had already located another likely specimen, run her down and picked her up with the abduction beam. At this rate, it wouldn’t be long before they had a full load and would be leaving this primitive world, carrying their cargo of helpless captives off to a distant star system...