Max "Bunny" Sparber

I GO TO AN ALIEN ABDUCTION SUPPORT GROUP. I try to be polite, but, frankly, I think these people are full of shit. Every single one of them seems to have some sort of personality defect, and their tales of kidnappings at the hands of almond-eyed extraterrestrials feel fashioned to perfectly fill whatever is missing in their pathetic lives. Every single one of them considers themselves special because they've been probed by space men. They talk about it, and dab their wet eyes, and speak of their dreams of a better place than this one, where a beautiful and advanced people send silvern ships through the cosmos to study us. And why? The consensus is that they are here to help us, and that this is why they abduct and experiment. Every single member of my support group smile sickly smiles and discuss how wonderful it is to be able contribute, in their own small way, to the Utopian future of humanity at the hands of exquisite, sensitive alien overlords.

This is when I struggle not to let out derisive snorts. None of these idiots were ever abducted. Some are ex-alcoholics, filling in their blackouts with imagined stories of white lights that pull them into the sky. Most are simply crazy, and their madness doesn't end with their manufactured tales of looking out their windows at night to see small, oval-headed men staring back at them. No -- that's just the start of it. One woman claims to be able to move clouds with her mind. Another talks in great detail about Atlantean artifacts. All claim past lives -- one woman, in fact, has been repeatedly kicked out of Native American tribal gatherings, which she insists she has a right to attend because she was an Indian princess in her last incarnation.

It's all nonsense, and yet I continue to go, because there is no support group for what I have experienced.

I was kidnapped by Mole Men.

I suppose it helps me to listen to the horseshit stories of the alien abductees because it reminds me that my abduction was real. Sometimes I doubt it. I doubt it despite the strange ideograph the Mole Men branded on my shoulder, an ideograph that means they will one day return for me. I doubt it despite the fact that I still see them, now and again, staring up at me through sewer grates, clicking their crablike claws together menacingly. I doubt it despite the fact that my rescue from the Mole Men at the hands of the police department was documented by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, who won two Pulitzers as a result, one for the story, one for a series of photographs showing three policemen firing revolvers into a crowd of Mole Men gathered at the mouth of one of caves that dot the Mississippi River. In one photograph, I am dressed in torn garments, bleeding badly from a wound to my forehead, as a SWAT team pulls me out of the clutches of Betrotha, Queen of the Mole Men, who by now must have given birth to our mutant child.

I do not know why Betrotha picked me. Although she seemed to understand English, she was capable only of speaking in a series of whistles. But she seemed to love me, at least for the two weeks I lived underground. After all, she rescued me from being torn to pieces by the Mole Men's witch doctor, who, from what I gather, planned to use my brain to power an army of humanoid robots, which he would use to conquer the overworlders.

Gosh, just saying it out loud makes it seem so unreal.

I decided to attend a support group because it has been hard to adjust to life after the kidnapping. I floundered at my job as a greeting card writer for the Pocket Wishes Card company. I would try and write humorous birthday cards, but without much success. I remember my boss bringing me into his office to discuss my work. He pointed out that everything I had written involved Mole Men in one way or another. He showed me the card I had written just that morning, which read "There's no place like home," on the cover, and then, when you opened the card, read "Unless home is a pitch black hole in the ground, wet and filled with strange echoes, where every afternoon you hear the whistles and the clicking of your captors devouring their prey of surface animals, such as deer and stray dogs." He suggested I see a psychiatrist. I was diagnosed with depression and post traumatic stress disorder, and have been collecting social security ever since.

I have been irritable and disinterested lately. Nothing seems especially exciting or meaningful. On the bus to my support group, I will hear strangers discussing the petty annoyances of their everyday life: paying taxes, or small illnesses, or car trouble. And I will feel the urge to shout at them, to tell them that they have nothing to complain about. The world is a much more terrible place than they can imagine, and they are wasting their time worrying about nonsense. It becomes very hard to have sympathy for someone who has a flat tire when you once fled a burning underground laboratory filled with strange and magnificent weapons designed to blot out the sun. I want to remind people that the Mole Men still live, and may yet succeed in their schemes to turn the world dark.

But why worry people over things they cannot control? Let them concern themselves with childcare and bills and flat tires; those are problems they can actually do something about. My psychiatrist tells me that the source of my depression is that I know what the Mole Men are capable of, and, in knowing, I feel somehow responsible, even though I am helpless to do anything about it. He points out that I probably have an additional feeling of responsibility, in that I fathered the mutant heir to the Mole Man throne, and so, if humans ever need to go to war with the Mole Men, it will be a war against my child. He tells me that this is a lot for one man to worry about. He also suggests that living with the knowledge that one day the Mole Men will come for me again is a little like living with a terminal illness. He is the one who suggested joining a support group. At first, he suggested an online forum for people who had encountered Cthulhu, but those people were simply too shell-shocked, too frightened, and too insane as a result of their experience. He also found me the alien abductee support group, and I grudgingly continue to go, although I feel certain it isn't helping. Anyway, if I am to stay on social security, I must demonstrate that I am taking steps to look after my mental health, and this seems to take care of that requirement.

Last night I awoke to clicking noises, and thought I saw a small creature peering at me from the opposite side of my bed. It was wrinkled and filthy and had tiny eyes, and we stared at each other for a long moment in the darkness. Then I reached to turn my night table lamp on, and as light flooded the room, the thing was gone. Perhaps it was never there.

This morning there was a father's day card in my mail box, even though it is not father's day. The card was unsigned. I recognized it: It was Pocket Wishes Card, one I had created. I'm trying not to make too much of it. It could have been sent by anybody, and it could mean a thousand things. But during my support group meeting today, listening to one woman discussing the great love and warmth she felt from her alien abductors, I burst into tears. I excused myself and fled to the bathroom, and I sat there sobbing for almost an hour.

The sun set this evening, and I found myself startled by it. I looked up into the darkening skies with an unexpected feeling, expecting to see some underworldly machine moving up into the atmosphere to dim the sun. But, of course, it was simply dusk, and the sun was merely setting, as is did every day. And I sat staring at the horizon, puzzling about my feelings as I watched the sun go down.

For a moment there, for the first time in years, I had felt something like hope.

Read more of I'm Just a Bad Boy, a Fake Memoir.