Aliens, once, abducted me. This was, oh, I guess five years ago now.

I was minding my own business and trying to get my head straight on the receiving end of a staggeringly ill-tempered storm and a bad breakup. Coincidence, for the most part, though the walk through the oncoming rain began as a heated attempt at cross-meteorological contrivance. It was raining so hard and so thickly and so, in every iron rivet of the term, bitingly, coldly; hammering at me in waves, pummeling my scalp and seeping deep down my neck and down into my soggy underwear; that I staggered into the nearest building I could find with lights in it. Or what seemed like a building at the time.

True, I suppose the word abduction brings to mind a more forceful type of conveyance but it’s difficult to tell people you absconded with aliens, or that you’d about had it with rain and Sheila, too, so you had to knock around in a spaceship for a few months on the unfashionable end of the Milky Way.

But I was young and you do crazy things when you’re in love – or were.