Agnes Gets Abducted

   Zach was homesick. He was sick of the constant rain, sick of his pants being wet at the bottom, and sick of only having two legs. He pulled his hood down over his eyes and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
  
   "Zach!" yelled Agnes. Zach barely looked up.
   "Zacheaus!"
  
   Zach looked up at Agnes. Her face was flushed from running and her hair was wet. "I'll miss you," he said.

   "Wha?"
  
   "I said, `let's go before we're late.'"

                                                      * * * *

   That night Zach made plans for leaving the planet. He hailed a space taxi by bouncing a voicemail off a satellite. He then hypnotized his mom. After all these preparations, he called Stichy to tell him the good news.

   "Sup."
  
   "Hey Stichy, it's Zach."
  
   "Hey! Sup?"
  
   "I'm going to college in Texas."

   "Cool, man. What college?"
  
   "Uh . . . Texas . . . Graphic Arts . . . college . . ."
  
   "The Texas School for Graphic Arts? Awesome! Hey good luck, dude. And stay in touch."
  
   "Yeah, you too Stich."
  
   "Bye."
  
   "Bye."


                                                     * * * *

    Agnes heard that Zach was gone about three months after he left the planet. She ran into his mom in the church's bathroom.
  
   "Zach's married and living in Texas," she said, looking at Agnes with pity.
  
   "Oh," said Agnes. She ran into an open stall trying to stifle her giggles. "I never liked Zach that way," she said to the toilet.
  
   Agnes would have no memories of seeing Zach after this point.


                                                      * * * *

    But she did see him.

                                                      * * * *

    Six months later Zach abducted Agnes while she was driving home from Josha's house. She was so frightened by the experience that Zach found that it took him two seconds to hypnotize her and make her forget about it. Unfortunately, Agnes's mind retained a residual image of one of Zach's arms resting across the top of her car's backseat. The image lasted for only a second, but frightened Agnes considerably. Once she proved to herself that there really was no man in the backseat of her car, she dismissed the event as a hallucination brought on by too little sleep.


                                                    * * * *

    What frightened Agnes so much about the abduction is that Zach's people all have six arms and six legs. Agnes was terrified, because she was a Christian. She thought that she had landed in a Hindu afterworld, and was in serious trouble.

   "My life flashed before my eyes," she told Zach, "and some other things too, that definitely weren't my life. Something about mushrooms and elves."