Another Fragment

... I checked him over: no visible bloodstains, rumpled jeans and jersey he'd had on three days ago, hunched shoulders and his hands between his knees. He wouldn't look at me. I kept on babbling: "... I mean, hey, my brother started setting my alarm clock fast - now I get up at noon to make my nine o'clock -"

"I was kidnapped by aliens."

"You mean like... lights in the sky?"

"No, I mean little grey guys that came up to my armpit, in silver velour suits with plastic ray-guns. I mean plastic. I could kick through the walls. I did a couple times, when I got loose. They, it, they hurt me a lot, and I can't even tell people about it - my excursion to the cardboard-mockup UFO." He glanced at me sidelong. "You ever read Dracula? Early on, Jonathon Harker fetches up in an insane asylum in Europe. He knows that he has two options: to believe that the horrifying events that he remembers actually happened, or know that he's gone insane."

He looked back at the wall, and the breath escaped his throat. "I'm sorry I missed your party."