1. Denial
As your eyes slowly adjust to the bright lights and you find you can’t move, of course you’re going to deny it. You insist that it must be a dream, but you know that once you realize a dream is a dream, you tend to wake up. There is no waking up. So you move onto the next lie, “I must have been in an accident. I’m in a hospital and I have amnesia.” Sorry, no dice. Hospitals on earth do not have pulsing purple walls or tentacled nursing staff. It doesn’t take long to get past denial when the three mouthed doctor leans over you with an oddly cute head tilt and a quadruple wink.
2. Anger
Why you? Of all the people in all the world, why did these stupid damn aliens have to pick you? If you could punch them right in their noses, er, hoses (nozzles?), you’d do it, right now, arm, hey arm, why aren’t you moving? Anger turns out to be much more difficult to hold onto when you can’t even thrash in protest.
3. Bargaining
Although you can’t speak, you decide to see if the aliens are psychic. Or if you’re psychic. You stare at them until your eyes hurt, thinking as loudly as you can: Let me go and I’ll give you candy. You’d like candy, I promise. How about beer? Nothing like a cold one on a hot day. Shiny penny?
Incomprehensible trills fill your ears, but you can’t tell if they’re responding, laughing or completely psychically deaf.
4. Depression
You’d cry if you could. But you can’t even tighten your sphincter, which, of course, you know they’ll get around to eventually. You wish you could see your mother again, and tell her you love her even though she’s crazy, which is totally the reason you fight all the time. What’s the point of trying to thrash or telepathically beg? There’s no point in anything anymore…
5. Acceptance
What will be, will be. You are paralyzed and helpless, and having absolutely nothing you can do certainly helps speed the process to acceptance. You endure, even as the expected probe strikes home, and tears actually do manage to leak out of your eyes.
6. X-Files
You wake up in bed, and while a part of you wants to pretend it was all a dream, a certain tender spot insists otherwise. You have no choice. There could be others out there, having been abducted, soon to be abducted, maybe even being abducted right now. You have to let everyone know that the truth is out there…