Justin is lying naked on the back lawn again. He does this on clear nights, buttocks pressed into grass, crickets chirruping their mating call on his mat of chest hair. I’m watching him from our open bedroom window, waiting for him to come lie with me, even though he’ll shrug my hand from his shoulder because, once again, they haven’t come for him.

Now he’s shouting Please, please, please! at the sky, and I’m calling his name and something else, but he doesn’t hear the something else because the air starts thrumming. Then I see Justin drifting upwards right past me in a tunnel of light, still on his back, full mast, dots of crickets jumping off him. His face is bright, not just from the beam but with joy, eyes only for the giant craft above him. I reach for Justin, call out. He doesn’t turn back. Not once.

Then he’s gone. It’s gone.

I go outside and lie in the patch where Justin lay, weeping into the warmth he’s left in the ground, ignoring the busy crickets crawling on my limbs.

It’s still nighttime when the beam and thrumming returns and they lower Justin gently back down to earth as he pleads with them Please, no, not back here! I just want to be with you! He’s placed next to me on the grass. Then they disappear, leaving the two of us alone, and Justin stops calling out. I say the something else he missed earlier, but he doesn’t look at me, doesn’t say it back, eyes on the sky. A cricket lands on Justin’s chest. It calls out by his heart, wings vibrating earnestly. I reach out my palm, smacking it down on the minute creature and Justin’s ribs so hard that we all hurt together.

Rebecca Klassen is fiction editor of The Phare and a Best of the Net nominee from Gloucestershire, England. She won the London Independent Story Prize and was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and Alpine Fellowship. Her stories have featured in Fictive Dream, Mslexia, Flash Frontier, and New Flash Fiction Review.