Abducted | Book 1 | Vreekar

two |

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Above me I saw something I did not believe at first. . . faint thin bands of blue, sharply etched against the dark sky. They hovered over the earth like a succession of halos.

— David G. Simons, LIFE magazine, 2 September 1957.

In the morning, Marbie was rudely awoken by the loud ringing home phone, to which I was rudely awoken by the disgruntled and upset Marbie. The both of us, now equally disgruntled and upset with rude awakenings marched over to the home phone.

"Why do we have this again?" I asked, glaring at the evil device. "We both have cellphones."

"We thought it'd be cool and adult like." She reminded me. It was our first time living on our own in our own apartment, and we wanted to feel mature and as she had put it, "adult". So we bought a home phone. Out of all things we could've bought.

I sighed, rubbing stardust out of my eye as I began pressing buttons on the phone. "It says unknown." I say flatly.

Marbie twitched the corner of her lip, "They called us last night too." She crossed her arms. "Why is the phone light blinking red?" I shrugged. She began fiddling around with it.

The phone's robotic voice spoke out, "Two. New. Messages."

We blinked at the phone, then looked at each other, then back at the phone.

The first message started up, and a male voice began to speak "This is a induction notice for," the voice changed to a robotic woman, "Naomi Reed". The male voice spoke again, "This is an operative message from Selective Services. You have been drafted into . . ."

Drafted. My mind began to spin. The world seemed to have been pulled from under my feet. Drafted. I've been drafted. Marbie's face grew pale and wide-eyed as she stared at the phone. The voice began relaying a time, date, and location as to where I should go to be present and then thoroughly tested for my draft. The voice began listing off punishments and offenses that could be on me if I refuse. The message ended.

The second message started off, the same introduction as before. "This is an induction notice for Naomi Reed. This is an operative message from Selective Services. ." I held my stomach, feeling like I was about to throw up. The message from today was harsher, telling me that today would be my last notice and if I failed to comply, I'd be prosecuted.

The message ended, and the room fell silent. I blinked once, twice, simply staring at the phone.

Marbie breathed in- then quickly scampered to her room, then back over to me, typing away a frenzy on her cellphone.

"Marbs-" I said helplessly, "What. . "

"I'm looking up ways to avoid the draft." Her eyebrows were knit together in concentration as she read her screen.

With a great sigh, I ran my hands through my hair, then kept them on top of my head. "I don't understand. . . I thought the drafts were nothing. There hasn't been an actual draft in years. . ." Tears of frustration threatened to spill from the corners of my eyes. "I'm going to be sick."

Marbie quickly looked at me, then helped me down onto the island counter barstool, "Hey. Hey. It's going to be okay." She began smoothing hair out of my face.

I felt a tear slide down my cheek, "I can't be a soldier Marbs." My lip quivered, "I'm too soft to be a soldier. My hair is too nice. I'll have to shave my head and get a buzzcut. I have to feed my cats. Who will feed my cats if I'm dead?" My voice cracked and more hot tears spilled.