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Shane Madej had ended up in his fair share of strange situations during his time with BuzzFeed. He’d found himself dancing through a doorway with an enigmatic Voodoo Queen, lying on a bed while an aggressively coquettish woman placed spiders onto his face, walking around the office asking his coworkers whether or not they were circumcised and if they’d like to talk about it on film, and sleeping in more potentially condemnable buildings than he could count.
But his current situation, he’d decided, was by far the strangest and most absurd of his career to date.
“What the fuck are we doing, man?” Shane asked, lugging a sleeping bag under each arm as he followed after Ryan.
“Setting up camp,” Ryan answered without turning around as he held a camera in front of him.
“No shit. But I mean this whole episode. It’s just hitting me. What are we doing?”
Ryan turned around to face him. “We’re trying to get abducted, Shane.”
He groaned. Hearing Ryan say it out loud while they were standing outside in the darkness made it seem even more insane than it had at their desks. When Ryan had proposed the idea, Shane had actually laughed in his face, thinking it was a joke. He quickly realized that he was wrong when Ryan detailed his lunacy.
It was simple, Ryan had said in their production meeting. The two of them would get an Airbnb somewhere in the Joshua Tree wilderness, since an abnormally high number of alien abductions per capita were reported there, and Shane hated hearing a phrase as intellectual as “per capita” used in such a context. Rather than sleeping in the house, they’d sleep out in the yard with a few cameras and see if they got abducted.
Shane had felt completely speechless, and then intensely betrayed when TJ chimed in with an uncharacteristically enthusiastic, “I think it’s a great idea!” Shane suspected that the reaction was only because Teej wouldn’t have to go on the shoot, but he didn’t say anything. Before Shane could do anything about it, the episode was slated as the Supernatural season premiere.
“I know that,” Shane said into the camera lens, back in the present, poorly concealing his exasperation. “But isn’t this, for lack of a better word… fucking stupid?”
“It’s not stupid,” Ryan replied, his voice indignant.
“Ryan,” Shane said slowly as he made eye contact. “Do you really think that if we lie in this backyard all night, we’ll get abducted by aliens?”
Ryan shrugged. “We might.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Look at it this way,” Ryan said, turning off the camera. “If we don’t get abducted, this is basically just a vacation on the company dime. We’ve got beer, we’ve got a shitload of food, we’ve got this sweet little ranch for tonight and tomorrow night. Plus, this episode is gonna be done like a vlog, which is a departure from our usual format but familiar enough to YouTube that it’ll pull new viewers, and it’ll inevitably be great banter-wise, since you’re already annoyed with me. So, people will talk about it and meme us and shit, which will be a strong start to the first Supernatural season on the new network.”
Shane pursed his lips. He hated that Ryan was making valid points. “Are we filming tomorrow night?”
“Nope,” Ryan said, popping the P. “I just talked the brass into letting us stay two nights in case we needed to get any extra shots, which we won’t, since the point of this episode is that it’s just one night. But I didn’t tell them that.”
“So… we just get a night to hang out in Joshua Tree?”
“Bingo,” Ryan replied, and then a grin spread across his face. “Also, I made us some brownies last night, which are currently in our fridge.”
“Yum.”
“Shane,” Ryan said, then raised his eyebrows and repeated, “Brownies.”
“Oh!” Shane laughed as Ryan’s implication clicked. “Nice!”
“You’re welcome.”
It actually sounded like an enjoyable way to spend the weekend, despite the irrefutably stupid part, especially since they were technically on the clock. With a sigh, he admitted, “You’re an evil genius, Bergara.”
Ryan smiled and turned the camera back on.
The boys continued to set up camp, first their tripod camera, then their lights, then sleeping bags, then a small fire. When they were settled in, both sitting on their bags and facing the camera, Ryan turned to face him.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready,” Shane replied.
Ryan walked on his knees to the camera, pressed record, then resituated himself next to Shane.
“This week on BuzzFeed Unsolved.” Ryan paused and glanced at Shane. “We’re doing something a little different.”
“Yeah, that’s one way to fucking put it,” Shane sneered.
Ryan grinned at him and continued, “So, the big guy and I are in Joshua Tree, a national park here in California, for those of you who don’t know. And we’ve got one goal for the night.”
“Goal?” Shane asked. “That implies it’s something achievable.”
“It’s achievable!” Ryan argued.
“It’s not.”
“Whatever. Anyway, our goal for the night is: Get abducted by aliens.”
They were silent for a moment.
“I know, you guys,” Shane said into the camera. “Ryan’s lost it.”
Ryan smiled, then launched into his spiel about reported Joshua Tree abductions. Shane leaned back, his palms flat against the ground behind him, and looked up at the sky. He was glad the night was clear, because if nothing else, at least he’d get to see the stars all night. It’d been too long since he’d gotten a good view of the night sky. He hoped it would be equally clear tomorrow night, when he could pair the view with the edibles waiting in their fridge. Knowing Ryan, and having heard his Joshua Tree stories ad nauseam, there was most likely an extra bit of magic hiding somewhere in his luggage.
“Hey, Ryan,” he interrupted eventually, sitting back up.
“Yeah?”
“This is a pretty wild theory, but I want you to hear me out.”
“Okay,” Ryan replied, his voice wary. “Shoot.”
“Do you think that, maybe, just maybe, the amount of,” Shane mimed heavy air quotes, “‘abductions’ could have anything to do with the frequency with which people use hallucinogenic drugs here in Joshua Tree?”
Ryan paused. “I mean…”
“Not that we or BuzzFeed condone that!” Shane said into the camera, suppressing a grin. “I’m just saying. It’s a thing.”
“It is a thing,” Ryan agreed slowly. “But…”
“But?” Shane repeated, his eyebrows raised.
“But nothing,” Ryan said eventually. “Shut up. Let me continue.”
“We got ‘em,” Shane said into the lens.
“You didn’t get me,” Ryan replied, then repeated, “Shut up.”
Shane laughed and reclined again, this time closing his eyes as Ryan finished his monologue.
“So, what now?” Shane asked when Ryan stopped talking.
“We wait,” Ryan answered.
“We wait?”
“Yeah. I Googled some stuff you can do to attract aliens, make yourself more likely to be abducted.”
“And what kind of whackjob shit did you find searching for that?” Shane asked.
“Nothing,” Ryan said with a sigh. “Like, literally nothing.”
Shane let out a loud laugh, throwing his head back. “Jesus Christ, Ryan. So we just sit here all night? Is that literally it?”
“I mean, we have food, and we packed a deck of cards.”
“And I brought Scrabble.”
“Right. So let’s go grab a snack and hang out.”
Shane sighed. “This is ridiculous.”
“Shut up.”
“So, those are my top five,” Ryan said into the camera lens, then looked over at Shane. “Should I keep going?”
Shane blinked once. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
“Ryan, you just spent an hour detailing your favorite abduction stories, and you want to keep going?”
“I mean, what else are we gonna talk about?”
“Anything,” Shane said. “Literally anything. Let’s get some questions from Twitter or something.”
Ryan’s face lit up. “That’s actually not a bad idea. We could ask people to send us questions about previous alien episodes.”
“No,” Shane said. “Never mind. I didn’t mean questions about aliens.”
Ryan pouted – actually pouted – and locked his phone. “You don’t have to be such an asshole about this, you know.”
“Excuse me?” Shane asked.
“I know you think this is dumb, but lighten up,” Ryan said. “Have another beer. Stop being so closed-minded.”
“Ryan, it’s not closed-minded to think sitting in a field all night won’t get you abducted by aliens.”
Ryan scoffed. “That’s textbook closed-mindedness, dude.”
“Fine,” Shane said, fighting the grin on his face. “Pass me another one. I’ll try to chill out a little.”
“Good,” Ryan said as he opened their cooler.
Ryan passed Shane a beer, along with his alien-emblazoned bottle opener. He popped the top off the beer, then handed it back to Ryan with a roll of his eyes.
“To aliens,” Ryan said, tilting the neck of his half-empty bottle toward Shane.
“To not getting abducted,” Shane said.
He moved to touch his bottle to Ryan’s, but Ryan pulled it back, eyebrows raised.
“Fine,” Shane said. “To aliens, I guess.”
Ryan grinned and clinked their drinks together.
“Oh, here’s a good one,” Ryan said. “The Sallie House demon, the Bellaire House demon, the Bobby Mackey’s demon.”
“Piece of cake. Kill Sallie.”
“Really?” Ryan asked. “I didn’t expect that with how often you talk about how it was one of the greatest nights of your life.”
“Yeah, but she’s a little girl,” Shane countered. “I’m not gonna fuck her or marry her.”
“The demon isn’t a little girl. Demons are ancient beings. She just presented as a little girl.”
“I’m not gonna try to fuck a baby demon on a technicality. I’m killing her.”
“Fine,” Ryan said with a grin. “Continue.”
“Fuck the Bellaire demon. Since he supposedly threw that woman’s dog, he could probably manhandle me a little, which is hot. And marry Bobby Mackey, since we’re bonded forever in memedom anyway.”
“Memedom,” Ryan repeated through a laugh. “That’s ridiculous.”
“We literally put the meme on shirts, Ryan. That demon is my husband now.”
“Jesus. Okay. Find me one.”
Shane unlocked his phone and resumed scrolling his Twitter mentions. “Got one. Ready?”
“Ready.”
“For both of us,” Shane said. “The Try Guys.”
“Oh, God,” Ryan said with a laugh. “Okay. Try Guys. Let’s do it.”
“Fuck Eugene, obviously,” Shane said.
“Obviously,” Ryan replied. “Kill Zach.”
“One hundred percent, kill Zach,” Shane agreed. “And marry Keith.”
“Keith?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah,” Shane said. “He’s basically my height, so I wouldn’t have to spend a lifetime with a craned neck, and he’s funny as hell.”
“Becky might kill you.”
“You’re worried about Becky but not the prospect of separating Ned and Ariel?”
“Fuck,” Ryan laughed. “Fine. You win. Marry Keith.”
“You’ll be our very small sister wife.”
They both laughed.
“Okay, this is getting a little too real,” Ryan said when they calmed down. “Let me find a new one.”
Shane laughed again and adjusted the pillows he was leaning against.
“Oh, here’s a fun one,” Ryan said eventually. “Ricky Goldsworth, Night Night and me.”
Shane laughed once. “Well, kill you, obviously.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m not gonna fuck you, and I’m sure as hell not gonna marry you,” Shane said. “We’d kill each other in a month.”
“We would not,” Ryan said with a scoff. “We could absolutely make a marriage work.”
“What, are you saying you’d marry me?”
“If the other two options were mobsters, yeah.”
“Oh, is Goldsworth a mobster?”
Ryan grinned. “He’s not not a mobster.”
“My kill stands,” Shane said. “But I’d fuck Night Night, and really take my time with it. Make it real good. That way, if he was ever contracted to kill me, he’d be like, ‘Oh, shit, that was the best sex I ever had, I can’t kill him.’ Boom. Life saved.”
“Shaky logic, but continue.”
“And marry Ricky. He gets what he wants, and he’d fuck up anyone who crossed me.”
Ryan looked into the camera, a sinister Goldsworth smile on his face. “That’s right. Don’t fuck with my husband.”
Shane laughed, and Ryan did, too.
“That’s not a word,” Shane said, his voice indignant.
“It is so a word,” Ryan argued.
“Do I need to pull up the Scrabble dictionary app, Ryan? Prove to you that it’s not a word?”
“I don’t give a fuck about the Scrabble dictionary,” Ryan replied. “It’s 2018. LMAO is a word.”
“Rock paper scissors,” Shane said. “Winner decides.”
“Oh, you’re on.”
They each beat their fists against their palms three times, then Shane frowned when his scissors were defeated by Ryan’s rock.
“Eat it, bitch,” Ryan said. “LMAO remains, with a triple word score.”
“Fuck you,” Shane replied, laughing despite himself.
It was just past 1AM, and they were on their fifth hour of not being abducted. They were also on their second game of Scrabble, which Shane was determined to win. Some sort of cosmic fluke had caused Ryan to win the last game, and he couldn’t let it happen again. Especially not on camera.
Much to Shane’s dismay, it happened again.
“How?!” Shane yelled after they’d tallied up their scores. “How did you beat me again?!”
“I’m a smart person, Shane,” Ryan said. “I have a wide vocabulary.”
“I’m not saying you’re not smart,” Shane said. “I’m just saying that I’m smarter.”
“Not according to Scrabble, you’re not.”
Shane threw a handful of Chex Mix at him.
“One… two… three… throw!” Ryan yelled.
Both boys threw a cheese puff toward the other, then dove to catch them. For the first time in their nearly forty minutes of doing this, they both caught the other’s cheese puff in their mouths.
“Fuck yeah!” Shane yelled as he chewed his.
“Finally!” Ryan replied. “Let’s see if we can do it again.”
Not only did they do it again, but they somehow managed to do it six times in a row. Shane knew it was just the fact that it was nearly 3AM and they were both exhausted and punchy, but it was the most fun he’d had on an investigation, possibly ever.
Until Ryan missed.
“Goddamnit!” Shane yelled. “Goddamn you, Bergara!”
“I’m sorry!” Ryan replied with a laugh. “I’m exhausted, and you gave me a terrible throw.”
“My throw was perfect. Don’t pawn this off on me.”
Ryan laughed again, but it quickly turned into a yawn, which caused Shane to yawn, too.
“What time is it?”
Shane looked at his watch, barely visible in the light they’d set up behind the camera. “3:45AM.”
“Fuck,” Ryan said simply.
“So, at what point do we give up and go to sleep?” Shane asked.
“Going to sleep wouldn’t be giving up,” Ryan countered. “A lot of abductions happen while the victim is sleeping.”
“Ah, yes,” Shane said, tenting his fingers in front of his face. “Sleep, the time when people have wildly vivid dreams that feel real once they’ve woken up. A perfect time to be abducted.”
“Fair point,” Ryan said. “But we could still get abducted.”
Shane looked around at their makeshift camp. They’d gone from two side-by-side sleeping bags and one pillow each to both bags unzipped and spread out like a picnic blanket, surrounded by a nest of every pillow and blanket they could find in their cabin.
“Should we zip the bags back up?” Shane asked.
Ryan shrugged. “It’s nice enough out that we don’t need to be wrapped up. We could just leave it like this.”
The two of them set to work getting ready to sleep, switching out their camera batteries, changing into pajamas and, in Ryan’s case, yelling up to the aliens that they were vulnerable and open to being abducted.
Once they were settled, Shane was again taken aback by the view of the night sky. He wondered briefly what it would be like to get lost up in the stars, and if it would look as beautiful from an alien ship as it did from the ground.
“This is gonna be so much better tomorrow night,” Ryan said, his voice nearly inaudible.
Shane laughed once. “I was thinking that earlier.”
Louder, Ryan asked, “Do you know any constellations?”
“Some. I can see Sagittarius.”
Ryan turned his head. “I was expecting you to say, like, the Big Dipper, and you pull out that shit.”
Shane shrugged. “I’m full of useless knowledge.”
“It’s not useless,” Ryan said, and the sincerity in his voice almost made Shane laugh. “I’m a Sagittarius. I don’t even know what it looks like.”
“See that lighter part of the sky?” Shane asked, extending his arm toward the sky.
“No,” Ryan said, and Shane sighed.
“Scoot closer to me and look up my arm.”
Ryan nodded, then moved over until the right side of his body was flush against Shane’s left. He rested his head on Shane’s shoulder and stared up the length of his arm.
“So, see how part of the sky is lighter than the rest?”
“Oh, okay. Yeah.”
“That’s the Milky Way.”
Shane felt Ryan’s head turn toward him. “Like… the Milky Way?”
“Yup. That’s basically the center of it.”
“Oh my God,” Ryan whispered, looking upward again.
“I know.” Shane moved his arm slightly. “See that teapot shape kind of below it?”
Ryan was quiet for a few moments. “No.”
“Hang on.” Shane pulled out his phone with his free hand and quickly pulled up an image of Sagittarius. “It looks like this.”
Ryan took the phone and studied the constellation, then looked back to the sky. Shane waited while Ryan repeated the loop a few times, then smiled wide when he heard Ryan gasp.
“I see it! Shane, I see it!”
“That’s Sagittarius.”
“Holy shit,” Ryan breathed, and Shane lowered his arm.
Shane wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, Ryan’s head still on his shoulder with the cosmos stretched out above them. Eventually, Ryan’s breathing evened out and faded into a soft snore, which lulled Shane quickly to sleep.
Shane was woken up by a bright light. Although the temperature of the air didn’t seem to have changed, the light felt warm against his eyelids. Too warm.
His eyes shot open and all he could see was white. He quickly turned his head and was just able to make out an outline of Ryan beside him.
“Ryan!” he tried to yell, but no sound came out.
Suddenly he was yanked upward by an unseen force, and as his body was pulled in what seemed like a hundred different directions, he was hyper-aware of the fact that there was nothing physically touching him.
He could see Ryan beside him, suspended in mid-air, his eyes still closed.
“Ryan, wake up!” he tried to yell again, and the silence overwhelmed him.
Shane closed his eyes and the wild movement abruptly stopped. He could feel his limbs lying beside him. Slowly, he tried to move his arm. It wouldn’t budge.
When he opened his eyes, the room he was in looked surgical. Bright lights shone down on him, radiating an aura of a color he’d never seen before. Slowly, he tried to move other parts of his body, and felt fear stir deep in his gut as he realized he was paralyzed.
He shifted his eyes to look to his left and saw Ryan on an operating table a few feet away. His eyes were open, too, and staring into Shane’s, looking terrified.
“Ryan,” he tried to say, but still couldn’t produce a sound.
Suddenly, he could feel hands on him, and see tall beings above him. Their faces were somehow blurred, as if Shane weren’t wearing his glasses, although he could feel them on the bridge of his nose and see the surrounding area with perfect clarity.
Before he could focus any more on his eyesight, he felt a sharp pain slash his right wrist and radiate up his arm. Internally, he screamed in pain, then watched in terror as one being carried his hand away from the table. A similar pain struck his left ankle, then his torso, and although he was writhing in agony, he remained motionless. He felt a single tear well in his eye.
He glanced back over at Ryan, just in time to see a large blade, glimmering with the same indescribable color as the lights, slice through the other man’s neck.
"RYAN!" Shane screamed, sitting bolt upright.
“Shane?” Ryan answered from somewhere in the distance.
Nearly hyperventilating and shaking hard, Shane looked around. The browns and greens of the scrubby Joshua Tree flora surrounded him. The sun shone overhead. All his limbs were fully mobile, and attached to his body.
His breathing slowed as Ryan approached him. “Shane, are you okay?”
“I…” he started, then looked up at Ryan. His head was haloed with yellow sunlight, but Shane could make out his features. “I had a nightmare.”
“What about?” Ryan asked as he crouched beside Shane.
Ryan laid a hand on Shane’s shoulder, and Shane felt the last of his lingering terror fade into embarrassment.
“Nothing. I don’t remember.”
A wide grin spread across Ryan’s face. “Did you dream about getting abducted by aliens?”
“No,” Shane said, but he could feel his own grin give him away.
“Oh my God,” Ryan replied with a laugh, sitting next to Shane. “That’s amazing.”
“No it’s not,” Shane argued. “It was fucking scary. I couldn’t move or talk, and they decapitated you.”
“What the fuck?” Ryan said. “You dreamed about me getting decapitated?”
“No, I…” Shane trailed off.
He knew, logically, that it was just a vivid dream, and possibly some sleep paralysis. His subconscious had just cooked up a crazy scenario and thrown him headfirst into it. But it had felt so real. If he were a different person, he would surely go running to the first podcast that would take him.
“Yeah,” Shane said. “I did.”
“Or maybe we really got abducted,” Ryan argued. “And I just don’t remember it because I got decapitated.”
Shane rolled his eyes. “Ryan, your head is still attached.”
“Maybe the aliens reattached it! My neck does have a crick in it.”
“Probably because you fell asleep on my shoulder.”
“Or because an alien cut my fucking head off last night.”
Shane laughed, and ignored the pain he suddenly felt in his right wrist. It’s just psychosomatic, he thought. You didn’t get abducted by aliens.
“The Shaniacs are gonna be furious about this,” Ryan said, grinning at the camera as he pushed up off the ground. “Their own leader, abducted.”
“Fuck off,” Shane replied. He took Ryan’s hand and let the other man pull him up. “There was no abduction.”
“Sure, sure,” Ryan said. “Keep telling yourself that.”
“Should we go get breakfast?” Shane asked, changing the subject.
“Yeah, I’m starving. I found a few places on Yelp. I was waiting for you to wake up.”
Shane nodded, and they both began to walk toward the house. He looked over his shoulder, inspecting the area around where he’d slept from afar. There were no irregularities, no circles in the dirt. He did notice a Yucca tree that was snapped in half, but he couldn’t remember whether or not it had been like that the night before. He’d check their footage later.
“Denny’s?” Ryan asked.
Shane snapped his head around. “Huh?”
“I said, do you want to go to a local place, or hit up Denny’s?”
“Oh, uh…” Shane glanced at the broken tree one more time, then turned back to Ryan. “Let’s try somewhere local.”
Ryan nodded, then started listing off names of restaurants that had sounded good to him. Shane listened intently, focusing on his words and nothing else. Although he’d never admit it, he was afraid he’d start to believe Ryan’s nonsense if he thought any more about it.
“Well,” Ryan said to his camera once they got situated in his car. “We didn’t get abducted.”
“Nope,” Shane said, shutting down the topic both in the video and in his own mind.
“But we’ve still got the whole drive back to LA. Who knows? We could get snatched off the freeway.”
Shane looked over at him, hoping the exasperation in his mind translated onto his face. “Give it up, Ryan. We’re staying on Earth.”
“For now,” Ryan said, flashing him a grin.
“For always.”
Ryan waved a dismissive hand, then started the car. “One day, we’ll get abducted.”
“What are you hoping would happen?” Shane asked. “If you got abducted.”
“I don’t know.” Ryan reversed the car. “Bang an alien, maybe get my butthole probed.”
Shane grinned. “You know you can do that here on Earth, right? There’s an alien-themed brothel near Area 51.”
“No there's not.”
“Google it!” Shane insisted. “We could get there in a few hours if we left now. I’m sure they’d be more than happy to probe you.”
“Okay, new subject,” Ryan said with a laugh as they pulled out of the long driveway.
Shane laughed too, and watched as their cabin and the last of his nightmare disappeared in the rearview.