She was left in the dark alone with no one

She was left in the dark alone with no one to comfort her or tell her it was going to be okay.

The night hid her surroundings. There was barely a moon to keep her path lit as she stumbled, looking for her friends who left her.

She stumbled about, clutching her bleeding stump of an arm, calling, tirelessly, "Annie? Will? Anybody?" they had abandoned her here, left her to die. Exhausted, she collapsed.

She awoke, disoriented and blinded by the light above her. She looked on in mute, paralyzed horror as small furry gremlin-like creatures began to perform surgery on her arm stump,

which was held down by straps. Moving with rapid, insect-like precision, the creatures attached ten squid tentacles to her arm stump. They then kicked her out of the flying saucer.

It was a long way down, so they gave her ten books to read; one for each tentacle. During her free fall she recalled the alien's saying "Read all ten books before impact and live."

She tried to read while free falling,but it was too difficult as she couldn't focus on the words. She started to panic

She let the little booklet fly away from her and concentrated on plummeting to her death. "Go jump with a parachute, they said", she thought cynically. Fuck this, I'm too young to

die." She took a big step back, joined a 12-step program, eventually returned to grad school & became a kindergarten teacher in Angola, where she is now living happily every after.