Not to brag or anything, but I'm a five-star dating app veteran. I've written countless bios, wooed myriad qts with my immaculate text game, and disappointed all of them when we met up in person. But I keep going, because life is a god damn struggle. Jesus had a cross, I have these feels.

Some of the bios ask you to write a fun fact that not many people know, so that you can impress the ladies with your expansive breadth of knowledge. Here's my fun fact: The moon is about 400 times smaller and 400 times closer to the Earth than the sun. It's why they're the same size in the sky. There's no deeper reason for this, it's just a coincidence. Billions of years ago, the moon was closer to the Earth, and it would have looked way bigger. In billions of years, it'll look way smaller. Two-thousand years after Mary lied to Joseph about how she got knocked up, they're the same size, and we get to enjoy perfect eclipses. Wasn't that a cool fact? Well, I thought it was cool, at least. It didn't help me pull any tail though. Apparently whores don't care about space. Unless it's some inane bullshit like astrology. I'm a rising Pisces, by the way. It's where I get my kind heart and overflowing empathy.

The point is, one look at the moon told me that I was no longer a resident of the pale blue dot. I stared at it slack-jawed for a solid minute.

Good morning, moon...

The sun had just started to rise over the horizon, so I could only make out the moon's outline, but it was clearly more than twice the size of the sun. It took me awhile to assure myself that it wasn't hurtling closer, like the meteor from last night, hellbent on turning Bradley into a Bradley patty.

If I'm not on Earth then... the sexually-deviant serial killer who brought me here is also... an alien?!

I almost want to meet this guy now...

Scanning the surrounding hills, I easily spotted where the meteor had landed (the smoking crater was a dead giveaway). I took a swig from my water bottle and headed towards it, leaving the sack by the cave entrance. The crater was in the opposite direction of the distant road squiggle, so I'd have to circle back anyway.

My first taste of wilderness was pretty underwhelming. The leaves on the trees had different shapes from any on Earth, and the birds sounded a bit different, but the bugs still buzzed, the leaves still crunched, and the critters still rustled. Rather dull, really. Then a dragonfly the size of a squirrel zipped past, and I reevaluated my need for entertainment. I'd rather be bored to death than gored to death.

Most of the trees were turning shades of red and yellow, so some kind of winter might be on the way. I tried to at least remember the season in which I'd been abducted but drew a blank.

Alien roofies are a hell of a drug.

I reached the lip of the crater and gazed towards the center, hoping to spot a chunk of meteorite. What I saw instead was... well... I wasn't sure. It kinda resembled a German Shepherd, but with small, goat-like horns, smaller ears, and a vibrant royal blue coat with crackling yellow stripes... I'm not really doing this thing justice. It looked even more out of place in this forest than I did, and if you'll recall I'm still not wearing any clothes. I slowly backed away.

Today's a wonderful day to not be a chew toy.

Too late. My dumbass foot snapped a dumber-ass twig, and the thing saw me. It emitted a bark that could best be described as a sonic grenade and came bounding over, tongue lolling and tail wagging. I'd barely had time to check whether the hearing damage would be permanent when it bowled me over and started licking my face.

"Ermmmmmfffffff.... geddoff." I pleaded, and finally got back on my feet. The creature looked at me expectantly.

"Alright then... today we're going to... uhhhh...."

Wait a minute... for all I know, this forest could be packed full of wolves, or bears, or motherfucking xenomorphs. The thing I need more than anything else right now is an ally.

I cracked a smile.

"C'mere, boy, let's get you some food."

----------------------------------------

The sun was sinking through the horizon when we burst through the last patch of foliage and onto the roadside. It was a dirt road, stretching as far as I could see in either direction. The trees had been thinning out slowly, and the road seemed to mark the boundary between the forest and a grassy plain.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

The hike through the forest had been mercilessly long, at least ten miles, but mercifully devoid of lovecraftian horrors. A few overgrown rodents looked at me like they knew what stale, crusty goodness I was hiding in my sack, but my right-hand man sent them packing with a sonic blast. Which was great and all, but I was starting to hear a high-pitched ringing noise.

"You've really got to turn down that subwoofer boy, I'm not wearing any earplugs."

I hyuk'ed and slapped my knee.

On the opposite side of the road, a lake was nestled into a cleft between several rolling hills. I was about ready to find a soft patch of grass and plop down for the night, but first...

I wandered down to the lake and washed off all the sweat and dirt that got on me from the hike.

As I was washing, I caught sight of my reflection, and couldn't believe my own eyes.

As a weightlifter, I'm quite familiar with body dysmorphia; It mostly happens to the guys who hop on steroids. Personally, I think your brain gets used to perceiving your body in a particular way, and if your body changes too quickly, it can take your brain awhile to catch up. People who lose weight might still see themselves as fat. Skinny people who gain muscle might still see themselves as skinny. When I look at my childhood friends, they seem strangely young to me because I remember what they looked like as kids, and their appearance never seemed to change as they grew up.

This becomes a problem when you successfully fix a flaw in your appearance, but you can never convince your brain that you've fixed it. Especially if your brain is stuck in the past and refuses to update its perception of your body. I'm not a doctor, I don't have an M.D., this is just one idiot's attempt to make sense of something by taking what he knows and extrapolating.

Still, calling my current situation body dysmorphia would be a bit much...

The face that stared back at me from the lake was thin, almost gaunt, with a shock of dark hair, but no beard, or even an indication of facial hair. It was softer and gentler than my previous face, but nothing that a decade of picking things up and putting them back down couldn't fix.

Am I... a teenager!?

Apparently yes. Roughly sixteen, from the looks of it. Which could only mean one thing:

The sexually-deviant serial killer alien who brought me here is also... a pedophile?!

No, that isn't right. I'm definitely between 15 and 19, so that would technically make him an ephebophile. Where in the fuck did I learn that word...

At least I'm still a guy... If I'd turned into a vaginated devil then I'd have to honor-kill myself.

Then it was time to address the elephant in the room.

I need to pee. Fuck.

I tugged fruitlessly at the chastity belt for a while, praying for a miracle.

God is dead.

...

Relief washed over me. And nothing else. I looked down, shocked. It was like it just... disappeared. Here's a valuable life lesson, a motto that I've lived by since high school:

Sometimes Your Problems Will Just Disappear On Their Own.

You Just Have To Believe.

I became a religious man that day.

My dad took me and my brother around to a few national parks when we were kids, to escape from my sisters and mom for a hot minute, so I've learned just enough about camping to be useless at it. I know that you should never drink from water that isn't flowing in some direction. It's like a guy who just graduated from college: taking a break is fine, reflecting on his accomplishments, setting goals, but if he doesn't get moving he'll stagnate. He'll get all greasy and musty, his room will start to smell, and any girl who so much as licks him will get a yeast infection. So don't drink that stagnant water. But don't drink any running stream water either, that can still carry bacteria. What water can you drink? I don't know. Like I said, I'm useless.

I know that bears will get into your food if you leave it out. How do you prevent this? I don't know. I can spot which berries are poisonous, and how to identify poison ivy and poison oak. Which ones are edible? I don't know. I could tell you how to make a fire by knocking a couple of rocks together. What kind of rocks? ...you get the idea.

So when I saw my blue companion nibbling at a group of orange fluorescent mushrooms, I decided to take a chance. I wanted to conserve the food that we had, because I had no clue how much longer we needed to go. They didn't taste that bad, either, but what does poison even taste like any-

ugh

My vision started to grow fuzzy.

How did I fuck this up? That damn dog ate way more than me and he's just...

I turned to look. The damn dog was convulsing uncontrollably on the ground, frothing at the mouth.

...fine. Stupid fucking-

Then the ground jumped up and slapped me in the face.

Everything went black... until my life started to flash before my eyes. For most people, I bet this would be pretty boring, like going to a movie that you've already seen, and the main character spends most of the screen time in traffic. The best thing that can happen is that you notice some little detail that might have gotten you out of whatever fucked-up situation you're in. There's me, browsing the web for something fun to do... There's me, packing for vacation... Oh, there it is! Instead of packing the parachute, I packed an accordion. Dag nabbit. There's me saying goodbye to my parents... There's me jumping out of the plane and... here we are! Welp, lesson learned.

For me, the flashbacks were not boring at all, because they showed events that I was just seeing for the first time: the missing memories from just before I was sent here.