They met in town, quite by chance.
They hadn’t seen each other since school. They were now both in their twenties. The older one, although only by a year, lived in the town, while the other lived on her parent’s farm quite a distance away. The older woman remembers two things about her. The first was how her dad would drop her off with his truck at school because the farm wasn’t on any bus route, and the second, was how she was known for telling tall tales. At school she used to tell whoppers! It had always been amazing that although the stories were completely outrageous and totally unbelievable, she would carry on as though she was convinced herself that what she was saying was true. This fact alone resulted in her not having many friends.
Anyway, on the basis that this sort of childish behaviour would have been dropped over the few years since, she was happy to find a café and chat for a while. When they were settled the older one started by talking about where she worked in a local estate agency and the type of work she did. The younger woman seemed reluctant at first, but after some gentle prompting explained that she didn’t have a steady job because of recent illness and she mostly just helped out around the farm. She sipped at her coffee.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know of course. I haven’t seen you for ages. You look OK, though. What happened?”
The other dropped her head. “It was pretty horrible at the time.”
“Go on.”
The other said, “To be honest, I don’t like to talk about it.”
They fell silent for a bit. The older girl began to wonder whether this was going to be like the old school days, with her trotting out all the crazy stuff she was known for back then. On the other hand she may really have been ill. It was only fair to hear her out. Besides, she was curious.
“You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s alright. It just makes me shudder to think about it, that’s all.”
“Like I say, if you…”
“No,” the other interrupted, “no, I should be able to talk about it.” She took out a tissue and blew her nose. “It was a few months back,” she went on, “I only had a bad stomach ache really, but my mum insisted I go to the emergency unit at the hospital here. She was worried that it might be something serious and we shouldn’t ignore it. Anyway, dad’s truck was out of action so we called for an ambulance.”
She blew her nose again. “It was dreadful because half way here into town the ambulance had an accident and ended up on its side. It was chaos, I can tell you, and my stomach pains were getting worse. Anyway, a helicopter was called for and I was air-lifted on a special stretcher and flown the rest of the way.”
The older woman lifted her cup slowly, keeping a straight face, she said, “Wow!”
“Yes,” the other replied, ‘it was pretty awful.”
“And your stomach?”
“Oh! That? Just a bad case of indigestion.”
“Oh! That’s a relief.”
“Anyway,” she went on, “it didn’t turn out too bad really, because after leaving the hospital I decided to get a taxi back. I needed money, so I used the ATM to get out some cash. It was amazing! I accidently put in the wrong pin number and the machine coughed up five hundred dollars of someone else’s money!”
“Amazing, as you say,” said the other with a poker face.
The younger one went on about all the things that had happened to her. The older, just sat there listening to her without saying a word.
She told her listener about the time she had spent the night in a haunted house with friends and by morning she was the only survivor. She told her about how she had been walking home one night and had to fight off a crowd of zombies. She told her about how she had been on top of a hill one day and was struck by a bolt of lightning, and how she was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital, and how she came back to life much to the amazement of all the staff.
She paused to get her breath.
The older woman sat back. “Have you ever been abducted by aliens?” she asked.
The other frowned. “No. Can’t say I have.” After a moment, she said, “Have you?”
“Yes, just once.”
“Wow! How cool!”
“Not really.”
“Why, what happened?”
“It happened last year. They took me to their ship and held me there for weeks.”
The young woman’s eyes went very wide.
“Go on.”
“To be honest, I don’t like to talk about it.”