Harvest Earth by J.D. Laird

of it. The beam engulfs an image of a cow who is hovering off the ground, presumably being picked up by the beam.
    “Everyone that we saw, those who fell asleep.” Tayna pauses and points at the picture of the cow. “They were taken.”
     

 
    18    Tayna
     
     
    The sun is coming in through the curtains in the same space between them where Tayna had neglected to pull them all the way shut the night before. She can already hear her father rummaging around downstairs. There is the sound of a tea kettle whistling as he makes himself another cup of English Breakfast tea. Rolling over, Tayna tries to ignore both the light and sounds. She tries to go back to sleep. She tries to tell her body it is just a dream. She tries to get some more rest.
    Her body aches. It longed for another few hours to recover from the previous night’s escapades. But Tayna’s mind is awake. It is already running through the list of things she had to do that day, homework mainly. After a few more minutes of battling with herself and her covers, she finally surrenders and rolls out of bed.
    Tayna stumbles across the floor, out of her room and into the hallway. She finds the bathroom and falls into it. After freshening up, Tayna splashes some water in her face. The water feels cool but has the tinge of a metallic taste to it as drops of it creep into her mouth. Tayna’s father had all of the water in their house purified and double-purified. As a result, the water always tasted a little like the carbon filters it passed through. Her father shipped the water in from the mountains and insisted it was necessary. “Do you have any idea what’s in the city’s tap water?” He would say. Tayna knew he did it to keep her safe but it still always tasted funny. The purification process takes out some of the taste that she enjoyed in ‘regular water’. Her father would say that ‘water doesn’t have a taste’ but she disagreed.
    Tanya meanders back to her bedroom and shuts the door.
    Her father would know that she is awake but as long as she stayed upstairs she knows he won’t bother her. Tayna flicks on her desk lamp and looks at herself in her vanity mirror. Her black curly hair puffs out from her head in wild spurts. She rubs her eyelids to make sure they don’t look too swollen. Then she checks her eyes themselves. She and her friends had gone to a bar down the street that was notorious for not carding students. Tayna is underage and remembers feeling so nervous ordering her drink with the other freshmen girls at the table. Staring into the vanity mirror now, she looks for any evidence of her indiscretion. She checks her eyes for signs of acute onset jaundice. She had drank more than she should have.
    Satisfied that there is no evidence of her follies the night before, Tayna grabs her backpack and pulls her agenda book out from inside. She flips through the pages to see what assignments are due over the next two weeks. There is an online lab test for her Biology class on Wednesday, a reflection paper for Philosophy class on Friday, and a chapter summary for her English class due next week. Tayna tries to think how best to divide up her time.
    Her phone then buzzes. It is a welcome distraction. Tayna finds her phone on her nightstand. A text message from her friend Clarissa flashes across the screen. “Woot!” It reads. “What a night! Thx BFF!” It makes Tayna smile. The memories of the previous evening comes back to her. She fondly recalls her new college friends chatting over drinks about guys, their parents, and their hopes for their future careers. Immediately Tayna wants to go out again to experience it all, all over again.
    Just as Tayna’s thumbs start punching in a response into her phone the screen goes dark. Outside there is the sound of a car swerving, a crash. Car horns follow. Tayna’s desk lamp goes out. Her digital clock no longer flashes the time.
    Tayna smacks her phone on its side with her palm hoping to jar the