It was planting season when Antonio first saw the light. A crimson glow moving over his fields like a silent storm. He was twenty-three, a farmer in rural Brazil, the kind of man whose world revolved around soil and sun and family. He watched it hover, his heart caught between fascination and the instinct to run.

The craft landed without a sound. He remembered the air thick with something like smoke, but sweeter, metallic. Figures emerged, small and suited, their eyes hidden behind glass. They took him by the arms, not cruelly but firmly, and led him inside.

The interior was bright — too bright — like standing in the heart of a storm. They stripped him, examined him, took blood. He tried to fight, but his limbs were heavy, his thoughts sluggish. Then came the woman. Tall, pale, with long white hair and large, unblinking eyes. She pointed to her abdomen, then to him. He understood.

Later, he would tell interviewers he felt no pleasure, only confusion, an animal instinct to survive something he could not comprehend. When it was over, she looked at him once more, touched his chin, and pointed upward — as if to say, You will not see me again.

He woke alone, lying in the field, his skin burning as if sun-scorched, though it was still night.

Doctors later noted radiation-like symptoms. The skeptics laughed, called him a dreamer, a lonely farmer with imagination to spare. But Antonio never sought attention. He became a lawyer, married, lived quietly. He said he told his story not for belief but because it was true, and truth, he felt, deserved to be spoken, even when it sounded absurd.

His story wasn’t just about alien contact. It was about the strange intimacy of fear. About the loss of ownership over your own life, your own body. He wasn’t sure whether he had been chosen or simply found — and that question haunted him long after the burns faded.

The world sees UFOs as cosmic mysteries. For Antonio, it was something smaller and lonelier: a single night when the universe reached down and made him feel both less and more than human.