Beth's Stable Read online

  They start exchanging words, many of them, and while they’re busy, I try to melt into the crowd of women around me. But before I can disappear, the ego-alien narrows his far-too intelligent eyes and catches me by the arm. We gaze at each other a moment, before—with a surprisingly gentle grip—he starts leading me away from the others.

  I want to dig in my heels, but I’m afraid of losing my balance and hurting my baby. And what will fighting get me? Probably a whipping and maybe a worse owner than this one, who so far, hasn’t been mean to me yet.

  Feeling like I don’t have any other option, I follow him, only a little bit reluctant.

  So far, us humans have been sold off one-by-one—but my alien must have some moolah, because he stops us by the blind woman and her dog, and he snaps his fingers at the auctioneer—making that guy grind his many teeth.

  Oooh, my alien must not be afraid of whips.

  My alien hunkers down beside the dog and the woman, (still keeping a hold on my arm) and to my surprise, he starts speaking softly to them.

  He sounds… charming. Coaxing—and his voice makes me want to trust him, even if I don’t know any of his words.

  Evidently, I’m not the only one affected because when he takes the blind woman’s hand, she only flinches for a moment before she gives in to his urging and stands.

  To my shock, my alien then turns and hands her off to a BIG alien who’s waiting nearby—a scary one. My alien starts walking with me but I twist back and stare, seeing that the other alien’s face has electric red and blue hatches, or some type of craggy slits running laterally along his cheeks, and odd, sort of bell-shaped ears that hang off the sides of his head on stalks.

  Super scary.

  To add to his oddness, at his shoulder stands a giant alien horse with crocodilian-dangerous eyes and fangs that poke out from under its upper lip. It has antlers and a zebra tail. Though, instead of black and white stripes, it’s green and oddly patterned—about as close to being a zebra as I am to a gorilla.

  The pair of aliens are horribly intimidating. The crowd thinks so too—when this alien man and his creature starts walking, other aliens give them space.

  It helps that his horse whips around and bares her teeth, squealing before she kicks backwards into the crowd. When one alien gets pushy, she plants a hoof in his head, popping it open like a watermelon dropped on the sidewalk.

  I’m gasping—but the horse’s owner doesn’t even notice. He’s too busy with the blind girl’s German shepherd, who—really understandably—is totally, absolutely, one-hundred percent freaked out and is trying to bite off the alienman’s leg. For a second, I’m scared that the alien is going to kick the dog away and leave it behind, but instead, the alien doesn’t do more than murmur at the shepherd before he’s bending a little to examine the blind girl’s eyes.

  My heart chills, wondering if he’ll be upset that she doesn’t see…

  But he only nods to himself, and picks her up.

  Jet black and burning gold and gleaming white flashes as the shepherd throws itself on the alienman and clamps its powerful jaws around his leg, giving him a violent shake—or trying to.

  The big alien doesn’t even slow down. He just walk-drags the snarling animal along, and behind him, the scary alien horse watches them curiously for a moment before following.

  “Narra,” says my alien, “Hecato.” And he smiles when he tugs on my arm a little to encourage me to keep moving with him.

  When I focus on what’s ahead of us instead of what half of our procession is doing behind us, I see that the mob we’re pushing through is a sea of glittering alien eyes, all watching us very, very hungrily. Feathers, fur, scales, slime, extra eyes and legs and bubbled skin—some look like seriously dangerous-looking individuals, but ALL of them are giving my new owner plenty of space. I mean, they still look like they want to snatch me and the woman being carried behind me—but the crowd doesn’t overtake us. Even though they could.

  I eye my ego-rooster from the side. His confidence is evident, sure—but he’s only one guy. His alien friend looks more physically intimidating to me—and neither of them look as monstrous as some of the creatures surrounding us. Yet it’s my owner though who is getting the lion’s share of the crowd’s wary respect. Why?

  And he’s just soaking it in. His eyes are sharp as they scan ahead. He struts past everyone like he owns the world and gives exactly no fucks for anyone in our way.

  I begin to worry about my alien’s sanity right about the time he starts swinging our joined hands. Like we’re strolling through a park, not facing down an angry gathering of extraterrestrials.

  He happily calls something over his shoulder to his friend, tossing him something small and flashdrive-like, and then my owner starts dancing with me like a loon.

  He’s so unconcerned—we’re surrounded by extremely hostile-looking individuals, yet he’s oblivious, concerned only with entertaining himself. (Okay, and maybe me too.)

  Or, rather, he’s seemingly oblivious: when something with more than one mouth smiles at me in a way that suggests it’d like to be the next one in line to dance with me—or eat me, it’s so hard to tell with so many teeth on display—I clutch at my alien’s arm—only to find that he’s already glaring down the other alien.

  When the thing backs out of the throng and scuttles away, I glance up to find my alien grinning down at me like I’ve pleased him.

  I relax a little. It’s difficult to fathom, but his presence is making me feel safer, even if his behavior seems reckless.

  He’s giving off an enthusiastic, almost vivacious air, and he’s wearing an irrepressible smile that almost, almost pulls an answering one from my own lips.

  Thankfully, he ‘only’ makes us dance in a circle before we continue leading the way for the others in our mini party, but he starts humming a tune and moving to the beat of it—and because I’m trying to keep pace with him, I’m basically forced to join him for the ride.

  When we start passing more spaceships than aliens, I realize we’ve navigated to some sort of parking section. My alien’s grip slides from my arm and moves to cup my ass. I give him a stern warning glare, but I’m interrupted when he steers me to a gargantuan shark-shaped ship that cuts such aggressive angles—even as it harmlessly sits on the ground—that my mouth goes dry.

  With trepidation, I take in the double tails, the triangular fin slicing into the sky up top; it’s all wicked curves and deadly sleekness. Confidently, my owner steers me up its gangplank, and I hear the growling of the dog behind us as its mistress is carried up too—followed by the clop of hooves as the horse-alien joins us walking up the ramp. I turn back to peek at it and see that it’s still acting as our rear guard; it kicks out at an alien who tries to follow us, and when its hooves connect with heads and various alien body parts, I hear sickening thumps and snaps.

  I don’t know why I expect the interior of the ship to be creepy and horror-set dark, but it’s not. Glowy, macaroni-orange light softly illuminates the area inside the entrance, which opens to a bright, cavernous bay.

  Everything, from the floor we’re standing on to the walls that close us in, is made of a sort of polished metal in interlocking sections. It’s all so precise-looking and streamlined that it’s jarring to see a massive pile of wood chips off to one side of the big space, and what looks like pop-up stalls, nearly the kind you see at horse shows, if horse shows were set in outer space. They’re a different sort of material than the ship is built out of, maybe the alien version of durable plastic or the ruggedly-tough, high-impact fiberglass that vehicle bumpers are made of—whatever it is, I can see hoofprints denting the walls of the closest stall, and the tracks are split-hoofed, like a deer-type unicorn rather than a horse. I peer at the equine-ish creature in our midst, and focus on its feet.

  Huh. It’s got unicorn feet.

  The animal yawns, displaying long jaws decorated with serrated teeth.

  I gulp. Those aren’t unicorn teeth.

  I
freeze when I see the carcass hanging high on a meat hook in the stall, like humans put up hay nets for horses.

  That’s not unicorn food. Not unless there’s a freaky, meat-eating, sci-fi version of unicorns with a pair of antlers instead of a horn.

  The alien horse starts ambling in the direction of the hoof-print decorated stall, passing us all like, “See ya, suckers.”

  With some words exchanged to my alien, the big alien behind us follows in that direction too, still carrying the other woman—and still dragging her dog by way of where it’s got ahold of his leg.

  The woman has to be completely freaked. Her hands are curled over the massive arms of the alien who has her, and her eyes look glassy and huge. She has to be wondering what the heck’s happening. “I’m Beth,” I call to her.

  She doesn’t say anything back.

  Her alien glances at me, and my alien looks down at me, but they don’t try to shush me, so I continue. “It looks like we’re splitting up.” I scramble to think of something more to say, but when she still doesn’t say anything back, I’m not even sure if she can hear me.

  Thinking that I should go to her, I start to fight against the pressure my alien is applying to keep me moving alongside him—but then I see her alien softly pet her back, and murmur to her.

  Even the dog’s ears cock, and its neck arches like it’s curious at this.

  The woman takes a shuddery breath and she buries her face in his neck.

  My alien says something to me too, and adds a nudge to my butt to encourage me along. When I glance up at him, he murmurs something, his eyes flicking to his friend, the woman, and the dog. Then my alien gives me a reassuring sort of smile.

  With one last glance back at the trio, we leave them. Nerves are twisting my stomach. What happens now?

  I’m led up two flights of see-through, grated stairs before he takes us across a catwalk, which passes over the entire bay. When I look down, I can see the big alien sitting in the shavings, hugging the woman on his lap while her dog paces beside them, looking a little less agitated.

  My alien’s manner has turned almost gentlemanly as he continues to guide me along. His hand isn’t even inappropriately cupping my butt anymore; it’s rising to a low spot on my spine. The heat of his touch radiating against the soreness in my lower back is so welcome, I decide I don’t need to try to move away. I have just enough energy to process that he’s swept us into a room where the lights have changed from snaking corridor-length tracks to wide, rectangular panels, bright and stark, and the floors and walls have switched to something gleaming, with a burnished metal look—all very high tech.

  Just like this medical table we’re suddenly standing in front of.

  I try to leap backwards but slam into his hand, which mercilessly checks my momentum.

  My muscles lock. “No way,” I tell my alien, turning to him with a fierce stare. “We’re not doing this. We’re not experimenting on the pregnant woman.”

  My alien takes one look at me and starts laughing.

  He doubles over with it, and I glare down at him harder. Yeah, ha ha; hilarious situation—for him, maybe.

  I try to fry him with my eyes.

  When he controls himself, he straightens, sending me an amused shake of his head, and adding a couple of happy-sounding words I don’t understand. He shuts the door behind us—and if I’m not mistaken, compression locks clang, signaling that we’re locked in together. This seems absolutely bad, and I’m feeling very #TeamIDontWantToBeHere—especially as he starts rifling through drawers and pulls out something that looks like a gun.

  I tense all over, and Batty Koda’s line from Ferngully runs through my head. Inspired, I shout, “I will scratch you up so bad, your mother won’t recognize you!”

  Warily, keeping my hands up and my fingers held together in claw-formations, I watch as the alien takes out a small computer chip-type… chip. He sets it into a slot in the wall.

  A holographic screen bursts to life.

  (Wait—holograph or hologram? There’s a difference, and I feel like I should know this. My SyFy Channel card is probably going to be revoked now. I knew I should have made time for that Stargate binge-a-thon. This is what happens when you don’t take advantage of helpful TV programming.)

  Suddenly, glyphs, runes—characters of some sort—start spitting in front of me in small streams. They’re emitted in a one-two pattern, along with a tone of sound.

  They mean absolutely nothing to me.

  (Holograms were the three-dimensional images in Stargate, right?)

  But although the alien activated this glut of data, he’s not watching it.

  He’s watching me.

  Challengingly, I face him. “What?”

  (‘Holographic displays?’ I swear I’ve seen that term before. Screw it: until I have Google, Siri, or a dictionary, I’m going to call this whatever I want.)

  He shakes his head and points back to the characters flashing by.

  I do as he’s indicating, facing the screen again, but I slant a glance at him out of the corner of my eye. I’m about to attempt to explain that having me stare at alien language is pointless, but his whole attention is still trained on me, like he’s studying me—

  “Deutsche, Servus,” the computer intones.

  I turn to the holo-gram/graph in shock. Was that… that almost sounded like German. I think that’s what ‘Deutsche’ is, but... nah. What are the odds I heard that right?

  “English, Hello,” utters the computer with a complete lack of interest, before moving to another one-two word combo, this one in an alien tongue. But I’m pointing frantically at the screen, shouting, “Hey! That’s mine! I speak English!”

  The alien’s already figured this out though, having watched me brighten in shock when I recognized the words. He starts typing something, and I see a mass of English roll by on the screen, formatted almost like dictionary pages.

  He presses his hand behind his ear, and his eyes squint—and maybe it hurts, or he’s concentrating, or he’s just realized he’s hungry but he left his lunch on the kitchen counter—but I think I can guess what’s going on. Like I said, I’m pretty well versed in sci-fi (my missed binge-watching opportunities aside) and I’m starting to feel a little more confident on what’s happening here. “If we’re following any sort of helpful plotline, you’re downloading English to your translator right now. Nice,” I praise him. And it is nice. If we were stuck in a book or a movie, doing this right here will help him understand me.

  My alien grabs my head.

  Purely out of instinct, I yelp, ducking and knocking his hand away.

  One eyebrow rising, he tells me, “Kayzeh, narra.” He points to a metal arm that’s lowering from the ceiling—nearing my face.

  FUCKNO. I duck.

  His hand slaps over my eyes.

  Do I go Tasmanian devil on him and beat him away from me?

  I don’t.

  Instinctively, I hunch and hug my stomach.

  His arm wraps around me, fitting over my protectively-held arms, which creates a band of pressure across my breasts.

  Which hurts, because my boobs are sore. “Owwww!”

  He pauses, and when my hands fly up to grab his forearm, he adjusts us so that he’s holding me under my arms, with his forearm fitting under my breasts. It hurts less (really; not at all)—and WOW the relief! My back breathes a happy sigh at the alleviation, and my ribcage expands as my cantaloupes get an airlift. He seems like he’s trying to be careful as he maneuvers me until—

  Until my back comes into contact with a cold, flat, horizontal surface.

  Panic swamps me.

  I suddenly have even more empathy for the other human woman on this ship—for her to not know what’s going on has to be utterly terrifying. For me, I can’t stop myself from struggling.

  But at the same time, because I can’t shut off the voice in my head that’s telling me ‘Be careful! Don’t struggle so hard you hurt the baby!’—I don’t go as wild as I w
ant to, even with our imminent safety on the line.

  “Kayzeh, kayzeh,” is murmured to me before I hear a loud beep and a whir.

  Slowly, four fingers uncurl from where they had been capping my vision—and I jerk to hop upright, but he’s still got me caught fast. I see what the source of the whirring noise is though—the metal arm is scanning me with a red beam of light, slowly directing the beam down my knees, my calves, my feet.

  It beeps again, and the arm retracts, drawing away.

  My alien’s arm does not. I push at him.

  He leans over me, and I can feel him watching me, waiting for me to stop looking at the scanning arm and give him my attention instead.

  Huffing in aggravation, I finally do.

  His eyes are smiling as much as his mouth is. He starts speaking to me, his tone sounding cocky. I imagine I can almost get the gist of his entire conversation based on the gleam in his eyes as they rake over me.

  He gives me a dirty-hot grin.

  I’m pretty sure this alien is propositioning me.

  He holds up a needle and syringe.

  Or I’m wrong.

  I do the impossible: I pull an octopus and ooze out of his hold.

  (Seriously. Octopodes can get out of anything. Sidenote: why can’t octopi be the Latin plural? Octopodes sounds very awkward in my head—but no worse than octopuses. Every time I come across octopuses, I hear the Octopussy movie start playing. Then it’s all James Bond growling wryly in hot-Scottish that if there’s no men allowed on the island because it’s exclusivly for beautiful women, then as his way of fighting the good fight against sexual discrimination, he’ll have to drop by. Rawr!)

  Anyway.

  I escape the syringe coming at me, slipping off the table and slaming myself harder into the wall than I mean to in my attempt to back away from him. I only meant to put my back to it, not break my back. “YOwww!” I howl, and I’m about to send the alien a glare of pure blame for putting me in this position in the first place, with him waving around medical instruments like a maniac (not really, but kind of)—but the look on his face stops me.