What the hell was she?
The snake-woman waved at me, drawing my attention from her tail, and to the monitor she pointed at. I had no idea what she was trying to communicate, but I locked on to the claws at the end of her fingers. Claws were never good, at least in an abduction setting.
Swallowing the bubbling panic, I nodded, and she spoke again. My pulse spiked, and the beeping intensified. I nodded again. She swiveled between me and the rapidly changing display.
“I want to go home,” I whispered. “I don’t know who you are or what you want, but please let me go.”
Her hand made a circular motion.
“Please.”
She gave the same gesture.
A breathy, humorless laugh escaped from my lips. I’d been abducted. By aliens. How in the world had this happened? It didn’t happen. It wasn’t possible. None of this was fucking possible. I gripped the blanket until my knuckles turned white, and my fingers screamed from the strain.
“Please,” I tried again. “Please, let me go.”
The woman didn’t do anything besides stare at me with her slit pupils eyes like a cat’s. So she was a snake-lion-elf creature. Like that made sense. But she was an alien, so what the hell did I know?
Though her nose was human enough. Weirdly, her one human feature comforted me, like a nose made her not as frightening. Then she growled, making the circular motion again, and ruined any semblance of calm I possessed.
When she continued to watch me, my jaw clenched. I’d been as polite as possible, but I wanted to go. While my life was not perfect by a long shot, it wasmylife. I had Lucy, my apartment, and a job that mainly covered my bills as long as I didn’t need to eat regularly. All of which was better than being abducted by aliens for unknown purposes.
Lucy.
Her name was a knife to the gut. Lucy was home alone. How long had I been gone? I had no family, friends, or even co-workers who would check on her.
Bile climbed my throat at the thought of confronting this snake-woman, but I couldn’t leave Lucy to starve. “I need to go. Now. Lucy is waiting for me.”
She pushed on the touch screen, claws clicking, and made a circular motion with her wrist.
“I need to go,” I said even louder, like, magically, the strange woman would understand me. “How long have I been here? Why did you even abduct me? I’m no one.”
Her fingers flew over the monitor. This snake-woman clearly didn’t understand.
I swung my feet over the edge of the bed and stood, wrapping the blanket around my waist. “Well, this has been interesting and everything. Something for my future therapist to help me work through and all that, but I want to leave.”
When she didn’t so much as glance in my direction, I stalked to what I assumed was a door, which opened with a low whoosh like in a cheesy sci-fi movie. I started to step into the hall, but an invisible force stopped me. Touching nothing but air, I pushed, but the invisible wall wouldn’t give no matter how hard I shoved.
“Seriously?” I asked, thrusting my shoulder into the force. “What in the actual hell?”
More scaled people gathered at the open door, speaking in their aggressive language. Heat swamped my face, probably turning it into a tomato. I was half-naked with a blanket around my hips, pressed against nothing. What a sight I must be. I stepped back, and the door closed, blocking the view of the growing crowd.
When I turned around, I noticed the strange woman hadn’t even shifted. Apparently, I didn’t merit enough of a threat to try and stop. Of course, I couldn’t even make it out the door, so there was that.
With nothing else to do, I wandered around the room. I was in some sort of scientific room with a single bed near the back wall and three more to the left. Each bed had monitors next to them. So a medical facility, I assumed.
On the right was an open doorway framed by windows. I peeked inside and saw shelves filled with odd plants and glass vessels as well as a desk covered in paper-thin screens.
My clothes were nowhere in sight, and I saw no other exit. I was stuck, trapped.
Fighting the black dots dancing across my vision, I sank onto the bed I’d woken up on. I ran through the options, but my mind was shockingly empty. Abducted by aliens wasn’t a possibility I’d ever planned for. I mean who did that? I would have sooner expected a zombie apocalypse or the collapse of society than alien abduction.
New was not my strong suit. People weren’t either. Honestly, my strength was being alone on my couch. I was a potato. I was perfectly happy as a potato. I would like to go back to being a potato.
How the hell was I going to survive this? I mean, that was a bold assumption. Perhaps I wasn’t going to survive. Maybe I wasfood? Though this seemed like a lot of work for food. Unless I was a delicacy? Were humans delicious? Supposedly we tasted like chicken. Did aliens like chicken?
Calm down, Seth;no need to go to the dark place. At least until they pulled out the carving knives. I had to survive. Lucy had no one else. They’d take her back to a shelter like the one I’d adopted her from. I couldn’t allow that.
