“It will involve some travel.”
This keeps sounding better and better.
“Are we actually allowed to travel?”
I haven’t left my apartment in months. I haven’t shaved my legs in just as long. Sometimes I pretend my monitor doesn’t work during Zoom calls and just sit there plaiting my leg hair. Maybe they got an exemption somehow. I’ve heard it’s technically possible.
“You are for this assignment. It’s off-planet.”
“Haha! Mr. Rogers!” I laugh. Then I wonder if I should laugh. Has he gone mad? Have I gone mad? There’s a real possibility we’ve both gone mad, and that would be bad for the both of us. You’re not supposed to laugh at crazy people though, it’s politically incorrect, and you might be crazy one day too. and you wouldn’t like it if people laughed at you then.
“Tania, please listen.”
“I’m listening.”
“I know this sounds strange, but my grandfather was at Roswell when the crash happened in 1947. He met the pilot. It wasn’t a little green man. It was a very annoyed, very large, scaled alien warrior. This alien warrior demanded that my grandfather give him his suit so he could evade the attention of the authorities. My grandfather did, and an alliance was formed.”
“Okay.”
“And our firm has been contracting to various alien species ever since.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Maybe he’s had too much cough medicine. I’ve done that by mistake before. And then on purpose. But that’s another story, one I don’t want to tell right now. Or ever.
“The details of the contract will have to remain sealed until you make contact with the client. You will find this challenging, I am sure. But I also think you’re more than up to the task.”
“Thank you, Mr. Rogers. That’s really kind of you.”
“You’ll be picked up at 4:30 am. It’s early, but it can’t be helped. That’s when the solar winds will be at their zenith.”
“Zenith. Huh. Gotcha. Okay.”
I am now well into the territory of just humoring him. Poor guy. He’s broken under the strain. I think we all have in various ways. I just have to be kind until his wife calls for someone to take him away to wherever old people get taken when they think they work for aliens. God, this is depressing. Poor bastard. I’m not going to be the one to tell on him, that’s for sure.
Hopefully, he feels better tomorrow when whatever he is on wears off, or once he gets some rest.
2 The Client
It’s four o’clock in the fucking morning, and somebody is banging on my door. It sounds like they’re attacking it with a battering ram, the booming sound making my entire apartment shake. I can hear the neighbor’s dogs going off their rockers at the sound.
Should I call the cops? Eh. Who am I kidding. They’re not going to arrive before whatever is out there makes it through the door. I may as well face it head on. There’s a small chance that if I go ahead and open it, it turns out to be mistaken identity and I get to go back to sleep for a few more hours.
I go to the door, adrenaline pounding, and throw it open.
“WHAT!?”
I snap the word into the general lower chest / upper stomach area of a very tall creature who has stopped pounding his massive fist against my door now that I’ve opened it. I see a flash of scale and claw and the further tirade I had stored up to deploy at whatever madman or woman who was assaulting my door dies on my lips.
It’s an alien.
A really tall alien. An alien so large that I can’t actually see anything above his nose. That’s okay. That’s actually more than okay. What I can see is more than enough. He’s tall. Tall in the way that puts my nose somewhere near his, er, lower midsection.
I am not very tall, even compared to most humans. The height disparity here is frankly hilarious. Or would be if standing in front of him didn’t count as a lewd act.
He stoops down a little and his full visage comes into view. It is as weird as I expected it to be, and insanely handsome besides.
“Are you the human Tania McMillan?” He speaks with a voice which sounds like freshly molten earth settling into cooled rock. He is tectonic and impressive, he is ancient and yet young, and vital.
“Uhhhhhh…”
I’m usually so much more eloquent than this, but there’s something about being confronted by the super fucking hot embodiment of everything I ever thought was a conspiracy, a lie, or the realm of crazy people which makes me linguistically inept.
He takes up the entirety of my doorframe, and most of the hall. I’ve never seen anything so large in humanoid form, though he is pushing the boundaries of what might properly be called humanoid.
Two arms. Two legs. A head. And… a tail? There’s something swishing behind him, I think. It’s hard to tell because I can’t take my eyes off that face. It is handsome, highly symmetrical, and very alien. His jaw is broad and square, much like his brow. His eyes are two sharp creases beneath that brow ridge, which juts out enough to cast a shadow over them until he lifts his head, and then I am treated to an iridescent gaze which is so beautiful that for a moment I forget where I am, who I am, and that this is an alien I am looking at.