Sold by the Alien: A Rough Sci-Fi Romance
When he finally lets me go, I know I have been punished.
And I know I have been forgiven.
CHAPTER 5
Ava
It’s all over. The punishment. The reunification. I feel so much better than I did before I ran. I feel like Zed really cares about me, as if we have something that means something between us. We’re talking now in a happy post-punishment, post-coital haze.
“When this year’s up, there’s still going to be a whole host of angry aliens looking for blood, money, or both. We have a unique opportunity, Ava. If that makes you want to leave, I don’t really understand.”
“You want to sell me to aliens and then steal me back.”
“That was my first idea, but your more recent behavior has made it clear that would be an absolutely disastrous idea. Besides. I don’t think I’d be able to.”
“Able to what?”
“See anybody else touch you, in any way.”
“Aw!” That was sweet. Unexpectedly so.
“I have bonded with you, Ava. I hope you have bonded with me.”
I guess this is alien speak for ‘let’s go out.’
“I’ve, uhm, I think I’ve bonded with you,” I confirm.
“Good. Then no more running away.”
“And no more trying to sell me.”
“Deal.”
“Deal.”
We are both smiling quite broadly and happily now. It’s a good vibe. Is this my happily ever after? Will nothing ever go wrong again? I really hope so.
About three seconds later, everything goes wrong. There’s a sound like the universe being unzipped, just the whole fucking thing slipping open. Both of us go to the bridge to investigate the sound, which turns out to be a sight. There’s what looks like a big scalpel incision in the sky. A pristine white line extending trillions of miles.
What is happening is exactly what it sounded like. The universe is opening up before our eyes. It’s amazing. It’s beautiful. I feel as though I am witnessing something very few sentient beings have ever witnessed before, something that will change everything.
“Oh fuck,” Zed curses under his breath as something begins to emerge.
I am too caught up in the majesty and excitement of it all to begin to worry, at least until I see what’s actually coming. It is incredibly large. Bigger than any sun, any planet, any solar being. It dwarfs everything. It makes us seem like specks of dust.
Great tentacles extend from the bright spot where it has sliced through, not with a knife or a weapon, but a giant hooked beak. The rest of the beast emerges, sliding through the gap in existence until we cannot see anything besides a great dark maw and the tentacles reaching for us out of the abyss of space.
From wonder to numb confusion, my emotions shift in a dramatic swing. I don’t know how to actually be scared of it. It is as if my body is not able to calibrate itself to the horror before me.
“What…” I look at Zed. There’s no need to finish that sentence. It’s pretty obvious what my issue is.
“That,” Zed says. “Is bad news.”
I could have told him that.
He doesn’t explain further. He concentrates on the practical task at hand: getting the hell out of here.
“I need to initiate this drive. Hold on…”
He tries to floor the accelerator again for another skip through time, but this time we don’t have a magic get-out-of-jail-free card. This time there are three massive suckers attached to our ship and he can bash the controls around all he likes, we are not going anywhere. We are caught in the grips of a beast so terrible and so terrifying I can barely comprehend it. Slowly and inexorably, we are drawn toward what must be its mouth. I see a beak emerging from the darkness. It opens for us, drawing us toward a serrated throat.
I scream and grab for Zed. I am convinced this is the end of all things. How could it not be? We are about to be eaten and digested, drawn into the belly of what has to be the ultimate primordial beast.
“It’s going to be okay,” he says. He says something else too, but I can’t hear him over the roaring of infinity.
All things seem to have come to an end. But suddenly, there is a blaring announcement, so obnoxious we are distracted by the end of being.
“SURRENDER, OR BE TIMEGESTED!”
“Ugh,” Zed sighs. “It’s the Aberks. They’ve caught up with us. Hold on.”
“What do they have to do with that monster?”
“You know some people keep dangerous animals as pets? That’s their version of an ancient human keeping a lion in the backyard. Hold my hand. Don’t let go.”
A moment later, we are yanked from the interior of our ship and transported into the interior of what I’m just going to call a cell, because it is. We are surrounded by little gray men. Aliens of the kind people used to imagine. They have big dark eyes and slate gray skin, and the physique of someone who has been stretched out on a chewing gum stretching machine, spindly and weak looking.