Otherworldly

by C F Rabbiosi

  I’m trying to listen, to understand, but the cool air assaults my skin, mourning the loss of his incredible heat. And it’s more than that. “I thought I would be afraid of you, but instead, I’m intrigued by you,” I say to the seven-foot monster that resembles a man but so clearly is not.

  A subtle chin lift and his mouth parts, though no sound enters the space between us. He wraps the blanket around my nakedness and steps away quickly. “You will be lucky to survive me. All I’ve wanted since scenting you out there,” I jump when he brings a fist into the glass wall but stops short, “is to enter you, to tear into you with no thought, no mercy. To rip you in two to feel everything your body can give me.” He grasps my face and sneers. “I want to be so deep inside you, I am swallowed, and all that is left is one.” He pushes my head back and I sprawl to the floor. “You are a fool if you do anything but fear me.”

  I back into the corner. “Then why force me to be your wife?” Out of all the human women he surely has access to, lost in the world, what suddenly has him set on a girl he finds used and broken in the dirt? “Why have you chosen me?”

  Staring at his back once again, he stops in the doorway. “You will be given adequate time to heal so you are at your strongest when I take you. Hopefully, you will survive me.”

  Knees pulled into my chest, I don’t know how to feel. I’ve certainly read too many books, and if this is a story, well, it isn’t Romeo and Juliet. Shame slaps my cheeks at the realization that I’m no more than a pretty piece of flesh for him to stain red. My fascination with him was simply a temporary sickness that can never return. He wants to protect me so he can be the only one to hurt me.

  But there is something he’s hiding. He chose me for a reason, and that gives me hope. “What do I call you?”

  “Kassien.”

  “Calypso,” I return. “Named after a goddess and the enchantress of men.”

  10

  ~Kassien~

  My fist pours fresh blood as I lay my forehead on the dent in the metal wall. It drips to the ground and I squeeze my eyes shut listening to the drop…drop…drop. The screaming of my knuckles comforts me, driving the torment back down, and for a moment, I can breathe again. But it’s not long enough.

  Many of our kind have become possessed by the scent of a woman. It is absolutely forbidden to mate one because of it. It is punishable because of the hideousness of the act. Having never been overtaken by one and transformed into a pitiful animal, as her scent washed over my senses, I was amazed at how much it hurt. Still hurts.

  Since the moment she drifted to me upon the wind, my loins ached for her. Without a rational thought, I ran to her. Like a snarling beast as it flashed across the land, my mind was overtaken. I rushed in and broke the pathetic man on top of her—or so I had thought it was her, the woman who had lured me. That’s when I turned toward her crumpled body and my world shattered.

  I am a warrior, from a very proud and superior people. Fighting is what I do, what I am a master of above all the rest. And yet…I have never wanted to kill something more violently than the moment I saw that beautiful creature being tortured to death by those humans. Blinding rage lit me on fire upon seeing that unworthy animal on top of my woman. She is mine. I feel her swimming through every part of me and it urges me to possess her in all ways known and unknown.

  I understand now why women are torn apart when one of us finds her, because it tore through me deeper than any blade or mortal wound to keep myself from spreading her open and extinguishing the scalding torment. But she means more than my prolonged agony. More than any one of us, for that matter, so I must not destroy her.

  My world became unlivable long ago. It is documented that somewhere along the peak of our civilization, we were becoming more and more intelligent, our technology beyond the wildest of dreams. Our healing science saved those who should have died before being able to pass on their defective genes, and slowly a species that was becoming god-like began to devolve. It was far, far before my time, but soon threats came from other worlds and, as powerful our machines and weapons were, it wasn’t enough. We were weak-bodied and weak-minded from the flourishing of inferior genes and were falling. Soon, we were no match against the ones who threatened us amidst the galaxies, especially when the machines had been stripped away and we were unable to fight the old-fashioned way. It always came down to that.

  Or so the powers of the world believed. They began a mass sweeping of the ones that didn’t meet the new requirements of a super breed. Only the tallest, strongest and most skilled of our race were accepted. The ones who were frail and small, weak-minded or had less than superior genetics were identified and medically sterilized. Some were removed from the population completely.

  After many millennia, Koridons became something like the powers imagined. Strong and large, we were a people that had also taken on superior genes of heightened senses and speed. We fought back not only with advanced weaponry, but when it came down to hand to hand combat, we were sturdy, skilled and hard to kill. But everything must come to an end.

  Calypso.

  Shudder.

  I slowly saunter away from her room, still forcing my breath to steady, my hearts to calm their pounding, and make my way into the main room where the horde I lead will need answers. Every step away from that girl cools my blood. It is pain, but it dances through me like some kind of sweet misery. I comprehend the intense desire for what it is, but no matter how I reason with myself and push it down, something deeper bids me to hold on to it. It is nothing more than a specialized sensor in my smell glands that is breathing in her chemosignals, her pheromones, and it is electrifying my insides, thrilling through places I did not know existed. The scent of her skin, even more intoxicating with her nakedness, causes my every breath to drown me.

  Maybe because I’ve never experienced them before.

  Our women are warriors, too. We have a friendship, an understanding. But love. This word explained to us through human interpreters is foreign to us. It is weakness that a warrior race has no use for, and the chemicals that were drawn out of the human girl by those loathsome men last night have caused a flood of ecstasy in my brain. It interferes heavily with my logic. The warrior in me wants to take everything from her, destroy her and sate my longing until she is drowning in my release.

  But she is far too important to our future.

  “Kassien, etnon ital…could you do this?” Efaelty greets me with a quick rise to her feet. Behind her, the others of my house have gathered. Tanak, my second in command, his wife, Ariqoi and the six others that help me rule this region with their various skills, watch me with weary faces and crossed arms.

  “You know the crisis we face. The answer is the woman. She is the reason I have killed Lekoren, and make no mistake—” Destabilizing protectiveness bleeds through my eyes, hot and radiating toward any who would threaten Calypso. “I will do it again.”

  “This is madness.” Tanak steps forward, and the many of our kind who he could not save with his medical skills weigh heavy on his expression. Though he is a respected and knowledgeable practitioner, he cannot heal the things this planet has ailed us with. We don’t belong here, and all of its foreign matter pokes microscopic holes in our bodies. “All I see is another lust-drugged Koridon breaking our laws. Except, this time it is our prince.” He touches the silver at his side, his fingers clicking against it, and his graying beard twitches.

  I feel the truth of my wise friend’s statement, but I cannot relent. The royal family handed this planet over to me to rule while they traveled out amongst the stars, and one day, if they ever return, I will pay for Lekoran’s death. But his mate died years ago, another to conditions unknown, so it will be years before anyone else confronts me on it. On that day, I will happily accept the challenge. “Did you see her?” I ask, my own weapon burning its presence against my hip.

  “What does that matter?” my second fumes. “We have our laws for a reason. It is unnatural to do such things to a human.
This is their planet and we cannot desecrate them so!”

  “Their planet? Look what they have done to it!” I meet him face to face in disbelief that he would still hold onto his reservations as we face our crisis. Unmerciful death to all of them. I care for the few left on this hellish planet and the ones who still roam the universe in search of a better life for us. “They do not deserve it, Tanak.” His eyes screw shut and, knowing my peaceful commander would never challenge me, I show him respect by backing off. With arms reaching out to the sides, I address the others. “We are dying. Will you not trust your prince? You have never questioned me before.”

  “Of course not. But this…” Efaelty, the lovely female I have taken as my mate, steps forward. Tough as any Koridon of pure breeding, she showed a side in the room with Calypso that I have never seen before. I thought my stone solid female would understand my reasoning, I had no doubt in fact, but then she almost killed her. I did not find it unreasonable to explain my need to take the human girl as my new mate, but she reacted with such anger. What is happening to us that even Efaelty would lose herself?

  “Will no one listen to my words?” I ask with a note of humor toward the others. “Gerakon? Brekter?” Solemn as stone, they give me nothing. “I said, she is the answer!” Walking around to the dusty ship control panel, I stare out into the wild greens of the forest through the translucent walls.

  Brekter, my expert on defense, speaks. “We understand that you believe this, but to do what you’re suggesting…it’s madness, Kassien.”

  “I have been stationed on this rock to lead what people we have left and find a way for us to survive. We would all prefer to be out exploring the stars with our brethren, discovering, fighting.” I turn back around. “But we all must serve our purpose. And ours,” I peer right into Brekter’s aggressive pools of silver, “is to find a way to make these ruins our home.”

  “But if what Efaelty told us is true,” Brekter says, “Do you really expect the royals to allow it?”

  Oxygen levels were ideal when first we landed here two hundred years ago, but after the war, the air reads thinner, even after many years of the toxins dissipating. Exceptional anatomy has ensured our adaptation, a second heart to pump higher amounts of oxygenated blood for one. Humans do not have this extra feature, but have also somehow adapted.

  Another problem we faced was the lack of a certain nutrient our bodies must have for energy and cell growth, nutrient X2, which we have learned to produce here with our own seeds in the soil. The plant grows, sprouting from a pod, and within days becomes a violet and orange flower, different in color and shape than how it grew back home. We brought many of our own species of fruits and vegetables, transported carefully in cryo-cases. Many adjustments have been made, but for the most part, water is the same on life bearing planets, and it brings everything alive with splendor all around us. The creator’s work is truly magic—or what we call science: the tiny broken down processes of creation.

  But there is one thing we have been fighting against that has had no answer. Until now. I can feel it in my bones, vibrating all around me. She will finally—

  “It’s been nearly two hundred years since the war, Kassien,” says Efaelty, slinking over to place her palms against my cheeks. “And we are still unsure of why this is happening.”

  I meet the backs of her hands with my own. She is going to hate what I have planned. They all will, until they see. “Have trust in me.”

  “Why do you believe it should be you?” Brekter asks, placing an intimidating arm around young Gerakon’s shoulders. His tone reveals much, as do the beads of sweat along his brow and the frenzied breaths that match my own.

  “She will be under my protection, and no one will be allowed near her. Touch her, Brekter, and I will react with ending violence.” As they have well seen.

  The smirk that threatens his lips does not fade before I note its meaning. None of my crew can be allowed near her, which means that through the innate demand for me to mount her and take her mercilessly until she is limp, I will have to tend her back to health. But how can I keep her safe when I am by far her biggest threat?

  My team moves from the control deck back to their tasks and not one of them meets my eyes as they depart. I let them go. It is understandable why they are upset. Walking out into the morning where new light shines upon our future, I take a deep breath and, for once, don’t feel like it infects my lungs with its foreign particles. She is inside me now—not just a woman but so much more. She is hope, and that is why she is precious and locked inside me. Something pleasant and warm swells within my insides that can’t be wrong.

  I walk back behind the ship, where I catch Efaelty entering the greenhouse dome. I stand before the force field walls, still wanting to say so much. A sick feeling roils my stomach at the thought of tossing her aside. It is not what I mean to do. She is an important daughter of the pacific clan and an amazingly intelligent female. This is why she will come to understand in time the historic moment we find ourselves in.

  Behind the greenhouse stands another of our structures where Gerakon will be hard at work with our animal specimens. He doesn’t take notice as I enter, his eyes narrowed as he peers deeply into one of the terrariums along the wall. He reaches through to remove the stiff body of one of the winged creatures and places it into a biohazard box. He throws his gloves into the receptacle with unnecessary force, then wipes his hands down his lab uniform and writes into his notebook.

  “Friend. Comrade,” I say. “I respect and care for you beyond anything you can imagine. All of you.” His mouth tightens as he tests water from an aquarium.

  He turns around abruptly. “Where did she come from? One of the secret villages our ancestors have hidden from us with our own technology?”

  “That was a pact made over a hundred years ago. The information is lost, and that’s how it should be.”

  Gerakon storms over to the receptacle and kicks it over. Several of the lifeforms that had been brought here by the generation before, spilling out onto the ground. “Do you know how many books they could have hidden there on genetics? On botany in this unknown world?”

  “This girl may be the key to a lot of things, young Gerakon.”

  “You must force her to reveal their whereabouts!” He kneels and, with a heavy heart, carefully places the dead animals back into the bucket. He is young but, without a doubt, a talented geneticist—and a passionate one.

  “She is frightened and very weak. I am going take her away for the day.”

  He opens the cooled compartment and pulls food rations out. “Of course,” he snickers.

  “Not so I can be alone with her, but to protect her from those here who cannot understand her purpose.”

  “This is a bad idea, Kassien,” he says. “I understand what you are planning, but this matter should be taken up with the other leaders. You refuse to listen to even us.”

  I place a strong hand on his shoulder. “There is no time.”

  His spirit sinks as he takes in the sparsely populated cages around us: a grave tableau of what we have become.

  11

  ~Calypso~

  Placing my hand against the glass wall in the room, I pretend to breathe in the smell of the blowing trees under the morning sunlight. A small whimper forms in my throat as I remember the cool smoothness of the plant I stroked upon the ground many hours ago, just before the sickening invasion as Alexander forced himself upon me. The hurt between my legs lights up and, shaking with sadness, I hope this isn’t what I always think of when I remember the forest I so longed for my whole life.

  Scarlet will have returned last night, and now my mother knows I’ve been ruined and carried off by a Koridon. A Koridon who killed all of my attackers and now wants to do the same things to me that they did. Mary-Shelley said it hurt the first time, but as the medical books describe, there is a barrier that is broken by the male’s penetration. Surely it gets easier? This cannot be a woman’s fate, to let a man hurt her for h
is pleasure. Nothing could feel good enough to make me hurt another person like what was done to me last night. That must be the real reason why the women of our village are given to a man at the age of twenty and only have to lie with him once a month. They always acted like it was to prevent bringing another being into this messed up world without hope and hardly enough to eat, and to prevent lust from infusing the air.

  Kassien. I don’t know about the others, but he is certainly not like the Koridons that haunt my nightmares. No evil tail or horns like a demon, no razor sharp teeth. Big, yes, with a certain glow about him and other incredible abilities, but so human in appearance. I suppose it makes sense that other worlds would have life similar to ours, if this is what life looks like. But no matter how much like a man he appears, he wishes to turn me into that girl found by my village with her discolored skin, broken bones, blood flooding the ground…

  The door slides up and I jump, leaving my disturbing thoughts to a more disturbing reality.

  “Nourish yourself.” Kassien sets a plate on the ground. “And cover yourself.” He flings something across the room and it hits me.

  Wishing very much to cover my nakedness, I grab the leathery brown frock crumbled at my feet. I hold up what I assume is the top and slip it over my head. It’s sleeveless with ties up the back, and I struggle to get it down over my full breasts. Feeling his gaze burn, I switch plans and try to step into it. Now, the ties are at my front, and though I am able to tighten them, my breasts squeeze together, cleavage showing between the crisscrossed strings.

  I reach for the bottom part and Kassien groans. “I’m sorry, but these items are unfamiliar to me.” His strong hands find my sides and he tries almost comically to be gentle as he pulls the blasted top around so the ties are at my back. “We all wear pants, and depending on whether it’s Hollow’s-Eve time or the season of Yule tide, we have normal shirts with sleeves.” He grazes my back as he tightens the strings and tingles dance into me from his fingertips.