by Loki Renard
He is hard and sharp and massive. I am small and soft and curvy. I have no horns. I possess no defenses besides the stubby teeth which can barely pierce flesh unless it is cooked first.
According to all the laws of nature, I should bow to him.
But I will not.
I will not behave. I have sworn to every concept of a higher being held by every sentient being in every time and place in the universe that I will never behave. I will never submit. I will never be broken, not as long as I draw breath.
I kept that vow for years. Every time an alien came to claim me, I resisted them. Sometimes they got their way temporarily, but I always escaped their grasp one way or another. I have earned a reputation for being impossible to handle.
But this alien is different, and not just because he is a member of the most feared species in all the universe. He is different because he is more than my captor. He is my savior. But he is also my tormentor, the one who might just break me.
He has me in his grasp, alien clawed hand wrapped around my neck in lieu of a collar. I feel my pulse hammering against his rough fingers. I am afraid. Not of what he will do to me, but of what I might do for him.
Days earlier…
Itch
I’m crouched behind a row of crates, looking at a row of alien ships docked along the space bay. Several of them have their hatches open invitingly, as if saying, Come on, Itch, take a chance on this bucket of space bolts.
This decision will inevitably change the course of my life. Or it could end it.
Any one of them could take me to freedom. Or, alternatively, any one of them could belong to a species who regards humans as food-class entities. It’s not an easy decision to make.
I’m trying to use my somewhat limited knowledge of the various species to work out which ships belong to which species. There are three Galactor pleasure cruise vessels at the very far end of the dock. They’re probably my best bet because they’ll be crowded with aliens from all over the place and I might even be able to slip by unnoticed.
The only problem is I’m a human female. A naked human female at that, and that’s a recipe for getting attention, even on this relatively crowded port. I need clothes and a disguise, but they’re not as easy to come by as I had hoped when I broke free of my owner’s cage.
He was transporting me to the market. I think he intended to sell me again. I have been sold six times in as many cycles. I can never tell time by alien standards, especially on these space stations which don’t even follow the protocol of orbiting a light source which can denote days. I tell time by the intervals between my own intimate cycle. The blood appears and I know another round is beginning.
It has been three weeks since I bled. My temper is beginning to fray, and my need for freedom increases with the waning of any obedience. Owner after owner has lost me. I have escaped. I have been sold. I was once bartered for a piece of pleasingly carved soap. My value has been assessed as priceless and worthless, sometimes on the same day.
One of these ships is my ticket to freedom. Which one? Which one…
“Itch!”
I try to run, but it is too late. A rope is being tightened around my neck, rough fibers scraping against my skin. That is how quickly freedom can be lost when one is weak. In an instant it can be taken away.
“Got her!” The catcher declares his triumph to everybody and nobody in particular.
“Let me go!” I reach for the loop to try to pull it off, but a harsh zap of electricity makes me squeal in pain and drop my hands.
The catcher grins at me. He’s so pleased with himself. He’s a very tall alien with almond-shaped dark eyes and a ridge of horn originating at his nose and running all the way up over his skull, down his neck, his back, and terminating at the tip of his tail. He is scaled, and his tongue is forked. He’s a talking lizard with opposable thumbs, basically.
“Caught you again, Itch,” he says. “I told you, you can’t escape me.”
This is not our first rodeo. He’s caught me every time I’ve escaped my various owners.
“They should breed you,” he says, yanking on the other end of the rope and dragging me after him. “That always slows the females down. But I guess we don’t have any semen shipments coming in for a while.”
I keep my mouth shut. This guy is a sadist and will take any excuse to use that electric prod on me.
“Get in,” he says, pushing me into the back of his catcher wagon. It’s made of a see-through plastic material, so all the aliens in their various allegedly superior configurations can see the rogue human pet being taken into custody.
There are laughs and stares, pointed fingers, and angled appendages from the crowd which is forming at my capture. This is the part of being caught I hate the most. Not the cage at the end of it with the hole in the ground where I’m supposed to relieve myself. This public humiliation which is designed to bring me to heel.
Fuck that.
I’m going to get off this vortex of rotating bullshit even if it kills me. I swore that to myself when I woke up a long time ago with no idea where I came from. It’s not that I have no memories at all, it’s more like a bunch of random information was all shoved jumbled into my head. I know things it makes no sense for me to know. And I don’t know things I really should, like, where did I come from? What did I do to get here? Why does the collar around my neck spell out Itch?
I give a gesture to the crowds which I consider to be especially rude. This is one of the vestigial memories which must be buried very deep in my consciousness, something that comes from the very oldest reaches of humanity. My middle finger is raised while the others are curved into a fist. I don’t know what it means, but I know it feels good to punch the air with my angry finger, and that it seems to agitate the onlookers.
“Settle down back there!” the catcher shouts at me through the speakers. “Or you’ll lose that finger.”
He wouldn’t do that to me. Wounded humans have less worth. The first thing a buyer looks for in his human is missing fingers and toes. Ten of each, or you’re basically meat scrap as far as these aliens are concerned. Still, I put it down, just in case.
We drive through the station crowds and into the flashing yellow interior of the building for keeping humans captive. That’s probably not what it is actually called, but it is what I think of it as because that’s the only reason I have ever been here. It may as well be the Itch Imprisonment Center as far as I am concerned.
The ramp winds down, taking us underground, through several sets of doors, each of which are secured so I can’t escape. I’ve tried. It didn’t end well. I have a scar across my shoulder blades from the last time I almost escaped.
I’ve learned to wait to be taken out of here by a prospective new owner. I play the same game every time. Big eyes. Sweet sounds. Smiles and rubbing up against the bars. Then BAM! when they last expect it, I run away.
I have escaped six different owners, and I’ve been caught every time, but I’m already hoping the seventh will be the charm. Next time, I won’t hesitate on the docks. I’ll jump into the nearest ship and hope for the best.
“Got a special cage all picked out for you,” the catcher tells me when he pulls me out of the wagon.
The cage stinks like fear and other less savory, more biological things. This is temporary, I tell myself as he shoves me inside and slams the door behind me.
This cage isn’t tall enough to stand up in, so I am forced to crouch and peer out. There is a door not far away which leads out to the counter where aliens come to retrieve their lost pets. The catcher leaves it open so I can see out to the reception area.
It is not long before I hear the squeal of a hinge which needs attention, and the squelch of a rubbery beast entering the building.
This is the problem with all my escape attempts. I always end up back here, in this cage, and my owners always know where to find me. Including my current one, who has just slimed his way in.
I bristle in the shadows,
growling softly under my breath. He’s four hundred pounds of pure asshole, and I hate him. I’d rather stay in this filthy cage forever than be returned to his so-called care.
“Can I help you, sir?”
The catcher speaks respectfully. He wasn’t respectful when he yanked a rope around my neck and threw me in here, but that’s because humans are one of the only species nobody in the universe seems to fear. No claws. No poisonous exudates. Not even a decently sharp tooth. On our home planet we had the ridiculous advantage being the only animal with opposable thumbs. Well, guess how far opposable thumbs get you in the big wide universe where every dominant species has them, or tentacles, or something even better. Precisely fucking nowhere. We stopped being proud of our thumbs real quick, or at least I did the second I realized that not only are we not alone in the universe, we aren’t even particularly special.
My ex-owner is a Vitari. In human terms, he’s a huge slug. He’s also a huge asshole.
He slimes up to the counter, his single foot — which is also the entire underside of his body — rippling with wet sinuous motions, goo sticking to the floor in his wake. Somebody is going to need a mop for that.
“I’d like to report a lost human. She might have been caught and ended up here.”
“What did your human look like, sir?”
“She has yellow hair, and she is wearing a collar which spells out “Itch” in her native language.”
“Is she particularly itchy? We have a few that won’t stop scratching themselves.”
“Not particularly. The B fell off.”
The catcher is fucking with him. He knows my name. He knows I’m back in the cage, but the catcher is an official and officials never make anything easy for citizens.
“She’s here,” the catcher says. “I can release her after you’ve paid the fine.”
“There’s a fine!?”
“We do not condone loose humans in this region, sir,” the human-catcher says. I can tell he’s practically shitting himself having to tell my ex-owner that. He’s a scary dude with his bad temper written all over his face. Any moment his rectal valves are going to open, and a stream of faintly radioactive excreta will emerge from within his form and turn the whole room into a contamination zone for the next eighty years. He might be a big slug, but he’s not defenseless.
“She’s not loose, she ran away!”
“All owners are responsible for confining their pets, sir. She’s a multiple time escapee, so the fine is higher.”
“This is ridiculous. I demand to speak to your manager!”
“I am the manager, sir. Any pet who has escaped more than three times attracts the highest tier of fine. Humans can be very destructive if left to their own devices. They’re a lot more intelligent than we tend to give them credit for.”
“Not this one. She’s dumb as a block.”
“A block of…”
“Any material you might choose to name. I’m not paying any fine to get her out. I already paid more than she’s worth to buy her.”
“If you identify her, we can destroy her for you. Or find another buyer. She is relatively young and female. There are some breeders on the station who like to mix humans with other species and see what comes out.”
“This one bit me every time I tried to breed her. She’ll have to be restrained if she’s going to be used.”
With every word, I get angrier, but no less helpless. These bars are more than up to the task of holding me back. My flesh is weak, but my fury is stronger than anyone can imagine.
The aliens discussing my fate know I can understand them. They probably know I can hear them. They don’t care. Humans failed to gain the respect of alien species a long time ago and we’re not going to get it back any time soon.
The law states humans must be owned, kept in a zoological garden, or more often than either of the previous two options, destroyed. Humans occupy a strange position in the social hierarchy of this society. We are both prized as pets, and regarded as pests.
Before I ran away, my previous owner would put me on display for his guests. I’d swear at them in seven different alien languages and they would laugh and laugh. And then they’d do unspeakable things to me, things I still don’t have words for.
I am not going back to his household. Not for anything.
But I needn’t worry.
The catcher comes and retrieves me from the cage, his zapper at the ready to harm me if I disobey him in any way. I come out warily, teeth bared.
“That’s her,” my owner says. “That’s the one. Scrawny little thing.”
“If you want her, you’ll need to pay the fine,” the catcher reminds him.
“I’m not paying the fine. She ran away of her own accord. I’m not paying for her actions.”
“You are fully responsible for your pet’s actions, sir.”
I stay crouched on the ground, one knee up, one down, perched like a sprinter.
Ding!
Someone has rung the bell on the front counter.
“I will be with you in a moment, sir,” the catcher calls out to the new arrival, before turning back to my slimy owner. “Sir, if you won’t pay the fine, then I will have to either adopt her to a new owner, or destroy her if she is too aggressive.”
“She’s very aggressive,” my owner says.
“Excuse me.”
The alien who rang the bell has walked around the counter and come out the back, where he joins the semi-circle of other aliens trying to decide what to do with me.
He’s unassuming. Quiet. He’s got spectacles, and I feel as though he has horns, even though I can’t actually see any right now. He has a newspaper with him and is pretending to read from it. I say pretending, because newspaper isn’t something aliens actually use. It’s an anachronism from a world they destroyed, the place my species originally hailed from. It is fashionable to keep human pets, and also to emulate elements of human society. I don’t know why. Some stupid reason, or maybe no reason at all.
The new alien looks up over his newspaper, and takes a sip from a cardboard cup of coffee. He is strange. He doesn’t fit this place. He doesn’t fit this world. I don’t even know what kind of alien he is supposed to be.
“I’ll take the human,” he says.
“You don’t want this one,” the catcher warns him. “She’s defective. Better to put her out of her misery.”
“Human are too precious to destroy,” the stranger says.
There’s a casual intensity to him. I have the sense that there is more to him than meets the eye. As someone who has been underestimated all her life, I know when somebody else is getting the same treatment. This alien is being underestimated by the catcher and my ex-owner because he’s not what you’d call physically imposing. He has a very thin neck and big dark eyes and long elegant fingers with little pads at the ends.
“Not all of them. Some of them beg to be ended. Like this one. She’s spent more time in the pound than out of it these last few months. If you want a human pet, I can get you a fresh one. We have a shipment coming in a couple of weeks.”
“I thought the scythkin had stopped the trade in humans,” the alien says, all conversational-like.
“What the scythkin don’t know won’t hurt them,” the catcher smiles broadly and winks as if letting the alien in on a delightful secret. The alien is not impressed.
“What the scythkin know could hurt you. Give me the girl.”
“Sir…”
And that’s when it happens. The horns I instinctively knew were there appear out of the top of the alien’s head, popping up as if they’d been taped down. They’re much larger than I thought they were going to be. They’re both bigger than the alien’s head itself.
Then the alien’s gray skin just sort of splits, like an insect emerging from a chrysalis, except instead of a cocoon he appears to have been wearing another alien. What comes out of the chrysalis is fucking huge. Nine or ten feet tall at the very least, as broad as the door he j
ust walked through, and absolutely covered in muscles and blades.
“You do not kill humans. Humans are special,” the beast who is all knives hisses, his horns pricked forward with rage.
“SCYTHKIN!”
The catcher and my ex-owner scream the word in the way my ancestors might have screamed, “BEAR!”
What follows is a bloodbath, though really, I suppose it would be better described as a sanguine shower. The catcher and my ex-owner are both summarily dispatched and thoroughly decommissioned. Which is another way of saying their parts go absolutely everywhere in a very messy fashion.
I stand there, staring. At first my jaw is dropped, but I close my mouth to stop any bits of alien from getting into me.
I have never seen a scythkin before. I have heard of them. They are the bad guys of the universe, the boogeymen haunting all the other alien species who just want to live quiet lives selling humans and being generally merciless.
From what I’ve heard, they’re not prone to popping up out of other aliens and destroying alien personages, but I’m glad this one has chosen to do just that. He kills with alacrity and obvious joy, with a great smile on his fanged and incongruously handsome face.
He’s sexy as hell.
That’s what hits me first, right before a disembodied hand.
This grotesque scene does not unfold much longer. Apparently satisfied that none of the little bits are going to get up and try to defy him again, he turns to me and looks at me with eyes which blaze red with fury-fire. His extended blades drip with blood and something gooey.
I’m not sure what to say.
“Uhm. Thank you?”
He lifts a blood drenched hand and points a clawed finger at me.
“You’re mine.”