by Gabby Dark
What remained standing was a seven-foot-tall statue-like man with a beating heart still grasped in his hand. Maybe I was hallucinating, but I couldn’t tell if the big beast in front of me was a man…or a monster. It had human-like features. A broader forehead. Thick neck and shoulders. Muscles were well-defined. Even his veins were prominent. The body was sculpted to a “T”.
Aside from a strip of fabric tied around his left arm and strange shoes, it was wearing nothing but a loin cloth. It—he was certainly different. His skin was a muted dark gray color, but every vein in his body seemed to jolt and spark like electricity. Blue circuits of it going haywire with each rise and fall of his chest. Its eyes were the same electric blue as its veins. I almost wondered if someone shot it, would it bleed blue?
It. No. Not it. This was a man, but something more.
He dropped the still heart on the ground.
More of these big electric creatures came up behind the first. They were all similar in physique. All of them were big and broad. They all had the same muted dark gray skin. The other four had electricity of a different color running under their skin. Two red. One yellow. And the last one, a stark white. None of them were as striking as the creature with blue circuits who plunged into a man’s chest with his bare hand and yanked out his heart.
The one with the yellow circuits dragged the body of one of the drivers and sent it gliding across the floor to halt near our feet. There was a rope around his neck, and he was pale and stiff.
Andara screamed. The sound of it was high-pitched like the siren of death. Except for the dead girl already lying in the middle of the van, we all crammed together in the corner.
“Shut up…human!” one of the creatures commanded.
Andara squealed.
The creatures communicated among themselves. The language was foreign. Not a word could be recognized. Something caught their attention outside the van. I heard tires screeching across the asphalt. All but two—one of the red-veined creatures and the white-veined one—remained behind while the other three rushed outside.
Who were these men? They looked like cave men…from outer space.
Aliens…
I gasped. Before I could confirm what I suspected, the tallest woman lunged for the weapon of the dead heartless man and opened fire. Chaos ensued. It looked like a freaking electric storm in the van.
Aside from the brave woman who had picked up the weapon and widely opened fire, the rest of us were too afraid to move. In the aftermath, the creature who used to have the jolts of white electricity running through him lay bleeding on the ground. His circuits had gone out. There was so much blood. I had my answer. They bled red. A deep, dark, almost black red.
The young girl that had been crying before managed to escape the van. The woman who killed the white-veined creature was apprehended by the red-veined creature. He wrapped his hands around her neck and was choking the life right out of her.
“Please stop!” Andara screamed. “Stop it! You’re killing her.”
In what seemed like a moment of weakness, the red-veined creature looked up with malice on his face. The woman, who seemed to be struggling to stay alive with every ounce of energy she had left, reached for her attacker’s blade and rammed it in his gut. The sound that followed was her neck being snapped in two.
Once the girl was dead, he got up, lurched forward, and backhanded Andara, sending her flying across the floor. He turned with his death gaze fixed on her. The blood leaking from his side didn’t even seem to faze him.
He grabbed Andara like a rag dog and impaled her to the wall with considerable strength. Spittle flew from his mouth as he spoke in a non-decipherable language. She was in pain. I could tell by the watery glass-look in her eyes.
“Run, Ryleigh, run,” she screamed. “Do it now!” She gasped for air as the creature strangled her.
“No!” I shouted, throwing all of my weight at the murderous beast. It was like running into a mountain. He turned around and slapped me. The impact was so hard, I literally tasted last night’s dinner—and blood.
I took a few steps back, but he trampled me like a bear. I fell hard on my ass. I cringed at the sight of his red eyes glowing with malevolence. He was on top of me in seconds. Hands on my throat.
What the hell was this? Had these creatures come to kill us all? Was this what they meant by salvageable?
“Ryleigh,” Andara cried out and kicked a blade across the van.
The knife flipped off the corner of a metal bin, but I stopped it with the heel of my boot before it got away from me. The glint of the blade caught the red-veined creature’s attention and he loosened his grip on my neck just a bit, trying to reach for the weapon. Enough to give me the upper hand. I bucked my way out of his grip, ducked down to the floor, and grabbed the blade.
Just as the other creatures raced into the van, he scrambled across the floor on his hands and knees, grabbed me by the ankle, and began to drag me toward him. With my other free leg, I slammed my boot into his chin. When his head whipped back from the force, I brought the blade down across his exposed throat. Dark red blood spewed out from his jugular, spilling on the toe of my boots. I was the last thing he saw as the red light dimmed in his eyes.
The alien creature collapsed at my feet.
When I turned around, the other three creatures stared at the carnage in the van and then at the bloody knife in my hand.
Andara ran behind me and grabbed my forearm. “Leave us alone! We’ll kill all of you!” she screamed.
“No more killing. You will come with us,” the blue-veined creature spoke in English.
At the sound of his voice, I almost fainted. They knew English.
After that, the remaining creatures came for us, scooped us up, slung us over their shoulders and took us into what looked like a spaceship from another dimension. I was so shocked by the notion that aliens existed and that I was being abducted by them that I forgot to fight for my freedom and for my life.
Just before I was thrown into some pod contraption of blinding light, I looked up into the celestial blue eyes of the gray alien who’d captured me.
“Who…?”
It was the only word I got out.
My veins grew cold and the deep sleep I’d been putting off for weeks came easily…
CHAPTER THREE
Ryleigh
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I woke up on the most uncomfortable medical table in the nation. Oh wait! Was I still in the nation? On Earth, even?
I jumped when small dark gray hands touched me on the arm. A short woman who resembled the other creatures leaned over me.
I panicked. “No, don’t touch me.”
“I won’t hurt you. I am Pio'ata. Like nurse. It is time for you to go to market now,” she said, calmly, and handed me a dress made from some see-thru fabric.
I was stark naked. My skin felt surprising smooth and all around me smelled like something that resembled a bed of flowers, something I hadn’t smelled in almost a decade, but I still dreamt of it.
I gasped when I realized that all of my pubic hair had been stripped from me. My entire body had been waxed. I reached for my head and sighed in relief to learn that my curls were still there. Not that my hair mattered more than my life, but even when asked by my group leader to cut my hair, I had always declined. I still dreamed of my mother braiding my hair or pulling it straight and putting it up in pigtails. I still daydreamed about her fingers gently stroking the knots from my tresses. ‘Never cut your hair, Ryleigh. Wear it like a crown,’ she said. ‘One day you will be a princess.’ I actually believed her, but now, I knew they were just stories she told me to keep me happy amid the chaos and destruction.
“What did you do to me?” I asked Pio'ata.
“You were cleansed,” she said, shoving the garment at me again. “Rufu.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Tʼǔn rufu.”
I shook my head.
“Put on the silk,” she said, this time in
English.
The calmness of her voice alarmed me.
“Where am I?” I remembered the aliens who captured me. The violence. The gore. I had killed one of them. “Another planet?”
“Zuna. You’re in the colony of Zunator.”
Zuna? What the hell? In all my time in science and geology classes we had never been told about any planet named Zuna. Mars. Venus. Pluto. But never Zuna. But why was I even surprised? Three fourths of the world’s population had been obliterated in the disaster. And still, Earth’s people were in danger of being wiped out. But here I was, on another planet. Why?
“How long have I been here?”
“Eight days in a cleansing chamber. No disease. No illnesses. Safe for acclimation and modification.”
“How was I brought here?”
“Zuna Fleet Magna Xium.”
“Why don’t I remember anything after they took me?”
“Humans are transported in cryo-chamber to reduce the risk of expiration,” she stated.
I swallowed dry air. “Andara?” I looked around the room, which looked like a lab or medical room of some sort.
“Tʼǔn k’u. It is time.” Pio'ata turned around.
“Wait! Time for what? Where’s Andara? My friend—Andara.”
“Andara? Woman companion? Friend?” Pio'ata asked.
“Yes, my friend. She was taken with me. Where is she? Is she alive?”
She nodded. “Alive. Mak. Alive.”
I studied her. Examined her dark flesh. Just like the men, her veins sparked with white electric jolts.
“What is that…in your body?” I asked.
“Ǔre.”
“What is that?”
“Aura. The ǔre beneath our axǔ foretells fate, skill, and purpose. Pǔta. Purpose. White is for healer. But sometimes for death bringer.”
Some doors slid open. Pio'ata humbly stepped aside to let two big strapping gray aliens by. I gasped and clutched the silk garment to my chest.
“Human, tʼǔn,” one of them hissed at me.
I immediately put on the barely-there piece of fabric and then I was pulled to my feet and forced to walk where the aliens dragged me.
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About the Author
Gabby Dark writes what she loves to read. Dark romantic science fiction/fantasy stories, of course. The hotter the romance, the better. She likes her men dominant and her heroines sassy.
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Copyright © 2020 Gabby Dark
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