Taste

by Cambria Hebert

  My feet hurt, my head hurt, and if one more guy asked me if I moonlighted as a stripper, I was going to waste a good bottle of beer smashing it over his head.

  Stupid college town.

  Actually, it didn’t even matter that there was a college in this town. It would still be stupid without it.

  Born and raised in this tiny town in Maryland, I grew up with the right to say that. I wasn’t sure of the population, but I knew it was minimal. We had a tiny mall where half the stores were closed because there just wasn’t enough business to support them. The entire town breathed a sigh of relief when a big-box store moved in because, for once, no one would have to drive an hour just to get to one.

  There was absolutely nothing to do here, which was probably why this bar was always crowded. When people were bored, they tended to drink. Not to mention the start of fall semester last week and the fact RoundRock was a block from the university made this place a popular watering hole.

  Not that anyone here was drinking water.

  I stopped at the end of the bar and waited for one of the two bartenders to make his way to where I stood. It was Matt. He’d been tending bar here since before I started. He was tall, blond, and looked like he was destined to become a doctor.

  He wasn’t going to become a doctor.

  He played guitar, did shots under the bar when no one was looking, and drove a motorcycle even when it was raining.

  Sometimes I teased him and said the reason he kept himself so clean-shaven and preppy-looking was because he didn’t want anyone to know exactly how much trouble he was.

  He never disagreed, so I knew I was right.

  “You look like shit, Soph,” he said, leaning across the bar to grin at me.

  “You look like a life-sized Ken doll.”

  His grin grew even wider, revealing a small chip in the corner of his right front tooth. “Wanna be my Barbie?”

  A squeamish feeling burst in my middle, but I ignored it. Matt wasn’t interested in me. He never had been and he never would be. He was just a charmer who didn’t realize the kind of effect he had on women.

  Well, no. He did know. It’s the reason he made such great tips.

  He just didn’t know I was also totally taken by his charm. It was something I never let him see. I wasn’t about to turn into one of those giggling little ninnies that sat at the bar for hours, just waiting for him to smile my way.

  Instead, I dished it right back. We’d fallen into a sort of friendship that way, sort of like I was the annoying kid sister he put up with because he had to.

  In a way, it was a better deal than dating him. I actually knew him better and saw him more than any girl who went out with him. He wasn’t the kind of guy to stick with the same lady very long. There were too many fish in the pond, waiting to be hooked by him.

  “As tempting as it is, I think I’ll pass,” I shouted over yet another annoying song.

  He placed a hand over his heart like he was wounded. I knew he was anything but. “Get out of here. Get some rest,” he said.

  “You sure?” I asked, glancing around the room again. “We’re busy.”

  “I can handle it,” he said, pulling a couple longnecks out of the cooler and sliding them down the bar to a set of waiting hands.

  “Okay,” I replied, untying my apron and tossing it on the shelf behind the bar. “I’ll see ya later.”

  “Sophie,” he called as I turned away.

  My dark ponytail swung over my shoulder when I spun back around. “Yeah?”

  “You sure you’re okay?” Concern lit his caramel-colored stare.

  He had the most beautiful hazel eyes. Sometimes they were green and sometimes, like tonight, they were the color of warm caramel drizzled over a sundae.

  Ooh, ice cream sounded good.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “I just have a headache.”

  Matt nodded and ran a hand through his already messy hair.

  “Thanks for covering for me.”

  He winked at me, causing that fluttery sensation to reassert itself in my belly, before turning away to flirt with a blonde at the end of the bar.

  I shook my head and left through the back, wondering how many numbers he would leave with tonight.

  The rush of crisp autumn air against my skin was refreshing, and I took a deep breath, rolling my head on my shoulders to stretch out the knotted muscles.

  The sky looked like liquid ink, dotted with a smattering of stars across the dark canvas. Mountains rose up out of the earth to jut into the night like great fortresses. When I was little, I always felt protected here because it seemed the peaks formed a shield around this town, carving out a little piece of safety in an ever-changing world.

  Maybe that was why I never moved away. It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought about it a million times before. Even after I graduated high school and the opportunity to go away to college presented itself, I still chose to stay, instead attending the same university that many of the bar patrons inside did.

  I realized I would likely always be a small town girl, but I was okay with that.

  The gravel under my feet crunched as I walked across the parking lot toward my used Jeep Wrangler. It was an older model, white with a black ragtop that was slightly frayed around the edges. The seats inside were some kind of vinyl material, black to match the top. It didn’t have air-conditioning and the controls were as basic as they got.

  But it had new tires, working heat, and four-wheel drive. Those things were a must, considering the cold temperatures, snow, and mountainous terrain that was Frostburg, Maryland.

  The ragtop was currently down, and I knew it was going to be a cold ride home, but I didn’t care. Soon enough, I was going to have to strap on the top and leave it that way through the entire winter. I wanted at least a few more rides with the wind in my hair and the tingly feeling I got in my cheeks from the biting cold.

  I tossed my bag onto the floorboard of the passenger seat and slid the key into the ignition. The radio blasted out of the speakers, and I jumped, immediately reaching over and shutting it off.

  You’d think by now I would come to expect that. Whenever the top was down, I had to turn the music up really loud to hear it over the ripping wind.

  But tonight was a no-music kind of night. Besides the headache that throbbed just behind my eyes and the tension coiled in my neck, I just wasn’t interested in music tonight. I wanted to hear the rumble of the engine, feel every bump and jolt this old Jeep made over the road, and let the wind carry away every thought, care, and sound that came close.

  It wasn’t like I had anything to really be stressed about. My life was pretty good. I was a college student, had my own tiny apartment, a job, and friends. My parents were still married and lived just fifteen minutes down the road.

  I wasn’t trying to get away from anything specific. But sometimes a girl just wanted the open road, the silence, and nothing but the cleansing wind.

  Before pulling out of the parking lot, I tightened the band holding my ponytail and pulled a Frostburg State hoodie out of the back and wrapped it around my body.

  I took the long way home, driving down several roads I didn’t have to, but choosing to because I liked cruising around. There were still people here and there on the sidewalks of Frostburg, their laughter floating into the open Jeep as I drove. On the side of Main Street was a popular coffee bar (it was popular because it was the only coffee bar besides the gas station) that looked like an old church. It sat on a little hill with cement steps rising out of the sidewalk to carry you up to a small green space dotted with outdoor tables. A group of college kids were exiting the arched door and laughing as the light turned green and I hit the gas.

  After a while of just driving around, I glanced at the dash and sighed. It was after midnight. I had class at eight a.m. Time to go home.

  My apartment was on the second floor of an old house that was converted into several apartments for college students. It was small, with only one bedroom,
a tiny kitchen, a bath, and a living room. The rent was cheap and it wasn’t too far from campus, so I considered it a good find. Only one other apartment in the house was rented, though, so I don’t think many people agreed with me.

  It stood down a narrow, single-lane road, kind of off the beaten path. True, it didn’t take long to reach everything from my place, but it felt miles away from all the “nightlife” of the small town.

  My headlights illuminated the single lane as I turned down it, gravel crunching beneath my tires. I imagined this used to be an old farmhouse, and the people who once lived here grew wildflowers along the roadsides. Big winding trees reached up into the sky and russet-colored leaves threatened to fall overhead and land in the seat beside me.

  This road stretched about two miles before it gave way to the area where the house sat. The entire two miles were lined with long grasses, trees, and a wide view of the sky.

  My foot pressed the brake and the Jeep obeyed, slowing a bit. I lifted my face upward, gazing into night. The stars were easily seen here because there weren’t so many lights like all the other streets.

  Beneath my hands, the Jeep stuttered. “What the hell?” I muttered and looked down at the gauges.

  The headlights blinked out, shrouding everything in darkness as the entire vehicle shut down.

  I wasn’t going very fast, thankfully, so I just steered to the side of the road and braked, throwing the shifter into park. From there, I turned the key and nothing happened.

  I knew I wasn’t out of gas. I’d just filled up yesterday at the Sheetz near school. It hadn’t been making any odd noises while I was driving, and I wasn’t late on my oil change. Okay, maybe I was a little late on the oil change. Surely that wouldn’t just make the thing shut off.

  The headache behind my eyes decided to remind me it was there and pierced me with a sharp stinging pain. I sighed wearily.

  I was only about a mile from my place. I’d just walk home and then call my dad in the morning. He’d know who to call to get someone out here to look at it.

  After fishing my bag off the floor, I climbed out, not bothering to lock the doors. There was no point when it didn’t even have a roof. Besides, there was nothing of value inside to steal, and unless they planned to carry the car away, I doubted anyone would be taking it.

  I pulled the hoodie a little tighter around me as I walked and reached up to pull the band out of my hair, letting the dark-brown strands fall around my shoulders. Using the tips of my fingers, I massaged my scalp as I trudged down the road.

  The sound of a plane flying overhead filled the night, and I pulled out my cell to shoot a text to my dad so he would see it first thing in the morning.

  But the battery was dead.

  Odd… I just charged at work.

  I stuffed the useless phone into my pocket, muttering about how I couldn’t afford to go buy a new one. Suddenly, an odd feeling washed over my body, something that seemed to penetrate below the surface of my skin and make my insides vibrate.

  I noticed then that the sound of the airplane overhead wasn’t fading away…

  It was growing louder.

  And it was unlike any other plane I’d heard before.

  The ground underfoot began to vibrate, and I thought vaguely of an earthquake, but we didn’t have those in this area. The sound overhead was like one of those annoying bug zappers, the kind that screeched when it caught its prey. It grated down my spine like nails on a chalkboard, and I recoiled.

  My feet stopped hiking and I looked up, desperate to know from where that awful sound was coming.

  My mouth ran dry.

  My hair fell down my back and tickled my butt as my head tilted up to stare at the source of the sound.

  I was seeing things.

  The headache was causing me to hallucinate.

  I was tired. Maybe I was coming down with something.

  I blinked and swallowed hard. The little bit of saliva my mouth produced scraped down the back of my throat like jagged pieces of glass.

  There was a giant disk floating overhead.

  Like, for real.

  If I had to describe it, I would say it looked a lot like a Frisbee, a silver one that seemed to hover high in the air without any help. It was much larger than me, blocking out my view of the sky and the moon.

  As I stared, a few pulses of blue light blinked on and raced around the edge, like a little car on a track. There was a sound of metal scraping against metal as something in the center of the disk began to open, revealing a dark hole in the center.

  “What. The. Fuck?” I said, staring at that black void. Fear skittered up my spine and snapped me back to reality.

  I took off running, propelling my feet across the ground as fast as I could. As I ran, I glanced over my shoulder, swiping the wayward hair out of my eyes.

  It was gone.

  I practically tripped as I lurched to a stop.

  I turned completely around, staring up at the empty sky. There was no little light. No bug-zapping sound. No giant Frisbee floating alone in the night.

  I was insane.

  Absolutely crazy.

  I could never tell anyone about this. About the night Sophie Perez thought she saw a… a… spaceship.

  A laugh burst from my chest.

  I’d been watching too many reruns of the X-files on TV.

  Then something behind me lit up, literally casting a light so bright it caused my body to create a shadow that stretched across the ground like I was suddenly seven feet tall.

  My back stiffened.

  It was eerily quiet—no sounds of an approaching car, not even the sound of the rustling wind. But the light couldn’t be denied. It illuminated the green of the grass so everything appeared electrified, like a major thunderstorm ready to attack.

  Slowly, I pivoted, the silence of the night causing an odd sense of panic to claw its way up the back of my throat.

  The light was coming from overhead. Several yards away, it shone in a wide beam from the sky, revealing the road like a giant spotlight.

  It was coming from that disk.

  I blinked hard, but when I looked again, the image was still there.

  It hovered in the air silently, no blue moving light, no annoying sound. If I weren’t seeing it, I would have sworn nothing was there.

  My breathing was ragged. My heart squeezed with great effort as it stuttered from the intensity of its beating. The light blinked out and barely two seconds later it reappeared.

  This time it didn’t just light the road.

  There was something else. Someone else.

  I opened my mouth to scream, only no sound came out. I lifted my leg to run, but it didn’t obey. I was frozen where I stood. The only thing about me that worked was my brain, and right now I wished it didn’t.

  I’m going to die.

  I’m going to die a horrible death and no one will ever know.

  The silhouette in the center of the light began walking toward me. Sort of. It was more like it floated over the ground, hovering just over the gravel, gliding gracefully through the air.

  I willed my body to move, to get the hell away. Still, my stupid body betrayed me.

  I was a prisoner inside my own skin.

  As the thing moved, so did the light and the disk overhead. Simultaneously, they all approached as one, drawing closer and closer until I was sincerely afraid I was going to pee my pants.

  The being was wearing a silver robe with an oversized hood that shrouded its face. They weren’t much taller than me, so I would guess them to be about five-eight or so. Of course, maybe if they were actually standing on the ground, they would be shorter.

  I tried to call out, to beg for my life.

  My voice didn’t work.

  It was as if everything around that disk was completely frozen in time.

  The creature stopped before me, saying nothing, but I could feel the penetrating stare behind the shadows of the hood. Silently, it reached out its arm, the silky mater
ial of the robe draping toward the ground like a waterfall.

  I tried to recoil, but it was no use.

  Eerily long fingers with oversized knuckles reached for me. The skin that covered them was ultra pale and so smooth it looked like polished stone.

  Two fingers wrapped around the skin just above my elbow. I imagined they would be icy cold, but they weren’t. This thing’s touch was much warmer than me. Even through my hoodie, I could feel the heat.

  The next thing I knew, the sweatshirt around me was gone. Ripped away and out of sight. I felt myself swallow as fear flooded my limbs.

  The fingers once again found the skin above my elbow. They were intensely hot.

  It moved so achingly slow, trailing those too-long fingers down the curve of my elbow, down the sensitive flesh of the inside of my arm. If I had control of my body, I would have shuddered.

  Then the fingers threaded through mine, a possessive action. This being seemed to claim my hand.

  You can’t have that! my mind screamed.

  “Yes.” The creature in the robe spoke aloud. “You are mine.”

  A single tug on our joined hands set my body in motion. I spilled forward even as my insides recoiled.

  The light grew brighter, so bright I had to shut my eyes.

  I felt something wrap around my body and support my weight because I no longer could. A feeling of lightness came over me, and then my feet no longer touched the ground.

  I forced my eyes open, looking up toward the sky. That black hole in the bottom of the disk was back. It was an unwelcoming void in the center of the neon light. My robed kidnapper and I were being towed upward, like it was a giant spider and I was now tangled in its web.

  I had no idea what was waiting up there for me.

  But I knew it couldn’t be good.

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