by Opal Carew
Forget about the Ancient Ones and all the crap he was spouting about ‘Pure Ones’, my mind snagged on something else the butler voice had said.
“The ozone layer?” I stared at the not-Devil guy, aka Sarden, in mounting disbelief. “Are you saying that me being abducted is a result of the hole in the ozone layer? I got snatched because of Global Warming?”
He shrugged again. “If that is what you call it.”
I wanted to laugh but I clamped down on it, knowing what came out of me would be more like a scream.
All the environmentalists and climate change people had tried to warn us. They said that the ice caps would melt…that the seas would rise…that all the polar bears and penguins and puffins would die…They never freaking said we’d be abducted by alien bride hunters, though!
I bet more people would have sat up and paid attention if someone would have mentioned that little tidbit of information. I know I would have run my AC less in the summer and carpooled to work to keep from being snatched by aliens. I was betting a lot of other girls would too. But who was telling them? Nobody, that’s who. So now they were fair game for this crazy AMI organization.
Thanks for nothing, Al Gore.
“The moment the hole in your ozone layer was wide enough, the Commercians moved in, as they always do with newly harvestable planets,” the butler voice which Sarden had called “A.L.” informed me.
I was beginning to think the voice coming from the dragonfly sounded like a cross between C-3P0 and Jarvis, the mechanical servant in the Iron Man movies. It sounded damn strange, coming from an insect. But before I could answer, it continued.
“The Commercians injected your atmosphere with trillions of tiny viruses—some for universal translation so that brides from your planet might understand their future mates, some for immunization that our alien pathogens would not infect or kill you, some for surveillance so that every female may be watched in any reflective surface, and some for transportation—which process you have just undergone. Then they opened their base for business.”
“Hold on—go back,” I said. “Did you say any reflective surface?”
The dragonfly fluttered its jewel-like wings.
“Indeed. Surveillance and transport viruses work together. They are silicone based life forms which are able to live in glass, metal…even water.”
“So you’re watching every woman on Earth every time she checks her lipstick or does her hair?” I was horrified at the idea. Freaking peeping-Tom-pervert aliens!
“As you see.” Bambi made a gesture with one of his many clawed hands (come to think of it, he looked more like a centipede than a worm) and a large screen made of golden light suddenly appeared behind him. My heart caught in my throat when I saw who it was displaying.
Leah was standing there with her phone pressed to her ear, talking rapidly and looking worried. The angle we were looking at her from seemed strange and her image was elongated and distorted but I could still see her long waterfall of silky brown hair and her big, brown eyes as she spoke.
“Fix distortion—switch viewing area,” Bambi commanded in his squeaky, innocent-sounding voice.
At once, the angle changed and we appeared to be looking at Leah from the side—as though we were staring in through the small window of the break room at her work, I realized.
“What…how were we looking at her before?” I asked, aloud, my mouth as dry as cotton. “You said, any reflective surface, right?”
“The scanner picks the first reflective surface it can find,” Bambi explained. “This was our initial viewpoint.” He pointed one clawed hand at the curved, silver side of the toaster which was sitting on the counter in front of Leah.
“Oh my God,” I muttered. “And I thought it was weird that you dragged me through the bathroom mirror. Now you’re telling me it’s not even safe to make toast?”
“Any reflective surface can be used for viewing and transport,” Bambi assured me. With another wave of his clawed hand, another image came into view.
I bit my lip—this time it was Charlotte but she was upside down.
“Switch viewing area,” Bambi said again.
The view changed to a more normal look and I saw that Charlotte had a half-empty Greek yogurt container in front of her and was toying with a silver spoon as she spoke on the phone. A spoon—so that was why she had appeared upside down! Not only was it not safe to make toast, yogurt was out too!
Breakfast was never going to be the same again.
Charlotte looked as worried as Leah had. As always, her thick, wavy blonde hair was confined in a tight, no-nonsense ponytail and her sharp green eyes were intense as she spoke into her phone—no doubt she and Leah were discussing what had happened to me and what they should do about it.
I felt my gut twist.
“Those are my best friends—please, you have to leave them alone!”
“We will leave them in peace,” Bambi promised.
“Oh, thank you,” I whispered, but my relief was short lived.
“At least until a customer comes who wishes to buy them,” Bambi finished. “After all, both are Pure Ones and either or both might have hidden gifts from the Ancient Ones—it is difficult to tell without further testing.”
“You leave them alone!” I snapped at him. “And better yet, send me back to them. They’re worried sick about me already—can’t you see that?”
“Regrettably, your former life and friendships must now be left behind,” Bambi informed me. He made a gesture and the screen made of light that showed Charlotte’s face disappeared as if it had never been there in the first place. “Currently you are no less than three hundred miles above the surface of your planet on our base.”
“Your base? Is that where I am?” I looked around again at the plain metal walls and floor. There was a row of what looked like holographic lights blinking in one corner. Was that some kind of control panel? It looked about the right size and height for the worm-like Commercians to use, though Bambi hadn’t needed it to show me the light screen and my friends.
“Their base is a ship orbiting quite close to your planet,” A.L. informed me. “It’s quite easy to conceal amidst all the space junk you have floating in your outer orbit. Your people certainly seem bent on being harvested—it appears that you dissolved the lock the Ancient Once put around your planet yourselves.”
“Yeah, right, whatever,” I muttered, feeling like a scolded child. “I guess we did. But we had no idea there were aliens looking to abduct us as mail order brides!”
“How could you not?” Bambi asked in his piping voice. Now that I’d been watching him for a while, I realized he looked different from the other Commercians—his wormy hide was a slightly lighter shade of blue. “For the past fifty to seventy Earth years or so we have been testing our transfer equipment by abducting one or two Earthlings every year and then returning them,” he informed me.
I looked at him in horror. “So all those stories about being taken by aliens are true? Not just crazy people saying crazy things?”
“I am afraid so. We had to test and perfect our equipment, after all.” Bambi shrugged—or what I assumed was his version of a shrug. His wormy body rippled with the gesture.
“Oh my God,” I whispered. “But in all those stories—or most of them—the abducted people get…get probed.” I looked at Sarden quickly. “You’re not going to…I won’t let you! I’ll fight every step of the way if you try to stick something up my…”
I trailed off, finally registering the look of amusement on his sharp features.
“No, no—please go on.” He made a sweeping gesture at me with one big hand. “Where exactly did you think I wanted to, ah, probe you?”
“Never mind,” I said grumpily, seeing he was laughing at me. Clearly some of the crazy abduction talk was just that—crazy.
“The captured Earthlings were probably referring to our sensitivity tests,” Bambi informed me, making me feel nervous all over again. “We are required
to run certain examinations to be certain that our subjects are healthy and that the transportation process did not injure or mutate them in any way.”
“Mutate them?” I looked down at myself, wondering if I had grown a third nipple or an eleventh toe or something awful like that.
“Don’t worry,” Sarden rumbled, giving me that annoying, sardonic smile I was beginning to really dislike. “You’re fine.”
“Technically we cannot say that for sure until she is tested,” Bambi pointed out.
“No—no tests!” I insisted, trying to keep my chin up and my voice strong. But the awful reality was, if they wanted to test me—to probe me—they could. There were too many of them and I was just one naked, unarmed Earth girl.
God, what I wouldn’t give for the little canister of mace I carried around in my purse right now! Or maybe Charlotte’s taser—she was attacked once, back in college and now she doesn’t play around. She will straight up taze a guy if he comes at her in any kind of threatening way. I wished she was here with me now to taze the big, red son of a bitch alien who was smirking down at me.
Speaking of the red son of a bitch, he seemed to read my mind.
“No need to fear, little Pure One—no one will be probing any part of your lush body. Though I confess it’s a tempting idea,” he murmured. “You’re safe enough while you’re with me. Of course after I trade you, I can’t say.” He shook his head. “You’re even more beautiful than your image on the viewer. It’s a damn shame to trade you to Tazaxx.”
The way he was eyeing me made me realize I was exposed—my arm had slipped and one of my nipples was peeking out at him. I readjusted quickly, but I was damn tired of feeling at a disadvantage just because I was naked.
“Listen, you’re going to have to stop talking like that because you can’t buy or trade what’s not for sale,” I said, glaring up at him. “Now give me some clothes and let me go home because you’re not trading me to anyone. Read my lips—you don’t own me and I am not going with you!”
It’s hard to make a point sitting down while the other guy is looming over you. I started to struggle to my feet—not easy with one arm locked in a death grip over my ta-tas and the other shielding my lady-bits.
“Here.” Sarden reached down a hand to help me up. My impassioned little speech didn’t seem to have fazed him at all. Not surprising since he apparently thought he held all the cards. Well, to be honest, he pretty much did, I had to admit to myself. But still, I’m no quitter! I wasn’t going to let him just steal me away and march me off to some Godforsaken planet where—
My thoughts cut off abruptly when his big hand made contact with my skin for the first time. I felt a shock of something like electricity go through me—a jolt that seemed to sizzle through every nerve in my body. It raised chill bumps over every inch of my skin and made my nipples into two painfully tight points.
“Ah!” I gasped, stumbling back from him and nearly falling.
“Gods!” he growled at the same time, jerking his hand away. Whatever the weird jolt was, clearly he had felt it too.
“What…what was that?” I gasped, standing shakily, still trying to cover myself.
Sarden didn’t answer me. Instead, he looked at the blue wormy Commercians.
“You didn’t tell me when I picked her that she was a La-ti-zal! Quick—get an inhibitor on her—now.”
“A what?” I demanded but the wormy little aliens were already snapping some kind of bronze metal bracelet around my wrist. I looked down at the band and saw it had a little window on it that had glowing, incomprehensible symbols jiggling across it.
Great, I was wearing the Alien version of a Fitbit.
I could imagine the readout now—You’ve already gone three hundred miles today, just a few million more into outer space and you’ll reach your abduction goal! Har-har, very funny.
The strange jolt I’d felt was still making me tingle in the most uncomfortable places. And it appeared to be affecting my captor too. Sarden was pressing his thumb and fingers to his closed eyelids and rubbing like a man trying to drive back a migraine.
“Gods, the colors I saw,” he muttered. “Whole spectrums of light…” Looking up at me he said, “Your hair—it’s the color of flames. And your eyes…I’ve never seen anything so blue.”
“Um…okay,” I said carefully. “Are you just now noticing all that? Look—what just happened anyway? What was that word you called me before you jerked away like I was a hot stove?”
“A La-ti-zal,” the proper butler voice informed me and the golden dragonfly fluttered on Sarden’s shoulder. “One especially bred by the Ancient Ones to have extra gifts. They are very rare and valuable. A tingling sensation during first contact between such a gifted one and one of another of the Twelve Sentient Peoples she is sexually compatible with is normally the sign of a La-ti-zal. Which is, I believe, how Master Sarden ascertained your abilities.”
“Which is good. It means Tazaxx will have to make the trade. He won’t be able to resist her.” Sarden straightened up and I saw for the first time how truly immense he was.
Earlier I’d thought that he just looked big because I was sitting and he was standing—but it hadn’t just been a trick of perspective. This alien was huge. He had to be seven feet tall at least, I estimated. In fact, the top of my head barely came up past his elbow and his shoulders were easily twice as broad as mine. He was muscular too but not in a gross, over-the-top, ropey-veiny way. He just looked incredibly cut and intimidating, standing there in his tight black trousers and his black sleeveless t-shirt looking thing.
With his incredible abs, neatly clipped mustache and goatee, and those intense golden eyes he looked positively mouthwatering. If you’re into Devil worship, that is, which I most certainly am not.
But hot or not—and he was, most definitely huge and hot—I didn’t like the way he thought he’d bought me and he was already planning to trade me away.
“She’ll do,” he said to Bambi who was watching, his stalk eyes wide. “I’ll take her back to my ship at once since our transaction is completed.”
“Negative,” Bambi protested in his piping voice. “You paid only enough credits for a standard Pure One—an Earth basic female. The charge for an elite La-ti-zal is much higher.”
“Then you should find a way to test the females and be sure of what they are before you sell them,” Sarden growled. “All sales are final—it says so in your own brochure.”
For the first time, I noticed he was wearing a large, chunky silver ring with a black stone on the middle finger of his left hand. He made a motion with it and a holographic display, showing all kinds of Alien symbols I couldn’t read, appeared and started scrolling through the air.
“There—see?” he said, pointing to a bit of floating green text that looked like squiggles and lines to me. Apparently the translation viruses the aliens had sent down through the hole in the ozone layer only worked for spoken communication. I was on my own if I wanted to read something.
“This is true,” Bambi agreed, sounding very unhappy about it. “But we have been meaning to refine our testing for some time. If you had not come so early, we would have had time.”
“So now you’re complaining that I’m your first customer?” Sarden raised one arched black eyebrow at him. “You shouldn’t have opened for business if you weren’t ready.”
“You must at least allow us to perform the sensitivity tests,” Bambi exclaimed.
“Well…” Sarden appeared to consider the idea. “It would make trading her to Tazaxx easier if I had a certificate of sensitivity on file.”
“Very good.” Bambi made a motion and two of the wormy Commercians slithered away only to return with a large contraption that floated through the air between them, guided by the lightest touches of their long claws.
I bit the inside of my cheek, trying not to freak out and scream. The weird machine the Commercians were bringing looked like a high-tech version of the Iron Maiden I’d seen in a Medieval mus
eum once. It had a padded upright table with straps on one side to hold the victim in place. The other half, which was clearly meant to close over it and trap the victim inside, was a bristling mass of needles and wires with sparks coming out of them.
Worse even than the awful instruments of torture I saw sticking out of the second side of the upright table, was their placement—they appeared to be clustered into three specific areas. Studying them, I was certain if they strapped me to the table, those needles and wires were going to be aimed straight at my breasts and crotch. Which, I think we can all agree, are the areas you specifically don’t want needles and sparking wires making contact with.
Great. I was about to be the star of an alien torture porn film.
“Is…” I had to clear my throat before I could get the words out. “Is that going to hurt?”
“Oh, yes—of course. It should be quite excruciating, in fact, as long as all your nerve endings are intact,” Bambi said cheerfully, as though he tortured girls just for fun every day. As far as I knew, he did. Who knows what gets an alien centipede off?
A low humming sound filled the air as it got closer and I could feel the short hairs on the backs of my forearms standing up as though I was in a room with an immense generator. My heart was pounding so hard it seemed like it was trying to get out of my chest and run away—which was pretty much what I wanted to do. But one look at Sarden’s long, muscular legs told me he would catch me before I got three feet from the torture table. My only hope was to change his mind about letting the Commercians test me.
“No,” I whispered, my voice almost too dry to speak. “No, please.”
But the other four Commercians already had their long, chitinous claws on me and were dragging me over to the table. They pushed me back against the cold, padded part of the table which felt like some kind of slick plastic against my bare skin. They forced my arms down by my sides and I felt my cheeks grow hot with embarrassment as my breasts and the small patch of red curls between my thighs was revealed. Oh God, if this was a nightmare, I needed to wake up now!