How could I answer that? There was way too much stirring about in my brain to even fathom what to say. “Rescued from what?”
“The same emotion I feel. Loneliness.” Leaning his mass forward, he rested his forearms on the counter and stared directly in my eyes. “Having you nearby is like a breath of fresh air. Please stay and let me learn how to see to your comfort. I am willing to put in a great deal of effort.”
Why? Who cares about a dumb waitress who didn’t matter at all? “Do others of your kind engage in this... behavior? Do they pursue other girls? Other... humans?”
Leaning closer, Phi click, click, clicked his eyes. “They do if they find a woman that interests them. It’s no different than your concept of courtship. It’s a beneficial arrangement for both parties.”
His enthusiasm seemed peculiar, so I pressed. “So human females are a passing amusement? A taste of local flavor?”
Running his thumb over my pouty lips, Phi offered his opinion. “Everything about you has caught my attention. We are a monogamous species. You are the only female I will penetrate and assimilate.”
That one word sent eerie tingles up my spine. Every Twilight Zone episode, every sci-fi film, all of them held this underlying theme. “Assimilate?”
I was graced with a smile that would have melted any stone-cold heart... if he’d been human. “Our pairing is more natural than the water in your glass or the division of a cell. You’ve noticed already a tangible adjustment between us. I take on the traits you require, and I enhance you in return.”
He was being so direct and smiling so sweetly, that I felt my spiking panic to be wrong somehow. “I didn’t give you permission to change me.”
He nodded, as if to disagree. “Four times now you’ve accepted me completely into your body. Twice I’ve both given and taken just enough to assure progress between us.” The flat black of his eyes changed, smoldered if you will, and I felt as if he was considering pulling me up to the counter and giving me a stern talking to. “My position in your life, your placement in mine, is inevitable.”
Phi had never been firm with me. It was always suggestions he’d employed, even a sense of shyness I’d found appealing. Sitting there, his form towering over mine even though he leaned over the counter made me feel... demure, intrigued, angry, even a little turned on.
The alien was definitely interested in seduction. In fact, though the counter was between us, I was certain his organ was beginning to form into a tempting shape. In my mind’s eye I was already imagining him taking me bent over the counter, the cold marble shocking my stiff nipples to the point I’d gasp. “You manipulate me. I know you do.”
“You are incredibly perceptive for your species. That aptitude will draw the attention of many of my kind. Though I was fortunate to discover your rare trait first, the truth is, if it hadn’t been I who staked a claim, it would have been another. We do not all practice the same technique. I have chosen to be gentle in rearing my life partner. I have only offered suggestions. I never made you do anything. Others would have used force, hidden you away until transition was complete or you were pregnant and dependent.”
Blood running cold, I couldn’t help but recognize that I had been somewhat dragged away, stripped of my clothing, and trapped. “Are you threatening me?”
“I’m warning you that others have already taken notice. We are a competitive species when it comes to seeking mates. I have removed several challengers already, made a public showing of my claim, but nothing can be assured if you are out of my sight. There is a natural attraction between us. You may not feel the same attachment to the next of my kind to penetrate your body in an attempt to assimilate a life partner.”
Horror sat plain on my face. “Are you telling me that right now women are being used like this all over the world?”
“We have laws. Human females are never allowed to be afraid.”
Shaking my head, I countered, “I’ve been afraid.”
Long-fingered hands reached toward my face, settling lightly to cup my cheek. “You’re special, resistant to suggestion. You see things the rest of your kind cannot.”
That niggling thought that had twisted in my brain from the day the ships landed, I had to say it out loud. “Because this is an invasion.”
“It is.”
A nonviolent takeover of my entire species, one happening right before our eyes. “What do you want from us?”
The tips of his fingers began lightly burrowing against my scalp. “Companionship. We do not pair with one another. Adults must find a compatible species, adapt to them, and integrate. Humans are extremely compatible.”
He’d failed to mention something extremely obvious. “But only the women.”
Phi nodded. “Males of your species cannot bear children. That makes them superfluous.”
And our males now had short lifespans, lived only long enough to increase the gene pool, leaving billions of women with no options for a partner. “You are the reason my brother is dying. Your people did this to us.”
“Without our interference, environmental factors would have wiped out your entire species in less than one hundred Earth years. Humanity would have died out. We offered a solution, adjusted one genetic variable to maximize the female population to make it worth our effort.”
Pulling my head away from his hands, I felt tears spill from my eyes. “As your reward?”
“I know you feel as if I have betrayed you, but I have come here to save you. Is it impossible to imagine you will be happy with me? Am I really so different from a human man?”
No. Every time I saw him he looked, and behaved, a little more human. His skill in mimicry was astounding. And just like a human man, he was using me for sex... or something.
Phi rounded the counter, his black eyes wide and vulnerable. “Where are your thoughts, Emily?”
Hopping off the stool, I backed away, my hand up in warning for him not to come closer. “Aren’t you afraid I’m going to tell everyone what you’ve said? Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell them what you are?”
Cocking his head to the side, he studied me: my posture, my expression, and I was certain, my mind. “What would it change? They can’t hear you. They only hear what we tell them to hear. Why upset their happy existence? Why not embrace the fact that my kind offered your kind life?”
“At a price!” My brother’s future, for example.
“Please, Emily. Would you rather your species went extinct?”
No, of course not. But I was torn: somewhat relieved he’d confirmed I wasn’t crazy, really confused... I was a mess. Were Phi’s kind an infection or an inoculation? “I love my brother.”
“Because of your memories of the lake?” Phi dared to step closer, to pin me between the wall and his body. “Emily, you’ve never been to that lake. The memory you cling to is a tool, a fabricated scenario that brings you joy—we add ourselves into the moment. But, the implantation has not worked properly on you. You were never supposed to envision your brother, only me. I am the one who enjoys swimming and desires to take his life partner to the lake. The home you see in the background is mine. I built it for us.”
That could not be true. I remembered that day perfectly, could hear water slapping the dock. If I turned my head my brother would be in the water, waving at me to jump in.
“Your brother only calls when your monthly check is late, or if he needs more money. He gambles with it. You know that, and it makes you very sad. You have had an exceptionally lonely life.”
A sudden painful gloom fell over my heart. It was hard to swallow, hard to feel anything but intense depression. Phi was doing it. He was bringing on these feelings. “You’re making me feel this way.”
“No. I’m doing nothing. This is how you feel without my intervention. This is who you were before you met me.”
I must have looked like a heartbroken child, my arms fast around my middle as if I might hug myself well. Eyes wide, a lost expression on my face, I began to cry. “Please
stop.”
“At first glance, I knew I wanted you. And with one brush of my mind, I believe it may have been the first time you’d smiled, really smiled, in years. The more I learned about your life, the more I had to intervene. It gives me pain to know you were sad for so long.”
God, I was drowning in it: the mundane existence, the toil, the work that never got me anywhere. The calls. So many calls for more money, knowing that no matter what I gave him, it was never enough. “This can’t be real!”
Phi pulled the fancy phone he’d given me out of his pocket and put it in my hands. “Call him. Talk to him. Ask your brother about the lake.”
Chapter Six
I had found my way out to Phi’s balcony, as if standing in the open air might offer privacy. The phone in my hand, I wanted to chuck it over the railing and watch it sail down and shatter on the roadway.
I could still hear my brother yelling, “What do you mean you got fired? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
He had not been happy to hear from me at all. Between the hacking cough and the lecture about responsibility, he’d reminded me his kids required school supplies, clothing, a roof over their heads, and that it was my job as family to provide it. After all, he couldn’t work, and his wife had to rear the children. How could she be expected to support them financially?
I felt cold, hollow, and overfull all at the same time.
I felt unloved.
“Get another goddamn job right now!”
How did my life become this? Wake up, work. Come home, sleep. Over and over with nary a day off and nothing to show for it.
Everything Phi had said was true. The awfulness I felt in that moment was my life, had been my life for so long I had grown accustomed to the grind. Before Phi had messed with my mind, it had felt normal. And I wish I had never learned differently.
The sliding door behind me opened.
“You smiled at me. You recognized me. One touch of our minds and you no longer felt alone.” A hand landed lightly on my shoulder. He squeezed, kneading where I was tense. “It is difficult for new worlds to know us at first, but it soon becomes natural. I promise you this.”
Phi made it sound, and feel, like it might be so simple. Nothing in life was simple. “You’re a different species.”
His voice was gentle in a way I’d never heard a human man address me before. “It’s no different than meeting a person from a distant culture.”
Closing my eyes, I took a shaking breath. I could imagine the protocol, the odds of how these aliens operated, what they must have done to prepare. “What do you know of Earth’s cultures? How many languages can you speak?”
“All of them.” He moved so his arm was draped over my shoulder, tucking me to his side. “I was unsure in which country I would find my life partner, find you.”
And I was uneducated, with a shitty resume, and very little self-confidence at that moment. Hell, I hardly spoke English well. Forget about my spelling abilities. “I need to go home.”
Stroking my hair, Phi said, “You won’t feel better if you go back to that place and isolate yourself.”
My eyes were still shut tight, an ache in my head building. A list of restaurants was forming in my thoughts, places I could apply to at once. One of them would hire me. I could probably start working in a day or two.
Unless one of Phi’s cronies snatched me off the street to try to assimilate me against my will like he’d said. The very thought was repugnant. I was not even sure if Phi had told me the truth. Though at this point, why lie?
The statement probably made no sense, but I said it anyway. “It was easier before I knew it could be different.”
“My intentions were never to cause you despair. But, it might simplify your understanding of all I offer. Your life with me will be full, happy, and nurturing.”
“And what about my family?”
“They have used you long enough.”
That was not good enough, not by a long shot. Two children depended on me to survive. Turning my head to meet his eye, I hardened my resolve. “I need to go home.”
I could see that he was tempted to voodoo my head, the click, click, click ready to go. “May I walk you there? Just to the door?”
Considering I had no pants, I’d need a large male at my side should something go even more wrong.
I also really didn’t want to be alone. “Okay.”
* * *
I didn’t need to look out the peephole to know Phi was standing guard in my hallway. I could feel him somehow. He was not deadening my melancholy, but he was somehow whispering in my mind that he was there when I was ready.
I wasn’t ready.
The milk in my fridge had turned. Eating stale cereal dry, I sat on the edge of my bed and stared out the window. The neighboring building’s brick façade looked the same as it always did—sloppy mortar squishing out, age-worn bricks having somehow turned moldy with time.
What a view.
How many years had I lived in this apartment?
I’d probably die in this apartment... surrounded by cheap throw pillows and dirty laundry, fast food taco grease under my fingernails.
Seriously, what the fuck was Phi thinking following me around?
That’s right, to assimilate me.
I still wasn’t sure what that meant beyond the suddenly radiant skin, and something a bit more disturbing I’d discovered while trying to give myself a pep talk in the bathroom mirror.
Where the button-down shirt parted, where I was flushed from being upset, I’d seen a subtle pattern in the pink skin.
Something similar to stripes.
Not similar to... exactly like. Stripes marked my flushed chest.
What had he said? Twice while we’d fucked he’d given and taken just enough?
Now, he looked more human, and I looked more alien.
Would people on the street even notice it? How far could alien mind games extend?
Were the lines going to get darker, or fade away if I never let him touch me again?
I’d stared, running my fingers over the pattern on my chest, and then I’d taken off the shirt. Naked, I found they were everywhere, hard to see unless I was flustered, but there.
They were even pretty in a Halloween costume kind of way. Take me to a nightclub and I’d probably glow under the lights—to warn off other aliens that I had already been claimed.
That had to be what they were, and there were too many other things going on in my head for me to decide if I was angry about it.
I might have even been grateful. The picture he’d painted of mind manipulated women being dragged off the street terrified me.
How long would it be before most females bore marks?
This might be the new norm. Fashionable even.
I had not been fashionable a day in my life.
My go-to was a ponytail, drugstore makeup, second-hand clothes... and now stripes.
Deep down, the more I thought of it, the more I understood they’d never fade. The only thing that would shift them would be another green man’s attempt at assimilation. I’d have stripes, or polka dots, or wiggly swirls—one of them would write their signature on my skin.
Because we’d been invaded and everything was going to change.
As stupid as it sounds, I couldn’t decide what major issue I should focus on. There were just too damn many: Invasion, the silvery-green hopeful ‘life partner’ standing in my hall, the fact I needed a new job immediately, the fake memory of the lake, my brother, my shit life... I could go on.
Overwhelmed, and decidedly sorry for myself, I flopped down in bed and chose to ignore them all.
Except I couldn’t. Lying there, hugging a purple pillow with gold tassels, I could not stop thinking. I guess when you’re really low, you make foolish decisions. That’s how people got hooked on heroin, right? Junkies just wanted to feel better.
A tattered robe on my shoulders, I went to my door and undid the bolt.
Phi said no
thing, patient as ever.
“No sex, or whatever you call it.” I said these words then opened the door wider so he might come in.
And come in he did. He came in, walked me to my bed, and lay down with me while I fingered the tassels of my favorite pillow and stared off into space.
It was hours of silence before I fell asleep, his bicep under my head and his arm around my middle.
My only words before I closed my eyes, “I’m not sure about the stripes.”
Lips came to my ear, a soft squeeze around my waist reassuring. “I think they’re beautiful.”
Chapter Seven
I’ll take the blame. I started it.
No dreams of the lake had come to warm me, no mental mishmash of alien voodoo—and for some reason, waking that way, knowing Phi had not tried his tricks, was a comfort I can’t describe.
I knew he could have done it; it would have made his objective easier. But, he’d respected my feelings, both spoken and unspoken on the subject. That made me feel... nice.
Nice enough that I wasn’t burdened by constant suspicion. Nice enough that when I woke up and he was still there beside me, I didn’t immediately freak out.
Instead, I studied him, the alien man that never slept. I even let my fingers explore.
It didn’t start off sexual. Phi didn’t try to touch me back; he let every decision be mine.
Meeting his eyes felt too intimate, so instead I studied the planes of his face, the stripes, the lips and jaw I now understood had changed to appear more human. I even touched them. They were warm, like mine. Appealing.
His adaptation was targeted, after all, to charm me.
Skull smooth, ears smaller and shaped slightly differently than mine, I explored these parts too. Sensitive ears led to the man closing his eyes and drawing in a breath when I traced them. Knowing I’d inadvertently given him pleasure... excited me.
Abandoning ears for neck, I followed the line of his throat until his shirt stopped further exploration.
Alien Alphas: Twenty-Three Naughty Sci-Fi Romance Novellas Page 40