by Viki Storm
“Shave,” the voice repeats. My room is furnished with a wash basin and a padded chair and a small table with various things I can only assume are food. I’ve eaten—no, correct that, drank—nothing except for a thick white gruel for the last… how many days has it been? I’ve lost count of the days since I boarded the spaceship. The doctor tried to explain to us all about orbits and rotations and time. All I remember is that he said 87 Earth Days is one month on the Zalaryns’ planet. Oh yeah, and he told us that what we call one Day is the equivalent of one solar cycle and—for us—24 hours. On their planet, he repeated over and over again, they don’t know what a ‘day’ is. They call it a neu and it’s 119 hours in Zalaryn time but one Zalaryn hour is only about 45 minutes in Earth time. And all this talk about days and neus is irrelevant to anyone from Earth because their suns never ‘set.’
Their two suns are binary stars that orbit around each other, but their planet orbits around the suns, and their orbits are timed in such a way that the Zalaryn planet is in constant sunlight.
That’s a little too much to wrap my head around. I have a lot to worry about right now, okay.
“Now,” the voice says. An intercom speaker is mounted in the wall of my room, but I’m not sure how to operate it. We have speakers in my village, but they are large and play music in the public areas; they are not for two-way communications.
“Shave my head?” I ask. The Zalaryn men have no hair; the top of their heads are coated with those thick dark bumps. Like scales, I would say, except they are round and shiny.
“Everything except your head,” the voice commands.
“My eyebrows?” I say. “My eyelashes?”
The voice grumbles and I get a weird, almost dizzy feeling. It’s bizarre— when one of the aliens says a word or concept that my brain-tinkering procedure cannot translate properly, it feels like my brain is turning around inside my skull.
“Leg,” the voice says. “Arm. Genital tract.”
Okay, that had to be a translation error. But I get the message.
I comply. I still don’t have clothes. I haven’t had clothes since the doctor took them when he examined my purity on the spaceship.
I go to the basin and look around, not sure how to fill it up. There are no handles or pumps. I see the spigot; that’s obvious. But what’s not so obvious is how to turn it on.
“Wave your hand,” the voice says. Is there one voice issuing commands to all the Earth girls? Or can he see me specifically, watching my every move? I wave my hand in front of the basin and water starts to flow instantly. As I poke a tentative finger into the stream, I realize it’s hot.
Hot water?
In my village, we can pump water into our house, but it’s only as warm as the outside ground. Hot water needs to be heated on the stove. Six months out of the year, hardly anyone bathes because it’s too damned cold.
I could get used to this.
It’s everything else that will be hard to adjust to.
I see there is a washcloth hanging from the wall and I use it to scrub my skin. I feel a little better when I’m done washing, but when I see the shiny metal blade hanging from the wall, I feel uncertainty. I have seen my father and brothers shave, but I am not sure what to do.
Not that it matters. Not that anything matters when you’re Marked. When you’re Marked, you do what the aliens tell you.
I do my legs first, figuring if I slice my skin open, that’s the area where I can do the least amount of damage. It takes me a while, but I finally get the hang of it. I run the blade over both legs, both armpits and, even though it takes me a long time to carefully go over the area, I get all of my pubic hair.
The finished product however… I’m like a plucked chicken down there.
My legs look quite nice, I admit. Smooth and slender. But between my legs? I feel bare, exposed, like I’ve lost some essential bit of protection.
I look down and can see a wrinkle of pink flesh between my soft white lips. Looking at myself like this is shameful. Except, something else inside me stirs. There’s a heat in my belly that has nothing to do with the hot water in the basin.
I’m utterly and completely exposed… and it’s just a little bit exciting.
My whole life has been so sheltered. I spent all my time alone, drawing on whatever scraps of paper I could scrounge, mixing paints and trying to copy the artwork in the old books my grandmother gave to me, sculpting figures out of the coarse river clay.
Once I was Marked, I was stashed away inside the house, kept in a room like the extra jars of preserved vegetables.
Hidden. A part of the family no one wanted to talk about.
But now?
Well, at least I’m someone.
I barely have a chance to finish up when the door to my room bursts open.
“Now,” he says. He’s a Zalaryn male, but it’s so hard for me to tell the difference between them. They’re all so big and reddish. He wears the same leather breeches and shiny boots that all the males wear. As he speaks, I see his double-sets of canine teeth. He is stern and strong but somehow I don’t sense the same sort of raw brutality that the guards on the spaceship had. It makes sense, I suppose. The girls are a precious shipment; we need to be protected by their biggest, baddest bruisers. But the males who work in the auction house? Whose job it is to wrangle scared and confused girls? They would have to possess a little more finesse.
I hope.
I scurry to the door and he grabs my arm. It’s a tender gesture, not full of the force or brutality I had braced myself for. He puts a wand to my shoulder and passes it over my Marking. It beeps and he looks at the wand. There’s a small glass screen and he reads the text. At least I think it’s text.
“My name is Osyr. This is how the auction works,” he says. “All the buyers submit their DNA profiles and we cross-match them with the girls’ DNA to find suitable mates. I will take you around to each man that you are compatible with. You will answer any question he asks. You will let them touch you. You will not ask any questions of your own. After you meet every one of them, then they will bid on you. Understand?”
No. Obviously I do not.
Instead, I ask, “What’s DNA?”
He rolls his eyes. “Do not say anything that stupid in front of the customers. They know that humans are primitive—that’s part of your charm—but do not expose yourself for a fool.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. I cannot help it. The pent-up fear from the last few days overflows and a tear rolls down my cheek.
“Listen,” Osyr says, seeming to take pity on me. “DNA is…” he seems to think of how to best describe it to a primitive such as myself. “It’s like part of your blood. You humans, if the parents have red hair, the baby has red hair. If the parents are fat, the child is fat. If the parents drink to much freykka, the children drink too much when they get older.”
I nod. I don’t know freykka, but I know plenty of families in the village that pour the wine quite freely.
“That’s DNA,” he says. “It’s what you pass on to your offspring. We examine your DNA and match you with a compatible male.”
“Then why don’t you just match us and make them pay a fee? Why the auction?” I ask. I can’t help the dumb questions, but I am a primitive after all.
He just laughs and shakes his head. “In matters of mating you cannot rely on science only. Besides, when a man finds the one he wants, money is no object. You will see. The bidding wars we have. One man pays 101101011 for a girl that another man wouldn’t give 11 for.”
I don’t understand the numbers he uses, but I get the idea.
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
He leads me down a dark hallway past many locked doors. The other girls from the ship. Girls from other ships, perhaps. How many other planets send tribute to the Zalaryns? Are there alien girls with tentacles or horns behind those doors? Which is most appealing to a Zalaryn warrior?
Maybe he actually wants a female with purple s
kin and wings.
Maybe I’m not the treasure. Maybe I’m the trash.
I’ve almost become used to being shuttled around nude—it’s amazing what someone can get used to. Until I step onto the auction house floor. It is raucous. It is wild.
The shouts and laughter of the men is jarring. There are many small tables, some pushed together while men sing or do something that looks similar to rolling dice. It’s like a tavern, except there are no tankards on the tables. I imagine for a purchase like this, the men want to have clear heads—no drinking frackaha or whatever Osyr called it.
But that doesn’t make the place any less rowdy. As soon as I step out from the shadows of the winding hallway, the hoots and hollers begin.
I wish I hadn’t had the procedure to understand their language.
Come here and feel my pole.
My tongue is the winner of your pleasure.
A tight anus will scream when I thrust.
My head spins with all the language and phrases and slang that I don’t understand.
But I get the meaning.
My face burns as they stare at my naked body. My breasts have always been large and I’m embarrassed at the way they sway as I walk. And my newly-shaved areas feel exposed to their perverted leering. They can see the same pink wrinkle of flesh between my lips. They can see the most secret place of my whole being.
I cross my arms over my chest, trying to hold my breasts in place with my arms while my fingers fan out to cover between my legs.
I feel a sharp sting at the small of my back. I let out a sharp cry and turn around. Osyr holds a small metal prod in one hand and shakes his head at me. “No,” he says. “Walk proud. Make them desire you.”
I know he’s trying to help me, but making this roomful of leering aliens desire me is the absolute last thing that I want.
He prods me through the rows of tables. I feel rough, leathery hands on my legs as I pass. On my stomach. On my ass. I try to follow directions, I try to hold my head high and walk straight.
I succeed—mostly, I think—until Osyr stops at a table. “Here,” he says. “Introduce yourself.”
“Um,” I say. I’m speechless. The Zalaryn male that sits at the table is… slimy. Not literally. His skin is as chapped and tough as all the others. I can even see a few scabrous patches on his elbows and shoulders. His arms are muscular, like all these alien bastards, but his mid-section is lumpy and thick. His eyes seem smaller, more sunken and close-set. His eyes remind me of the hogs in the yard, beady and hungry.
With their DNA matching, this is someone they think would be a good mate for me? This shifty oaf?
I’m definitely not the treasure.
“Let’s take a look at you,” the customer says. He grabs my wrists and pulls me close so I’m standing between his legs, my thighs touching his.
Is this what I have to do? Go from table to table and get felt up by every sleazy alien in this place? Until the biggest sleaze with the most money decides to take me home and…
Mate with me.
The thought is vile. Even though I’ve had seven years to get used to the idea, I still can’t believe it’s actually going to happen.
Soon.
Very soon, one of these red bastards is going to take me to a room and claim me for his mate. He’s going to shove his probably gigantic alien cock inside me, shoot whatever disgusting seed their species uses for procreation, then make sure I can’t ever leave the house because their bizarre two-sun system will sear my weak human skin.
I want to cry but it’s all too surreal. The customer runs his hands over me and I see his fingernails are thick and yellowed and caked with dark grime. “What’s this right here?” he says. He’s pointing between my legs, where my little pink nub is poking through my lips. I really wish they hadn’t made me shave. I never noticed how it sticks out between my lips like that, but I hate it. It’s so humiliating. It’s obscene. I’m completely on display, every inch of my secret sex exposed for these perverted alien brutes to look at.
“It’s…” I can’t talk. I don’t know what to say. There’s surely no Zalaryn word for clitoris and even if there was, there is no way I could bring myself to say it.
“Does it feel good when you touch it?” he asks. He smiles and his teeth are the same dark yellow as his fingernails. There is a fleck of stringy meat between his bottom teeth.
Not if you touch it, I think. If he touches me there, I might just go insane. I feel like I’ve been a good sport about all of this so far. Stripped of my clothes and my dignity, a needle in my brain, shaved, paraded around a room full of barbarians, about to be sold to the highest bidder. Is it too much to ask for that this… creature keeps his hands to himself?
Yes. Yes it is. He sticks out his finger and puts it in his mouth. He licks it, swirling his long, narrow tongue around the tip. A glob of spit shines in the low light. He reaches slowly towards me. I look back at Osyr, hoping that there’s a prohibition against the customers touching the girls between the legs, but he just gives me a stern look and points the metal prod at me.
“I bet it feels really good,” the customer says. He smiles and adjusts his crotch. I can see the huge bulge under his leather pants.
I really am going to go insane.
As his finger stretches out towards me, to rub and stroke me, I close my eyes and wait for my sanity to break.
I don’t expect the auction house to be classy, but I at least expect it to be somber. Selecting a mate is serious, but half the men in here are acting like they’re whooping it up in the tavern after coming back from a raid. There is song and bawdy laughter.
I look at Droka, hoping to see my own disgust mirrored on his face, but I see he’s smiling a bit. “What did you expect?” Droka says, reading my thoughts. “It’s not often that you get to be surrounded by a bunch of naked females from one of our exotic outposts like Earth. And some of them are probably going to go home with one. You can’t tell me you’re not excited to sink it inside that weird pink human slit?”
I took his point and it did make me feel a little better, but the truth was, I was not excited about it. I’ve had intercourse with plenty of different species of females, just never a human. They all feel pretty much the same once the lights are off and you’re inside. Humans seem so small and fragile. How could a creature like that birth and nurture a strong Zalaryn warrior?
I pay our entrance fee (an outrageously expensive 101101101 each) and a staff member leads us to a small table. The tables and chairs are made of real wood, I notice. That is impressive. Trees are rare on our planet and the ones we do have are cultivated for food only. It seems so decadent to chop one down just so you have a place to rest your ass.
The High Healer had my DNA analyzed and the report sent to the auction house so they could populate a list of suitable mates for me. I would meet the mates one-by-one, inspect and evaluate them. At the end of the evening, the girls would be auctioned off.
This seems so contrary to everything a Zalaryn male stands for. A Conquest Mate you took by your own strength and cunning. You earned her and she would come to respect you for it. But buying a scared girl that was delivered right to you, just because you’re the one with the most money? Why would she ever come to respect you for that?
But it seems to work, so I pay the fee, sit at the wood table and watch as the house staff members parade the girls around, taking certain ones to meet certain men, based on how the genetic reports were matched up.
A few girls come to me, all trembling, some with tears in their eyes. My own mother was purchased here. I didn’t know her very well. After I was born, my father had me raised mostly by my grandfather. My mother stayed in her room. She was sickly and died when I was young. Was she a frightened and weeping girl, naked body on display to a room of rowdy men?
I’m sure she was. I’m sure they all were. All of our mothers were purchased here. Zalaryn females are sterile, all of them. The first use of Qizo minerals many generations ago caused
a mutation in all of our females. The Sickness binds to the X chromosomes. Males are able to resist, as we only have one X. But the females have two X’s and the Sickness stunts their development. Physical deformities are common, as are mental ones. There should be a better way, but our healers cannot find a cure for the Sickness. The damage has already been done, they say. We are a warrior race and our doctors are better at reattaching severed limbs than curing genetic diseases.
None of the girls interest me. I can see that they interest Droka, however. He is the one talking, trying to get them to engage in conversation with me. He’s more carefree, better suited for this sort of thing.
When the last girl leaves, I look out into the crowd. I see men groping the women as they walk by. Some of the auction staff have to strike the girls to get them to comply.
That’s when I hear the laugh that sends an angry punch of hate to my gut. I hope it’s not Teda, because an evil prick like him should not procreate. But I see him, his scabby paunch hanging over the waistband of his trousers, his hands on a girl’s waist, pulling her close.
This girl. She is not like the rest. Her hair is jet black, shiny and sleek like the obsidian mines on planet Leptai. Her breasts are large and ripe and I want to feel them, fill up my hands and squeeze. Her eyes are fierce, full of quick wits and strength. She is tall, carrying herself with an almost regal bearing.
Like a queen.
Like my queen.
But that thought is absurd. I don’t even want a mate. And if I did want her, it’s probably because I see Teda with his grubby hands all over her.
I’m not above being petty and childish when it comes to my enemies.
I stand up. Droka asks me where I’m going, but I don’t respond. Because I see Teda lick his finger and reach for her opening. I don’t know that much about human anatomy, but I know that human females are equipped with a thin membranous layer that protects the opening of their birth canal. It’s their proof of purity. And Teda’s the exact sort of dishonorable toad who would try to slip a finger inside her and then claim it was an accident. And her value would be diminished. A decent man would not want her and she’d have to settle for a sneak like Teda… which is probably why he’d destroy her membrane like that on purpose, to get a high quality female for a discount price.