by Rebecca Pond
Emma didn’t want to be caught like this. “Actually, I don’t yet.” She looked down, away from Beth, and shook her head in shame, “I have no money, and I can’t rent anything without a deposit. I have to wait until I get paid. I didn’t want to ask you and Sammy for an advance because, it’s just not right. After all, we just met.”
Beth was quiet for just a moment. “You know, Sammy and I own a few apartments just a couple of blocks from here. The tenant we had in the efficiency just moved out. It is small, and rent is pretty reasonable. The guy left it a mess, but it has a bit of furniture and the basic kitchen stuff. I think that maybe if you agree to clean it up, we can forget about a deposit. What do you say?”
“Beth, that’s just way too good to be true. You don’t even know anything about me. We just met just a couple of days ago.” Tears began to form in her eyes. “How do you know that I won’t just screw you over too?” she said as she wiped a falling tear with her finger.
Emma saw Beth nod her head a bit and smile, “I have a good feeling about you, honey. I just think that you might be down on your luck and might need a bit of help finding your feet.” She watched as Beth approached her slowly, reaching out to give her a tight hug. They spent an hour together sitting on the bathroom floor coming to an arrangement with the apartment. Emma would work for room and board until she made enough to pay the rent. Then they talked about what Emma had been through in her short life, and the obstacles she had overcome.
She told Beth that at the age of sixteen one of her foster fathers had broken her right arm when she tried to run away from his sexual advances. Luckily for Emma, his wife had come home unexpectedly, and had caught him in the act of assaulting her in their kitchen. She was removed from the home that day and placed into a group home for a while. This was the way that the state’s social services department dealt with older children, because it was really hard to place older kids in homes. Families typically didn’t want to deal with a teenager.
She was in the group home for almost three months until an elderly couple had agreed to take her in. That living arrangement wasn’t much of an improvement. Emma was acting as more of a live in maid and nurse to them. So many nights she would cry herself to sleep, wishing just for once, that someone would love her for who she was and not just try to get free work out of her. That’s when she had made up her mind to save as much money as she could, and get the hell out of that house.
The last night she spent in foster care was the best night she ever had. Tomorrow was her eighteenth birthday, and the day of her freedom from foster care. Without letting the old couple see what she was doing, she waited for them to go to bed before she packed up her meager belongings. Excited as she was, she could hardly sleep. With a smile on her face, Emma slipped on her floral print backpack, picked up the brown rolling suitcase that contained her clothes. When she heard the sound of her foster parents talking and making coffee, she walked into the kitchen. The old couple depended on Emma for care and the bit of money they earned from the state for allowing Emma to stay with them. They sat at the table looking up at her. She approached them with butterflies racing around in her belly and announced, “Thanks for nothing!” and then walked out the door.
She had come a long way since then. The place was a mess when she moved in. She couldn’t believe that anyone could possibly live like that. After spending much of her time cleaning, she had made this apartment her home. At first, it was a scary living all by herself. It was definitely better than living on the street. But, it was a great feeling for her to finally be out on her own.
She pulled up drain and stood up in the tub. Careful not to slip as she got out, she reached for the towel on the rack and began to dry her body. Then, she towel dried her long black hair, and brushed the knots out. She took a good look at her reflection in the mirror. It was always the same. She saw the long straight black hair cascading over her bare shoulders, dark green eyes with thin arched eyebrows, and unblemished skin that was light to fair in color. She had long arms and fingers and nice perky breasts with small round pink nipples that were peaked as she was starting to feel the chill from standing on the cold tiles of her bathroom floor naked. She knew that she was pretty, as she wrapped her towel around her body and brushed her white teeth. She noticed the attention she got from random men on the street and the men she waited on at work. She stood around five feet seven inches tall and always maintained a thin figure. She ate right and worked hard for everything she had, day and night, and this is what kept her in shape.
She dressed in her favorite Mickey Mouse pajama pants and black tank top after blow drying her hair. She turned off the bathroom light, and made her way over to her daybed that doubled as a sofa during the day. She pulled back the covers and crawled into bed switching on the small old television in timer mode. She flipped through the few channels that she had in her basic cable package and found nothing of interest to watch. It didn’t take long before her eye lids started feeling heavy and she soon drifted off to sleep.
She did not know how long she had been asleep when she was awoken by a loud noise. It was very dark in the small efficiency apartment because the TV had turned off. She wasn’t quite sure what the noise had been, but assumed it came from the alley. Maybe it was one of those damn stray cats that ran about the alleyway knocking garbage can lids off to find their dinner inside. She rolled over onto her side, pulling the covers back up around her neck. Closing her eyes, she attempt to go back to sleep, but a second later she heard the noise again. It couldn’t be, could it? This time the noise was closer to where she was and seemed to be coming from inside her apartment.
She held her breath and laid completely still, slowly cracking open her eyes to get a glimpse of the intruder. She tried to focus on listening to the noises in the room. However, her heart was pounding so loudly that she was sure whoever was in the room with her could hear it. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room, out of the corner of her eye she caught some kind of movement over by the door. The dark mass split into two and moved closer to where she was. Without thinking, Emma sat up on her bed and shouted to the masses, “Get out of my home!” She scooted back into the corner of the small bed, but one of the dark figures continued to approach.
“I said get out! Leave me alone!” She was starting to panic. “Look, I have nothing valuable. My purse is over on the chair. It has a little over twenty bucks in it. Take it and leave!” It was raining hard and outside, the thunder continued to crash loudly. No one would be able to hear her screams with a storm like this raging outside. A flash of lightening lit up the room and what she saw left her speechless.
Two of the three huge sci-fi psychos from the diner were now towering over her. She noticed that they weren’t wearing the sunglasses that they had had on earlier. With the lightening continuing to flash repeatedly, she got a clear look at their eyes. The man standing the closest to the bed had eyes that were a copper color and the other man had purple eyes. She had never seen anyone with eyes like these before. The purple eyed man was looking in the direction of his partner, and he said something in a language she had never heard before.
“Please, don’t hurt me.” She begged. Her back was now pushed tightly against the rod iron frame of the bed. She couldn’t scoot any further back and her only escape route was blocked by the third man. Her eyes bounced around like a ping pong ball off the three figures in her home. She was caged in like an animal.
“What do you want?” She was becoming desperate, but when the reply came she still had no idea what was being said. She screamed loudly as the man with the copper eyes reached for her. She kicked out her legs with the hopes of breaking his fingers, or anything that might delay him, but it didn’t do her any good. His fingers gripped her ankle tightly then pulled her towards him in one swift yank. With nothing but the rails of the bed to hold on to, she slid easily across the bed and into the arms of the overly large man. Releasing her ankle from his grasp, he then pried her fingers from the railing of
the bed to pull her to her feet. Now, she stood in front of him and his partner. She didn’t have any hopes of getting away at this moment, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t going to at least try one more time to escape them. Without giving them warning, she swung her left fist up and around aiming for the face of the closest of her captors. Her fist met solidly with his chin, but it obviously didn’t have much effect on him because all he did was stand and stare at her. Then he had the nerve to let out a deep chuckle. “Damn, that hurt!” she said as she shook out her fist knowing that her knuckles would likely bruise. She was really pissed off that the bastard was amused by her attempt to escape!
“Let me go, you over grown freak!” Emma struggled in vain to release her arm from his grip. She kicked her leg out again, this time making contact with his shin. He gave a small grunt, and then let go of her arm. She thought for a fraction of a second that she could get free, but to her horror, he bent forward and lifted her, tossing her like a sack of potatoes over his shoulder. The wind had been knocked out of her chest when her body made contact with his the bones of his shoulder. She listened to the sound of the odd language, as the men spoke to one another again, making their way out of her apartment and into the pouring rain.
It didn’t take long before her clothing was soaked all the way through to the skin. The three of them jogged through the rain drenched streets taking back roads to avoid being seen by any other people. The rain was coming down so hard that the streets were starting to flood, but her three captors didn’t have any problems maneuvering through the water. Without warning they stopped in the middle of one of the flooded streets. She lifted her head to try to see where they were doing and where they were at, but it was of no use, it was raining too hard for her to get a clear picture of where they were. The man holding her shifted her a bit on his shoulder causing her to yelp as his shoulder jabbed her once again into the pit of her belly.
The men started to speak to each other again and it was hard to hear them over the sound of the rain. She once again lifted her head to try to see what was going on, and caught the eye of the man with the purple eyes, as he stood a behind her captor. He flipped open some kind of communication device and spoke into it. He spoke with a tone of authority. With a quick and curt command in a language she did not understand, he then snapped the device shut. The third abductor trotted over to where they were standing in the street and looked to be asking some sort of a question. The purple eyed guy nodded in response. What they hell were they waiting for out here in middle of the street, in the pouring rain? Seconds ticked by with no one moving or saying a word. Suddenly she started to fell a tingly sensation throughout the length of her body. She gasped as she watched the two men standing in front of her slowly start to fade away.
Chapter 2
Zeb, Zane and Brylon had been the first Theron warriors to go down to Earth’s surface to start scouting for brides. They had made an agreement a few days ago with the Administrator of NASA. They worked out a deal that the Theron’s could actively seek out mates among the Earth’s females, in exchange for the knowledge of how to make space travel possible to distant galaxies and civilizations. The Theron’s also included the necessary element, cavmenton, which was required for a ship to travel through wormholes in space.
Earth was the first planet that the Therons had come across in the several years they had spent in search for compatible mates. With orders from Gatton, the evil Emperor of Drylon, the Drylon’s civilization had virtually killed or kidnapped most of the Theron females in order to exterminate them from the X-tran galaxy and gain control of the Theron’s natural resources. Earth had become the first hope for the Theron’s that were trying to recover from the war that the Drylons had started ten years ago.
The Theron mother ship had parked behind the Earth’s moon almost a month ago. At first, the Therons wanted to monitor the planet and see if mates could be found before attempting to contact anyone on the blue and green colored sphere. Thankfully Zane, the ship doctor and second in command, was able to determine that the human females were indeed genetically compatible as mates for the Theron race. It had taken the better part of the month for Zane to come to his conclusions by careful analysis of samples he obtained from the Earth’s surface. When the knowledge of a compatible race was announced, Zeb had breathed a sigh of relief.
Then, it had become Brylon, the ship’s engineer’s job, to send out the transmission to contact the people of Earth. The answer to his message was received rather quickly. The people from NASA’s command center readily accepted the agreement with them, even though they probably knew that it was not the most ethical thing to do. These men had, in a sense, sold the females of their planet for career gain. However, they did have the presence of mind to set forth restrictions on which many of the earth females could be taken. Now that the necessary preparations had been made, the warriors were just now beginning to beam down to the planet’s surface to scout for eligible females.
Their first day of planned abductions on the planet’s surface wasn’t going as expected. The city that they were transported to was engulfed in a major rain storm that was making their efforts of communication with the mother ship very difficult. They had found themselves lost in the city, and hadn’t been able to locate the female that they were searching for. They were running around in a suburb of Orlando for a couple of hours now. Whenever there would be a break in the rain, the three men would set out again on their quest to find her.
“This is ridiculous, Zeb!” Brylon complained to best friend and commander, “We have been searching for hours for one female, and on top of that, the Gods are dumping tons of water on us.” Brylon was the ship’s engineer and third in command on the Theron mother ship. At the moment, he was feeling uncharacteristically frustrated with their current mission.
Zeb was leaning against the wall of a building, just under the ledge that was providing them with cover as the current wave of heavy rain was falling from the dark sky. He was searching his computerized tablet again, looking for information relating to the female that they were seeking.
“I do not understand. She should be right here,” Zeb said, “Her last know residence is over there.” He pointed to a small brown brick building that was located across the street from where they stood. The front of the building’s windows were all boarded up and with the minimal lighting on the street, the building appeared as if it were shrouded in darkness. However, along the side of the building was an alleyway that led to several doors that were lit by simple light fixtures placed near the upper right corners just above the door frames.
“She’s not here Zeb. Does the information you are looking at give a place of employment? Maybe she is there at the moment.” Zane questioned the commander as he looked out over the quiet street.
Zeb scanned his tablet again, and he searched for any other useable information that would lead them to the female. He was becoming a bit worried that they would not be able to locate her. She was the first of the women that they had chosen to abduct this night. Things had better start working in their favor, or they would be down on the planet’s surface much longer than they had anticipated, retrieving the female.
“I got it!” Zeb announced to the other men. “Her place of work is some kind of eating establishment that is not far from where we are now. Let’s get a move on, before the rain starts pouring down again.” Zeb powered down his tablet and slipped it into the inside of his uniform jacket. “It’s this way.” He led the other two Theron warriors down the street to a building that sat on the corner. The neon light in the window, spelling the word OPEN, was aglow as well as the fluorescent lights inside of the diner. They could see several people moving around inside through the large wall of windows. “That should be the place. Let’s go in and see what we can find. If there is any talking that needs to be done, it will be done by Zane. He speaks the language the best out of all of us. Most importantly, do not take off your glasses. Our eyes are a dead giveaway that we are not
human.”
“Won’t you give me a little credit where credit is due, Zeb? I’ve learned a few words of the odd language that is spoken in this place. Zane isn’t the only one who can learn new languages quickly.” Brylon said.
“Sorry Brylon, I forget that you are pretty quick at languages too. But, if I were to guess, I would say that Zane beats you out in learning new languages. He is like a magnet. Actually, more like a sponge, because he absorbs everything he hears,” Zeb replied.
The three Therons made their way across the street and into the building that smelled of greasy food. All three of them quickly looked around, and then they proceeded to seat themselves at the nearest table. It was a bit of a tight squeeze for them because the booth was designed to seat people that were generally not almost 7 feet tall.
“You have got to be kidding me! Can’t we move to another table Zeb, or better yet the counter? I feel like I am trying to fold myself in half!” Brylon whispered as he slid into the seat after Zane. His knees were pressed against the underside of the table. “This is really uncomfortable.” They heard the sound of footsteps approaching, and this caused the three warriors to turn their heads simultaneously in that direction of the sound. Not two feet away from them, stood the very female that they had been searching for all this time.
The Earth female that they had been searching for was standing right next to Brylon, and Gods did she smell good! He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, in order to remember the floral scent that seemed to emanate from her direction. He was fascinated by her long hair that was as dark as the night sky of Theron. She had her hair pulled back, away from her face with some sort of a string. Her eyes were big, round and dark green. Her full lips were pulled up in the corners in a slight smile as she looked around the table. He could sense that she was uncomfortable standing in their presence but he didn’t dare utter a word. He wouldn’t have been able to speak even if he wanted to.