Rodeo Rancher

by Lauren Wood

  Looking out the window, she noticed that the lawn had a medley of different colored leaves on the ground. They would need to be cleaned up.

  Vanessa sat down at his desk and could feel this presence, like he was standing over her shoulder. He did that, while she was doing her homework. Mother was mostly away on business, but it was soon learned that some of that business was not exactly concerning her job. Her parents’ marriage wasn’t what she thought it was. They divorced when she was 18 and Louise was only 16. Louise opted to stay with their mother and Vanessa, feeling sorry for her father decided to stay with him.

  Unfortunately, when their father got a bit of dementia, Vanessa made every effort to be out of town, as much as possible. She begged and pleaded on bended knee to her bosses that she could handle being away from home for days on end. Thankfully, they needed somebody to make some international calls and her volunteering had given them a way out.

  Vanessa might have only been 5 foot four, 115 pounds, but she had enough baggage that would make any relationship fold under from the very beginning. She was always judging and measuring those men that came into her life. They didn’t know it, but that measuring stick came in the form of her father. If they couldn’t match up to her expectations, she would show them the door in short order.

  For the next 2 hours, she boxed up various pieces of information and labeled them to make sure that she knew exactly where everything was. Vanessa was tempted to call the police, but there didn’t seem to be any need. He was gone and there was nothing that anybody could do to him ever again. He was at peace and there wasn’t much here that was worth anything. Some of it was ramblings and when he started to get dementia, things began to unravel in a hurry.

  The office was almost completely empty with only boxes left behind to inform anybody that this was his legacy. Vanessa laid back and looked at the ceiling, when she noticed something sticking out from one of the overhead beams. Standing on the chair, she balanced herself and reached up. Straining every muscle, she felt like her shoulder was going to give out, when she finally grasped onto this blue sphere.

  At first, she thought it might be some kind of stone or maybe even a shell that was found on a beach somewhere. She never did take her father to be the outdoorsy type. Looking at the blue sphere in her hand, she weighed it and handled it very carefully. There seemed to be some sort of heat emanating from within.

  “I remember something in one of these files that mentioned a blue sphere. I thought it was just another one of his mental breakdowns. If I recall, I believe he said that this was some sort of device to contact a civilization known as Tu’Fallian. Wouldn’t it be something if I could actually visit another world? I could bring back photographs and become a sensation overnight. There would be no stopping how far I could go. I only wish that something like that could happen.” The blue sphere began to glow and then there was some kind of voice coming from within. It was garbled and didn’t sound human. It stopped, as soon as it began. She placed the sphere on the table and walked away from it, having no idea what kind of Pandora’s Box she opened.

  Chapter 2

  Vanessa was getting tired and after the second day of going through everything in her father’s house, she had just about had it. Charity had picked up most of the furniture and even his suits. She did notice that they looked at her kinda funny when they saw the multicolored designs that her father liked to wear to shock the masses. He always said that you could get a person’s attention with more than just your words. It was a credo that she lived by even today. She had a sense of whimsy and she always wore something that would be the talk of the office.

  “I think that just about does it, Ms. Lasky.” It sounded, so weird for somebody to call her miss. It seemed only yesterday that she was running down to the convenience store for an ice pop in the middle of summer. It would always drip on her clothes and leave a sticky mess. “I’ll just give you this receipt and then we’ll be on our way. Is there anything that you want us to do about the boxes in the office? I noticed that when I was down there picking up the desk that there were several things that would be a little too heavy for somebody like you.”

  “He looks at me like I’m a frail fragile doll, but he doesn’t know that I work out constantly. I probably have better upper body strength than even he does. Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, considering that he is kind of muscle-bound.” Vanessa wanted to reach out and touch him, but she knew that it would probably be frowned upon. Besides, she wasn’t looking for any satisfaction. She could get that at any dive bar in the middle of the night…not that she was ever that desperate. “I appreciate the offer, but I think I can handle it.” She saw him shrug his shoulders and then he walked down the stairs to the white panel truck.

  The next half hour, she heaved those boxes up from the office basement. It wasn’t easy, but she prided herself on being freakishly strong when it came to moving things. As she was reaching for the last box, she heard something of a whine and at first she thought it was some kind of dog caught in a trap somewhere.

  She had a glance outside the curtain, raising herself up, so that she could see through the small window. There was a layer of dust and she wiped it with a Kleenex, but there was nothing out there, but the vast lawn that still needed to be mowed. She didn’t consider herself to be all that handy, but being single had made it necessary for her to learn some of the things that were more in the line of a man doing them. She learned how to put in electrical wire, not to mention do her own plumbing and fix her own car when necessary. She was a renaissance kind of girl.

  She had the last box in her hands, when she walked up the stairs to come face to face with two specimens of men that really didn’t look real. It wasn’t that they were just standing there, but they were standing there completely naked. They were looking at each other and then at her and she wasn’t sure if she should scream or bow down to worship at their feet.

  “I’m afraid that you’re too late and my father’s clothes have already been taken to goodwill.” This was her idea of teasing them, but she couldn’t stop staring at something else of interest. “Seriously, I don’t think that you’re in the right house. Perhaps you should be a few blocks south at the sanitarium.” One of them tried to open their mouth, but nothing came out for a moment.

  “I could call the cops, but something tells me that they’re no threat. I don’t know how I can say that, considering they are standing in front of me in their birthday suits. I could at least offer to get them something to wear. I just don’t know what I have. There might be something that was left over that I didn’t grab when they were here to pick up his clothes.”

  “My name is… Marcos and this is my Brother Michael. We came here to talk to Robert. He sent us a message and we really didn’t think that he would abide by the deal. We thought that we were going to have to come here and use force to get what we wanted. We were really close to doing just that.” Vanessa thought that they might be colleagues, but unless they were nudists, it did not explain the way that they had greeted her.

  “I’m afraid that you’ve been misinformed. My father has been dead for the past two months.” Both Michael and Marcos’ exchanged glances. They appeared to be telepathically linked and they were able to communicate without saying any words. One of them was having a hard time trying to voice the human language. His tongue was completely tied and he was now allowing his brother Marcos to speak for the both of them. “I would’ve thought that you would’ve known, but maybe you were in some isolated part of the world.” Vanessa could not stop staring at their bodies and wondering what it would be like to take one for a test drive.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your loss, but the agreement still stands. This may be a little hard to believe, but we come from a place that is far away from here. Your father and the two of us came to an agreement that benefited all of us greatly. In exchange for us providing him with medicine, he agreed that…” Before he could say anything, the other brother had touched him on t
he shoulder briefly.

  “I don’t know what kind of agreement you have with my father, but I don’t think you’re going to find it here.” Vanessa was inching her hand into her purse that contained a taser that would give them a shocking development. “I do have to get going and I have a meeting in less than an hour.” She had placated them enough and how they weren’t noticed coming up to the house completely nude was beyond her. It was 6:00 PM and that meant that people were home from school and work. If they were all inside, then surely, somebody saw them walking by their window and would call the cops.

  “My brother and I are aliens from a world called Tu’fallian. You must have accidentally initiated contact with the blue sphere. We understand that this was not intentional, but it came at the most opportune time. We’re going to give you a rare gift and something that not a lot of humans have been able to experience for themselves. We would like to take you to our home world and show you colors and landscapes that would make any photographer’s dream come true.”

  “I see and you should tell this to your doctor’s. I would suggest that you go back to where you came from and talk to them about this. I’m sure that they will be understanding and will most likely give you medication to keep you from hurting yourself and others.” She didn’t mean to talk down to them, but she felt like it was necessary to keep her words calm and soothing in the face of those that had lost their mind. “I may have been wrong about them not being a threat. If they try any sudden moves, I’ll have to act.”

  “I understand that this is hard for you to take, but we really don’t have time to debate this issue. The window for going back to our planet is closing rapidly. Let me show you that we are on the level. You just need to let me touch your forehead with my finger. That way I can use a technique that hasn’t been used in millennia. We are still capable of doing it, but it causes us immense pain. To be honest, it has been banned and to use it only shows you how important this is.”

  Vanessa backed away, but she did not go more than a couple of feet. Marcos came forward and she felt his finger just grazing her forehead. There was something sticky on the end of his finger and he was now drawing some sort of symbol on her forehead.

  When he was done, he pressed the pad of his thumb in the very center of the symbol. His brother was touching his hand. They were now closing their eyes.

  The transmission had only lasted a mere couple of seconds, but both young Tu’fallian men looked drained to the point that they could not even stand without assistance. They collapsed under their own weight. They fell down on to their knees and were looking up at the woman that they had come to retrieve.

  For Vanessa, she felt like she was on some sort of drug. The images were, so quick, but she was able to see that this was definitely of alien origin. She even saw the meeting that they had with her father. It was fleeting, but that memory was now with her, even though it was part of a jumbled mess that had just short circuited the neurons in her brain.

  She stumbled backwards and held onto whatever she could find. Thankfully, there was one lone chair left behind. She fell against it, moved your fingers along the wood grain and then sat down with her two hands over her face. She’d never felt anything like this in her life. She didn’t even know that there was any kind of technology that was out there today that could do anything even close to this.

  “I don’t know what I just saw, but it couldn’t be real. All I know is that I want to see more.” The brothers looked like they were fish out of the water, clawing at the wood floor and trying their very best to get back on their feet.

  Vanessa could barely move and she felt like her limbs were holding her down. It was not the ideal way to find out that there was alien life out there. She often wanted her father to be right and right now, she was getting that proof in a way that was a little overwhelming. It was mostly a flash, but there were moments that she was able to grab onto more. The rest got lost in translation.

  Marcos was the first one to stand, but he needed to hold onto the banister of the stairs. Vanessa saw him very slowly move up the stairs. She wanted to scream, but there was no voice. She wanted to run, but she could not use her legs. She felt tingling and at least that gave her hope that she would not be paralyzed for life.

  She had no idea how long it had been, but then Marcos came downstairs with a heavy foot. He was wearing an old pair of blue jeans and a white muscle top that stretched over his gigantic chest. He had in his hands a pair of black pants and another white tee shirt. He put his hand on his brother’s shoulder and Michael turned and looked up. He took the clothing and he dressed, but he fell back down several times.

  “I’m afraid that we’re going to need your decision. We’ve just showed you proof of alien life. If you want to know more, bring your camera with you and we’ll make you into a star on our planet. We do not have this thing called photography. You’ll be the first to break into that scene. Unfortunately, our spaceship is crossing over your hemisphere and will only be here for the next minute. After that, we will be pulled out of your atmosphere and back to our ship on our way back home.”

  I thought that they might have lost their minds, but maybe I have. Right now, I could be sitting in some sanitarium, rocking back and forth in the fetal position and mumbling all sorts of nonsense. Do I even dare think about doing this?”

  “We have less than 30 seconds.”

  “This is crazy and I don’t even have any luggage.” She looked at them and still couldn’t believe that this was happening. It was all, so fast and there was a sense of urgency that made it impossible to weigh the pros and cons.

  She did notice that the brothers were almost identical, except for one was a little thicker around the middle and they both have scars, but over opposite eyes. Their dark hair was almost shaved to a stubble and they were over 6 feet tall, 200 plus pounds and that was all muscle. She’d seen that with her own eyes and it was not a sight that she would forget easily.

  “You don’t need luggage and whatever you require, I’m sure that we can make allowances for. 10 seconds.”

  She looked around the house. She had made a decisions and she turned and gave a nod of approval. She didn’t even realize what she was doing, until it was too late to take it back.

  There was a flash of light, so brilliant that it was burning through her cornea. She was blinded and couldn’t see a thing and then she materialized in this sterile cold silver walled room that looked barren.

  She saw Michael, one with the scar over his left eye move quickly to open up the console. “Brother that was a close one. We barely got on board and now the ship is taking us back to our planet. We should arrive in less than 5 hours.”

  “Our ship has been programmed with artificial intelligence to move through your atmosphere and any obstacles without delay. There are too many asteroids between your planet and ours for Marcos and I to manually move the ship around each and every one of them. This way, we’re relatively sure that the artificial intelligence will take care of it.”

  She heard what they were saying and their voices were identical with this monotone feel that would’ve been right at home on the radio. Vanessa looked around and everything was fuzzy like she just woken up from a three day bender with one of her friends. She couldn’t concentrate and her entire body was awash with electrical current that hit her from the moment that she came on board. Her head was pounding and then everything began to spin. She couldn’t stop it and she did not fear for her safety. She should have, but she really did feel like she was in good hands.

  Chapter 3

  She awoke with a start, smelling lilacs or something fragrant in the air. She was lying in a field completely surrounded with different color flowers that were not indigenous to her own planet. She had minored in botany and none of these plants had any semblance of anything that she had seen in her studies. She looked up at the sun, but it was not the kind of sun that she would have normally seen. There was a green tinge within the orange.

  “I tho
ught for a moment that we lost you, until I remembered that the human brain isn’t accustomed to immediate travel. Being transported to our ship was very taxing on your system and your body decided to shut down. It was its defense mechanism and your father was exactly the same way. Michael and I forgot that and we apologize profusely for our shortsightedness.” She could not see where the voice was coming from. She turned once again felt breathless in their presence. They were wearing what look like ceremonial robes. She looked down to see that she was also dressed in the same way.

  “That was a trip and a half.” It reminded her of when she had woken up after an accidental dose of LSD. Her mouth was dry, her vision wasn’t exactly 20/20, but she knew that that was only temporary. “I’m trying to justify in my own mind why I came here.” Vanessa stood up and looked around. It looked remarkably similar to what she would see on her own planet. The big differences were that the blades of grass seem to change color with each step that she made towards it.

  She grabbed for her camera and she took shot after shot, completely immersing herself into the alien environment. She loved the contrast of colors and the way they seem to dance in her peripheral vision. She wanted to stay there and investigate further, but then she noticed that the brothers were not exactly smiling.

  “I’m sorry to tell you this, Vanessa, but our intentions were not entirely pure. We brought you here for our mating season. You’re to copulate with the both of us and then decide which one you’re going to take as a husband.”

  “Marcos thinks that he has to speak for me, but that’s only when I was on your planet. Here, we have universal translators, not unlike something that you would see in one of your science fiction movies. We understand that we may have tricked you, but it was necessary. We could’ve taken you by force, but that wouldn’t have shown us in a good light. Marcos saw the camera sticking out of your bag and it brought to mind the conversation that we had with your father. Even when you were young, you were impetuous and too curious for your own good. You liked to pretend that you had your own gallery and the stories that we heard about you wanting to be a photographer stuck with us. It was the last communication we had with Robert when you were only 10 years old.”