CHAPTER 17

 

TARA

 

I wake up to find the alien, in bed, on top of me.

There is an alien half over me.  Or… I’m half under him, depending on how you want to look at it.  I’ve tensed up all over and he twitches—his head lifting off of me enough that I can watch as one eye slowly cracks open, then the other.  He keeps them half-peeped, like he’s feeling too lazy to work them any harder than this.  His brishkers are sticking in every direction, the ends curling slightly as if they’re resting too.  They look… kinda cute.  The beads he’s got on some of them are ornate.  Some look shot through with gold, giving them a sort of sparkle—

When he sees where my attention is at, he caws—or, coughs?—a quiet… laugh.

As I blink at him in astonishment, his lids fall shut before he pats me and murmurs something in a rustier voice than the one I got used to hearing in our brief time together yesterday.  Like he’s reassuring me, ‘Shhh, the alarm hasn’t gone off yet,’ or, ‘It’s Sunday: we don’t get up early on Sundays.’

Somehow, his completely relaxed, groggy demeanor goes a long way to thawing my concern about him being in bed with me.  Guiltily, I think of him putting me on the bed last night, and then doing the gentlemanly thing by taking the floor.  Really, it was all very polite of him.  I can imagine I’d have changed my mind halfway through the night too, right around the time I got the numb hip and the first neck crick.

His chin is back to digging into my shoulder, not painfully, but just enough that I wonder how I slept through it.  When I try to inch away from him, he lifts up, yawning—and then he’s stretching, his long, powerful feet flexing.

He looks like something that an FX department is going to want back: their character escaped off their movie set.

He’s like one big special effect to me.  Like any minute, someone will call ‘Cut!’ and later there will be bonus contents on the DVD of my life that will show some guy in a green-screen suit; then I’ll know for sure that CGI magic has tricked me into seeing and believing something crazy almost looked real.

And that’s the thing: he almost looks real—but it’s too crazy to believe.

Meg and Mona would get such a kick out of him.

My eyes fill with the tears I have been working so hard not to shed in the five and a half seconds I’ve been conscious.  It’s a good thing I woke up last night to find the squishy packet beside me, otherwise I’d be dead from dehydration with the way I’ve been crying the last twenty-four hours.  Give or take.  I’m not actually sure how long I’ve been here now.  Besides too long.  That squishy packet… My eyes return to the alien, who seems to be well on his way to falling right back to sleep.

It was thoughtful of him to leave me with his version of water.  When I’d woken up sometime in the night, I’d been facing the wall, a packet of water-gel-substance propped on me.  I don’t know when he joined me on the bed.  But now that I’m processing it, not only was I facing the wall—it was actually like I’d been shoved at it.  My eyes narrow.  Maybe that’s what woke me up: him shoving me.

No!  He seems too… polite to do something so uncivil.

He also seems too polite to drag me over to his side to drape himself over me too.

Did I snuggle up to him?

I might have.

Okay, that might totally have been me.

I wipe at my still-leaking eyes, trying to focus on innocuous things like water, and dehydration.  On anything.  Focus on anything that isn’t… Simone!  Megan!

They’ve got to be so scared, and so, so confused.

AMY, I LOVE YOU.  This chant is as far as I’ve let myself go down the path of ‘Are they safe, are they—’

Amy will be there.  My sister stepped up when the twins’ dad stepped out.  Briefly, I wasted a thought yesterday wondering if he’d help her, but he made it clear he wanted no part in the twins’ lives when he left us and that hasn’t changed in over two years.

My poor, sweet girls.  They’re just getting old enough that they’re noticing they’re missing this fabled ‘dad’ person who exists for kids on TV shows.

And now, they’ll be missing a mom.

Something else!  Think of something else.

I feel the sleep-heavy fingers on my hip flex once.  It feels nice but it reminds me: this Mutant—yes, demoted back to Mutant—locked me up and abandoned me yesterday.

The anger-fueled memory must play out across my face because the alien sleepily peers at me again only to jerk back, eyes going wide.  His brishkers unfurl seeming to stand at full, frightened attention.

I just shake my head at him.  Whatever.  ‘Thanks’ to him, yesterday I had all sorts of time alone to think.  To plan.  To gain resolve.  I’ve got this.

I swallow what feels like a ball of tears as a shudder wracks me.

My nose and cheek suddenly meet an arm.  The Mutant has wrapped me up in an awkward hug, like he’s never quite done this before and isn’t sure how exactly this is supposed to go.

I sniffle, lips trembling up into a smile thinking the aliens I met yesterday didn’t exactly look like they went around doling out many hugs to each other, so this probably really is the first one he’s ever given.  Certainly the first one he’s ever given to a human, I’d think.

I hope.  I hope there isn’t some outer space black market for humans.

They had certainly all looked very surprised to see me, like they’d never seen one of me before.

The bowing was weird, but now that I’ve had some time to think of it, is it really surprising that another culture (or cultures, since they aren’t all the same kind) would have similarities to my own?  Sure, technically, I’ve never bowed to anyone in my life, but is there really a clearer way to demonstrate that you’re welcoming someone?  I didn’t think of that—think of it like that—yesterday.  Huh.  By bowing... that was actually very respectful.

Also further evidence they don’t hug—they bow.  Duly noted.

I smile again, my lips brushing the skin of the alien’s arm.

He startles and leans away from me a little, his brishkers raising up high in what looks like surprise.

I smile wider, and a little sadder.  Because if he’s never hugged anyone before, never experienced the simple comfort of someone smiling into his skin before, it is sad.

He smiles back at me but his comes without the effort that mine feels like it needs.  His is wide, and open, and kind.

Feeling thirst hit me, I feel around for that packet from last night, and check it over in case there is any jelly left.  I sigh.  Nope.  But I do enjoy the slight pleasant tang when I sniff at the package.  Faint now, it was however nice and strong last night when I found it.  It didn’t taste like much, but boy, the manufacturer draws you in with that smell.  Mmm.

When I look up again, it’s to see him looking down at the packet in my hands pretty oddly, right before he throws a baffled glance over his shoulder at the door like he can’t quite believe something.

Pressure in my bladder reminds me that I need to grab his attention and take the opportunity to put my Plan into action.  My Plan, the one I came up with last night when this alien abandoned me.  Yep, still struggling not to feel a little resentful.  Here I was, locked up, scared he wasn’t coming back, and I needed him to.  I needed to be able to try to talk to him.

I back out of his arms and sit up.  This gets him to look back at me, and I carefully enunciate, “Bathroom.  I have to go to the bathroom.”

I repeat it.

He looks into my eyes, taking measure of them individually.  His study is quiet, thoughtful.  Then he makes a croak-chirp.  Although he seems to have no comprehension of my phrase—which comes as no surprise—it’s obvious that he’s all for getting on with our day as he pulls his knees up, rolling over and dropping to the floor, his weight fully absorbed by his ski-like feet.  He insists on picking me up right off the bed and after travelling in the narrower hallway to get here yesterday, I understand why it’s easier if he carries me instead of trying to guide me ahead of him or have me keep up behind him, so I don’t fight it.

I hope it doesn’t take long to get to the bathroom though, because any jostling is going to be dangerous right now.

I flinch a little when we pass the bowl on the floor.  It had been putrid.

It was so bad, I actually wondered (after I swallowed a spoonful of it) if it wasn’t supposed to be food.  Maybe it’s room freshener.  Or a bowl of tile grout.  Or spaceboot polish, or something equally inedible and I can attest that it tasted like all of those things combined—ugh.

I shudder in revulsion and he pauses before he follows my gaze down.  He cackles at a quiet volume and sets his nails on top of my head.

I tense, but he only scritches them against my scalp.

It’s… sort of a mini massage.  Like hair ruffling.

With claws.

Tentatively, I smile up at him.

His smile freezes… sliding right off, just like his hand slides off of my head.  We both look away suddenly, and after a moment, he gulps a chirp and I have to figure that this is his version of clearing his throat—that is exactly how he just used it.  I shake my head—and catch him watching me shaking my head at him.  It makes me feel inexplicably pleased when I see that this appears to amuse him.

Without another attempt at words, we’re on the move.  At least, until we get to the door, which seems to be a bit on the fritz.

Now I get to hear a drum-like grumbling.  From him, not the door.  No, that’d be too weird, right?

Once he manages to coax the door open, we bounce into the corridor where he heads in the opposite direction from where we traveled yesterday to arrive here, so I’m counting it as an early win.  “Bathroom?” I ask, intending to keep the word fresh in his mind.

I sway into him with his next hop and he holds my eyes the entire time before his throat moves and I hear a trilling note.  Sounds like agreement to me.

“Okay.  Thank you,” I tell him, and I get a smile.  A big, no-holds-barred smile that makes my lips curve up in return.

When we reach a blank area of the corridor ‘wall’ that has no tubes crisscrossing it, no wire bundles gathered in alien-zip-tied overhead, he stops and does something magical with this hand that makes the spot open, revealing that it’s a door.

And when it swooshes open, I see what looks like an alien toilet.

“Bathroom!” I say excitedly, clapping my hands.  Maybe I ended up shouting it, because he almost drops me.

“Sorry!” I grin up at his startled face.  “Bathroom.”

I was right!  This can work.  I can do this.  After all, I have tons of practice, don’t I?

Violently, I shove away fresh memories of teaching my girls to speak by word-association games.  I will have all the time in the world to cry over this when I have them back in my arms.  Soon.  Soon we’ll have enough words down that I can tell them how badly I need to get home.