by Pixie Unger
Misconstrued
Copyright © 2020 Pixie Unger & E M Brown
Pixie Unger Publication, Saskatoon, SK, Canada
All rights reserved.
ISBN - 978-1-9991729-7-8
The author respectfully acknowledges that this book was written in Treaty 6 territory, traditional lands of First Nations and Métis people.
Dedication:
This book is dedicated to Rynna whose compassion and generosity got this book started in a time where I had given up.
I want to thank Sarina Irwin for being my cheering section even when I’m lost, Kenzie Rzonca who was incredibly patient with my typos, Nora and Jennifer for all the encouragment and my Patreon readers, I couldn’t have done it without your support.
Misconstrued
My name is Wilhemina Jensen. As far as I know, I am the last living member of my family.
I am one of the few people who survived when the aliens first made contact. I was in my twenties and working as a caretaker for a community hall in a small city when they arrived. Locally, we didn’t see them right away, but their effects on the world were felt everywhere almost immediately. There were riots in the grocery stores that very first day. The whole food-shipping arrangement that North America depends on was gone with in a few weeks. Society broke down and it fell apart, hard.
Neighbours turned on each other. People started going around armed. Families were being killed for their vegetable gardens. The preppers were probably cackling in their own private bomb shelters; the rest of us just tried to get by. We watched the news reports on TV before that went dark. It led to a whole series of conspiracy theories on the internet. The aliens looked like something out of a video game or a movie; they were that much bigger than us. Think seven-foot-tall basketball player, but add an addiction to illegal horse steroids, then tusks, and photoshop their skin to a selection of unnatural grey colours.
The media quickly dubbed them “space orcs,” which people quickly shortened to just orcs. The name stuck, even thought was ridiculous. A whole corner of the internet was devoted to explaining that it had to be fake, because life on another planet wouldn’t really be humanoid. Another group was loudly complaining about the lack of tentacles. Some people assured us that it was fine as long as you didn’t shoot first. Then there were the really out-there ideas suggesting the orcs were actually us from the future using time travel. And then there were cults that claimed the orcs were a penance sent by god to stop whatever thing they personally found objectionable.
The government ran out long before we ran out of dead. Eventually, it got really bad. Bad enough that the mass graves weren’t the low point anymore. Some sort of shadow government, The Resistance, started recruiting people to help rid us of the alien threat.
That winter, those of us shacked up in the old community center barely left the building. We weren’t preppers, but we were at least starting with a fully-stocked kitchen. We had enough skills between us to hunker down and survive. When we finally emerged in the spring, most of the people were gone. It was like a ghost town, with only the occasional orc patrol to watch out for.
Days were spent getting supplies. Food mostly, but also clothes. It was easier to keep your head down and focus on just staying alive. Avoiding the orcs and the random gangs of feral humans, I focused on just getting through today. Every day was “get through today.” And at night, I would be too tired to let the nightmares bother me.
Or so I told myself. In reality, we all ended up crying out in the night at some point. We had all lost so much.
One day at a time, concentrate on getting through today, worry about tomorrow if you got there. Be safe, be smart, be invisible. Take care of each other. And don’t forget to feed the cat.
By the time we emerged in the spring, the orcs had largely stopped looking for us. I thought I was good at avoiding them; it turned out I was just lucky.
I’m not going to lie, I was scared shitless when a gang of aliens found me hiding in the woods near the river. It turned out they treated me better than I could have ever expected, even better than if I had been found by humans instead. It didn’t exactly make me happy, but I was resigned to my fate. The orcs kept the surviving humans they caught in internment camps that I had been vaguely aware of, but mostly as a place to avoid.
In a way, it was a relief to be in a contained environment where food happened three times a day and there were guards to break up any fights. The schoolyard where they were keeping us wasn’t a bad place to be, even if it really was human warehousing. It was a pretty good cross section of humanity. Not as many men as you would expect; they tended to get themselves killed when they fought back. Some kids, not many seniors. It was the tiny selection of people who didn’t die when the world fell apart.
We were all living tents in the park behind the school, with families sharing. No one had their own tent. I was sharing my tent with a couple of women: Erika was about my age, and Barb was about the same age as my mom. It was an odd arrangement. Erika had taken me under her wing when I arrived, but Barb didn’t say much. I’d been there for weeks and I still had no idea what she thought of all of this.
There were enough weird outhouse-style bathrooms for us to use. We could all get clean water from the fountains, and crowd into the gym during storms. The food wasn’t bad, it was just bland and vaguely kibble-like. Institutional, shall we say. Casseroles of unknown origin. I joked about soylent green in the early days.
After a while, I realized the menu had been set out so we were basically getting eight meals on rotation, with no differentiation between breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
Today at lunch was the brown-beige casserole. It was the one that I couldn’t eat. I mean, I could; it didn’t taste any better or worse than anything else they fed us. I just had to remember that anytime I ate … whatever that was, I ended up with a really itchy rash and swollen hands and feet.
Now, I’m no doctor, but I was betting that eating something you knew made parts of your body swell and itch didn’t seem like the best idea, in case it was your throat that decided to swell next time.
Damn. I was really hungry today, too.
So was everyone else. That made it easy to take my full tray and pass it along to Miriam. She and her husband were both in the same camp, and, in the absence of birth control, they were expecting; she needed the extra calories. It had been a long time since any of us were fat enough to even get pregnant.
I followed them to where they were sitting, and waited for her to finish her portion before passing her mine. I hadn’t noticed that one of the aliens had followed me. All three of us froze and looked up when he growled.
“No take!” he growled, barely intelligible. He was tall and grey, his tusks straight, and, aside from a scar through his right eyebrow, he was relatively unmarked. The sides of his head were clipped short, like all of them, but so was the back of his head. What was left of his hair was black and pulled back into a little bun.
“It’s okay!” I explained. “I can’t eat this one. Miriam needs the food, so if I share it with her, it isn’t wasted.”
He just shook his head. “You eat.”
“I can’t,” I tried again. “I get a rash. I get sick when I eat this.”
“Hmmm.” That one was more of a grumble. “Not take, trade.”
Miriam and Nicoli still hadn’t moved. I hesitated. “They did,” I lied. “When Miriam was sick, she gave me her food. I’m holding up my end of the trade.”
The guard narrowed his eyes, but nodded and left.
I thought that was the end of it. Afternoon brought Tai Chi, like always, followed by a supper that was green and uneventful.
Two days later at breakfast, it was brown-beige sludge again.
It looked like the sort of thing your weird aunt would bring to a potluck that was probably made of mushroom soup, brown rice, and mayonnaise. And despite how much it reminded me in smell, colour, and texture of cat food, I still would have eaten it if it didn’t make me want to claw my skin off. I took my plate, but after the last time, no one was hungry enough to take it. I waited for it to be time to turn in our trays and just brought it back, untouched. One of the guards took it from me and frowned. Then he called over his shoulder and someone bigger came over.
It could have been the same one, but as much as I hated to say it, they all looked the same to me. I hadn’t exactly put the effort into learning individual features. He had the same hair, but there wasn’t exactly a lot of variation there. They had different symbols tattooed in red on their arms, but they weren’t human symbols, and I hadn’t been able to figure them out or find a pattern. Still, this one was big enough that it felt like he could block out the sun. He glared at me like I had personally offended him.
I flinched, but managed to mumble, “I still can’t eat this. I’m sorry, but really, I can’t.”
He took the tray from the guy in the clean up line then came and stood too close behind me. I shifted to get a bit more space. He nodded and pointed at one of the doors into the school. I wasn’t happy about being separated from the herd; people who were taken away didn’t always come back.
He gave me a gentle nudge and I thought about refusing for a moment, but I was horribly out-numbered and if I made a fuss, there was no way I was coming back. If I went quietly, I might. Not everyone who went inside disappeared, but enough of them to make us all nervous.
I was steered towards the school’s old cafeteria. There was a meal line for them that had significantly better food than what we were getting. He passed me my tray of beige, then helped himself to chicken, corn on the cob, lemon roast potatoes, and green salad. Then he took my tray in his other hand and went over to sit at one of the tables. He had a little chat with the others at the table, until someone nodded over his shoulder at where I was standing like a traffic island at the end of the food line.
He waved me over.
I came and sat, fidgeting with my hands in my lap. I really did not want to make eye contact.
He nudged me in the back near hard enough to nearly knock me off the bench. When I looked up, the other orcs at the table were grinning at me, and my dinner date was eating my tray of beige goop.
I slowly looked up at him.
He nudged his plate of chicken towards me.
The other orcs were eating with their knives. I didn’t have one, so I had to use my fingers.
It wasn’t, objectively, that good. The chicken was a little over-cooked, but it was still the best thing I had eaten since before they arrived. I just wanted to eat quickly before he changed his mind. I also didn’t want to make myself sick, so I tried to find a balance between hurrying and bolting down my food.
He finished first. I stopped, prepared for him to take his tray back, but instead he gestured for me to keep eating.
I wasn’t going to make him tell me twice.
After breakfast, he led me back out to the school yard and sent me on my way.
My stomach was full for the first time in more than a year, so I went back to my tent and went back to sleep. Food comas are nice, and it wasn’t as though I had anything else to do.
-----
Feeder Orc—as I decided to call him— or someone like him watched me eat my lunch from then on. And my dinner. And every meal after that until, eight meals later, we were back to beige.
He watched me not eat that one again. He stormed over and shouted, “Eat!”
I jumped, dropped my tray, looked at him in horror, and then tried to run away. I should have known it wouldn’t work. They have longer legs than I do. Honestly, blind panic just took over.
He caught me by the back of my shirt before I had made it more than a couple of steps.
I just went limp as a bunch more of them came over and had a chat I didn’t understand. In the end, he let go of me when I struggled, but that just meant I fell to the ground next to my spilled meal. “Pick up,” someone snarled.
I tried to scoop as much of the goop back onto the tray as I could. If they made me eat it anyway, it wasn’t going to be at all improved by the extra playground dirt.
Once again, I was herded into the school, only this time, we went to one of the classrooms on the second floor.
There were a bunch of orcs sitting around a table. Their uniforms were nicer, and they all had a bit of grey in their hair. One of them sighed as he stood up and came over to take my tray.
“If you are refusing to eat in an attempt to get better food, it won’t work,” he said in a surprisingly unaccented voice.
I stared at him for a moment, then shook my head. “I didn’t ask for better food. It’s just that I can’t eat this meal. Normally, I just pass it along to someone else who needs it, but the others are afraid to take it now.”
The older guy glared at me. “You need it. Your meals are balanced to meet all your dietary needs. You need to eat all of them for that to work.”
I swallowed and looked down at my one-size-fits-no-one stretchy shoes. “I can’t,” I whispered. “I eat all the others, but this one makes me sick. I break out in a rash and feel gross for a whole day after eating it.”
He frowned, then snatched the tray from my hands, took three huge strides and dumped it into a garbage can in the corner. Then he waved me out. I turned to leave, but the one who had brought me was blocking the door. He had a hurried conversation in their own language with the older guy. Someone at the table chimed in. There was a quick but heated conversation, and then my guide led me back to their cafeteria. He got his tray of prime rib and took me over to sit at the same table with what were probably the same group.
“Are these your friends?” I asked.
“No,” he snorted, even as one of them said, “Yes.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say. I hadn’t realized that they all spoke English, or maybe it was just these ones.
I waited politely for the guy to eat his lunch, but instead, he pushed it towards me. I stared up at him in shock. “Why are you feeding me?” I whispered.
“So you eat,” he replied.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I picked up the bun and carefully ripped off a piece to eat. I wasn’t happy about this. I wanted the food, but I didn’t like the idea of owing him a favour. “But you need to eat, too.”
That caused a ripple of amusement. Then the guy at the end of the table with the basic army-type hair cut got up and got an empty tray from the line. He brought it over and put a slab of meat on it, then slid it towards me. Someone with a shaved head and a bunch of piercings in his neck intercepted it and added some of his carrots. The next guy had long hair like a horse’s mane; he added all of his zucchini. My host took the tray, to much protest from the others.
“For her,” the meat guy snarled.
I swallowed and went very still. I had to force my voice to be even when I asked, “Why are you feeding me?”
They echoed my stillness. The silence went on too long and became suffocating. Finally, the first one repeated, “So you eat?”
I couldn’t tell if that was a question because he wasn’t sure it was the right answer, or if it was because he thought it was so obvious he didn’t know how I didn’t understand that. I carefully set the bun on the new tray in front of me. “Is this a trap? Because the last guy said I wasn’t getting special food.”
Everyone frowned. I fought to stay still.
Okay, then, time to see if I was clever or dead.
“You’re all a lot bigger than me,” I said softly. They nodded. “You are all too close and I feel like prey.”
There was a long moment of nothing. I looked up into four confused faces. The one at the end rumbled out something I couldn’t understand, and suddenly they were all leaning back from me.
That was a good sign, I thought.
“I would like to go back to the other humans now.”
Nothing.
I pressed my lips together and thought hard. “Humans are a herd species. We do better in groups. At one time, putting us alone in separate rooms was used as torture.” They were still all watching me. “I want to go back to my group now.”
“Eat first.”
I looked up at the one sitting on my left, who was insisting on feeding me, “What’s your name?”
Now he winced. “You can’t say my name.”
“Oh.” There didn’t seem to be anything else to say to that. I picked up the bun again and fidgeted with it.
The one who had seemed to have translated my earlier statement about feeling like prey spoke again. “Chest wrong shape to say our names. He is—” then he made a noise like an elephant rumble.
I stared at him long enough that he ducked his head, either embarrassed or doing a credible impression of being embarrassed. That left me wondering how many of their mannerisms were their own, and how many they were parrotting from watching us.
I put a piece of bun in my mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “You’re right. I can’t make that sound. I can’t say that name.”
They all relaxed a little. That had to be a real response right? Could you fake muscle tension— well, yes, of course you could. That was what actors did all the time. But it seemed more likely that they were fighters tensing for a battle than actors performing a role.
Except they weren’t human, so how would I know?
I finished the bun and repeated, “I would like to go back to be with the others now.”
Mr. Piercings across the table from me asked, in very garbled English, “Oo refoos fud fra us?”
I had to translate that mentally, then think about it. “Obviously, I can’t. If I refuse to eat the food you provide, I have no way to feed myself.” The tension came back at that. “I don’t like leaving the safety of the herd.”
