by Pixie Unger
Which made sense; people have a very different attitude towards the family pet than they do towards a wild dog. Maybe it was easier because I wasn’t being aggressive. The boss orc had described me as “defective;” were they being nice to me the way people were to a three-legged dog at the pound?
When I did get out of here, no one would believe they were kind to me. I thought back to that old Outer Limits episode where the soldier caught as a P.O.W. in space ended up bonding with a woman, only to find out she was one of the enemy aliens all along. Maybe it was like that, maybe they were just being nice to me to get at the other humans.
Maybe the whole point of this was for me to “escape” and lead them to where other free humans were living. It had been long enough that I wasn’t sure I could still find them. If there was even anyone left.
When the knock came in the morning, it was Romeo. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t say anything to me. No, the surprising part was that I was taken back to the school yard and left standing in line for breakfast.
It was green, not beige rations, and I noticed that Miriam received a larger portion. That was something, at least. When I was looking for a place to sit, Erika flagged me over.
“Well, you’re looking well-scrubbed. What happened while you were gone?”
I told her the whole creepy, unexplainable story, and felt somewhat justified when she was shocked that the free-standing toilets were also showers. After we turned in our trays, she had me show her. She immediately cornered a random orc and demanded a towel. He looked shocked, but after a little bit of organization, one was supplied.
She had a bunch of us women huddle around to screen her from prying eyes and she left the door open in case anything went wrong. About the time she was finished, an orc I didn’t recognize sidled over and passed a clean set of clothing down the line for her. Erika was over the moon; we found a clear space and I helped her finger comb out her hair.
“So,” she said, looking hard at me, “the food is better. You get to shower every day. You get your own room, with a door—”
“In a garage,” I interrupted.
She shrugged. “—free healthcare,” she continued, “and no one is molesting you. How the hell do I sign up?”
I stared at her for a long moment. “Damned if I know. Maybe if they come to take me away again, you could just go instead, if you’re so keen.”
Erika snorted with laughter. “They might all look more or less the same to me, but they are definitely keeping an eye on you.” She nodded over my shoulder and I turned to see Mac watching me. To my surprise, she waved at him and he waved happily back.
“Really?” I demanded.
“What? He isn’t even close to the ugliest troll I’ve dated,” she laughed.
I resisted the urge to give her a shove.
“Which one offered to eat you out? That’s the one I want to meet.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake!” I grumbled.
“Exactly!” she teased. “That’s the point. I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but all the nice guys are taken around here.”
I closed my eyes, as if by not looking at the world I could make it not exist for a moment. She was right, of course. Men were more likely to join the army and go out to be killed. That wasn’t any different than the male to female ratios after either World War. It wasn’t as though we were starting in an area with a surplus male population in the first place.
There hadn’t been any world news since they landed. I wondered, again, how many camps like this had been set up around the world. Had any of the countries with nukes managed to use them?
----
I had lunch and dinner in the school yard with everyone else. There were a few more people willing to try the showers. Night had fallen and I was on my way back to Erika’s tent when Tybalt turned up.
“Come now?” he asked, and it was a question.
“Do I get to say no?” I countered.
He just looked confused. “Yes?”
Erika gave me a gentle shove and failed to notice Tybalt getting tense over it. “Oh, go on! You know a garage is better than a tent.” Then she looked at Tybalt. “You make sure you bring my friend back to visit, understand?” she ordered.
Tybalt nodded solemnly. I rolled my eyes.
He turned to lead me away when she shouted, “Hey!”
Tybalt went very still and looked at me, not her.
“You’re a good guy, right?”
Slow nod.
“If I need to ask an orc for help, who else is a good guy?”
He blinked then turned and looked at her while doing a fairly good impression of a stunned bunny.
“Someone who won’t hurt her,” I added softly.
He looked hard at me then. I avoided looking at him until I couldn’t anymore. Once he had my attention he looked around the yard before nodding at an orc with three scars crossing his jawline.
“I think,” I said slowly, “that he tried to be helpful the other night.”
“Really.” Erika wasn’t asking it as a question, but rather she blurted it out like a particularly salacious piece of gossip.
I shrugged, then turned to Tybalt. “Does he live in the same house as you?”
“Same house as us,” he agreed.
Erika leered. I shook my head. “Don’t do anything stupid, okay?”
Erika laughed. “Yes, mom!” Tybalt jumped at the last word. She noticed. “You should get going, you’re making the dictators nervous.” She laughed at the look on Tybalt’s face, then hugged me tight. “Go on then! Take that cat king home and put him to bed.”
I rubbed her back. “G’night!” I waited until we were out of the school and most of the way to the house before I whispered, “Please don’t let anyone hurt her for that last joke. We’re all trying to adjust to the new world as best as we can.”
Tybalt just grunted. After another few steps he said, “Want you to sleep in my bed.”
I stopped walking. He took another step before he noticed I wasn’t moving. I just stood there looking at him.
He gritted his teeth. “Mine. Not everyone’s. Mine.”
I seriously considered turning and running. Instead, I tried to keep my voice even when I contradicted him. “No. Not yours. I am mine.”
His eyes went wide, then he nodded.
I tensed for the next bit. “I’m not sleeping in your bed, but I’m not sleeping in anyone else’s either.”
Nod.
“Do I have to worry about you forcing the issue?”
Shake-shake-shake.
“Good.”
-----
I noticed something was up as soon as I reached the house. They all were standing around grinning at me. All of them, not just the original four. Well, three, since there was no sign of Iago. I swallowed and tried to keep my tone light when I asked, “What did you do?”
I would have to say they chortled because their voices weren’t exactly built for giggling, but it was a matter of range rather than expression. I wasn’t sure what to think of a house full of giddy orcs. Tybalt held out his hand to me and looked really hopeful. Some of the other smiles in the room got a bit tense about that.
Okay.
The bottom line was however nervous Tybalt made me, the whole rest of the house was worse. The ones who were tense about him offering me his hand were complete unknowns. All of that flashed through my brain in an instant, and I took Tybalt’s hand with barely a pause.
He beamed at me like Christmas had come early. It wasn’t exactly comforting.
“I don’t know what you’re up to, and it’s making me worried,” I explained. “I don’t like surprises. ‘Surprise! You’re fired!’ or ‘Surprise! You have an incurable disease!’, there are just too many ways to—” I stopped because we had gotten to the master bedroom. It had a door and there was a paper stuck to it. Looking closer, I realized it was a page out of the magazine I had been reading earlier.
“Not set you on fire,” Mac protested.
I felt like I should address that, but I wanted to just find out what was going on. “Um, good? Can I just go to my room now?”
“Open door!” Mac shouted, making me flinch. Tybalt was only moments behind him in saying something similar, albeit with a lower volume.
I pushed open the door. The room inside didn’t exactly match the one in the picture, but I could see where they had tried. The walls were now painted navy. The room didn’t have wide baseboards or crown molding, but a surprisingly good facsimile had been painted on the walls. The furniture was crisp and white, the linens were white, there was a navy and white throw blanket with a pattern that reminded me of my grandmother’s china on the end of the bed.
There was a dog bed in the corner, just like in the picture.
“Are we getting a dog?” I asked the question, then looked over my shoulder to be confronted by a sea of nervous faces. Someone elbowed Tybalt forward. He gave me a sickly smile and shook his head. “Okay. I was just wondering.” I went to look into the dresser drawers. They were empty. Apparently, they were trying to match the look without really understanding the function. There were two mirrors over the dresser, making it look like a two sink vanity without the sinks.
There were a lot of gold accents including the knobs on the dressers, the round frames on the mirrors, the lamps that were gold toned glass and the piping on the dog bed. I turned the switch on the light; that didn’t work either. They were all watching me expectantly.
“It’s very pretty,” I suggested, not sure what to say.
Romeo pointed at the ensuite.
It could not have been the standard issue for the house. The whole thing, floors, walls, ceiling were all covered in something that wasn’t human made. It had been made to look like marble tile. There was a human toilet and sink and the shower had been reworked to have an orc rain ceiling installed. The whole wall behind the sink was mirrored.
When I tried it, the sink worked, flushing the toilet seemed to work.
“This is really nice,” I murmured.
They just looked so pleased with themselves that I couldn’t help but smile. They were all still standing there looking at me. I shifted awkwardly. If this was my room now, I wanted them to leave. I was more than a little afraid of the idea that my having the master bedroom meant that I had to share. Okay, time to think strategically.
I could fake yawn, but I had no idea if they would take the hint. Of course no one had actually said this was my room now, only that they wanted me to see it.
I cleared my throat. “Um, is this my room? Am I expected to share that bed? Or are you just showing off your skills before I go back to the garage? Because I realize this could go either way.”
Tybalt surprised me by getting the hint. “Your room. We leave.”
“Thank you,” I replied.
They did and as the hallway cleared, I realized none of them had been in the room with me. They had all been watching from the doorway. That was very interesting. Tybalt was the only one left watching me as I thought about that.
“You keep being nice to me and I keep waiting for the not nice to start.”
Tybalt frowned a little. “Have to be nice. If not nice, someone else take you.”
“Who?”
He shrugged. “Someone nice who you like better.” He was still and quiet. “A human male. Or the one you said was helpful. Maybe. You gave him to Erika.”
I tensed at that. “Is he going to be nice to her?”
He just looked puzzled. “Yes? Not many women talk to us. No one wants to make you stop.”
I looked around the room again. It was a human bed, a queen sized. “You wanted me to sleep in your bed instead of here. Why?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “This—” he gestured, indicating the whole room, “not mine. Everyone helped. Gift from everyone. I want you to have my gifts. I want you to be mine more than everyone’s.” It was a quiet speech with him addressing his boots rather than me.
“Is that why you said no when I asked if Romeo, Mac, and Iago were your friends that first day?”
He nodded, still not looking at me.
“But I spend a lot of time with them,” I pointed out.
He sighed and flopped his head back to look at the ceiling for a moment before suddenly startling me with eye contact. “Not important enough to pay for your food alone. Not … rich or…” he shrugged helplessly, “not wanted enough to—” he stopped abruptly.
I sat on the bed. “Why don’t you come in and explain it to me?”
He shook his head. “Your room. I stay out until you choose me.”
“I’m inviting you in.”
“No. You don’t understand and I don’t take.”
I just stared at him. “You’re right. I don’t understand. So help me.”
He nodded. “I like you. If I do nice things, maybe you like me back.”
I considered that. “Is this like dating? Or like feeding a stray?”
He just looked confused.
I sighed. “Am I here as a person or as an animal?”
“Person!” He blurted out emphatically. “If you like me, maybe as husband?”
I blinked stupidly at that. “You want to get married? But I just met you!”
Tybalt nodded. “I do nice things, you see if you like.”
I considered that some more. “But … this isn't like dating. Not with four of you.”
He pulled something that looked like a circle of plastic out of his pocket and poked it a few times, then nodded. “Yes. Orcs different, have many husbands.”
I thought about him and Mac. “I think this is a lot more complicated than I was expecting.”
Shrugging, he said, “Not complicated. You see if you like how we treat you. If you do, you keep us until you don’t.”
———
Erika was at breakfast the next morning. With Mr. Helpful.
“Holy shit! What are you doing here?” I asked, feeling flabbergasted.
She laughed and patted my cheek. “I wanted to see you so I told that guy that if he arranged for me to have lunch with you, I would look at his dick—”
“Erika!”
She grinned. “What? I said look not touch. He seemed pretty happy with my offer, he didn’t even wait for lunch. What’s his name anyway? I can’t get him to tell me.”
“We can’t pronounce their names, you’ll have to pick one for him,” I explained.
Mac and Romeo were glaring at him, but it was Tybalt who added, “Name is worth more than breakfast. Looking is worth more than lunch.”
She and I exchanged a look. Nameless just seemed embarrassed.
I was still struggling with the idea that giving someone a name was a service that had value.
“You could name him dipshit!” someone a few tables over suggested. People laughed. Mr. Helpful suddenly looked dangerous for a moment. Erika noticed too and shifted away from him. As soon as she did, I could see him force himself to relax. That was interesting.
She sat next to me, Helpful-possibly-Dipshit sat next to her, giving her a bit more room after Romeo said something. It was almost funny. They were all squished tightly together to try to give us as much room at the table as possible.
As breakfast was wrapping up, Erika asked, “Where are you going next?”
I shrugged. “Wherever they send me, I guess.”
She turned to the closest one of my orcs, who happened to be Romeo, and asked, “Can Mina hang out with me today?”
He blinked, then nodded.
“Okay! I need you to kick my ass and make me do yoga. I haven’t since you left.”
I grinned at that.
“Right after we look at this gentleman’s junk,” she added.
My three looked alarmed. The gentleman in question looked offended. The peanut gallery laughed.
“Not junk!” he protested. “Nice dick.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll be the judge of that,” she declared with a straight face, as though this
was a perfectly normal way to pay for breakfast.
Which, now that I think about it …. In theory, they were a different species. I should be as objectively attractive to them as an orangutan was to me. The problem with that theory was the couple of half-orc babies in the camp.
One of the fundamental qualities of speciation, as I understood it, was the inability to cross breed. These guys had arrived on space ships. How in hell were half-orcs even possible? Parallel evolution is one thing; this was something else. Either way, the end result was that I was not inherently safe.
“Show me,” she announced, waving a hand to indicate he should proceed as she spun around on the bench.
Mr. Helpful/Dipshit looked really uncomfortable but slowly got to his feet. He stepped back a little and reached for his fly. Someone laughed.
“How about we do this somewhere with a little more privacy?” I suggested. My three didn’t look pleased with the suggestion. “Like the medbay,” I added.
That was how I ended up sitting on a chair with Erika on one side of me and the medic on the other. The poor orc dropped trousers and stood there awkwardly, not sure what to do with his hands.
“Huh,” Erika remarked.
“Yeah. That’s a penis alright,” I agreed.
“It’s not as … big as I thought it would be,” Erika mused.
I managed not to laugh, but my cough wasn’t subtle. She gave me a playful shove, which had me crash into the medic.
“He might still be a grow-er not a show-er,” I pointed out.
“Well, yes, but I was expecting a total horror show. I’m sure there were toys bigger than that.”
The medic just sounded confused when he asked, “Do you want to see if it works?”
“No!” we blurted out at the same time. “I think that’s enough for one day,” I added.
Erika was fighting not to laugh. The poor guy just looked horrified. “Well done soldier, you can put your pants on now.”
His cock twitched when she said that.
“Right! Now that that’s over, yoga?”
“Awesome sauce!” Erika replied.
Everyone else in the room looked completely confused. The orc getting back into his pants hesitantly asked, “You want me to—”
