CAVE ALIEN

by Renard, Loki

  The rest of his posse have headed out to the camp fire and are sitting around with liquor. I don’t see any other womenfolk in this camp and that doesn’t bode well for me. Men have lustful natures, and they get real good at sharing when there’s only one woman around. I’m not keen on being spread this thin. I got to get out of here, and quick, before the drink gets in their blood and they decide collectively that they’re going to take what’s owed to them for my rescue.

  He turns away and starts talking to another feller, so I turn and start walking away. I figure I’m free now and I’d better leave to make sure I stay that way. Men have a habit of rescuing women only to turn them into prisoners all over again.

  I’m only a few steps away when a big hand comes down on my collar, yanking me backwards without warning.

  “Now where do you think you’re running off to?”

  “I ain’t staying here, Mister. I ain’t entertaining all you men, not even if you did save my life.”

  “Entertain?” It takes him a second to work out what I’m referring to. When he does, his lips thin and he presses them real hard together, talking through gritted teeth like he’s a ventriloquist. “You ain’t here to entertain anyone, girl. You’re here for your own safety. Under my protection.”

  “And who are you?”

  “Name’s Orion Steelbane,” he drawls.

  Orion Steelbane. No way in hell am I standing in front of that murderous son of a bitch. I heard he was dead more than once. But… shit. Now I’m looking at him proper and it’s all making sense. Talk about out of the frying pan into the fire.

  “Orio…. oh… fuck,” I swear under my breath.

  “Just Orion to you,” he smirks as my heart starts to thunder in my chest.

  Want more Scythkin?

  The Scythkin species were first introduced in the Possessive Aliens series, three standalone romances featuring these powerful, dominant alien males and the human females who love them.

  Check out the Possessive Aliens here:

  Mine

  Interstellar Human Petting Zoo

  Humans Must Kneel

  Enjoy this Interstellar Human Petting Zoo excerpt…

  “ARRRRRGHHH! MY EYES!”

  Ten minutes earlier…

  Tarkan

  “Tarkan, take care of this.”

  Usually that phrase means I have to kill something.

  It means that this time too.

  I have been tolerating the irritating presence of unaware aliens around me, milling about in various stages of consumer sloth. Upon hearing those words, I take a deep breath and smile with pure contentment.

  “THERE’S A GIRL IN THERE!”

  Reaper’s human screams at me from an ever increasing distance. She is being hauled physically back to our ship before things get messy, dangerous, and generally dismembered. She is desperate to be believed, though Reaper and I both know she is probably wrong. Humans are rare, so rare as to be functionally extinct.

  I am standing outside a shabby tent with a crooked sign which reads: INTERSTELLAR HUMAN PETTING ZOO.

  This is one of many shitty attractions which throng the ‘entertainment’ sector of this space trading post. The likelihood of there actually being a human here is so vanishingly low we’d have more chance of flying through a sun and surviving the ordeal.

  But what if she’s right?

  I draw another deep breath in and feel the disguise which covers my body from head to begin to thin, straining with the effort it takes to contain my true form. To the outside world, I am a ten foot tall fluffy lovebug. Behind the fur lurks the reality: I am scythkin. I am one of trillions of vicious creatures born in clutches, hatched from eggs laid in the wastelands of the civilizations our kind already conquered. I am a being made for one purpose: to kill.

  Our original plan was to keep a low profile. Reaper, the very same Reaper who just told me to start with the slaughter, strongly impressed on me that we must not draw attention to ourselves. Here on this trading outpost in the middle of a remote sector, the quality and number of law enforcement is dubious. There could be two little old fladgies in a cart driving around wagging their fingers at people, or there could be a hundred devouring orckrills ready to unleash their poison tentacles. You never know.

  Don’t make any scenes, he insisted before we left the ship. Be careful to blend in. And remember, our disguises don’t stand up to that much punishment.

  He’s right. My suit is about to split at the seams for some one hundred percent authorized violence for an excellent cause: we’ve found a human.

  I pay the door creature and I walk in just like any other customer might. May as well keep the element of surprise going - and oh, what a surprise it is going to be.

  Unlike One, the naive little human who belongs to Reaper, I’ve been in plenty of these places before. They’re all pretty much the same, dark hovels overselling underwhelming lies to customers too young or too parochial to know better.

  I stroll through the sideshow casually, knocking smaller aliens out of the way with my furred legs. Some of them curse at me. They don’t know how lucky they are. They run away whinging after a good boot sends them flying, but they’ll be glad for every step of distance they’ve gained from me once the screaming starts.

  HUMANS! REAL HUMANS!

  A flashing sign points in the direction of the display.

  It’s dark inside the tent, which doesn’t matter to me because my vision compensates for practically all light conditions. I can see rows of cages containing all sorts of bedraggled looking alien animals, most of them non-sentient, many of them food class.

  Sometimes it is difficult to tell what is alien and what is animal, but there are guidelines. When alien species first came together to trade and fight, we had to make a distinction between two types of life form. Who could you eat? Who could you bargain with? Who could be farmed? Traded? Owned?

  In the end, after much fighting and many regrettable meals, the decision was made to make speech the deciding factor. Any alien capable of communicating via voice, or gesture, is not to be consumed. Of course, that just means a lot of creatures are gagged and bound before death nowadays, but at least there are rules.

  After a quick stroll around the tent, I come to a regrettable conclusion. There are no humans here, just a few Tarnisians with their gills amputated, sitting in a corner pretending to be people.

  Oh well. I’m a very big boy. I’m used to disappointment.

  I turn to leave, but as I do, a scent catches me. It is filtering down a small dark corridor I could easily have missed if it were not for the pungent draft which caught my nose and now draws me down the narrow passage until I find something I never expected to find again.

  A human.

  She looks less human than the butchered aliens on display, but scent does not lie. Underneath those chains and all that filth, behind the veil of grime and matted hair, there is a human female. I feel my senses thrilling to her, locking on to her. My mind is filled with disbelief, but I know what I am seeing, I can make out the shapes of her limbs, the curve of her hip, the length of her leg curled up against her body. She is chained more aggressively than any other exhibit here. There are bands of metal on her wrists and ankles, and at her neck and waist. Heavy chain binds her to the floor and wall. I have never seen a human kept this way, not even during the fairly dark periods of human history. She is not moving. She’s just a little lump of human, curled up against the world. The only indication that she is alive comes from the fact that I do not smell any decay.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  I look down to see an elbublian standing next to me. Figures. Elbublians are traders, scammers, liars, and exceptional cooks. You always eat at an elbublian restaurant, and you never leave your valuables unattended. Elbublians are recognizable by their stature - which is very short. They rarely grow any taller than three feet, and for their stomach pouches, which bulge with traded riches.

  “What’s that?” I point
at the human girl. “Is it for sale?”

  “That’s something a little special,” he says, his teeth flashing in a broad, friendly smile which inevitably hides a world of lies. Reaper once told me that a study had shown elbublians are actually allergic to truth. They’re born talking, and everything they say from birth onwards is a lie. But what he just said appears to be true. “And yes, it is, for the right price.”

  “What kind of animal? Is it for eating?”

  The disguise I am wearing makes me look like a nice, but stupid kind of species. The kind elbublians love to take advantage of. I can see his diamond shaped eyes gleam with greed, and it is all he can do not to rub his four hands together in glee.

  “It’s a human,” he says. “And they're not good eating, but they make good slaves.”

  “Why is that one chained up?”

  “She’s untrained,” he says.

  Obviously I was not meant to see this, but just as obviously, this elbublian thinks I am too stupid to understand what I am seeing. If he had any idea how precious a human woman is, there is no way she would be kept this way. That makes me curious. Has the news of the destruction of the human homeworld not penetrated this deep into space? Or does he know something I don’t?

  “She must be fake.”

  He looks offended. “That’s a real genuine human woman!”

  If it wasn’t for the smell, that uniquely human tang, I wouldn’t believe him.

  “Then why do you have her out the back? Humans are big money.”

  “She doesn’t know how to behave,” he says. “She bites and kicks, but a big guy like you, you wouldn’t have any trouble holding her down, and…”

  “Wait,” I say, interrupting him before he triggers the rage in me so completely I can no longer contain it. “Where did you get her?”

  Reaper would be so proud of me for asking questions first instead of just twisting this disgusting little creature’s head off and hurling it across the marketplace. I am doing what is known as gathering intelligence, even though every second we stand here and discuss the girl is another second she suffers in filth and chains. I make notes in mental parenthesis as the elbublian talks.

  “We purchased her (lie) from the Interstellar Gardens (never heard of it). They had just taken on an exhibit of humans and other Earth species. Tried to house the tigers with the humans, but it didn’t go well. Anyway. This one was supposed to be our display piece, but she keeps trying to attack the customers, so we’re keeping her back here until she learns to behave.”

  “She’s filthy.”

  “Let me clean her up for you,” he says, clearly eager to make the sale.

  He picks up a bucket of nearby water and throws it over her. It hits her tender body, rushing over shivering exposed skin which bears marks of older cruelty. She barely flinches, and I know that is because she has been hurt so very many times before she doesn’t respond to pain anymore. To break an animal this badly, you have to hurt it relentlessly day and night for reasons it cannot understand until it no longer fights, no longer complains, no longer even reacts.

  I look at him, and I smile. This conversation is over.

  42

  SPLASH!

  I keep my eyes closed against the cold cascade of water, knowing that the initial shock is not the worst of what is to come. The seeping cold will soon make my skin prickle with heat that isn’t there, my muscles cramp and my bones ache.

  There are sounds and noises. Shapes moving close to me. I close my eyes against them and I pray for death to come for me before they do. I know the end is near. I’ve been waiting for it for a very long time. I didn’t know it would come this way. I thought I’d just fade away back here, take one last breath and slide into oblivion.

  But it’s noisy now, and not in the way it usually is. The air doesn’t ring with jeering, squeaking, and shouting. There are loud voices, but they’re sort of… shrieking. And gurgling.

  If I still had a fear response, I might be afraid. Instead, I’m just… aware. I have been numb for so long I don’t recall how to worry. I don’t know how to care. I don’t know how to do anything at all besides breathe. Exist. I don’t know if I ever knew any other way of being.

  My memory is very short. It began when the chains went on in darkness, and since then it has been so similar that I cannot tell one day from the next. There are two ingredients to every moment of my existence: hunger and pain, and neither one of them help me tell the time.

  A particularly sharp shriek rings out next to me and my eyes open with what is left of my curiosity.

  There is a big pink and blue fluffy animal very close to me. I think they call them Pandacares. They’re exhibit #134. But this one is far more active than any specimen I have ever seen before, much larger - and it just ripped its own head off.

  Interesting.

  I watch the body of the pandacare fall down, a senseless sack of skin. Out of the fluffy animal suit emerges a massive scythkin marauder. I know it’s a scythkin marauder because one of those beasts was briefly known as exhibit #97 before it broke out, killed almost every other exhibit, and the exhibitors as well. I enjoyed that day. I thought, for a moment, it might kill me too, but it didn’t.

  This one is killing already. It takes my captor, impales him on its ridges and then twists him into two pieces, wringing his guts out as if he is dirty laundry. Scythkin are the most frightening species in the universe. They are designed to dominate, kill, and possess. Not necessarily in that order. I know that, because that’s what it said on the Scythkin’s cage before it came out of sedation and did the second of those things to everything it encountered between it and the exit.

  I was so jealous of it then. It was so strong. Nothing stopped it. But this one might be even more fearsome, because this one is not frightened, and it is not trying to escape. This one is killing the aliens who have been holding me. Where one falls, another comes. Stupid. They should be running away from the killing, but I suppose they don’t know what has been unleashed in the back of their hellish circus tent.

  Scythkin are naturally heavily armored. This one has fangs and horns and sharp protrusions all over its body, each of them utterly lethal.

  One, two, three, four, all the proprietors come to try to save their friends, and one, two, three, four, they are all turned into pieces of their former selves, broken down into their component parts, becoming nothing more than sludge on the floor.

  Then it turns to me. Looks at me with eyes that burn like fire. It is my turn.

  The beast moves toward me with purpose, eyes glowing, sharp ridges fully expanded, navel channels awash with blood. Scythkin have special channels between their muscles where the blood and viscera wash down. Quite fascinating. I’ve never seen one up this close. It is likely to be the last thing I ever see. I am okay with that. I am chained and restrained, so there is no way to escape, and I long ago learned that there’s no point trying. Besides, I don't have much of a life to save. I think maybe I had a life before this, but I cannot remember it. Every moment before becoming exhibit 42 has been systematically erased from my mind. And maybe, now, I am to be finally erased as well. I owe this beast a debt of thanks.

  The closer it gets, the more detail I can see. It has claws, each one as long as my face. They extend toward me and I watch them come with detached interest. It might hurt when they scythe through my skin, but I have experienced more pain than I can contain already and the prospect of more doesn’t concern me. Every time I am hurt, I feel my reluctant life flash and flutter inside me, proving that against all odds I am still here. Still drawing miserable breath.

  I brace myself for the cleaving of flesh, but instead all I hear is the tinkle of breaking chain. The beast is not attacking me, but my bonds. He snaps every single one of the chains holding me in place, the ones at my ankles, the ones at my wrists, the one that keeps my waist in place, and the one at my neck. The manacles are still in place, but I am no longer chained to the filthy floor where I have been held for lon
ger than I can begin to count.

  But I am not free.

  The beast takes firm hold of me, lifting me against its body. I become smeared in the exsanguination of unfortunate species it has already slain, but I do not fight. There is no sense in struggle. Not against my previous captors, and not against this one. I am limp in his arms, submissive to yet another capture as I am carried away at high speed. The scythkin is racing through the crowd with some particular destination in mind. I close my eyes, not caring where I am going, or what happens to me when I get there. It is just another event unfolding, another experience inflicted on me by an unfeeling and disinterested universe.

  Tarkan

  I can’t believe I have a human in my grasp. I wasn’t entirely certain she was a human until I touched her. There is a way humans feel that no species can replicate. There's a softness of the skin, a certain suppleness that is not typical of any other animal. Humans are delicate. Their bones are soft and kept entirely on the inside of their bodies. It’s such a useless design, but it makes the females so beautifully vulnerable, their soft curves so completely exposed.

  This one is not in good condition. The human we found all those months ago was not either. But where One had been battling a harsh environment, this girl has been systematically and deliberately abused. I can see marks on her skin, old bruises and cuts, not to mention other abrasions from ongoing harsh treatment and rough captivity.

  I wish I could kill her captors all over again, but unfortunately life can only be taken once, and…

  STOP! SECURITY!

  Red signs begin to flash all around me. Apparently, someone has taken exception to the rampant murder which just took place. I hope Reaper has the ship warmed up and ready to go, or this is going to turn into a serious bloodbath.