by Gayle Keo
As she was putting the last book in her basket on the shelf War & Peace by Tolstoy, an earthquake began to rock the shelves of the library. Julie moved just in time as two shelves collapsed against each other creating a cave that all her books rained down from. She found herself on her bottom, on the floor as the tremors stopped as soon as they came. Her heart was pounding and she called out for Ethel but heard no response. Was the old woman hurt in the back room? After a few minutes of sitting, waiting to make sure the worst was over, Julie pulled herself to stand, arms and knees shaking as she looked at the books that very well could have been her death. A part of her wanted to cry as she looked around the rest of library. Other shelves had toppled over and all the books were out of order. It was going to take days to clean it up. There was a double despair—on one hand she had to clean this mess, but on the other hand no one would even come in to try and find a book to read.
“I’m just so tired of always being alone, useless and alone,” she told the shelves. Julie swallowed back the despair and jumped a couple of times on the ground to make sure it wouldn’t move, then tried to move the shelves up right. They wouldn’t budge. She was going to need help.
“Ethel!” she called again. Still no response, Julie made her way towards the front of the library, gingerly stepping over books when a cold hand wrapped itself around her ankle. Julie fell down and screamed.
*****
The hand belonged to a man or at least someone man-shaped because he looked like no male she had ever seen. He let out a groan and let go of her ankle so that she could scurry away—as far away as the bookshelves would allow her to flee. It looked like he had crawled through the front door and the useless metal detector they had in case anyone wanted to come in and rob the library of its books. No one else was around—no one was there to see what she was seeing. Julie didn’t believe what she was seeing.
The man wasn’t human, or at least no human she had ever laid her eyes on. Long silver hair fell around his collapsed form—a form that was tall, taller than most men, but lengthy instead of bulky. He wore a royal purple suit—defiantly not the fashion of today’s world—with tears throughout it. The way he was lying on his side didn’t allow her to see the face. Injured, that was the only thing she could really get her mind to wrap around. This not-quite-human was injured and bleeding silver all over the carpeted floor that, she had to admit, was in need of a cleaning. He let out a groan and raised his head up to look at her, the face was angular with a masculine chin but the features were almost feminine. His eyes were wide slits of pure black, but if she stared closely enough she felt like the entire universe lay inside them, small swirling star systems. His lips were thin, a pale blue, his overall skin color was white. Not the white they labeled people, but the white of a clean sheet of paper ready to be print or a cloud on a sunny day. He opened his mouth trying to say something, but she couldn’t understand. Julie crept a bit closer and that was when she realized there was a large gash on his side, and on his arms. He was bleeding so quickly out of the wounds that Julie knew they needed pressure placed against them to stop the flow. She had nothing but books and they wouldn’t stop the bleeding.
Julie removed her dress, looked at the various cats on it, took a deep breath and found a pair of scissors and started to cut. She cut long strips out of the lower part of her dress and moved to stop the bleeding on one of his arms, wrapping around the one that reached for it and tying it off. The man-creature watched her as she moved, applying pressure against the wound on the side. He let out a low hiss but kept still.
“This is going to need to be sewed shut,” she muttered to herself only faintly aware she was kneeling in front of a man like creature in nothing but heels, a bra, and a pair of blue panties.
“Human,” the man finally said. His voice in a language she could understand made her jump.
“Human and English,” he repeated, his voice was faint. There was so much pain on his expression.
“Y-yes, human, English, and my name is Julie,” she rattled off. “We need to get you to a hospital.”
“No, no human care, no human can find me,” he muttered, his eyes were closing and he began to faint. His lids fell closed and Julie was left with a decision on what she should do. No, if he was some otherworldly thing she couldn’t very well take him to a hospital. But where could she take him? Julie looked at the deserted parking lot to her old white Toyota Corolla and thanked the gods—or whatever was out there—for leather seats. For the most part she had stopped the silver blood from gushing, and went to the back to find clothes to wear. She found an old shirt that said ‘Support Your Local Library’ that they had tried to sell at a fundraiser and put it on. It came down to her knees but she was covered enough. Julie looked at the remains of her dress and scooped it up—maybe she could make a cute top out of it. Her hands were slick with silver blood, but if she stopped to think about it, she knew that she would begin to panic. Instead she kept her head in the mind space of keep going. Nothing ever exciting happened in this town, she should be happy that it was happening to her. That was her mantra that played in her head as she went back over to the body to figure out how to move it.
Julie rolled him over onto his back and took in the fine cut physique of the creature. So tall, lean muscle, she would appreciate it all later when she could find a way to stitch him up. There were sewing needles at her apartment along with a large tub—a must for a bookworm. Julie picked him up from behind and linked her arms underneath his, bringing his shoulder to her chest. She kicked off the heels and started to drag him out to the parking lot, towards her car. He was heavy, and dead weight at that. Adrenaline pumped through her blood and she was surprised at how quickly she got him outside and to the back seat of her car. Glad for click buttons, she unlocked her car. The hardest part was crawling in and pulling him through her back seat. She heard a few groans of protest but he was hurt enough that he was not going to run away, or help. His skin felt so cold but his blood was warm. She crawled backwards out the other door and walked around the car to bend his long legs into it so she could close it.
Julie ran barefoot to the library, Ethel had not come out but she realized it was because Ethel had apparently left early. She grabbed her pumps and remains of her dress before locking the door to the library. She was closing early for the day but it was unlikely anyone would notice. If they peeked inside and saw the shelves fallen over surely they could figure it out for themselves. Julie darted back to her car and opened the passenger door and slid inside. The man-creature lifted his head to look at her, look around at what they were in. Maybe he was a fairy of some sort, she had always believed in fairies—ever since she read Peter Pan.
“Where… where are you taking me?” the man asked her. The sound of his voice sent unexpected chills up her spine, there was something velvety to the tone.
“I’m taking you to my place where I can try to sew you up,” Julie said, surprised at how determined her voice was.
“No other English humans?”
“None,” Julie said as she began to carefully back out of the parking lot. The movement sent him back against the seat and he let out another moan that let her know she had hurt him.
“You just better like cats,” Julie said then began to drive home.
*****
The other-being was in and out of consciousness as Julie drove to her apartment. She drove carefully expecting to see more damage done by the earthquake but saw no evidence anything had happened. Her passenger was not much of talker—at least not in any language she had ever heard or understood. There was a steady almost sweet-song coming from him while he was awake. What was she going to do if he needed a blood transfusion? What if he died? Then what was going to happen? Julie’s thoughts were racing as she pulled into her parking spot in front of her apartment complex. Julie was finding many things to be grateful about, one of them being that her apartment was on the first floor. Cleopatra gazed out at her with mismatched eyes, one yellow and one blu
e, from the windowsill. Julie looked back behind her to see how her passenger was doing.
“Are you awake?” she asked.
“I am not sleeping,” he said, gazing up at her. He had moved to his back and was currently admiring the bandage wrap around his arm.
“Can you walk?” Julie asked.
“If I must, but I will start… human word for it, bleeding, I will start bleeding again,” he said.
Julie was just glad he had not bled out all over her backseat. She got out of the car and moved to help him out of the backseat. Hopefully no one saw—that would make people ask questions. There is Julie leading some stranger who looked like he should have been in a 80s rock band into her apartment. It would be the most excitement the town had since the nudists decided to go to Walmart three years ago. He leaned heavily on her, and it was an awkward lean, he was much taller than her and she was in heels. As soon as he stood, the wound broke open again and drops of silver followed their trail to her apartment where she fumbled with the door.
“Julie, I apologize but…” he broke off, and suddenly he was dead weight upon her. It took the last of her strength to pull him into her kitchen area where she laid him flat on the floor. Cleopatra watched from the counters, moving back and forth, letting out a meow of protest. Julie pressed a hand to his forehead and it was like touching ice, she jerked back. Did he need a warm bath? She would worry about that after she stitched him up. Julie found a pair of kitchen shears and began cutting away his shirt. Underneath the blood she found a solid body, with strange black tribal tattoos up his chest that extended to both arms. There were little white specks in them as well, and she could have sworn she saw them swirl. Below his right ribcage is where something had slashed him, she couldn’t tell what but she knew it needed to be sewed shut.
Julie got off the floor, locked her apartment door and closed all the blinds, then went to find her sewing needles and black thread. There was alcohol she could use to sanitize the needles in the bathroom, but she had no idea if she was doing any of this correctly. He was still unconscious on the floor as she took in a deep breath, steadying shaky hands, and threaded the needle.
“Just like hemming jeans, Julie, just think of it like hemming jeans,” she said to herself.
It was nothing like hemming jeans. It was slippery and hard to pull the skin together so it would stay. Several times she dropped the needle as she worked, but her patient stayed unconscious the entire time. It was like sewing up an ice cube and it took her thirty minutes to finish. By the end of her crappy sew job she was covered in the silver blood, but she noted the other-being was breathing deeper, easier. The bleeding had stopped. She didn’t want to touch the cat-made bandage on the arm because it hadn’t shot out blood since she had done it. Julie was worried about how cold this creature felt and stood to go run a bath.
Her apartment was small, quaint, and filled with books. She didn’t own a TV, but from wall to wall were shelves lovingly filled with novels and small trinkets she found in the stores. Julie had decided to only fill her place with things that made her happy, so each item was special to her in some little way to her. There was a large brown couch in the center of her living room that faced a gas fireplace she turned on from time to time. On the other side of the living room were two doors, one that led to her bedroom and the other to her bathroom.
Julie began to run a warm bath, at the same time stripping from her own clothes so she could take a shower. She had a closed-in glass shower beside the tub. Today was not a bath day, today was a day to wash the silver blood that looked like she got in a fight with a can of spray paint and lost. She scrubbed herself clean and turned the water off. When she moved to open the door, she let out a scream falling backwards and nearly hitting her head if it were not for the hand that grabbed her. She locked gazes with the man, fairy man, werewolf man, unicorn maybe? She wasn’t sure, but she was very aware that right now she was naked and that he was definitely of the male gender. He, on the other hand, did not seem to notice and would have fit in well with the nudists.
“Julie, I startled you. We must make acquaintances, I am Sion, my name is Cyrus,” he began. Julie’s face was beaming red and as soon as she got a towel she wrapped it around her form, skirting away to not look at him. He stopped all he was saying, dropping his hand to the side and watching her with a confused look on his face.
“I am doing some human custom wrong,” he said. “I apologize. I awoke and you were gone, when I saw the water I thought it was time to bathe and maybe humans made acquaintances in the bath,” Cyrus said.
“N-n-no, not normally, no. Humans are rarely naked around each other, but… but the bath is for you. I am going to find clothes,” Julie kept her eyes down and skirted past him. She couldn’t deny there was a part of her that wanted to make acquaintances with him in the bathtub, but she chastised that side of her brain until it shut up. There were small silver droplets on her carpet from where he walked, and she could see his discarded clothes in a neat pile in her kitchen. Cleopatra was sniffing them.
“Does he smell safe?” she asked the cat. Cleopatra just stretched out her front paws and followed Julie into her room where she promptly claimed the queen size bed. Julie found a pair of jeans to wear along with tight fitting shirt of purple she felt made her look slender. Without thinking about it she started to put just a little make-up on and scolded herself when she was done.
“Stop all those thoughts from going through your head Julie Grows, it is not going to happen, and it is very unladylike to think that way,” she told her reflection.
“Is it normal for humans to talk themselves as well?” Cyrus said, standing at the door holding one of her red towels around his hips.
Julie flushed, suddenly liking unconscious Cyrus more than awake and semi-alert one.
*****
Cyrus kept his towel on, but he said he did it only because she seemed more flustered with it removed. He now sat on her couch, idly petting her cat. The bandage she created for him was still on and so was the badly stitched job. The only clue that Julie was picking up that he was getting better or healing was that the tattoos semi-dormant before were now definitely swirling quickly. She fixed food in the kitchen, nothing fancy just some chicken she had marinated and cut up some broccoli to steam. All Cyrus had really asked of her was for water, which he drank a lot of. He said he was Sion, not human, did that mean she had an actual alien sitting on her couch petting her cat?
“I hope you like chicken,” she said.
“If it is an edible substance I will appreciate it whether it is good or not,” he said.
Cleopatra jumped away from him and wound herself around Julie’s legs letting her know it was time to feed her. She stepped back from their meal and went to feed her. Cyrus moved slightly on the couch to take in the sight more.
“So this fur thing owns you then?” he asked.
“No, I own her. She’s a cat, my pet, don’t you have one?”
“But you feed and water her, and she seems to believe the house is hers, how does that make her a pet? And no, she is the first cat I have seen,” Cyrus replied.
“I rescued her from a shelter when she was a kitten, and they do say that cats own people not the other way around,” Julie said thoughtfully. Cleopatra purred at her dinner.
Julie brought the food and more water to the small table she had in front of the couch. Cyrus gingerly picked up the plate and used the fork to pick at the chicken. Before Julie had gotten two bites in, his food was already gone.
“Thank you, this will help with the healing,” he said. Then he touched her messy stitch mark and the bandage.
“These will help as well.”
“What are you?” Julie asked.
“I am Sion, a Prince of Sion, I told you this when you fell in the shower,” he said. Julie didn’t want to be reminded of falling in the shower.
“I’ve never heard of a Sion, or a Prince,” she flushed. She had a nearly-naked Prince over at her dusty little apar
tment.
“It is a side dimension from your world, it is like we co-exist but we cannot see each other. My brother was trying to kill me for the throne, as is custom, so I jumped through a portal and landed at your library. I am in your debt for saving me. I was for certain going to bleed out,” he said. He held her gaze when he talked to her. When he was done she remembered how to breathe again, even coughed before settling on her food.
“You always kill for the throne?” Julie asked.
“Or marry, but neither of us has found love, and with father sick we had to fight,” Cyrus said. He leaned back against her couch looking troubled. Julie sat on the floor watching him, finishing half her food before offering him the rest, which he took with grace.
“But if you or he found love, you would not have to kill each other?” Julie asked.
“Perhaps, though my brother wants the throne badly, and I have not seen the one who has made me fall in love,” Cyrus said, she could feel an echo of sorrow to his words. “No, Kraekel will not stop until I am dead, or I kill him, but I will wait till I am healed.”
He suddenly stood up and walked around to her, careful to hold the towel in place. Cyrus bent down across from her and she could feel his cool breath on her face, he was bending forward and Julie skirted back.
“Wh-what are you doing?” she asked, now to her feet.
“I was going to kiss you as thanks,” Cyrus said, once again looking confused. “On Sion we kiss to show we are grateful, and since the things you have all around here with words some have two humans kissing, I thought it was much the same.”
Julie turned red, he was going to kiss her then. She was not opposed to the idea but it was not right to kiss a half-naked alien prince, she couldn’t tell herself why, but it just wouldn’t be. Even though her heart was beating fast and her stomach was clenching trying to stop the butterflies from hatching from their cocoons. She hadn’t felt this way since college when she thought she had been in love, but Eric was just an infatuation. He had quickly left her after they had sex a dozen times for a newer model that wasn’t as tried out—at least that was what she had gathered from the ‘we are over’ text message she got from him.
