by Nora Blaze
Copyright © 2020 by Nora Blaze
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover Design and Formatting: Mayhem Cover Creations
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Also by Nora Blaze
About the Author
Chapter One
Loretta
I wake in a confused daze, lying on a cold metal floor. There’s a rotten smell I don’t recognize, ripe in the air. Groaning, I push up to my hands and knees and look around.
I’m disoriented and confused. The last thing I remember, my shift at the bar had ended and I was driving to my sister Marie’s house.
Now I’m in what feels like a prison cell, crowded together with five other women. A few rusty metal bars separate us from an open space in the middle of a mechanical room, like a garage, and there seems to be an identical setup opposite us. The bars are too far apart to stop me from stepping out but there’s a strange blue flicker between them, like how I imagine a forcefield would look.
I stand with shaky knees and cast my eyes around. Most of the women are passed out at my feet.
“This is the most realistic dream I’ve ever had,” I say into the eerie silence.
“Loretta?” Marie stumbles to her feet across the strange metal room. She shivers in her nightgown, which is just a long, thin T-shirt with a unicorn printed on it. “What’s going on?”
My heart jumps. “Marie!” I exclaim.
I rush toward her, as horrified to see her in this environment as I am relieved to have my sister close. When I try to dart between the bars, I smack into something sizzling and hot that tosses me violently back.
I crumble against the metal wall with a pained grunt. My whole body aches like I just ran a marathon.
“Loretta!” Marie yells again and I hear a sizzle and a thump as she repeats my mistake.
This is insane. I look down at myself. I’m still dressed in my favorite pair of jeans and my red Converse. It’s my bartending outfit, an old gray T-shirt that hugs my body just right. I wear this outfit for my shift just about every Friday night, but I’m not at my uncle’s crappy dive bar.
I’m somewhere straight out of a nightmare.
That’s when I notice a small circular window against the far wall. Gasping, I point at it. “Look,” I shout to Marie.
Far in the distance, there’s a little blue and green ball that my heart recognizes as Earth. My whole world spins into disorientation as I realize I’m not there.
A breath later, the entire room jolts and shakes as we lurch forward. I stumble, falling on my knees as I watch my home planet disappearing into the distance, shrinking until it’s gone.
“No!” I scream.
A woman with short red hair wakes and pushes up on her elbows. “Where the hell am I?” she whispers.
I turn to Marie. She’s standing there with tears streaming down her face, whispering something I can’t hear. I need to protect my little sister, to find some way to keep her safe from all this madness. She’s a nurse and a good person, just a few years out of school.
She’s not supposed to be somewhere like this.
None of us are.
The ceiling opens up in the center of the room and I jump back to my feet when a terrifying creature floats down. It must be eight or nine feet tall and my eyes lock immediately onto its face, like drooping gray clay. Over what I assume is the gaping mouth, thin pieces of gray flesh stretch from top bottom. The eyes, set back in the hairless gray skull, are yellow slits.
I shudder in horror. This is an alien. I’m looking at a freaking alien.
From the neck down, it’s covered in something that looks like seaweed. Slimy, inky tendrils flap against its body, obscuring anything else. Some of them appear furry and some are sleek, like shark fins, but none are more than a few inches along. The seaweed drapes across its two arms and down its chest and two legs. I think it’s some kind of outfit, but as the monster stands there, I see it wriggling and realize the strange covering must be a part of its body.
The monster spreads its mouth wider and a black tongue slips through the gray flesh as it turns, staring at each woman in turn.
The tongue slides in and out slowly, like its savoring the look of us.
I retch, barely able to comprehend what I’m looking at. Another woman, waking at my feet, starts sobbing.
Okay. So aliens are real and they’re fucked up.
Because there’s no way something that looks and acts like this creep can be good news.
He stretches his mouth wide again and a painful screech echoes through the room. The rest of the women all wake, confused and frightened. The alien points at one of the women in my cell, then straight at Marie as he screeches again.
“No!” I yell. I stand as close as I can to the glowing blue field and scream at the alien. It’s like all the adrenaline in my body finally explodes and I can’t stop cursing the gross thing out. “Don’t you dare point at my sister, you freak!”
Two more of the creatures float down from the hole in the ceiling. Immediately, they shove their long arms through the force shield and yank the woman in my cell and Marie out.
“No!” My voice cracks. “No!”
“Oh god,” a girl in our group, who couldn’t have been more than twenty, sobs. “Please no. Please say this isn’t happening.”
“Deep breaths, sweetheart,” a tatted-up woman offers, taking her hand. “Deep breaths.”
The aliens float back up through the hole in the ceiling, taking their chosen captives with them. A sob wrenches through my body.
“That’s my sister,” I say to the other women. “They just took my sister!” I rub my hand over my face as I try to pull myself together. “We have to do something. We have to get her back.”
The woman with the tattoos stands. Wearing a blue work shirt that sports the name of a garage, she appears to be her in early thirties, probably a few years older than me. “What’s your name?” she asks, her voice steady and calm.
“Loretta,” I answer, my heart still racing. “And my sister is Marie.”
“I’m Kelsey,” she says, and nods to the other women. “We’re all the in the same boat here.”
“It’s one hell of a boat,” I say sardonically.
Kelsey chuckles, shaking her head. “Looks like it.” She walks over to the glowing blue barrier and peers at it, then pokes the metal device that it seems to emanate from. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” she mutters.
“Didn’t you notice?” the younger girl asks, her voice strained. “That thing. Its gross seaweed, and that tongue! What are they going to do those women?” She shudders and looks like she might get physically ill.
“Don’t think abou
t that,” a woman across the room offers. “Just don’t think about that.”
My brain, though, can’t help but think about it. Images of Marie flash in my mind. There are so many horrifying things those aliens could be doing to her. In movies, they operate and experiment on women that they abduct. Eat them. Sometimes they even impregnate them, I remember. But do aliens in real life act anything like aliens in movies?
I remember those disgusting strings of flesh across their lipless mouths. And the seaweed body, inky and dripping with ooze. Recalling the alien grab Marie with his seaweed arm sends creepy shivers prickling across my skin. To think of him rubbing his gunky appendages all over her body makes me nauseous.
The room jolts and jerks again and I stumble forward, then fall against the blue shield. My body flies back to the wall as electric pain jolts up my spine for a second time, wrenching all my muscles. When I crumple to the ground, the pain finally knocks me out, and the world goes black.
Chapter Two
Loretta
The women in my cell sit in a circle, all facing each other while the spaceship lurches and rattles. Earlier, the aliens had dropped off a bucket of stinky water and another bucket filled with a pale sludge that reminds me of oatmeal. The younger woman, Tara, drinks some of the water while Kelsey eats the gruel and the rest of us wait to make sure they don’t die as a result.
“It’s sour,” Kelsey says, the substance sticky on her fingers as she examines it. “Kind of like yogurt.”
Tara frowns and lifts the bucket for another sip. “It’s like gutter water.”
I shiver, the vision of the aliens haunting me. Were they feeding Marie right then, too?
Or was she the dinner?
“Breathe,” Kelsey says, holding my eye from across our cell. “You’ve got to stay strong for your sister. Be brave for her.”
I swallow. “Our dad is probably searching our apartments back in Kentucky right now. How long has it been, a day? Two? He’ll be so worried. Our mom died a few years ago. I moved back home to be close to him and Marie and I don’t know what he’ll do…” I trail off as I realize I’m rambling, tears burning at my eyes.
“I hope someone feeds my dog,” Tara offers, then wipes her own tears away. “I’m worried about Potato.”
Kelsey drops the bucket of gruel onto the metal floor, sending a clang through the cell. “I hope someone feeds us actual food. This shit is disgusting.”
All the women laugh and a sense of togetherness bubbles up inside of me. It feels kind of silly to talk about stuff like our pets, but somehow, that makes me feel better, too. We’ve all lost something so big, it’s hard to comprehend.
We’ve all lost Earth.
Our home.
“I tell you what I won’t miss,” I say. “I won’t miss the assholes at the bar where I worked. Worst pickup lines in the universe, I swear. And my shift last Friday, two different guys tried to grab my ass.” I shake my head, remembering the night, and chuckle. “I slammed one guy’s hand with the whiskey bottle. He howled so loud the whole bar stopped to laugh at him.”
Everyone laughs. “I won’t miss cleaning up after my neighbor’s gross dog,” Kelsey adds.
“Or dating,” a woman hollers from the other cell, earning another round of laughter.
“Stop!” Tara cries out, burying her face in her hands. “It’s not funny, just stop!”
Her panicked yell cuts through the brief moment of peace. I extend an arm, ready to comfort her. Gallows humor might soothe my soul, but I understand it’s not the case for everyone and I want to do what I can to help out the other captives. Before I can even offer a consoling word, though, the ceiling slides open again and my skin goes cold.
The aliens are back.
My heart thuds. I pray that they’ll return Marie to me, but the three things float to the ground alone. I hear the squishy sound their seaweed makes when they land and I tremble in horror.
This time, they don’t waste any time. One of the monsters heads to my cell and reaches through the force field, boring its blank, yellow eyes into me. I scream and flail as its big, gooey hand grabs me by the waist. It feels like wet globs of hair yanked straight from the shower drain are caressing me from the sides and I scream louder when I feel something hard and slimy poking me, probably protruding fingers.
“Put me down, you asshole!” I beat my fists against its arm but the alien pays me no mind. He just throws me over his shoulder, his seaweed sliming my jeans, T-shirt, and bare skin as a musty, stale scent fills my nose. After the alien screeches so loud it makes me dizzy, he floats back up through the ceiling, hovering to another floor in the spaceship.
We’re in a cavernous, dimly lit room. There must be eight or nine of the aliens milling around, but I quickly turn my attention to the equipment to try to figure out my context. It looks like a laboratory of some kind, with rectangular metal tables in the center of the room and trays scattered around that are filled with knives, needles, and instruments I can’t identify. Pouches of green and yellow liquids hang from the walls, each with tubes sticking out of them.
The alien throws me on one of the tables and I immediately start to fight. I lurch forward, ready to punch him in his ugly face, but two other aliens strap me down to the table first.
I try to turn my head and look around but a strap that feels like leather lashes over my forehead, holding me down. “Marie!” I yell. “Are you in here? Marie, it’s me!”
The alien screeches again and the monsters assisting him turn to me and cut off my clothing. I sob as they tear it away and the chilly, damp air prickles my skin. “No,” I say through gritted teeth, shaking my head. “No, no, no.”
Every horrible possibility flashes through my mind. I saw the way that alien licked his mouth slit the first time they visited us. Was that the same freak that was standing before me now, staring with soulless eyes?
Did it even matter?
I’m not sure how much time passes. Maybe an hour, maybe two. The straps hold me tightly to the cold metal table. Occasionally, some of the aliens come and look at me and scan my body with different instruments. My emotions cycle through despair, rage, and hysteria. When I don’t think I can take it anymore, finally, something happens.
An alien pushes over a large machine and tilts me so I can view it. It looks like a tube made of smeared, dirty glass, about the same height as the alien and ribbed on the sides with coiled metal. I take it in, and then, a light flicks on inside the tube.
There’s a human woman, naked as I am. Her ankles and wrists are bound. She struggles, writhing and thrashing the best she can.
Even though she’s silent, in my soul, I can hear her screams.
“You’re disgusting,” I spit at the aliens. “What is wrong with you?”
They all make satisfied screeching noises as they watch me, and when they quiet down, the alien who carried me up places his hand on the top of my head. I feel his fingers caressing my scalp and suddenly, I feel more.
I don’t know how to describe what’s happening, but it’s like I can sense the alien in my mind. His slimy tendrils follow my pain and my fear and I try to force him away with pure will, but he stays right there, watching me.
The other aliens drag the woman away. I sob, terrified that Marie is in one of those tubes and soon I will be, too. I have no idea what’s happening, just that it’s very, very bad.
A moment later, they return with another mechanical tube. Four of the aliens hover around it, stroking the side in a way that seems almost loving. They float off the ground for a few seconds then lower back to the metal floor. My fear rises and in a strange, unfamiliar way I can sense the alien in my mind, his tendrils following my emotions. When the aliens are done fawning over the tube, they flick the light on again.
I gasp in pure horror. This time, the naked and bound woman is eight or nine months pregnant.
She holds my gaze and if she hadn’t been struggling softly I would swear the eyes looking back at me were dead. I can’t e
ven scream anymore, it’s all too horrible.
This has to end. There has to be some way to make this end.
All the aliens screech happily and stroke the machine as I scream, terror echoing in my mind. I don’t try to make words or argue, I just holler and yell until my throat burns. I can tell that my anguish is pleasing them, but as the woman struggles weakly against her restraints, the screams keep coming.
And somehow, worst of all, I can feel the alien in my brain, too. He’s right there, as close to my fear as I am, screeching.
An incredibly loud bang crashes out from behind me. The aliens all screech and the one holding my skull releases me. When his last tendril slips away, it feels like I crash back into my body and the screaming in my head finally stops.
But the banging continues behind me, along with some deep, guttural yelling.
What the hell now?
What looks like a beam of light shoots above my face, then another. One of the beams blasts against an alien’s shoulder and burns against the seaweed before redirecting and sparking with a sizzle against the metal. The alien screeches and grabs the spot he was hit, his gray flesh now exposed and burnt with the weird seaweed blown away, and a moment later a knife spins through the air and plunges into his exposed skin.
The alien who held my brain floats up to the ceiling while screeching and grabs a metal box. Light beams blast off his seaweed, shooting off whole chunks at a time, and when one nearly hits his face a helmet-like green forcefield flickers into existence, blocking it. The alien extends long fingers as he plays the metal box like a music instrument, wailing horribly the whole time.
