by Mara Frost
My eyes move down to his rib and I immediately wonder how he’s doing. His mood has been particularly sour lately – even more than usual - and I’m sure having a broken rib has a lot to do with that. I wish he would have let me look at it.
Maybe later. But now? Now, I have to pee and I have to do it without causing a ruckus or waking anyone up. The last thing I want to do is make a big event about me relieving myself in the woods. I can at least handle that on my own. I just need to stay within the perimeter, right?
Somewhat unsteadily, I stand up and eye Big Blue one more time just to make sure that he is indeed fast asleep. Satisfied, I turn to leave and slowly tiptoe my way towards the dark and ominous forest. I probably should be a little freaked out, but honestly? Right now I don’t give a hooey about the darkness or the ominous-ness. I just need to pee. Bad.
I walk for just a little bit; far enough to be a good distance away from Big Blue’s direct eye line, but close enough so that I can still see the light from the fire. I find a nice bush and quickly unzip my uniform, silently cursing that I have to wear a full body suit. No one likes to get naked just to pee.
Once I wiggle my way out of the suit, I squat behind a bush and I let out an audible moan as I answer the call to nature. I cover my mouth and freeze, terrified that I might have just woken up the slumbering alien.
After a few seconds of silence, I continue on for what feels like an eternity of peeing. Once I finish up my business, I stand up and try to put myself together as quickly as possible. I don’t love letting my lady parts hang out when who knows what type of creepy animals…or plants…are around and are hungry for exposed human butt.
As I turn to head back to camp, I brush up against a neighboring bush and it’s like the bush suddenly comes to life. It all happens so fast that I don’t even have time to react. I just stand there wide-eyed and watch as the bush expands bigger and bigger until the leaves appear to literally burst off the branches. I yelp and try to shield my face, but the explosion happens too quickly.
And then suddenly I’m surrounded by a fury of glowing light, beautiful purple glowing light. The leaves, at least what I thought were leaves, surround me and fill the air. They dance and move as if they’re swimming in the open space around me.
“Oh my goodness,” I whisper. Caught under the spell of their beauty, I smile and reach out my hand, trying to touch them. The creatures quickly disperse, but then after a few seconds, hesitantly swim back.
“So beautiful,” I murmur to myself, watching as they move with my hand, gliding along with it and leaving a trail of purple light behind them.
Mesmerized, I squint and try to get a better look at the floating aliens. They almost look like butterflies, but they move sort of like jellyfish. It’s the most peculiar yet wonderful thing I’ve ever seen. They almost seem magical.
I circle around and giggle as they surround me. There’s a part of me that acknowledges that I should probably be freaked out by a swarm of alien fireflies surrounding me, but for some reason I’m not even slightly afraid. How could I be? They’re like pretty glow-in-the-dark snowflakes.
Without realizing it, I start moving with the alien butterflies, dancing around and probably looking like a complete idiot. Again, I don’t care. Since I’ve been abducted I’ve seen a lot of amazing things, but this was the first time that I could actually just relax and enjoy the wonder of it all.
For the time-being there are no Imperial ships after us and there are no lecherous Generals eyeing me like a sexy piece of pork. I can finally relax a little. A real smile touches my lips as thoughts of hope and contentment start to sneak their way into my brain.
I have all these nice and cozy feelings right before I experience the very distinct sensation of freefalling into a dark oblivion.
And then the air gets knocked right out of me.
Even while gasping for air and with my lungs temporarily collapsed, I’m able to quickly realize that during my little dance with the alien sugar plum fairies, I managed to step backwards into a ditch. I’m an idiot.
As I take that deep painful first breath and gasp for air, my lungs expand and it feels like a fiery explosion in my chest. If it wasn’t such an instinctive action, I probably would have stopped the second breath from happening, but the next one quickly followed and it was almost as painful as the first.
After a few breaths, I’m able to control my breathing and regain a semblance of composure – at least as much composure as a person can have while they’re lying flat on their back in a deep dark ditch.
With my arms and legs splayed out, I look up and as I suspected, I am indeed in a deep dark ditch. Sigh. I gaze up at the night sky in frustration and see the little alien fireflies just floating over the ditch, taunting me and rubbing in the fact that they’re not down here with me.
“Jerks,” I grumble.
I moan out loud and move my arms and legs, just to confirm that the stupid fall didn’t paralyze me – it didn’t, which is a total surprise given my luck lately. I groan again, but this time in frustration. The ditch is big and dark and it’s easily over 15 feet deep. It’s going to take some work to get out of here.
I sit up and rub my neck and then growl again. This is beyond annoying. I’m an idiot. I couldn’t just do my business and get back to the camp? Nope. I have to dance around with some alien bugs like a mad woman. Awesome.
Another growl.
I freeze. That wasn’t me that time. I whip around in the dark, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.
“H-h-ello?” I say, my voice unsteady and shaking while I look around, my eyes trying to penetrate the darkness. There’s no response, just an eerie silence, but I know that I’m not alone. My brain wouldn’t make up a noise like that. I’ve never even heard a growl like that that before.
I walk to the center of the hole and look up, wondering if I could somehow climb out of the ditch before anything caught me. Given my incredibly crappy upper body strength, the chances are pretty slim. I whimper.
A louder and more terrifying growl responds.
“Oh Hell no!” I yell out and run to the side and do my best to start climbing up the dirt wall.
I don’t get very far before I feel something latch onto my ankle. I scream bloody murder before I even have time to process whether I feel pain or not. Whatever it is that has my ankle grabs on tight and yanks me down to the ground.
I manage to scream, but that’s about it. It’s too strong. I try to grab onto anything that I can to fight its grip on me, but my fingers only find loose dirt as I claw along the floor.
So I decide to kick instead. I kick fast and I kick hard. I have no idea what I’m kicking at, but I’m bound to land a kick eventually. If I’m going to be eaten by a monster then I’m literally going to be going down kicking and screaming.
This clearly pisses off the monster even more. A terrifying scream echoes through the ditch, which makes me realize that the “ditch” is much bigger than I realized. The beast tightens its hold on me and yanks me across the floor.
I scream again. I can’t see it, but I feel it’s hot breath hitting my face and I can smell its pungent stench, which smells like a mix of rotten eggs and mud. I reach out and try to push it away and my fingers grip onto thick coarse tufts of hair.
“No!” I yell as it growls again, lowering its hot face to me, trying to smell its next meal.
I snap my eyes shut and wait for what’s about to come next. I just hope that it’s quick. So imagine my surprise when nothing happens. In fact, the opposite of what I was expecting happens. The crazy alien monster jumps off of me and then I hear a violent scream. I don’t stop to wonder what’s going on. I just crab walk it as fast as possible away from him.
My entire body trembling, I look in the direction of the beast and faintly see fast movements and thrashing. What’s going on? Is he having some sort of seizure? Or is this some weird ritual that he does before he chows down on dinner?
And then I hear a sound
that makes my blood turn cold. I hear a screaming growl that doesn’t belong to the monster.
“Dakhar!!” I cry out. As if answering my call, he growls again.
A feeling of both relief and fear sweeps through me. He’s here! He’s going to kick the shit out of the monster, I think quietly to myself! I hear another violent scream from the alien beast and then a grunt from Dakhar.
Or he’s going to get eaten first.
My heart is pounding in my chest as I try to watch on. I wish with all my heart that I could do something. I’m torn between staying permanently attached to the dirt wall and wanting to jump in the fray and help. Although, knowing my luck, I’d accidentally poke Big Blue’s eye out and then we’ll both be gobbled down in seconds.
I stare into the darkness and try to figure out who’s who. The light of the moon is the only source of light, so I’m only able to see flashes of shapes and movement. Either way, I can see that the creature towers over Big Blue and they’re playing a tug of war with each other’s bodies.
Dakhar lets out another growly cry. My heart jumps to my throat.
“Dakhar!” I yell again. I can’t be sure, but I think the monster is on top of him now. Without thinking, I go into action. I blindly reach for something – a rock, a stick – anything that I can use as a weapon. My pulse jumps when my hand finds a large rock.
Not allowing myself to think my actions through, I scream and charge towards the fighting. Eyeballs be damned, he needs my help. I throw myself into the pile and without sparing a thought, I slam the large rock on to the hairy beast.
And that does absolutely nothing. Except maybe make the hairy monster a little angrier. The big alien beast stops whatever it was that he was doing to Big Blue and turns to look at me. My eyes widen as I take a step back. Okay, so I didn’t think this all the way through.
“Get…BACK!!!” I hear Big Blue scream through labored breath.
Keeping my eyes on the monster, who is now staring me down with hungry bloodlust, I inch backwards. Even in the dark I can see it’s glistening eyes – and by “eyes”, I mean way more than two. While fighting the urge to run, I just walk slowly backwards, trying to keep an eye on the monster.
“Uhm…okay, now…what?” I ask nervously, thinking for some reason that Dakhar will have an idea of what I should do now that I’ve royally pissed off the giant alien animal.
And he doesn’t answer me. Instead, he just charges the beast from behind and jumps onto his back. Naturally, this seems to only anger the giant alien even more. It quickly begins to thrash back and forth, trying to dislodge the blue man like a bucking bronco, but Dakhar somehow manages to stay on.
I watch on in terrified fascination. I have to give it to Big Blue; despite his huge size, he’s a nimble bugger. No matter how hard the animal tries to shake him off, he stays latched on like a stubborn barnacle.
But this can’t last forever. Just when it looks like he’s about to lose his grip and be thrown off the alien, I see his glowing light saber appear in the darkness and then it instantly disappears. The alien then screams, a sound that sounds like a mix of bloody murder and anguish all rolled up into one horrifying sound. With his mouth open, I see the glowing light imbedded deep into the back of the animal’s throat.
Horror mixed with relief crashes through me. Dakhar speared the animal through the head with his light dagger. The screaming continues and I force my eyes shut and I cover my ears, trying to block out the terrifying noise. Nothing helps though. The cries of pain and anguish still manage to cut through and land into my eardrums.
I open my eyes. Big Blue jumps off the beast and I watch as he almost solemnly walks to the head of the crying animal. And then with one quick sweep, he stabs the beast one final time right through the temple, giving him the mercy of a final kill shot.
With my eyes finally adjusting to the darkness, I can faintly see Big Blue. Covered in blood and shoulders heaving, he turns from the animal he just killed and looks at me. I can’t move. I can’t do anything. I just stare back at him. I know I fucked up. Like a total idiot, the pretty little lights caught my attention and I ended up in the ditch of despair with an angry alien beast.
He says nothing. He doesn’t move. He just stares at me as he continues to catch his breath.
“Sorry…” I say.
Yep, that should make us square. One “sorry” for one brutal battle with an alien monster. Yep, we’re good now. And as expected, he says nothing. I look around somewhat awkwardly, silently realizing that dealing with the animal was just solving one of our problems.
“So…how do we…get out of here?”
This finally makes him break his silence.
“We climb.”
“We climb? How do we do that?” I ask as I look cautiously at the dark dirt walls. I’m fairly certain we’re at least 20 feet down, so that coupled with the near pitch blackness – and my nonexistent upper body strength – it makes climbing out of this thing almost impossible.
He ignores my question and brushes past me.
Alright. That’s cool. He’s pissed. That’s fine. I’ll just live in this hole. If that alien monster is edible, I might even last a while. I glance over at the dead beast and catch a whiff of its pungent smell and wiggle my nose. Or maybe not.
While I’m busy planning out my new life in the alien hole, Big Blue is keeping busy trying to get us out of it – which works for me. He brings out his light saber, which I’m growing to love more and more, and does something to it until the light intensifies to the point that I have to squint and look away.
I shield my eyes and glance back at him and see that the light dagger is now lighting up the entire hole…well, cavern actually. Now that I can see more clearly, I notice that we aren’t in a muddy ditch so much as a giant underground cave. My eyes then land on the dead beast and I unconsciously cover my mouth with my hands.
“Oh no,” I whisper.
The animal didn’t look anything like I had pictured. It wasn’t made out of just teeth and scary alien ooze. Yes, it was huge and had four eyes, but it also almost looked like a bear covered in dark greenish hair.
“Shit.”
I hear Big Blue snort.
“What?” I ask, almost defensively.
“You feel remorse for this animal’s death?”
“Well, yeah…whenever you put a face to anything, it’s always harder to reconcile things like death.”
“So because you’ve seen its face, you wouldn’t want it to die? You would rather be dead and eaten?”
“No, that’s not what I meant,” I growl. “Can you just stop being so cold and logical for once?”
Thankfully, he remains silent and assesses the cave instead. After only a few seconds of inspecting, he says, “It looks like this area here would be our easiest way out. There are plenty of footholds and places to grab.”
I glance up and nod.
Using the light of his dagger, we begin our ascent. And surprisingly, it really wasn’t that difficult. We manage to climb out of the hole in only a few minutes, which is shocking given the state that we’re both in.
Once we made it to the top and begin making our way back to the camp, a thought quickly comes to mind. I didn’t realize how far from camp I had walked…
“Dakhar?”
He just grunts in response. I take that to be an acknowledgement of my question, so I continue.
“How did you find me? How did you know that I fell in that ditch? I was pretty far from camp and you were in the hole almost right after I fell.”
Silence.
Big surprise there.
“Dakhar?”
“I was following you.”
I stop walking. “Following me? When?”
“After you made your water. When you were doing your dance with the bugs.”
My cheeks burn. He saw that? He was watching me? Oh God. That’s embarrassing.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“It didn’t seem like you wanted
to be disturbed. You seemed to be enjoying yourself, so I decided to follow at a safe distance to ensure nothing happened.”
“You were watching me…?” I really want to be angry at his Peeping Tomness, but honestly that’s the only reason why I’m still alive, isn’t it? So score one for being creepy.
Sigh. Why does it feel like everything in space is trying to kill me? And when space isn’t trying to kill me then I’m busy doing a good job of it all by myself.
***
Dakhar
I must be going mad. Perhaps it is space madness? Why else would I be doing this? I’ve seen honorable warriors succumb to space madness and end up nothing but a pile of gibbering waste. It’s an ugly thing. They become stark raving mad and scream themselves into oblivion. Normally, they end their own life – usually right after they claw their eyes out or try to rip their own skin off.
I must have that, but a much more extreme case of it. Why else did I freely jump into a black pit to fight a hungry beast? Just to save a human? Yes, I risked myself to save her from the General, but that was because a weak and undeveloped side of me felt some sort of guilt for kidnapping her and selling her, but now? Now, we’re practically even. There was no reason for me to save her after she foolishly went so far from camp.
Thoughts of the female discovering the glowing bugs and dancing with them instantly flash across my mind. A part of me thinks that it’s absolutely ludicrous that she became so enamored by the simple little bugs and it just reinforces how incredibly simple humans are, but then….there’s another part of me that found it…pleasant to look at. It looked like she was dancing with pure light. Just watching her made it uncomfortable to breathe.
“Fuck.”
“What? Did you say something?”
“No. Nothing,” I grumble back, not the least bit interested in telling her what I was thinking. Instead, I continue to silently cut through overgrowth and make a path for us.
