19. Phoebe
19
PHOEBE
V apas’ growl is tinged with the edges of rage as we both jump. My heart is in my throat. Grabbing at my torn shirt I clench it closed in one hand. Vapas curses. I don’t know his language or the word he says but I know a curse when I hear it.
The pounding comes again, matching the rhythm of my heart. A loud thundering interspersing the lightning of fear striking my nerves. I bounce off the table and trip over my discarded pants, falling into Vapas.
My breasts smash against him as he hooks his hands under my arms to keep me upright. I look up, hoping to find certainty and confidence, but in that at least I am disappointed. He’s scared too.
My stomach hits the floor as the room spins. His hands tighten on me, and then he looks down. His frown is deep, worry lines creasing his forehead. He looks from me to the door as the pounding grows louder then back to me.
“Upstairs,” he orders.
“Vapas, I—” he doesn’t have to say anything, the look on his face stops the words.
What was I going to say anyway? I, what? I’ll help? Yeah, right.
He bends and pulls his pants up, fastening them. I grab my pants from the floor and run up the stairs to the bedroom.
Standing in the middle of the room, I don’t know what to do. I turn in a circle, looking for a weapon. Something to defend myself with, anything that might balance the scales at least a little. As if. The smallest Urr’ki is twice my size and I can only imagine that even their kids are stronger than I am.
Vapas barks something in Urr’ki. It’s loud and harsh but that’s not saying much. Their entire language sounds like that. He shuffles loudly across the floor and I know he’s doing it on purpose. Letting me know how much time I have.
I’m a mess, but there isn’t time to stand here like some too stupid to live damsel in distress. I need to do something. Something effective.
I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and count to ten. Slowing my breathing and my heartrate at least a little. When I open my eyes, I’m still nauseous, but that’s fine.
I straighten out the legs of my pants and get them back on. He’s almost to the door, feet still shuffling. I knot the ties to keep them in place, then look at my shirt. Damn it. I don’t have a replacement shirt. The other girls and I were ‘bait’ and our story was that we wandered too far on accident, leading to our ‘capture’ so that we could infiltrate the Urr’ki society. Not a story that lends itself to bringing along changes of clothes or supplies.
And my binder is downstairs. Bras became things from our former lives some years back since the crash. The ones we had or that survived having long since worn out and all of us ladies have resorted to makeshift binders to keep the mounds under control.
Shit…
A ripped up shirt, no binder, great. How about I just put my tits on display? Maybe that will distract whoever it is long enough for Vapas to… what?
He will protect me.
Like Todd did? Stand up for me? Protect me? Or…
The pounding comes so hard that I jump, jerking myself out of the dark spiral my thoughts are trying to follow.
I’m not putting myself on display. I have to do… something.
The only question is what. What can I do? Desperation brings a sense of overwhelm. As if the entire world is trying to swallow me whole. Hope becomes a distant fading light as I begin to sink below the waves of despair.
No.
I hear the bar on the door sliding. Still moving slowly, but this is it. There is no more time for indecision. One final glance around the room and finding nothing, I let go of my death grip on the fabric of my shirt. It falls open, my tits hanging in the open seam, right there for anyone to get an eyeful.
I’ve always been self-conscious. My tits were never as nice as the other girls I bunked with. A little too big, too saggy, not shaped as nicely. My stomach is far from flat too. Another ding against my genetic worthiness. All of which Todd took advantage of in the most clever, diabolical of— No!
Todd is dead. He didn’t survive the crash, and not to be hateful, but he doesn’t matter. Worrying about him, what he did, or what happened between us will get me absolutely nowhere.
Vapas doesn’t care. The way he looks at me…
Warmth suffuses my skin, chasing away the doubts and fears. Undermining uncertainty because it’s true. The way he was looking at me, the passion in his kisses, the way he came when we were in the marketplace, he likes me the way I am. Not some idealized version of myself.
And I love him for that.
Vapas speaks, making me jump yet again. The door is open. Whomever it is down there, they are in the house. I hear them coming in. Loud. Insistent. Terrifying.
Grabbing the bottom seam of both sides of my shirt I pull them tight together, crisscross and tie them up. There is no mirror to look at myself but I can see well enough and hate every single inch of it but I’m out of options.
My shirt is now a mid-riff leaving the soft bulge of my stomach exposed but most men won’t notice that because their attention is mostly going to be on the cleavage that is on full and very, very uncomfortable display.
There is yelling below, all in the Urr’ki language. No matter the rough, coarse nature of the language itself there is no mistaking that the conversation is heated. My stomach roils, twisting and untwisting itself into knots over and over.
I ball my hands into tight fists, then slowly force them to relax. Concentrating on my breathing, trying to keep it slow and steady, I wait. There is nothing else I can do. Eyes darting around in the vain hope of finding a weapon. A gun would be so nice right now.
As if I’d know what to do with a gun. We didn’t have them on the ship. Only the armed forces carried guns, or so I assumed. I never saw them with one either. All I know about guns I learned from old Earth vids. Apparently they were quite common and popular at some point in the long and mostly sordid history of humanity.
Maybe this is what the human race deserves. Crashing onto a planet that makes the brutality we’ve created look like child’s play. A universal, karmic level of ‘hold my beer’.
“Phoebe, please come down,” Vapas calls.