Chapter 6 #2
They continued singing at each other, and then the male held up the probe the doctor had tried to get me with.
I couldn't help myself. I started laughing.
"Lorelei, this is serious. He is trying to make sure I receive medical care," Arnina said, finally engaging with me.
"That's what all the guys say when they want to put it in the rear," I replied. "That and, ‘Ooooooh, baby, the condom is too tight, let's just use the other hole’. The other hole doesn’t protect you from getting space glitter from getting to frisky with a fairy."
Arnina rolled her eyes at me.
"Can you just help me get up on the table?" she asked.
"Never say I don't enable you," I teased as I walked over to the table. I squatted down and put my good hand palm up on my thigh.
Arnina put her hands on the edge of the table and stepped one foot in my hand. As I stood, Arnina hauled herself upwards and got her belly on the table. With some wiggling, she rolled onto the table and sat up.
It was so easy to lift her.
I had no residual pain from being beaten and left to wallow in my own filth in a crate. At the very least, even though the stupid cat lady stuffed me in a cage, she certainly took care of my wounds first.
Arnina sang something to the aliens.
I sighed.
I didn't just wait around. While they were busy, I rummaged around the room, finding some bandages and a sling. I wrapped up my hand, making sure to tape it up so that I couldn't move it and hurt it worse. I used the sling to secure it because why not?
Basic first-aid skills - I got them.
After Arnina's exam was over, her alien hottie led us out to a cart that was hovering off the ground like it belonged in a Back to the Future movie. We climbed onto its one bench seat, Arnina in the middle.
"Where is he taking us, Neen?" I asked.
"Probably back to our pen," Arnina yawned. "He is the only guy who cleans my cage and stuff like that. He's the bottom rung. If they all think we're animals, then we are likely property, and he would be stealing if he took us anywhere else."
Yeah, to hell with that.
"What if we run in two different directions when he stops this floating golf cart?" I mused. "He can't catch us both."
"Floating?" she asked.
Of course she didn't notice.
"You didn't see it?" I said. "This thing ain't got no wheels."
"No, I didn't. In any case, we shouldn't separate. I know only a few words, and you can't sing for shit, and I think we should..." She trailed off as her Boy Toy stopped the cart.
"What?" I demanded. "We should what?"
Was this chick seriously thinking about ditching me again?
"This isn't where the pen is," she frowned, sliding off the seat after the male.
"Well, where are we?" I asked. "If Drizzt here is only a side character, where would he take us?"
There was no way I was going to stop with the elf references now that I latched onto them. This cat boy she had on a leash was handsome in an ethereal way, not the rugged gonna murder your enemies way like my guy.
My guy - could I even call him that?
I flushed as I realized I already felt so attached.
One box of severed heads, and I was ready to roll over and put my legs up in the air. I definitely needed to take a cold shower for my emotional attachment during a high stress situation where I was utterly vulnerable.
A hot shower would be a lot nicer though.
"To a lawyer?" Arnina handed her set of keys back to the alien, and he led us through the doors into a room that looked like a lobby. We followed him down a hallway filled with rows of matching doors. He opened one and held it open.
We went in, and he followed us, shutting the door behind him.
It was a long, rectangular room with two doors.
A line of countertops sectioned it into two different areas.
The farther space had thick, cylindrical tubes that ran along the wall at various heights.
It was as if an old-growth tree grew branches as wide as its trunk down close to the ground and a yard above that, and someone covered them in fabric and glued them to the wall for pleasantly rounded platforms to climb around and lounge on.
"This is a kitchen. That is a living room," I said, calling it as I saw it. "Lor'themar took us home."
That was a pretty obscure one.
"What even is that reference? Did you make that one up?" Arnina shook my head, abandoning the question without a response as she continued talking. "This doesn't have to be his home. This could be an office."
"I don't care if it's Mordor in disguise," I pushed on a wall in what I had dubbed the kitchen, and a panel popped out. I looked inside. There were a bunch of boxes with pictures of things I didn't recognize, so I shut it and opened another. "It is already way better than a cage."
This one had jars, so I pulled one out, twisted it open, and sniffed.
"Arnina, Fuck You," her Boy Toy sang at us and pointed at one of the doors. "Makrus."
He pointed at the padded tree.
Ah, that was probably his name. Or was it the name of the cat climber couch tree?
Then he swiped his hand over his wristband, causing an image project in the air. He then moved over to the tree, sat on it, and began tapping his finger into the display.
"See?" I pointed out, never one to miss a chance to prove I was right. "Living room. Wanna bet that the door leads to a bed? Aragorn is going to sleep on the couch like the king that he is."
"Aragorn isn't an elf name," Arnina said, giving me a smile as she caught onto my deliberate mistake.
Sometimes the best way to handle a stressful situation outside of your control was playful distraction. I was a pro at taking negative vibes and transforming them by focusing on the humor in the present moment.
I opened another door in the kitchen.
"Jackpot!" I cried out. "I found the fridge!"
I began pulling things out. The current plan was to taste them and then dump a bunch of things into a pan.
Hopefully I'd have a better plan before got to that point.
"I don't think he's been here long," Lorelei said as she stepped back into the living room. "His clothing is on the floor, and I didn't see anywhere to put it."
"There are only three things in the fridge, so that seems likely," I replied, dissatisfied with what I had found.
I opened one of them and tasted it.
It tasted sour.
"This is a bathroom," Arnina called out.
She had followed her alien into another room.
"There is a shower, but instead of towels, it's like a built-in full-body blow dryer in the shower.
The toilet looks like what you'd expect for a bipedal being, but it doesn't have water.
It has wood chips and sand, I think? It flushes, but I have no idea how that works. Looks like quicksand."
I came to look over her shoulder.
"It's a cat box," I joked.
"Or a composting toilet," Arnina pointed out. "We have those on Earth. They work pretty well if they are done right."
There was a heavy weight in the air as she said those words.
"Do you think we will ever get home?" I asked. I was already certain the answer was no.
"One step at a time. We can achieve any goal," she murmured. "First step is to learn the language. The second step is to make sure we have legal rights as people."
That sounded like a lot of work. At least she was trying to be positive about it but the crippling reality of the situation didn’t leave a lot of room for escape.
"Second step could also be hitchhiking," I said.
"We need to make sure we have marketable trade skills that an alien freighter would find useful. I, for one, am not spreading my legs to get home," she said, glancing over at her alien male.
He moved towards us. We both backed away.
"Not even for King of the Jungle here?" I asked, immediately regretting it. We were in a precarious situation. I should not be joking about prostituting my friend for freedom.
"He works at a zoo shoveling shit," she said. "No way he owns a spaceship."
Or maybe it was okay to joke about it since she was responding that way.
"He had the balls to take us away from the zoo," I pointed out. "Either he has a swagger you don't know about, or the man would steal a spaceship for you. He let you put a collar on him and walk him on a leash! Tell me you at least got a look at his balls?"
She flushed.
"Lorelei!"
I grinned.
There was the fun I had been poking for!
"Oh, you slippery squid, what haven't you told me? Do I have to castrate him while he sleeps with a pair of salad tongs?" I moved my unbandaged hand, mimicking tongs.
"No, no," she said, waving her hands. "We just... I, well..."
There it was. How could I trust her when she censored herself when she talked to me? She should be able to tell me everything.
"I think I turned him on once," she simplified.
"He made a move on you?" I demanded.
"No, I think I, technically, accidentally made a move on him," she said.
"Now he is in love with you and wants to rescue you, and you- hey! I was going to cook that!" I did a one eighty in the conversation as I realized that her Boy Toy was undermining my efforts.
He was putting all my treasures back in the fridge!
"No! I'm hungry!" I wailed. I pushed past him and closed the fridge. He sang something and tried to put the thing back again.
"Try learning words rather than grabbing," Arnina said. "I'm going to take a shower."
"Easy for you to say, Miss Perfect Pitch!" I said, but she had already left the room.
Ugh, how was I going to do this?
"Hungry!" I insisted, waving my arms around in giant circles, feeling like an American in Europe expecting everyone to know English, frustrated with my own lack of communication capability. "You learn my language! Hungry!"
Why wouldn't he just feed me?
Or at the very least, get out of my way so I could feed myself.
I heard the sound of running water as I continued to argue with the stubborn alien.
Then there was a sound at the door that sounded a lot like a bird warbling, and the Boy Toy gave up putting things back in the fridge to go over to the door. It slid open, and the female doctor was there. She handed something to him and promptly left.
He set it down and grabbed the jars I'd taken out of the fridge again.
"Seriously, are you like the donut police?" I asked. "Why are you so stingy?"
The door warbled again, and he went to it.
It slid open to reveal my murder male.
My heart fluttered at the sight of him.
Even more importantly, my stomach grumbled.
From the smell of it, he had brought food.