Chapter 3 Jessa
The devil had shoved a sandwich bag into my hand.
Every instinct I had warned me not to take my eyes off the threat, but he wasn’t acting very threatening, and I didn’t think looking at him would save me if that changed. Besides, I had to admit, I was curious.
Fighting to keep my breathing steady, I slowly dropped my attention to the wrinkled baggie in my fist and was met with an all caps READ ME!!! written in bold purple marker.
Okay. Not what I’d expected.
My hands were trembling and slick with sweat as I struggled to peel the sealed bag open and shake out the folded piece of lined paper. When I finally got the page flattened out, I was greeted with three stickers of kittens playing with yarn and a glittery peace symbol.
A slightly hysterical snort escaped me, and I darted a wary look up at the invader still looming on the other side of the massage table. He flashed me a broad smile and tilted his head expectantly.
Right, read the note. Clearly, he didn’t speak English, and clearly someone he knew did. Someone who thought kitten stickers would be enough to keep a terrified human from running away from a six-foot red alien in a loincloth.
I awkwardly cleared my throat and held up a finger.
“I’m reading it, give me a sec.”
The alien’s grin brightened and I wondered if he somehow understood me.
Swallowing down the whirling bubble of stress threatening to take over my body, I looked back at the sticker adorned note.
Hello, stranger, my name is Penny and I’m a human survivor.
If you’re reading this you’re probably standing next to a really scary looking red alien, don’t panic, he’s friendly.
The hysterical laughter I’d been holding back escaped me in an obnoxious burst and I clapped a hand over my mouth to muffle it. Tears filled my eyes as I reread the first two lines of the note.
A human survivor was talking to me. Not in person, but for six months I’d been convinced I was the only human left alive on the planet, and I was holding tangible proof I wasn’t. The relief was so intense my chest hurt.
I wiped my arm over my streaming eyes and kept reading.
I know it’s a lot to believe, but if you’ve survived this long you’ve probably seen a lot you’d never have believed a year ago. There are two kinds of aliens on Earth right now, turochs and sytos.
The big red guys are turochs and they’re on our side. The blue ones are sytos, DON’T APPROACH THEM. They’re the ones who invaded us and they’re still a threat.
The situation is a lot bigger and more complicated than a note can explain, but we have a safe place for you if you want to come. We have food, water, weapons and friendly faces.
The turoch who gave you this note has a translator that will allow you to understand him. It looks like an earring and unfortunately has to pierce your ear to work. If you want nothing to do with us, he’ll leave you alone, his translator already lets him understand you.
Good luck, Penny
The note ended with another kitten sticker and a drawn heart.
It was the most beautiful, silly, human goodbye and I found myself frantically rereading the note just to feel the presence of another person.
Turochs, sytos, translators, a safe place. It was too much information and not enough all at once. I was desperate for more, for a whole book of reassurance and humanness and at the same time, I was so overwhelmed by the moment I wanted to shut my eyes and check out for an hour just to process.
For a second I did just that, shutting my eyes and holding my breath until my racing thoughts slowed down.
There was a scuff of movement and my eyes flew open.
The red guy was still here, how had I forgotten?
It was a good thing I'd never left the spa, clearly my situational awareness was crap. I had the self-defense skills of a newborn fawn, just holding still and hoping the predator didn’t realize I was right in front of them.
I licked my lips and cautiously met the devil’s-the turoch’s eyes. They were yellow, and almost sparkling with eagerness.
“You can understand me?” I croaked out. He nodded and lifted the little piece of metal he’d tried to hand me before. That was probably the translator.
I hesitated a moment, torn between instinctive fear and the desperate need to know more.
“You have to stick that in my ear?” I clarified, noting the grime and blood spattered over his hands and arms. “Like pierce the skin?”
He nodded again and flicked on long, furry ear toward me, showing off the matching glint of metal hidden in the curve of cartilage.
“Okay,” I slowly reached out and plucked the tiny object from his calloused fingertips. “Let me just-”
I stared down at the slightly rusty translator and looked back at the filthy male who’d handed it to me.
“I’m going to disinfect this really quick.” I said. There was a jar of alcohol wipes on my work station and I grabbed a handful. Ripping open the first packet, I laid the wipe down on the table in front of me and used another wipe to clean the tiny translator as well as I could.
Hopefully the rust wouldn’t give me tetanus.
Was I really doing this? The moment I could properly talk to this alien, any delusions of normalcy would be toast. Already I knew more about the outside world than I had five minutes ago.
I knew what aliens had invaded Earth, which were friendly, which were not. I knew other humans had escaped the initial attack, I knew I could leave and talk to someone other than myself.
Did I want that? Could I handle the new reality past the safe bubble of the spa?
I didn’t know. But for some reason I kept moving.
Laying the (hopefully) sterilized translator on the clean wipe, cleaning my own hands and then thoroughly wiping down my left ear.
Once I was confident I’d killed as many germs as I could, I looked back at the translator, noting the semi-sharp end of the metal post. It was almost as thick as a small screw, way more painful than the needle that had pierced my lobes as a child.
There was no way I could force myself to shove that through my own ear. Hell, I was still standing akimbo because my unfinished Brazilian stung like a bitch.
“Can you help me?” I asked, hesitantly. It felt weird to let a total stranger stab me, let alone an alien I couldn’t understand.
The red guy nodded and reached for the translator.
“Wait, wait!” I yelped, watching as his blood and dirt covered hand paused an inch from my recently cleaned translator. “Let me wipe you down.”
He froze and darted a confused look at me as I snatched another packet, ripped it open and flapped the thin wipe open.
I grabbed his thick wrist and held his hand between us as I quickly scrubbed the grime from his brilliant skin.
One wipe wasn’t near enough surface area to cover his huge hand, and I had a small pile of dirty wipes and scattered wrappers by the time I was confident I wouldn’t get some terrible infection if he touched the translator.
I swiped a clean wipe over his knuckles one last time just to be sure and realized what I’d just done. I was touching an alien, I’d grabbed an alien, and manhandled his huge hand like it was nothing.
My throat tightened for a moment as I stared down at his hand.
He had five fingers, just like a human, and short, blunt nails over dark red nail beds.
There were dozens of tiny scars over his boxy knuckles, and tiny speckles of purple dotting the back of his hand.
His skin was hot and smooth despite the scars, and he felt bizarrely normal compared to how he looked.
I looked up at him through my lashes and felt my face flush when he grinned lazily at me.
“Sorry, that was...aggressive,” I muttered. Both his ears perked at my words and I spotted his short tail lashing excitedly behind him. There was a little tuft of black hair at the end of it, and for a brief moment the hulking male looked cute?
I really had lost my mind.
I dropped his hand and pushed the translator across the table toward him.
“Just use your clean hand to touch it,” I mumbled, reluctantly moving around the table to stand next to him.
My hair was already tied back, because waxing yourself with loose hair was just asking for a disaster, and I pulled the ends over my shoulder and tilted my head to the side to give him access to my sacrificial ear.
He said something in reply, his voice a low rumble that made the hair on the back of my neck prickle with something that wasn’t quite fear.
I squeezed my eyes shut and braced myself. “I’m ready.”
The alien laid a heavy hand on the back of my neck and tilted my head slightly, his skin burning against mine. A tiny gasp escaped me at the contact and he rumbled something else I couldn’t understand before grabbing my ear and quickly forcing the metal through it before I could flinch.
I yelped and instinctively pulled away, almost falling before he caught my arm.
“Over quickly,” a cheerful male voice reassured me.
My eyes flew open and I gaped up at him.
“It actually worked,” I blinked up at him, poking at my sore ear.
He tilted his head to the side and grinned, he was awfully smiley, this alien.
“Of course it worked, I wouldn’t hurt you for a piece of broken tech.” He offered me his hand, the clean one. “I am Tovis, formerly a syto slave and gladiator. Now a free turoch of Earth.”
“I-” words failed me for a moment as the last few minutes hit me all in a rush. I was talking to an alien, apparently he used to be a slave. He had a name, Tovis. He was trying to shake my hand.
The jarring contrast of the human greeting combined with the pure alienness of Tovis made my head spin and I stared blankly at his offered hand.
The world I’d been clinging to was over, there was no way I could shove this new development under a rug and go back to the shadow of a normal life I'd been living in.
He said something else, his voice suddenly distant and muffled and my vision blurred. I had just enough time to be embarrassed that I was the stereotypical fainting maiden before I passed out.