Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Me: The ceiling is ceiling-ing
What else am I going to reply? I’ve told them they’re morons half a dozen times, but they’re persistent like a low-hanging fart. Someone needs to light a candle.
“Is the empire taking these texters seriously?” I ask, wondering why Vera would be intrigued enough to pull up a picture of the outside.
“They are less threatening than the InvasiveParasiticBodySnatchers, but they have proven their own ability to evade our search and rescue team,” she explains, and the view on the hologram suddenly shifts.
I barely catch a glimpse of smoke before it resets to an image of one of the empire’s ships hovering over a city I don’t recognize off hand.
The ship shudders in place and then it implodes, collapsing in on itself in a fire ball that literally puts itself out.
No debris. No collateral. The ship is simply gone.
“What the fuck just happened?” I demand, stepping closer to the hologram.
“The ship assigned to seven was destroyed,” Vera replies with a terrifying, deadly rattle that literally sends me involuntarily to my knees.
On the hologram, the image of the admin comes up and the scrolling text below appears in what I assume is the alien language.
I barely clock the image as Vera’s terrifying rattle intensifies, and I lose control of everything.
Tears drench my face as I soak my pants and uncontrollable sobs hitch my breath.
I curl into the smallest ball I can make myself, terror seizing my very soul.
Vera’s rattling growl suddenly cuts off, and the sound of her footsteps retreats from me. “I offer my apologies, Ollie Teakwood. My… spouse was aboard that ship. She is safe. She contacted me after the announcement of fatalities.”
I hear her, but it still takes a few minutes for my muscles to decontract and relax enough for me to move out of my fear-ball.
Logically, I’m aware that Vera induced an instinctual fear response in me, but I’m not feeling all that logical right now.
I’m emotionally overwrought and still shaking from the terror that keeps rearing back up.
With trembling hands, I use my teleportation privileges to get back home where I drop everything and cry until I’m completely wrung out.
Eventually I get myself into my shower, washing away everything I can.
The lingering feeling of fear feels like it will never go away, but I remind myself that Vera did not necessarily mean to fuck me up like that; she was responding to the attempted murder of her spouse, which is completely understandable.
It’s likely that my extreme response is like the sex pheromone thing with Lora, and Vera could not have known I would be so affected by her angry pheromone or whatever.
And even if that’s all true, I’m still not ok.
After I drag myself out of the shower, I pick up my PDA to text Vera to let her know that I’m going to take a few days to recover.
I don’t say anything else because it’s not ok that she did that to me, but I also don’t want to regret speaking out of turn right now, either.
When I pick up my phone to ask Bee if she's working, there’s several new messages from the empire.
SDAVE: Ship FRED self-destructed after human technologists who’ve claimed responsibility set off the self-destruct sequence.
SDAVE: Two ScaryDarkAlienVampire enforcers lost their lives saving the spawn aboard the ship.
SDAVE: Search and rescue teams have reeducated thirty human technologists involved in the destruction of Ship FRED.
SDAVE: Oliver Teakwood will report to Dr. KAL for psychological evaluation and therapy at 0900.
SDAVE: ANNOUNCEMENT: InvasiveParasiticBodySnatchers have been discovered in every region.
BE ADVISED: InvasiveParasiticBodySnatchers inhabit dead or dying beings.
Please report EVERY DEATH AND EVERY NEAR-DEATH to the nearest ScaryDarkAlienVampire.
DO NOT ENGAGE. Humans engaging in violence will be reeducated.
SDAVE: COUNTDOWN TO INVASION: 40:12:39:04
The countdown is live.
Holy shit. Forty days until the invasion force of the body snatchers will arrive, and they’re already in every region. That’s every city in the world. Fuck.
Unknown: WE WILL NEVER SURRENDER.
What the fuck is wrong with this human group of potato heads? They caught thirty of them, but there’s still at least one out there trying to cause chaos.
Me: YOU ARE AN IDIOT
It doesn’t make me feel better to send that, but sometimes I do things in the moment that I shouldn’t.
On the plus side, I’m not still shaking from the Vera-induced terror.
I make sure my towel is secure around my waist and go to my kitchen, where I pull out everything that feels good enough to eat right now, and I line it all up on my counter.
I open every jar, grab more forks and spoons than one person needs to dirty in one meal, and then I stand there for an hour, munching on my favorite foods, drinking myself into a happy little buzz, and ignoring the drama of the world out there.
If I have to keep up with the happenings out there in the world, then our alien nannies aren’t doing a good enough job protecting us, and that’s not what I signed up for.
I’m going to be a toddler, happily oblivious for at least the next…
I check the time… seventeen hours before I have to go confront my trauma with a psychologist.
Fifty hours until Lora wakes up.
***
I wake up with a scream in my throat, soaking wet with sweat, and…
I rush to the bathroom before I pee my pants, barely making it to the toilet before I start losing it.
Fuck.
I might never forgive Vera. Well, my body might never forgive her.
I finish emptying my bladder, wash my hands, and head back to my bedroom, where the closet calls to me as soon as I step across the threshold. I press my lips into a line, deciding whether it’s a good idea.
“Fuck it,” I whisper to myself, grabbing my blanket and pillow and taking them into the closet.
“Sorry if this is a violation of your culture and privacy, but Vera scared the shit out of me, and my dreams are nightmares. I damn near peed my pants just now, and that’s after she literally scared the piss out of me,” I explain to the sleeping alien as I lay my pillow beside him and make a little cot out of my blanket.
I lay on my side, curl into his stiff body, and lay a hand across his chest. “Sorry. I just need to not be alone right now,” I whisper.
Lora doesn’t so much as twitch, but I still feel safer than I did in my own bed.