Raising her eyebrows, she watched as the parent linked hooves with its child and pulled it away to view another poor soul in one of the other terrariums.
The child sucked on its juice pouch, its eyes on her as it walked away.
“Byeee!” She waved, pasting a fake grin on her face.
The child’s weirdly large, dark eyes widened and the faint sound of its squeal came through the shield as it pulled against its parent, trying to return to her terrarium.
Lauren’s eyes widened slightly.
“No, no, keep going. Go with your mama, or papa…” Shit, she had trouble entertaining strange human kids, much less strange alien ones. She didn’t need the attention.
“Go away, little alien. GO AWAY. Nothing to see here.” She was whispering, speaking underneath her breath through gritted teeth, while mentally berating herself.
First rule of the terrarium: Never engage with the visitors.
They tended to not want to leave her shield and go somewhere else whenever she even so much as made eye contact with them.
She guessed that made this a shit zoo if that was all it took to get the visitors’ attention.
She guessed? She knew it was.
As far as she could see, she had gotten the luck of the draw with her terrarium and at least they fed her every day.
Maybe they thought she was frail and would die if they didn’t at least make an effort with her.
Lauren sighed, her shoulders sagging with relief as the parent pulled the little alien away.
At least the child had only been looking at her with interest.
There were some aliens who came by to look, species that she couldn’t have even imagined existed, and she could see the danger in their eyes.
Outside of the transparent shield wasn’t a safe place to be.
After she’d been taken, she’d woken up on a large alien ship. There had been slugs hovering on levitated rings and tall guards that looked like gators walking upright.
They’d planted a translator at the side of her head, behind her ear, performed a gender test on her to confirm she was female, then locked her in a cell.
Next thing she knew, the ship had gotten attacked and she’d hit her head against the cell. She must have lost consciousness because when she woke up she was being pulled into a market, thrown into a cage, and then bought by the zookeeper.
It’d been horrific in that market.
The stench had been unreal. But worse than that, the aliens walking by had been terrifying.
Imagine living in a world where you didn’t know aliens really existed, only to wake up one day and find that your life was ripped away from you and you’d been thrown into an actual alien world.
Not only that, but most of the aliens had been looking at her with one of two things in their eyes. They were either looking at her as if they wanted to have sex with her or like they wanted to see what she tasted like.
She’d been lucky with the zookeeper. She only realized this later and, for that reason, she hadn’t fought to escape.
Well, she’d stopped fighting to escape.
After the first few attempts and the excruciating pain she’d endured when she’d been caught, she’d learned to stay within her terrarium. When the door in her wall opened during feeding times, she no longer tried to rush through it to freedom.
Where would she go anyway? She was alone.
Deep down, she knew returning to Earth was never going to happen. She was lost to the world, literally. She wondered if they were even looking for her back on Earth.
Did her family think she’d met upon some serious accident somewhere? Did they imagine her body rotting in a ditch on some lonely road? Did her friends miss her?
Another alien paused by the transparent shield. He was all white and he was dressed in a white robe. He blinked at her, studying her.
She found herself staring at him.
It was hard not to.
He was an alien, after all, and though she’d accepted the fact that aliens were real and there were many different species of them, it was still a bit jarring when she saw a new one.
But, after a year away from Earth, every day that passed it got easier and easier.
Easier knowing she would never see Earth again.
Easier accepting that this was her new life.
Easier adjusting to this new life.
She was alive. Every day, that one fact kept her going. Despite what was thrown at her, she was going to survive.
The white alien got bored and walked away, leaving her alone again.
Sliding to the floor, she touched the watch fastened around her wrist.
It no longer worked. The battery went out several months back, but she kept wearing it anyway.
It’d been her mother’s watch and the only thing she had from Earth apart from the clothes on her back—her now very-worn jeans and black tank top.
She was lucky to have them.
The watch was like a relic of her past life.
As she spun the watch around her wrist absentmindedly, she looked toward the transparent barrier, a frown slowly creasing her brow.
It was strange there weren’t any aliens at her terrarium barrier today. Usually, they’d be filing into the zoo by now, flocking in to see the exotic animals they wouldn’t normally see in the wild.
But today was different.
Just then, the door on the inside wall of her cell moved.
Lauren stiffened.
It wasn’t feeding time yet. There was no reason for them to enter her terrarium.
As the zookeeper stepped into the terrarium, his fat black and red belly jiggling, Lauren moved a little farther toward the far wall.
The alien looked down at her, his small ears folding over behind his horns. He looked like the version of the devil they didn’t want you to imagine: old, intoxicated, and rocking that divorced dad-bod. All he needed was a pair of boxers and messy hair.
Who would
