“How long have I been asleep?” I said.
“Not long. About three weeks. You need to go back to sleep…”
Three weeks?
It wasn’t possible. I was locked in my head in a coma somewhere. This Maisie was some sort of internal projection, that’s all. Maybe one of the nurses taking care of me in the hospital. Or someone I passed on the street one time.
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
“It’s the truth,” Maisie said.
“I have to go,” I said, pushing myself up onto my feet. “I have to leave. I can’t stay here.”
Maisie waved her hands. “You don’t have a choice. If they find you, they’ll hurt you.”
“This isn’t real,” I said. “I’m trapped in some kind of nightmare.”
But how could I prove it?
I know! You can’t feel pain in a dream. I pinched myself.
I felt it.
Oh no…
I pinched myself again. Harder this time.
I felt that too.
The room spun as I realized everything Maisie told me was true.
I was on a spaceship heading to my new ‘master.’
This sure wasn’t part of my plans for Hazel’s hen night.
I grabbed Maisie by her shoulders. “Tell me how to get out of here. There must be an exit, a way out. Something.”
Maisie shook her head. “There’s no escape. You have to go back to sleep—”
“There must be a way back home,” I said. “There has to be.”
Instead of grasping at the woman, I wrapped my arms around her and bawled like a baby.
“Please,” I said. “Please help me get out of here.”
It felt good to hug another human being. Even if she was working with the mysterious ‘them.’
I pulled back and she too had tears in her eyes. “There might be a way, but you must be careful. If they catch you and they discover I helped you…”
And that was when she told me the two-part plan to aid my escape. First, she would swipe a translator strip from the captain’s room and then use it so I could work a craft in the shuttle bay.
It’d worked perfectly until I had second thoughts in the shuttle at the moment of the launch—
A tray clattered on the table as a member of the crew eyed me with suspicion and raised his bowl. I ladled the stew into it and, still not taking his eyes off me, he backed away to a nearby table, joining the others with the same expression on their faces.
“Don’t worry about them none,” Maisie said. “Except for me, they’ve never seen an abductee free to roam the ship.”
“They sure look pissed,” I said.
They glared at me not with anger but hunger… The kind only a female companion could provide.
Well, not this female!
“Are they dangerous?” I said.
Maisie looked at me and then glanced away. “Only if they’re in a bad mood. Which is why we made one of their favorite meals. I’ve never known a good stew to end up with an argument.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” I grumbled under my breath.
I got back to chopping more vegetables. Maisie kept a close eye on me and altered my posture so I could do it faster. I’d never been much of a cook.
Maisie leaned in close. “Did he tell you about his little… problem?”
I glanced the crew, covered my mouth, and whispered back: “His sickness?”
Maisie nodded. “The rest of the crew can’t know about it. If they did, they’d take action. And that’s the last thing we want. As strict as he is, Nighteko is fair. And he has a streak of honor in him that not many of the others possess.” She sidled up to me. “Don’t tell him I said that. He doesn’t need a bigger head.”
I considered telling Maisie the truth—that the crew not only knew Nighteko was sick, but they were causing it in the first place. But I didn’t want to worry her. She was better off not knowing.
Hell, I was sure a lot better off not knowing aliens were real and abductions actually took place.
Now I was here, I was just going to have to put up with it.
By now, as Maisie had promised, the crew focused their attention away from me and on their bowls of stew…
All except one.
He was by far the largest and needed a whole table to himself. He had small piggy eyes and a flat snout with two large nostrils carved into it. In fact, there was a whole lot about him that was piglike. One long ear folded forward, the other bore notches in it and a pair of gold rings. The stew ran over his flat nose, down his chin, and splattered across his uniform. He didn’t appear to care. After all, the uniform was already doused with meals of yesterday.
“Maisie?” I said. “Who’s that? And why is he staring at me?”
“That’s Horn Tusk,” she said. “It’s best not to make eye contact with him. He can be a little… grouchy.”
One of the other diners leaned his elbow on Horn Tusk’s table as he enjoyed a conversation with his friend. Horn Tusk froze with a spoon to his lips and glared at the elbow. When the unfortunate crewmember didn’t notice he was encroaching on Horn Tusk’s space, Horn Tusk seized the elbow in his hoof and gently twisted. A cold hard snap and the diner fell to the floor, screaming in pain.
Horn Tusk calmly resumed eating.
Yowza.
Once Horn Tusk was done, he carried his tray over to the kitchen and dumped the contents in the sink. He affixed a smile to his face. Just the sight of it turned my stomach.
“Maisie, Maisie, Maisie,” he said. “Just what do you put in your food that makes it taste so good?”
Maisie grinned and slapped his arm good-naturedly.
“If I ever get my own ship, I’m taking you with me,” Horn Tusk said.
Maisie chuckled. If it were me, I’d be shaking with sheer terror, but she appeared to be used to his gruff nature.
Horn Tusk approached the stew pot and sniffed the remains with his wet snorting nose. “This is for the captain?”
“It always is,”
