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Seized by the Alien Sneak Peek
Bianca
I cracked his skull so hard I thought I’d killed him. I didn’t know what the penalty was for killing one of these alien creatures but surely they would let me mount a case of self-defense?
As Master’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he sailed in slow motion toward the bed, I wondered how my life had come to this.
Until just a few minutes ago, I was scrubbing the floor of a filthy alien house somewhere in the galaxy. I leaned with my full body weight on the wire brush to dislodge as much of the dirt as I could. Three weeks now I’d been scrubbing that floor and it still looked like a dog had shat on it.
I’d seen advanced vehicles whizz through the air on anti-gravity thrusters and slept in a cryogenic pod for days or weeks at a time and you were seriously telling me no one on this stir-crazy planet had thought to invent a better cleaning device than a wire brush?
My hands hurt and the skin had long since turned dry and cracked. I’d always been proud of my hands. But that was when I’d been a teacher back on Earth. Not a slave in someone’s shithole house in the armpit of the universe.
Thewwwwww!
“Oh no, not again!” I screamed.
I shuffled back on my ass as far as the restraint around my ankle would allow, held my breath, and pinched my nose.
“What’s going on?” you might ask.
Had someone just dropped a grenade?
Had someone just tossed a smoke bomb in this one-room cockroach-infested shack?
No. Stinky—that was the name I gave the dog-like creature that belonged to Master—had just let one go. I didn’t know what made the animal break wind like that but it sure couldn’t be healthy to make that kind of stench.
Then again, Stinky was as alien to me as the rest of this world I’d been dumped on. For all I knew, these Titans might think he smelled like roses.
The stink infiltrated my blocked nose and made my stomach churn. No matter how long I held my breath, I had to breathe in eventually. I covered my mouth with the crook of my elbow but it did nothing to stop the smell.
Stinky raised his hairless head and cocked his head to the side. His three bulging eyes peered at me questioningly.
“Don’t pretend like you didn’t know what you just did,” I said.
Stinky lowered his head and wagged his twin tails. The picture of innocence.
The smell dissipated and I took a moment to clear my passageways. The stink had a habit of lodging in the throat and repeating on you when you least expected it.
Despite his flatulence problem, Stinky was the best friend I’d made on this planet.
In fact, he was the only friend I’d made. And that was probably the most depressing thing of all.
For the thousandth time that day, I thought about my friends and where they were. The last time I saw them, we were in the minivan that plunged over a cliff and toward the bottom of a deep ravine. A bright white light froze the van in place and sucked us each up into the sky one by one, like plucking grapes off a vine.
After that, I woke up in this shithole.
Were my friends in the same situation I was? Fighting to maintain their sanity? Used as slaves to a merciless master?
I had to balance most of my weight on one ass cheek to avoid the worst of the searing pain from the lashes Master had given me. Sometimes he wasn’t so accurate after drinking the night before.
Serves me right for spilling soup on the floor.
My vision turned blurry with tears and my head flopped forward on my arms.
What had I done to deserve this?
I’d been an elementary school teacher. My kids loved me. It hurt that I might never see their beaming faces again.
When I turned in for the night, I often cried myself to sleep—silently. I wouldn’t want to wake Master. That would result in very harsh punishment.
That was when the darkest thoughts came to me. That I was never getting out of here. I was never going to be free.
I was going to be scrubbing this floor for the rest of my life, and it might end up being a very short one at that. All it took was for my drunken master to go off crazier than usual, for him to deliver a blow just a little too hard or at just the wrong angle, and it would be over.
My hopes and dreams of escape, to return to Earth and my old life, would be dashed for good.
I delighted in teaching my old students something new, something that sparked that look of pure wonder on their faces. When you worked around children, you never stopped being a child yourself.
And I loved it.
But those children might as well have never existed. They might as well be figments of my imagination.
Escape had never seemed possible.
For the first few days, I hollered for help. I screamed myself
