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She grabbed my wrist that held my phone and tapped my phone against the wristband. There was a small chirp.
“There, it is synced to all your data. Tap on the indentation when you want to call me.” Caley pointed at the center of the strap. She straightened up, rolling her shoulders back and thrusting out her chest. “It is my responsibility to make sure my clients are satisfied with their match and you can’t go flying off to the moon without being able to call me and tell me about it.”
“I will,” I laughed. Then I thought about what had happened with Aeson’s tongue a few hours before the wedding. “Eventually. Probably not right away.”
“Understood.” Caley relaxed her jaw and smiled at me. “I sent your address to your new husband’s unit so he knows where to go. Have fun.”
Aeson took that as his cue to book it back towards the back of the garden, where there was a large empty cement slab. As we approached it, a light shimmer in the air rippled, revealing a two story tic tac.
A hole opened in the bottom of the tic tac and Aeson carried me inside and set me down in chair. The chair was thick and plushy, and I sank down into it like it was determined to eat me. The soft yellow surface pillowed around my arms. I tried to lift my arms up, only to discover that the chair was indeed eating me.
“I had this added for you.” Aeson patted me gently on the head.
“Aeson, I can’t get up,” I pointed out. “You made a restraint chair just for me?”
“Yes, to ensure you are unaffected by the acceleration and directional changes of my craft,” he replied, the hole in the wall sliding up and vanishing. The rest of the room was a soft beige, a smooth interior surface with no other furniture or defining features. There weren’t any portholes or screens.
Just beige.
Aeson wrapped himself around my chair several times before lifting up in the air above my head.
“We will be there shortly,” he said.
Then he stuck his entire upper body through the ceiling.
“Alright then,” I said. “Going to swing by my house in a giant tic tac.”
I sat there and waited.
Nothing happened.
This was weird.
I’d just married an alien and then gotten on his spaceship.
It had only been a few minutes since he stuck his upper body through the ceiling, but I could feel my heart racing. It felt like there was a weight pressing down on my lungs. My thoughts ran away from me, trembling like a hamster on a wheel, spinning endlessly in one space, round and round, over and over. Should I have gone with him? Was I making the right decision? Had I just thrown my life away, getting into this spaceship with an alien I barely knew who had been vetted by a friend who didn’t even warn me he didn’t have any legs? Not that it should matter, or should it? What if he was a double amputee human and I didn’t know it before I met him, would that be the same thing? No, this guy was a giant snake man, a Naga, something that showed up repeatedly in human lore and knowing that in advance, at least knowing a little bit about his culture so that I didn’t sexually proposition him as my first interaction, would have been a good idea. I didn’t know that so maybe this whole moon base was me agreeing to something else that I didn’t know about in advance. Maybe this was a terrible, horrible idea.
I really needed to take a Blamex.
At that moment, the floor disappeared.
I was sitting in a chair, my feet dangling out over open space.
Not the ground, but outer freaking space.
The Earth was below me.
It was a brilliant blue, green, and gold gem, a breathtaking sparkle on a shimmering black backdrop, splattered with stars. It was gorgeously overwhelming, set to the background drumbeat of my out of control heart pounding as if I was sprinting up a mountain. I took a deep shuddering breath, trying to rein my thoughts in and focus on the present moment of exquisite beauty, but what should have been a gorgeous moment filled with overwhelming, rising panic.
I couldn’t move my arms to grab my meds.
I needed them. They had worn off and I needed them. I needed something to stop this crushing terror. I was going to die. I was going to suffocate, out here in space, at the mercy of a monstrous alien that I married because I was tonguematized and would rather go hard in the direction the haters hated me for rather than ghost the guy and go on a groveling apology tour. I didn’t have to do this. I didn’t have to be here. I could have just rolled over and shown my belly and hoped the internet mob would take pity on me and convince my job to take me back. Instead I was in space with a giant monster snake who wasn’t taking me to my home. Who knew where he was taking me?
A sob ripped free from my mouth as I desperately tried to suck in air.
Tears streamed down my face.
I was suffocating. I was being crushed. This chair was too tight. I struggled against it, trying to free myself but I couldn’t move at all. It was compressing me.
