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“I want you to sleep well,” he says. “You need a good amount of rest. You look very tired. I know that running about the universe selling yourself to every kind of alien possible has been quite stressful for you. You’ll never have to worry about fending for yourself again, Sandy. I promise that.”
He drops an all-too-chaste kiss on my forehead, turns out the light and leaves the room. I lie in the dark for a long moment, just breathing and trying to get some sense of what is happening. I am cleaned. I am fed. I am tired. He’s not wrong that traveling around the galaxy trying to sell myself has been stressful. It has also been demoralizing, and worrisome, and a whole bunch of other negative feelings to boot.
Suddenly, I am comfortable. I have had all my basic needs met. The temptation to relax and simply melt into the dark is quite intense. All I need to do is close my eyes, lie back, and let him take care of everything. What do I need a brain for, anyway? Has it ever done me any good? Arguably it has only gotten me into increasing amounts of trouble as my life goes from bad to worse.
My eyes are starting to feel heavy. I fight the temptation to close them, but it almost feels as though I don’t really have control over them. There’s a certain weight to my limbs too, that isn’t always there. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost say that hot chocolate had a little something extra in it.
I sit up in bed and I push the blankets back. I need to keep myself alert. I need to get off this ship. I need to resist control. I need to do what I’ve always done and be a complete pain in the ass. Getting up entirely, I start to swing my arms to force blood back into them.
“Don’t give in,” I lecture myself. “Don’t let him suck you into this happy little fantasy. You’re going to get the hell out of here and you’re going to be free. In fact, it might even be better if the others think the scythkin has you. They might not come after you if they don’t know he’s lost you…”
I start to smile a little. This might actually work out very well. The scythkin, Atlas, could very well stand as a shield between me and the worst of my alien owners. Emrys and Sheriff can fuck off completely.
I wait for what feels like a very long time, until I think he’s probably also gone to bed. I don’t know how much scythkin sleep, but I hope it’s somewhat akin to humans. I hope he’s getting a good, long night’s rest.
Putting my hand on the door, I worry for a second that it might be locked. If I was keeping me, I’d lock it. But Atlas didn’t, and it swings open on hinges that don’t squeak. Things are starting to go well for once.
Isneak out of my room, padding on bare feet. If I do manage to escape, I am going to be doing it in a nightgown, without shoes, and without any kind of funding or weaponry. It could be a mess, but then again, most things in my life are.
I move through the lounge, past the bathroom and the kitchen which loom quietly through various arched doors. I am thinking that this ship is probably a lot larger than a small house. Most of them are. I want to find a door that leads outside this little imaginary human environment and into the part of the ship where the real things are.
I find a door somewhat hidden in the walls in the lounge, between the bedroom and the bathroom. It doesn’t have a handle, but it does open with a light push. Like the other doors, it has two sides which slide apart and into the interior of the ship’s walls. Unlike the other doors, which lead to human-themed interiors, this one leads to a slick black interior. There are pipes on the exterior of the walls, also black and solid. This is where the real business happens. This is where Atlas becomes who he really is for himself.
I slip into the hall. I can hear my feet on the floor, making soft slap slap sounds. I am being very careful to stay as quiet as possible, but this part of the ship has a kind of cavernous ring to it. The human part was made to my scale. This isn’t. This is made to scythkin scale. The walls are taller, the roof is higher, and the echoing spaces are much more echoey.
It is lit with red diodes which blink in various patterns. They almost look like letters, but not in any standard galactic script that I can read. I am sure they mean something to someone though. I hope one of them means ESCAPE PODS.
There’s got to be one around here somewhere. There has to be a way out.
I keep my ear out for Atlas. I assume I’ll hear a massive, lumbering scythkin who is probably itching to get out of his human suit before he hears me. If he thinks I’m safely asleep I might potentially have hours to explore the ship.
Every corner brings fresh opportunity, and fresh disappointment, right up until I go through a little door which leads to a bay with a small ship in it.
“Jackpot!” I murmur the ancient incantation to myself. This is exactly what I need. All I have to do is get into that thing and I am the kind of free I’ve always dreamed of. I bet those scythkin ships can move faster than anything I planned on buying. Maybe they don’t have hyperspatial capabilities, but I know they’ll be fun.
“What do you think you are doing?”
The inquiry catches me off guard, making my heart sink and race at the same time. I turn around to face the scythkin, whose gruff tones indicate real displeasure. Of course, he caught up to me just at the very moment I seemed to find my way out of his trap. Of course. Why would anything go right for me when it could go horribly wrong instead?
I turn to see that Atlas is halfway in and halfway out of his human suit. The effect is… disconcerting. One half of his body is human sized and shaped. The other half is au naturel. My mind twists like I’m looking at a sentient möbius strip.
“Back to bed, young lady,” he says firmly. “It is very naughty for you to be out here. Was one caning not enough? Do you need another six?”
“I definitely do not need another six. I don’t think I could take another six.”
“Then you need to get back to bed this instant, and I do not want to see you out again before morning.”
Much deflated, but with the knowledge I’ll later need to make good my escape, I slink back to the mid-century nightmare that is Atlas’ idea of a proper environment for a human mate.
REEEeeeEEEeeeEEEeeeEEEeeeEEE!
I wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of a cosmic tin opener turning this practically impenetrable ship into an easy-open vessel. The wall of my room is bowing and vibrating like crazy, and the cacophony that is made as the side of the ship is wrenched open is incredible. It sounds like the end of everything.
I accept my fate immediately, because I have very little choice. I am going to be sucked into an endless void and there is going to be nothing I can do about it. Cosmic forces are at work, and though I can fight an endless stream of ultra-possessive aliens with weird kinks, I can’t fight the eternal vacuum of space.
I sit in my frilly nightgown with my knees drawn up to my chin and I wait for everything to end. Funny how much energy I spent fighting this outcome only for it to find me anyway. Some people would say that’s how fate works — it’s just this inexorable force that plays with us all as if we’re dolls. Some of us get crushed before we’ve even started to live. Others get to survive to adulthood only to realize that’s only delayed a terrible inevitable.
I see rotating teeth peeling through the inner skin of the wall. I hold my breath, knowing that the oxygen will be rushing out of the room now. In a second, it will be a big enough hole that I’ll be sucked toward it and probably end my life in a thin stream of human paste.
