Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
“Oh, my gosh! Tasin! A human! Can it talk?”
“Of course I can talk,” I say.
He chuckles, as if talking means something else here. I bet it does.
“I love small mouth noises,” he says. “It’s so primitive, but in a good way.”
Then they start to communicate in another way. I can’t understand it. I can’t even really explain what it is, or how it works. I just know that they are. I can feel a kinship happening nearby, something in the way their eyes flash and their faces move. A whole conversation is happening, but not audibly.
“Rude,” I complain.
“Sorry, pet,” Freak laughs. “It’s just a lot quicker to discuss things that way among ourselves. I was just telling Miko how I came to find you, and how good you’ve been.”
He reaches out, takes me by the hand, and pulls me close to him. I kind of want to bite him now. I don’t like feeling as though I am an animal in a human world, but that is how I feel around these aliens.
“Everyone is going to be so happy to see you,” Miko says, switching to a verbal language I can understand, though now that I know they’re basically doing the equivalent of talking down to me it doesn’t feel as good.
“I’m not stupid,” I grumble. “Just because I can’t talk with my brain.”
“Of course you’re intelligent, pet,” Freak says indulgently.
“Do you want to bring her with us? Or do you have a crate or something to put her in?”
“If anybody puts me in a crate, I’ll chew my way out of it and I’ll come and bite you,” I promise.
“She’s pretty violent,” Miko says.
“Humans often react to fear with aggression. Stop talking about her out loud,” Freak says. “It makes her uncomfortable.”
“Don’t talk about me at all!”
Freak pulls me close to him, lowering his voice so it feels like only I can hear him, though I bet his words are going far and wide in this freaky alien place where everyone reads minds.
“I’ve got you,” he tells me. “You are mine. It’s going to be strange for the others to get used to you, but you can help by being a well-behaved pet for me, do you understand?”
“I’m gonna bite them all,” I mumble back.
He laughs, but taps my ass at the same time. “Don’t,” he says firmly. “I need you to be on your best behavior.”
“You barely know me,” I tell him. “Maybe this is my best behavior. Maybe my normal behavior is much, much worse.”
“It’s about to get a lot better if that is true,” he says. “Otherwise I am going to take you into a corner of this place and give you a very thorough training session, pet.”
He is using the same tone as the one he had when he punished me, and every part of my body thrills to it.
“Mmm, yes. Teach me how to be good,” I purr against his chest.
I feel a rumble in response, and I know I am having an effect on him too. He likes disciplining me as much as I like him disciplining me.
“Get a room,” Miko says. “But don’t. Because we’re going to manifest a feast, and you have to be there. Bring the human. If the others are weird about it, let them be weird about it.”
Freak carries me after Miko, and the three of us travel through a city that frankly makes me feel seasick again because when we move, or when their legs move, it really seems more like the city rolls around them, kind of like we’re on an unseen treadmill and everything else is what moves and shifts around us.
There are no plants here. There’s nothing that I would call alive. I don’t see anything growing. I don’t see anything moving. No butterflies. No birds. Just the geometrically carved moving marble structures and a brilliant blue sky.
I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t like this place. It’s sterile. It’s not a place for things like me. That’s why my presence is a scandal.
“I know it seems strange,” he says. “It looks different to me than it does to you…”
“Stop reading my mind,” I complain.
“Sorry,” he says. “It’s just I can feel your alienation. And I want you to know that it is normal. We won’t be here for that long.”
“Oh? We’re not staying in the geometric marble hellscape?”
That was rude of me, but I’d really like to be somewhere that the walls feel like they really exist. I want to be somewhere there’s ladybirds, or at least a bug or two. I guess the station didn’t have plants or bugs on it either that I saw, but it felt more alive than this place. This feels like a place that only exists in theory, and I don’t think I can survive in theory.