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)
“Dad!” I shout, loudly enough to make a few aliens around us look at me.
The lizard man looks me up and down, his forked tongue flickering at me as if he is tasting me on the air.
“You sss-hould be more careful about where you’re going.”
“Maybe. Sorry. I’m trying to find my dad. He’s over there…”
“Who iss your father?”
“The man who gave me life,” I explain, wrenching my arm away.
“Wait,” the lizard says, catching me with another hand. “You are with the wrestlersss, are you not?”
“Yeah!” I say. “I gotta go!”
He lets me go, and I make a mad dash through the various openings the crowd provides. I am getting so close. I can’t believe it. I was so scared that he’d leave, or blend in, and I wouldn’t be able to ever find him again, but I’d always know I was so close.
I catch up with the man, reach out, grab him by the arm, and swing him around. “Dad! It’s me!”
“Wha?”
The man I am looking at has graying hair and stoic features, but he is not my father. He’s not even entirely human. He’s definitely part human in some way, but his skin contains extra ridges around the nose and mouth. His eyes are wider and darker than full humans. He looks at me with a surprised expression, though due to the shape of his big orbs, that could be how he normally looks.
“Sorry,” I say, my eyes getting all misty with disappointment. “I thought you were my…”
“There you are!”
I hear a rough growl behind me, and then I am physically picked up and thrown over Freak’s shoulder. He carries me through the crowd like a trophy, and unlike for me, they part for him, making his path easy.
Some massive blue alien beasts have all the luck.
“I told you one thing,” he is saying. “One thing and you refused to obey even in the slightest and most reasonable of ways.”
He’s mad. I am sad. It’s a terrible combination because he isn’t feeling me for once. Usually he knows everything I am thinking and feeling without having to ask. But he’s all caught up in the adrenaline of thinking he lost me and he’s turned his brain off and all he wants to do is get me safely back in the ship and never let me off again.
I know all of this without having to read his mind, because he is so obvious about it.
“One thing,” he is saying as he carries me up the ship stairs.
“One. Thing,” he repeats as he drags me into our private room.
Then he starts saying a lot more things and doing a lot more things and the repetition of that one thing phrase is something I quickly become nostalgic for.
“I told you not to leave my side,” Freak says, his palm whipping my ass too hard and too fast to allow me time or space to make any kind of response. “You were almost entirely out of the area! And speaking to strangers!”
I cry out, wanting to explain, but being unable to, and then at a certain point I don’t even care if he knows why I did anything anymore.
“I thought I saw my dad! But it was just some guy.”
His expression softens slightly, and he stops smacking my ass. He lifts me up to face him. “You cannot run after every old man you think might be your father, pet. The likelihood of him being here is infinitesimal. We are waiting to get back a report from our network as to where he is likely to be. Until then, you really must contain yourself.”
“You’re really mean,” I complain.
He hesitates for a moment. “That may have been really mean,” he agrees, surprising me. “I can feel the angst you’re experiencing, and how much that hope must have turned to misery when you realized you were chasing an idea through the crowd. I’m sorry you miss him so much. But you have to obey me, pet. No matter what.”
“No matter what? What if it had been him there, though? What if I saw him and I couldn’t find him because you forbade it? Obviously I am going to go to my father if I see him. You cannot tell me not to.”
Freak scowls at me. “You’re not going to find your father ambling about a space station.”
“Why not? That’s what his job is, roaming about on space stations! I spent months doing that with him. Years, really. He always looked at everything to see if he was missing any opportunities. He’d have come and looked at you lot to see if there was a chance to make t-shirts with your faces on them.”
“Your father has a responsibility to find you,” Freak says. “It is not your job to rush about, putting yourself in harm’s way. It’s my job to protect you, and it’s his to find you. You are lost to him, not the other way around.”