Close Encounters 02: of the Fifth Ind

Ugh. Colleagues are the same everywhere.

It's a disillusioning discovery that cattiness, in-fighting, workplace bullying and backstabbing are a thing everywhere in the universe. Even when the boss is a literal bag of slime.

I mean, everyone has the kind of colleagues who foist upon them a john who's a six feet tall, five-legged, barnacle-faced slug as revenge for allegedly luring a warlike people onto a planet through the (allegedly) vast powers of their (apparently) magically irresistible pussy, right?

My

lovely

co-workers hang out in the corridor and watch me with barely concealed glee. One of them waves all of her seven fingers at me and winks with her inner eyelid.

Bitch.

I keep a very straight face as my customer half walks, half slimes ahead of me into the back room at a... well... snail's pace.

Just twenty minutes ago, the other delightful individuals working at this wonderful establishment near the space port of Vurn X'lora 15 were

so kind

to let me know that the manager -- himself a slug-thing with too many legs, appendages and a Picasso-meets-H.R. Geiger-meets-a-Lovecraftian-nightmare-after-a-botched-facial-surgery- type of face -- was having a capital-I -

Important

visitor from his planet. Naturally, said visitor was to receive

every

type of hospitality.

In my absence, while I was still dangling head-first in a gigantic crockpot scrubbing grey grease off the bottom because today is actually my kitchen day (just like every day, really), my dearest colleagues got together and drew straws over who would be the one to do the honor for the

Important Krgotu Envoy

(Ike, for short).

No points for guessing who ended up with the short straw.

I shouldn't be surprised, really. It's their way of getting back at me.

After all, it was me who went and fraternized (sororized?) with a Dryth and put our beautiful(ish), peaceful(ish) Vurn X'lora 15 onto the Dryth's radar... riiight.

It was also me who got staked by that Dryth and who gets up to fifteen orgasms a day. (Yes, fifteen. I counted.)

It's also me who is kinda-sorta responsible for the fact that the Dryth are going to come back here soon.

(Or at least one of them is.)

(

Or so he said - nine goddamn days ago, Valerie. Face it, he's not coming back.

)

(Shut up, Val.)

In my defense, none of this was really my fault. It's not like I invited the Dryth here. The bloody manager made me serve them, mainly to save his own hide. I almost got eaten, there was a bit of a tussle, blood was spilled, one of the males claimed me and then decided to fuck me -- you know how these things happen sometimes. One thing leads to another and all that. At that point all I could do was run with it and hope he wouldn't (literally) eat me -- and then everything came up Valerie.

Or came up

in

Valerie.

And Valerie also came, hard, several times.

In the end, it was all just a lucky coincidence for me, really.

Coming back (

maybe, Val. Maybe. Unlikely, at this point, if you're honest with yourself

) was also entirely his idea, not mine.

(He said he'd be back before his stake comes out, and it's coming out

tomorrow

. He's not coming back, Val.)

(Shut. Up.)

The one thing that

was

my idea was to tell my colleagues and boss about Bane's threat

(

promise?)

(Broken

promise?)

(Oh, my God, shut uuup!)

...threat of return. I mean, they had probably figured it out themselves, seeing that the Dryth weren't the type of conquistador race to make a stopover anywhere and then leave without making trouble. I just thought it was fair to forewarn everyone exactly how soon they might be back, seeing how the Dryth's last entrance at our bar ended in a fairly serious mass panic and some amount of property damage.

Ike here is my co-workers' way to express their gratitude for my heads-up. Elphaba was right. No good deed goes unpunished.

I sigh and immediately regret it as my too hasty exhalation causes me to almost have another orgasm right there. My knees wobble a bit. I bite the inner lining of my cheek and focus on my breath. That bloody spike.

Literally... bloody.

I feel a squirt of half-solid wetness fall into my biogarment-underwear and grimace.

A great many things are actually better in space. Sun- and moonsets are amazing because there are usually doubles and triples of each in a single sky, the stars are closer and brighter than even Photoshop can make them seem, and the chemical composition of the atmospheres creates unbelievable colors. Aliens have the technology to clean their air and food, so every breath and bite tastes better, more wholesome. There's no discrimination based on sex, gender, religion, ideology, skin color or planet of origin because there's too many of either of those and they are too fluid for anyone to keep track and get some solid hate going. Gravity isn't as tough as on Earth, so your boobs look even more amazing and will potentially stay nice and perky until you're ancient -- and you don't even have to wear a bra. (Eat your hearts out, Earth girls.) Sex with penises is, as I already elucidated, better overall if you keep an open mind and aren't squeamish.

But then there are periods. Not the ones at the end of a sentence. The other kind.

Aliens -- be they male, female, fungus, fluid or "other" -- don't have those, for the most part. Some really don't have them at all (because they reproduce via spontaneous cell division and such), some have them once a blue moon (kinda like dogs at home), some get one once a lifetime (and then for half a day or something), and many aliens just switch genders to avoid the thing altogether. I know, I know -- the universe is not fair... but hey, at least sex can be nice and your boobs look good, I guess?

While there are plenty of all-natural painkillers and mood-lifters that help with Aunt Flo's side effects (though no chocolate, unfortunately), basic feminine hygiene options are

super

slim. Menstrual cups don't exist at all, the items that serve as tampons require lots of getting used to and strong nerves, and the closest thing to pads are diapers for baby-aliens. Those diapers are made of semi-animate clothing which basically... Well, it drinks and eats the... excretions.

They are uncomfortable, itchy, smelly, and prone to leaking because the bio-garment normally isn't

that

thirsty. Which is why I usually go with a combination of diaper

and

tampon, even though the latter are even weirder than the former. (Don't ask. There are finger-like protrusions and long minutes of squatting/pushing involved, and sometimes stuff accidentally goes up the butt or the peehole. Yeah, eww.)

Problem is, when you have a Dryth spike lodged in your hoo-haa, the weird tampons don't fit, or they are squished and squeezed out of your body by the undulation of aforementioned spike and your own muscles.

Like, when you sneeze. Or have an orgasm. Or a string of orgasms.

It's only four in the afternoon and the one I forced down just now would have been number eleven. Might break my own record today.

So here I am, resisting the urge to pick the living diaper-panty out of the many cracks and crannies of my body into which it has wedged itself, and trying my hardest to keep a straight face when the aftershock of my almost-orgasm turns into a massive cramp.

Lovely. Just. Lovely.

(If that Dryth ever shows his face here again, I swear...)

(He won't.)

(Fuck you.)

Finally, my molluscy client has slid far enough over the threshold of the back suite for me to close the door and at least cut off my gloating colleagues. I allow myself a tiny sigh of relief, then straighten my shoulders, put on my customer service face and turn towards Ike.

One of Ike's facial barnacles sort of migrates on the surface of the Kgrotu's front end with the sound of someone sucking the last drops of soda through a straw and turns towards me.

My polite smile holds, but only because I've had three years of training with the boss, even though my stomach still heaves a little.

Ike opens a pore and produces a sound like a half-clogged drain. My translator chip picks it up and transmits the message straight into my frontal cortex.

"Human... Naked... Eat."

I nod slowly. Okay. I have worked with less. Not often, granted, but I did.

"Human get naked, then eat," I agree pleasantly in my broken galactic vernacular and quickly disrobe right there on the spot and without ceremony. My semi-sentient garment rustles in protest at being handled so roughly. I leave the diaper-panties on, though, for obvious reasons.

"Food? Drink?" I walk towards the cabinet in the corner, the one that holds small snacks and drinks that are stored there, mostly for the benefit of the people working here. Aliens tend to be a teensy bit food aggressive, so it's not a good idea to dangle snacks in front of their faces.

Then again, if the snack serves as a distraction and keeps

you

from

becoming

the snack yourself... dangle away. You might luck out.

"Naked. Eat," my client insists and stretches one appendage towards me at a disconcerting pace, like some creeptastic grabby baby hand, if babies were monster slugs."Food."

Male reaching for me saying 'food'. I'm having a déjà vu and a sudden yet overwhelming moment of clarity, an epiphany, a sad realization of the most profound proportions: I need a

Change

in my life. A big one. ASAP and at whatever cost.

I toss the foodstuff -- dried meat, some alien fruits, and the Vurn X'lora 15 equivalent of prawn crackers -- into the reaching tentacle's general direction and dance out of the way in an evasive maneuver that carries me across the room and towards the door to the bath.

"Food. Then clean. Must be clean by taking bath," I singsong like everything is perfectly wonderful in the city of Ba Sing Se, but my cheeks are straining with my fake smile and my upper lip is suddenly sweating with apprehension.

Before the Dryth came to this bar, there had never been any incidents at this establishment that I heard of. I had always assumed that bar brawls were just not in the nature of aliens, and especially not of aliens in a neutral zone -- basically intergalactic Switzerland -- but now I'm not so sure it wasn't my loathsome manager keeping the peace the whole time.

What if I've been seriously underestimating the Krgotu race as a whole?

It's in my intrinsic nature to be scared of managers -- because, you know, they hold your existence in their hands, like some sick type of demigod -- and the current one is no exception. I've had a string of them, and I can't even say which one of them was the slimiest or most unpleasant. But while I was often scared for the sake of my livelihood during my jobs, I've never been scared for my life at my job -- until now.

Not even while alone with a Dryth (Space Mongol) in this very room, which was probably stupid of me.

What if my colleagues have a reason beyond mere revulsion of Ike to put me up as his service provider? Do they know something about space slugs that I don't?

Like... Could it be that space slugs

actually

eat their mating partners? Turn their stomachs inside out and wrap their mating partners in it to digest them, like starfish? Engulf them whole and drown them in gastric juices?

I shudder and my throat gets tight.

I'm having a flashback to a YouTube video I saw years ago. It featured a gray, grainy blob of magnetic putty slowly sucking in and apparently eating a little metal cube.

Oh, God, I do

not

want to become that little metal cube.

Before I can formulate a proper plan, Ike appears in the doorway behind me, parting the milky curtains and oozing through them. In the humid air, his skin's odor immediately gets ten times stronger. I turn away to disguise the fact that I've thrown up in my mouth a little and busy myself transferring all the bathing accessories from the shelf to the rim of the big bathtub and arranging them there, then adding some of the most pungent bath salts to the gently steaming water.

"Must be clean by taking bath," I repeat and try to sound as relaxed as possible. "Into bath. Please, into bath."

With his non-eyes fixed on me, Ike seems to hesitate for a long, sickening second, and the next cramp roiling through my belly has nothing to do with my period. I grit my teeth, drive the edge of my thumbnail into my palm and smile.

Smile. Smile to breathe (through the mouth), Val.

Finally, the slug's foot...body...thing slithers across the tiles and towards the bathtub, up the side, across the rim and finally into the water, leaving a wide oozy trail. The rest of Ike's mass follows until he is wholly in the tub.

I allow myself another silent sigh of relief and turn ever so slightly away to give my straining cheek muscles a break.

In hindsight, that was probably my mistake.

Something slithers wetly across my left foot and I look down, assuming that it'll be one of the many water-loving critters inhabiting the bathrooms here.

It's not.

It's Ike's grabby monster baby hand. It wraps itself around my ankle at improbable speed once, twice, too fast for me to step out of this noose, and then yanks at my leg.

The floor is too slippery and I have nothing to grab onto in my reach, so I have the choice between falling on my face and probably being dragged over the tiles, and hobbling towards him and giving in to the pull, like I'm some unfortunately lightweight dog -- something fine-boned, like a whippet or a poodle or something -- and he's my big, burly owner with the leash.

I choose the latter, since the outcome seems to be pretty much the same and I'd rather stay upright and in possession of all my teeth.

"Ba-Bathe together? Okay. Okay," I stutter in English and quickly hop into the tub, painfully bumping my shin against the lip in the process. I try to cling to the slippery rim as my ass unceremoniously slides into the fizzing, warm water and hits the little ledge that forms a seat inside.

Half-submerged and still being irresistibly pulled by Ike, I have a horrid vision of being pulled underwater like the expendable brunette in a 90s horror movie bathroom/swimming pool scene. Drowning was my biggest fear while I was still on Earth (second only to managers). Hard to say whether I would rather drown or be eaten right now... and

man

, that's another sad realization.

Ike's appendages -- there's two now, one for each of my legs -- wind themselves around my calves and knees and up my thighs, and then something latches on to the upper inside crease of my thigh.

Is... is he sucking up the blood that's seeped out of my diaper?

Ugh. Eww. I fucking

hate

my job.

Ike makes some slurping noises as his sucker latches on to my diaper-panty.

Scratch that. I hate my

life

.

"Food," Ike blubbers again -- my entire body seems to dry-heave -- and then the slug's mass starts to move through the water and into my direction with the inevitability of an iceberg.

Little metal cube, meet magnetic putty.

My shoulders automatically draw up to my ears and the tiniest of whimpers escapes my mouth.

I close my eyes tightly and take the time to viciously, thoroughly curse my job and my backstabbing colleagues and my manager -- who, I

just

realized, set me up to get rid of me and of Bane by extension --, to curse my own rotten luck and my foolishness and carelessness, to curse my

Volvo

, that piece of

shit

, which cost me

so much money

in repairs, guzzled gas like a hole in the ground

and then

got me abducted by aliens, curse that

goddamn

Dryth who first showed up here without asking and capsized my life and then said he'd be back here days ago

but then wasn't, that asshole

and is now getting me eaten by a space slug by virtue of his absence.

Something wet and viscous sprays all across my face. The tentacles suddenly pull tight as if trying to wring out my legs and break my bones, and then abruptly go entirely slack just before it gets unbearably painful.

I keep my eyes and lips screwed shut, lock my jaws and scream on the inside.

What

the

fuck

!? What is that on my face? Krgotu gastric juice? I expect my skin to start melting off any second and frantically splash bath water into my face to wash off the substance that's clinging to my cheeks and nose, eyelids and forehead and part of my hair.

Before long, I notice that the bathwater I'm scooping up with my hands is strangely... heavy. Viscous.

I open my eyes, squinting.

The water in my palms is yellowish-white and stringy, like pus.

Eww.

I shake it off hastily, then notice that the stuff is creeping towards me across the surface of the bathwater, like crude oil from a capsized tanker making its way toward a beach, and that it's giving off a smell of moist garbage.

Ohhh, groooss!

With a terrified shout, I scramble out of the bathtub, almost falling on my face in the process. Ike's limp tentacles cling to me like sea grass and I shake and rip them off with both hands and shudder when they fall apart in my grip like so much wet cardboard.

Finally out of the tub, standing with my back pressed to the wall to support my two unsteady legs like a newborn doe, my surroundings start to filter into my brain and things start to fall into place.

The yellowish stuff in the water -- that must be Kgrotu blood, because it appears to be streaming in great big swells from Ike's body which is split open lengthwise and gaping wide like a cracked oyster. The weapon that created the fatal wound, which looks like the love child of a scythe and a halberd, is still protruding from between Ike's facial barnacles.

I turn my bedraggled head and see the guy who apparently threw that weapon standing there near the door. All slate-colored, six foot five, at least two hundred fifty pounds of him in his full soldier's regalia are looking at me with his yellow, lizard-pupil eyes, his facial expression so even and neutral that he seems positively bored.

We stare at one another for a good, long moment.

Bane says nothing.

Bane, who came to this goddamn bar with his goddamn brethren nine days ago, turning life (and work) on Vurn X'lora 15 from "chaotic neutral" into "anxiety-inducing clusterfuck (but with orgasms)".

Bane, who fucked me and 'staked' me and left me. He left me alone with his penis (sorry, 'spike'), which made it hard (ha!) to sleep properly, and with my period, which came two days late for the first time since my puberty and

freaked me the fuck out

, and with my blackmailed (or 'bribed'?) boss and my vengeful co-workers who clearly meant to kill me.

Bane, who may have just saved my life, yes -- I couldn't say, I'd had my eyes closed -- but who also just killed my client, who is (was) a VIG (Very Important Gastropod) and whose demise my manager will surely not be happy about. My manager and the rest of the Krgotu race, probably.

Bane, who just effectively ended my life on this planet, or any planet near Krgotu central, and quit my job for me without even checking in with me first.

Bane, who said he'd be back sooner.

Bane, whose fault this whole mess is, is standing there and looking at me -- naked except for my living diaper, dripping wet with water, with Krgotu blood, and with my own blood probably forming pink little rivulets down the insides of my legs -- and he. Says. Nothing.

Nothing.

Doesn't even bat an eyelid.

And some small part of my brain is dancing a victory dance and chanting 'Told you so! Told you so!' and mooning me inside of my own head (yes, that is entirely feasible), while my heart and stomach do funny little things inside my torso.