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.

All in all, you could say I am conflicted about the whole situation.

So I do the only thing that makes any sense right now. I grab one of the jars of lotion I had lined up on the bathtub rim, the heaviest one, and throw it at his face.

I throw like a girl – meaning that I throw it angrily and with great accuracy. Aroldis Chapman has nothing on me right now.

Bane ducks away but the jar still clips him on his horned head and then smashes against the wall tiles behind him. Jar and tiles shatter with a crash and rain down onto the floor in bits and pieces. Satisfying, yet not nearly enough to calm the fire in my belly.

So I send the next jar flying, with a barbaric yawp this time. He catches this one in his hand, his reflexes lightning-fast, and drops it to be able to catch the next one as well.

Next, I throw a bottle of lotion.

“You!”

Pumice stone.

“Fucking!”

Back scrubber with a long handle.

“Asshole!”

The scrubber, whooshing through the humid air like a wonky boomerang, finally forces Bane to sidestep quite a bit into the bathroom. My way to the door is free and I don’t hesitate another second. I need to get out of here and away from this guy lest I try to choke him with my bare hands (and fail again miserably like I did last time) or, worse, break out in tears.

I barely even feel the colder air in the main room. Barefooted and mostly naked, I power-walk through the place, pick up my garment on my way and hold it to my body like a towel – it immediately starts to grab at my skin a little, trying weakly to wrap me up and re-knit itself – and then stomp out the main door, which Bane left wide open as he came in.

When I look over my shoulder, I see that he’s not coming after me.

I guess I should be glad about that – chances are he might be angry at me right back, and not in the fun way.

I should be glad. Instead, I’m fuming.

What a goddamn asshole! Can’t even be bothered to come after me. Fuck this dude!

I am so damn borderline-irrationally angry, I’m not even sure where I want to go, but since the corridor is unidirectional and all the doors lining it are closed and barred – no doubt my lovely colleagues are celebrating somewhere behind them – I inevitably end up in the guest area of the bar.

Which is empty and looks like a hurricane went through the place.

Ceiling lamps are dangling low and crooked, their cables half ripped out, some of them shooting sparks. Chairs and tables are partially overturned, wonky from having had some of their legs broken, cups of courtesy drinks, debris of bits and bobs are scattered on the floor – and is that a dead body back there by the pillar? The bar itself – the counter, I mean, which was made of some wood-like compound – seems to be missing a piece, like a giant had taken a bite out of it at the side, causing the whole thing to slant a bit. The windows and doors are wide open, some of them broken, letting in a breeze that coolly licks my wet skin, pebbling it with gooseflesh. My garment starts feeling like a clammy, clingy shower curtain. I shiver.

Ah, fuck. Seems my warnings fell onto deaf ears. Great. If there was anyone left on this planet who didn’t (undeservedly!!) hate me for what happened nine days ago, they’ve probably changed their minds after whatever the hell exactly happened here just now. They probably all went home to grab their pitchforks.
 
I half-turn and jump half a foot. The bar isn’t entirely deserted, after all.

There’s a Dryth sitting at the small two-person table right next to the corridor all by himself, with a dark flask of something in one hand and his other wrapped around the hilt of a wicked-looking, silver-tipped seven-foot-long spear, his legs spread in a relaxed fashion, looking for all the planet like he’s on his couch watching TV on a mellow Sunday morning (and just happens to be casually armed). He’s as massive as all the Dryth I have met so far and I cannot believe I just walked by him without noticing, even if he’s as animated as a gargoyle by day.

Seriously, he doesn’t even seem to breathe. (Do Dryth even have lungs?) I resist the urge to wave my hand in front of his face to see if he blinks.

Just like Bane, he is in full Dryth get-up, with armored plates and metallic-looking scales covering his torso and limbs. His gray skin has a dark brown tinge, his eyes are a warm, dark orange, reminding me of a ripe pumpkin or an autumn sunset back on Earth, and they are fixed upon me.

I notice that, unlike Bane, he has ears. They’re generally shaped like mine, although they seem a bit smaller and spikier, and… well, on him, they look sort of… cute?
 
Immediately, my hopelessly overclocked brain incorporates this unsuspecting, adorably eared dude into the survival strategy I mapped out all of two seconds ago.

That strategy so far:

1. Get away from Bane (so he doesn’t return my less-than-friendly welcome-back and break me in the process).

2. Get away from this bar (because I’m so fed up with this place).

2.1. Get away from the manager (if he’s still alive) and my co-workers (so I don’t throttle the bitches myself).

2.2. Ideally, get away from this entire planet (before the lynch mobs start).

Girl’s gotta do what girl’s gotta do, I figure, so I smile at him, hoping there’s no globs of slug blood still clinging to my face to ruin the effect (then again, maybe Dryth are into that sort of thing? I’ve had weirder customers), and channel my inner Victoria’s Secret model as I cock my hip and push out my tits (or I try to. It’s not as sexy when you’re holding a garment/towel to your naked body and wearing a (soaked) diaper instead of glitter lotion, Louboutins and angel wings).

“Hello, sugar. I am Valerie. Do you speak English, perchance?” I ask him. I figure Bane can’t be the only Dryth versed in Earth languages.

If he’s surprised or offended to be addressed this nonchalantly, he doesn’t show it, which in turn doesn’t surprise me. Not very expressive people, these Dryth.

He eyes me up and down slowly. My garment is struggling to get back onto my body but it isn’t fast enough, or big enough, or intelligent enough to cover all significant portions of me – particularly my thighs, hips and waist are all hanging out there for his perusal. Oh well. Since he’s keeping his hands to himself and isn’t exactly looking at me like he’s literally going to eat me, this entire exchange so far has been the best I’ve had with another sentient being all day. In fact, I’m starting to like this guy.

“I do not speak your tongue,” he answers eventually, speaking something that sounds like slightly accented Standard Galactic. His voice is quiet, deep and smooth. Nice. “But I have a translator. I understand your words, human Va’l-ree.”

My smile turns a little more genuine. Seems like the Dryth will conquer the entire universe before they conquer my first name.

“I have a translator, too. And… ‘Ree’, please. Just ‘Ree’ is enough,” I tell him. “Would you do me the honor of telling me your name?”

Again with the long pause. I bite my tongue and keep smiling. No use trying to hurry these guys along.

I use the moment to have a closer look at him. He has a line of rust-colored hair-like growth on his head, almost like a Mohawk, that’s nestled in between the horned ridges. The ears are relatively small, compared to his head, and fit tightly to his skull. Black earrings rim the outer shell of the left one. He has a wide, craggy-looking scar running across the bridge of his nose and his cheek all the way down to his jawline, and his mouth looks full and soft for a male’s I can’t help but notice.

His pupils constrict and dilate in fascinating ways as they watch me watching him.

Apparently, after a long period of consideration, he comes to the conclusion that there’s no risk in giving me his name. Thank the gods. I’m getting just a tad impatient. There’s no trace of Bane in the corridor yet, but I know it won’t be much longer. Just thinking about Bane makes my heart leap into my throat and also causes his spike to pulse inside of me (because of nerves, certainly!). I press my thighs together surreptitiously.

“I am called Kryzedoalburune,” he utters from between his white fangs, and my translator chip just softly beeps at me in capitulation at the last word(s?).

“’Rune’ it is, if you don’t mind.” I lift a finger to tap my full lower lip. “My human mouth cannot handle your full name, I’m afraid.”

His eyes turn a little brighter, like honey, and fix on my mouth.

See? That I can work with.

I walk up do him slowly, very slowly, making sure to walk like I’m Jessica Rabbit and there’s a sexy saxophone playing in the background, and not like my knees are knocking, I’m half-naked in the worst of ways and my bare soles are painfully catching on whatever that stuff is on the floor.

I can physically feel it when come within the range of his spear, and then within the range of his arm if he got up and extended his body, and then within easy grabbing distance while staying seated. My entire body seems to hum disapprovingly at me – danger. … … Valerie, danger!… … ... Valerie Magdalena Greene! There’s DANGER, dammit! – but I push through it. I’m on a mission, and the mission is survival.

“So, Rune,” I say sweetly, “you don’t happen to have a spaceship with which one could leave this planet, do you?”

I figure my time is quickly running out and it’s wise to skip the foreplay and get straight to the point with a guy who’s bound to take a full minute or two to answer any question.

“Because, you see… I would really like to leave this place. Right now. With you.”

On second thought, maybe I should stop the whole ‘implicit questions’ thing and just ask him properly.

And because subtlety doesn’t get quick results, I sit my mostly naked ass down on the slab of pure muscle that is his left thigh. The action pushes the spike up into me an inch and squishes my diaper. I cringe, pray I won’t leave a stain on his pants, and keep my face all business.

“Will you take me away from here, Rune?” I touch his shoulder but don’t dare to sling my arm around his thick neck. Not yet. “You won’t regret it. I promise. I make a fantastic fellow traveler.”

I mean, I think I would. At this point, I’d certainly do almost everything and everyone if it made him happy enough to get me away from here.

Our faces just a couple hands widths apart, we lock eyes. I’ve got the squirmy feeling that he can somehow read my thoughts through my eyes, or that he knows exactly what’s happening in my abdomen, and in my ribcage. My heart is positively hammering against my sternum, like it knows as well as I that this is my best and only shot off this rock.

And then his eyes slide to the side and fix on something behind me, and even before I turn my head I know that Bane is standing there. Lord knows exactly how he sneaked past me without me noticing.

For the next few moments – which stretch into minutes – there’s a strange stand-off happening between the two males, with me stuck in the middle, balancing on Rune’s thigh which is definitely… well, there’s something moving underneath my ass and I’m not certain whether it’s his cock or just his muscles getting ready to spring into action. The fabric of his soldier’s pants is too thick to tell.

(Personally, I think it’s his cock.)

(Yeah, it probably is.)

So. Seems like I’m quite literally caught between a rock and a hard place, with Bane being the rock – the coloring fits, too! - and Rune being the (increasingly) hard place. I press my lips together before I go full Ralph Wiggum - ‘Haha, I’m in danger!’ – and then likely break out into hysterical tears, just before Bane snaps me in half on the spot.

What’s a girl to do?

Pull a dick move (cunt maneuver?) and try to play them against each other, of course.

“So, Rune. This is Bane. Eh, you probably know him,” I begin and finally slide my arm all the way around his neck, bringing our faces closer and recapturing the Dryth’s attention. “He has… uh… staked me a couple of days ago and he seems to think that that gives him some sort of prerogative.”

Rune’s pupils dilate and constrict and dilate again. I really wonder what that means, if it means anything at all. The rest of his face remains entirely impassive though.

“Now, I don’t know exactly what happens on your planet, when two Dryth meet one sexy A’Draht…”

Just to be clear, I’m suggesting they should fight over me. Not to the death or anything, just to first blood or until someone taps out like it’s the WWE or something. Loser stays here and drinks all the leftovers at the bar, winner gets the glory and… well, me.

Once the words have left my mouth, however, I am suddenly very aware of the fact that Dryth mating customs may very well dictate the two guys should share the chick instead.

And boy, am I not ready for that.

(I’m not.)

(Like, at all.)

I swallow nervously and look from one Dryth to the next.

Silence reigns. The wind howls through the depopulated bar. All that is missing is a tumbleweed and some eerie harmonica tunes, or some dramatic 70s synth keyboard and Russel Mael’s falsetto voice going “This town ain't big enough for the both of us!”.

When about five full minutes have passed by and exactly nothing happened, I’m starting to fold under the strain.

“Alrighty, then. Uhm, this is awkward,” I mumble to myself and start to get up off Rune’s lap.

He puts down the black flask on the table and clasps my waist with his now-free hand. Hard. His grip locks me in place where I sit.

Oh boy.

His skin is warm and tough against my gooseflesh, his fingers long and his palm wide enough to cover a significant portion of my body – and I’m not waif-like, mind you. What’s more is that he grabs me with the same sort of unapologetic assuredness with which Bane touched my tits – and then my everything else – the other day.

Damn. That’s my kryptonite. I swallow again.

“I will take you away from here, Ree,” Rune says, transferring his gaze from Bane to my face, and the next moment, everything is suddenly topsy-turvy.

“Wha-hey!” I yell as I find myself dangling over Rune’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes, scrambling for purchase with my hands on his armored back in fear of falling face-first –it’s a long ass way down because the dude has stood up and he is tall as fuck and I’m quite sure my neck wouldn’t like the impact.

“Silence,” Rune admonishes, and something in his tone makes my whole body go ‘zing!’, then go still, then slack, half in defeat, half because it’s seriously not easy on my circulation and my breathing to dangle around like that. It sucks all energy out of you and makes your head throb with blood. I groan and consider myself lucky for having (involuntarily) skipped the midday meal.

Rune’s arm is like a thick bar of steel across my ass and the back of my thighs, holding on tightly to me as he carries me toward the main door.

Before we’re outside, I put in the effort lift my head and look up one last time and see Bane standing there, looking after us with his eyes dark and dangerous enough to give me a full-body chill that doesn’t have anything to do with the temperature.

At the same time, something squeezes painfully inside my chest.

And also, I’m filled with pure glee. Asshole. That’s what you get for treating an Earth woman like that. I barely resist the urge to give him my middle finger, reasoning that the gesture will probably not hold any meaning to the Dryth. Insults are decidedly less fun if the receiving party doesn’t understand them.

Then we’re through the doorway and outside of the building, on the streets. I’m not outside terribly often, what with my workload and my manager and the rain that melts rocks, but it looks as deserted to me as the bar did, almost like the hurricane from the bar has come through here, too, and most people have taken shelter. There are several other establishments like my workplace (former workplace) scattered here and there, between all sorts of shops, markets, the odd domicile, and parking spaces for Vurn X’lora 15’s strange scooter-like vehicles, but not a living being in sight.

After a couple of minutes, in which I lift up to look around whenever I can muster the energy to do so, I realize that we’re walking toward the space port in whose shadow the whole Vurn X’lora 15 settlement lies, kinda like a farmhouse would lie in the shadow of huge silos. Makes sense that we’re going there, really – there’s nowhere else to go on this planet. There’s one “city” (random collection of buildings, really, not much bigger than maybe two hundred residents plus a couple hundred transients each day) with that one port - that’s basically it, that’s all there is to it. The rest of this little rock floating around this galaxy’s central sun is covered with forest, stinky swamp, forests growing in stinky swamps, and a big angry ocean whose waves are tossed about by the two-and-a-half moons in the sky and by the teeming monsters inhabiting it.

Still, the prospect of actually getting into a space ship with Rune and leaving this planet is…crazy. Almost unthinkable. Wonderful and frightening. Makes my mouth dry and my heart speed up. I want to leave more than I ever wanted anything in my life, but also not. I’m scared shitless of it happening that way, and also of misunderstanding the whole situation and it not happening.

“Hey, uhm. Could you put me down? I can… I can walk by myself,” I call to my (technically, I guess) abductor (it’s an actual, personal abduction this time! Uh, yay?), twisting my upper body into the general direction of his face and ears to make myself heard.

I figure I might have a chance to change my mind if I had the option to run.

We pass two streets before he deigns to answer.

“Your feet are bare,” he says.

He’s got a point there. Vurn X’lora 15 hasn’t heard of asphalt – to be fair, it would probably melt in the rain. The ground is made of the natural soil, hard-packed but rough and edgy, something that reminds me of coral. It would be hell on my already slightly scuffed soles.

Just as I want to suggest he might carry me piggyback instead, he adds, “And I like carrying you like this.” The arm that’s cinched around my upper legs pushes against the swells of my buttocks and his cheek nudges against the side of my butt, like he’s a cat wiping his scent on me.

“Oh. Uhm. ‘kay,” I mumble. Stupidly, my cheeks fill with heat. Even if it was more implicit than anything, it’s always nice to have one’s butt appreciated – take note, ladies and fellas.

But also, that might be the low-key nicest thing anyone has said to me in… years.

Man, today must be National Sad Realization Day or something.

My common sense warns me to not romanticize a Dryth because that’s something only morons would do, like anthropomorphizing and trying to befriend a polar bear. My common sense is an insufferable spoilsport.

By the time we arrive at what might be the terminal of the space port – I’ve never been there before, except when I came here, which was in a literal crate with air holes in it – I have taken ample note of the state of Vurn X’lora 15’s footpaths (good, I suppose), and of Rune’s legs and buttocks (both well-hidden from sight by thick fabric, but a girl’s got imagination, so… good) and his tail (also good, for a tail).

Unlike Bane’s, Rune’s tail ends in a fray, like an old hemp rope. Seeing that my Dryth expertise pretty much begins and ends with rudimentary knowledge of their mating habits, I can’t say if this is natural or might be another war wound, like the one on his face.

Mainly, though, my midriff and pelvis are hurting from my own weight being smushed into Rune’s shoulder pad (or maybe that’s just his shoulder), and my head is pounding from the blood flowing down into it. Less than a quarter of an hour and I’m already way over this personal abduction thing, really. In terms of travel comfort at least, my Volvo was a lot better.

We pass through doorways and walk down a corridor or three. The taste of the air changes, acquiring a distinctly metal-and-kerosene-and-bottled-oxygen flavor, and the sound of the wind fades into the noise of whirring engines and ventilation systems. Rune’s footsteps on the metal-compound flooring are almost entirely silent. Guess the Dryth are Space Ninja, after all.

Eventually, Rune stops and sets me down on the floor, and my head swims and pounds for a moment. My garment, which has valiantly clung to my tits the entire time, decides to give up the ghost and flutters down. I squawk and try to grab it but miss because I stagger while crouching, and then fall on my butt with an “ouff!” and sink onto my elbows. Yep, there’s a reason my middle name isn’t Grace.

As I half-sit, half-lie there on the cool ground like a wounded starfish, Rune comes to stand over me, between my spread legs, and gazes down at me.

He’s a living skyscraper from this angle.

Or maybe a definitely unfriendly polar bear, ready to tear into a piece of meat.

I go very still, except for my right arm which comes up almost automatically to cover my nipples. (It’s a reflex, like blinking, and no amount of time spent working in a brothel would stop it.)

“No,” Rune says and uses the spear he’s had in his hand the entire time to nudge my right arm out of the way again with its butt.

Hooboy. My heart starts up double time in my naked chest which, very opportunely, puts on the headlights for him. I blame the cold and the anxiety and definitely not the fact that Dryth Bossiness™ has turned out to be the turn-on of the century for me, no siree.

He reverses his grip and hefts the spear so that the silver tip is pointing down, right at my prone, vulnerable body.

Okay, now it’s mostly anxiety, going on fear that’s making my nips hard. Shit, shit, shit. Things were going so well. I must have misread the situation. Again. Mr Jones, my math teacher in elementary school was right – Valerie is not a quick learner and does not successfully transfer and employ knowledge she has previously gained to solve new problems.

I lock eyes with Rune because I definitely want to be the type of woman who looks into the eyes of the guy who is about to stab her with a spear.

On second thought, I much rather want to be the kind of woman who doesn’t just lie there and waits to get herself stabbed with a spear, dammit!

Unfortunately, my muscles, slightly worse for wear due to the less-than-comfortable method of transport and tight with the cold, lock in place and make it impossible for me to scramble away before he jabs his weapon forward--

And cuts my diaper-panties. Two clean scalpel-like cuts through the bits of fabric from my thighs to my hips, and the garment practically withers off of my body like some sort of anemone shying away from damage, leaving me stark naked and sitting on a wrinkly patch of blood-soaked biogarment. My skin underneath those cuts remains completely intact.

Shaking – with nerves and useless adrenaline now – I sink back onto the floor, muttering unintelligible stuff and put a hand to my forehead. I literally need a minute.

Rune looks at my prone, naked form, from my heaving chest to the soft swell of my pale tummy, the nest of curls covering my pubic mount, the recently uncovered messy area between my thighs, to my legs and feet, and back up all the way to my face.

Dryth facial expressions are truly not easy to read. I’m starting to suspect that they don’t have the same muscle groups in their faces as humans do, on top of wanting to hide emotions for strategic reasons.

It’s not that difficult, however, to interpret the movement in a Dryth’s pants, or the slow, sinewy uncurling of a tail from a waist, or the brightening – not a run-of-the-mill glitter of excitement but actual luminescence – of a pair of eyes. And just like with Bane, there’s a kind of fundamental seriousness and intense, unswerving interest in Rune’s gaze and in his stance. It’s like every single atom, molecule and elementary magnet inside him is pointing right at me, like I’m the absolute center of the universe right now, and worthy of absolutely all of the attention.

Fuck me, a girl could get used to being looked like that. The frightened fluttering of my heart switches gears and turns into something that is simultaneously faster and deeper, booming through my torso like a bass drum beat.

Rune lets go of his spear and the weapon clatters to the floor behind him, discarded and forgotten. Ha. Guess my body and my smile are literally disarming, eh?

Rune’s tail undulates, comes forward and touches my ankle, the contact quite soft and surprisingly warm. Man, these Dryth are like ambulatory heating units.

That interestingly frayed end slides up my calf and to my knee, reminding me of the fact that I haven’t shaved my legs in a couple days. (You try bending forward and putting a sharp razor to your own skin with an animated dildo up your pussy!) I get up on my elbows to follow the trail of his tail with my eyes.  It feels a bit like a feather duster. I giggle, then gasp when he keeps sliding up and up, hitting all my ticklish nooks and crannies on his way, and finally reaches the apex of my spread thighs, going for it without hesitation.

I try to feel self-conscious about the state I’m in, drippy and puffy and a bit bloody and all that, but I can’t really manage it. My mind is reeling too much after this rollercoaster of a day, it has latched on to the easy, pleasant feeling of being fingered (tailed?), and after all, Rune doesn’t seem to mind, either.

The strands of his tail tip are gently probing and poking at my pussy, one of them dipping to and circling my back door, one sliding between my lips and dipping into my entrance, nudging Bane’s spike and causing ripples all through my abdomen. I sink onto my back again and bite my index finger knuckle to suppress the much-too-slutty moan that’s rising up inside of me – alongside the eleventh orgasm of today. My other hand almost automatically goes to my tit and clamps onto my turgid nipple, pulling and squeezing it to try and ease the ache in it.

It seems to take no time at all. If he only touched my clit, just once, I think I would—oh please, good God-

He brushes the right spot, just once.

Fuck. Fuck, that’s plenty.

“Ooohmygo---d,” I groan as my whole body seizes and my eyes roll back. My toes curl. I can feel my own wetness spurt from between my shuddering legs as, in tandem, Rune’s tail tip and Bane’s spike milk my climax for all its worth.

Ho. Ly. Cow. That one had been in the making for far too long.

Rune keeps prodding and massaging me through the whole performance, his tail following my bucking and twisting hips unerringly, until my nerves flutter so hard under the stimulation that my diaphragm jumps and I nearly start to weep.

“Mercy!” I gasp and scoot, limp-limbed, backwards and away from him. Doesn’t do much good. His tail has an amazing reach, or maybe the man is just persistent. Or cruel. Or both. “Please, mercy.”

I roll onto my belly, get onto all fours – I don’t trust my wobbling knees enough to attempt upright walking just yet – and crawl forward like a baby, and finally break the contact. I don’t get very far, though. There’s a closed door in front of me, something that looks like an opening mechanism aaall the way up there. I check over my shoulder.

Behind me there’s a slightly smirking Dryth with his tail in his mouth, sucking my fluids off its tip, reminding me of the fact that blood is kinda their thing and an integral part of their mating habits.

I can’t help the low moan at that sight. That’s yet another one of these things – of which the Dryth do and say a lot, apparently – that should be disturbing but aren’t and instead seem to cause a pulse low in my abdomen. Immediately, my body is getting ready for the next round, the insatiable lecherous hussy.

I have a feeling the Dryth may be the death of me… but what a way to go.

Feeling all wobbly, I sink onto my elbows and rest my forehead on the soothingly cool floor.

I’ve been plotted against by my colleagues, almost eaten by a space slug, sprayed with space slug blood, fought/stare-down’d over by two Space Mongols, carried away by one of them like quarry, and prodded to my eleventh orgasm of today by his tail tip while lying on the floor of his space ship with which we’ll (hopefully) soon be leaving this planet (hopefully) forever. This is the weirdest goddamn day I’ve had in a long time, and I’ve had a client three days ago that literally turned out to be four fish-creatures in a trenchcoat, stacked on top of each other who, far as I could tell, wanted to talk me into investing in their intergalactic Ponzi scheme or join some sort of cult.  

And then the door in front of me opens with a hydraulic hiss and my day gets weirder.

A pair of boots appears in my vision. I lift my head up off the floor, scramble backwards on all fours and and tilt my face to look up, and up, and up.

Golden-yellow eyes return my gaze.

Fuck. So much for my survival strategy.

--

TBC (in part 4!)

Hello! I know, I know, cliffhangers are evil. That's why the next part is coming right up!
Thank you for reading!
xo cydia