Chapter Text
Ella
I always wanted to win lotto, thought it would solve all my problems. Surprise! I finally won one…just not this one. Why was this the worst lotto in the galaxy? Oh, let’s see because we were the prize. The dickheads we put in charge of global leadership auctioned 30 million of us to any alien species that could stop our star from going supernova. The winner, a race of aliens called Klards. We were being handed over to one eyed, four-armed, horrid fucking smelling frog like creatures.
I stood in the middle of roo knows where staring at about forty black ships, one of which I was being loaded on to. They were huge with wide flat wings reminiscent manta ray. I searched the lines of unwilling people- sorry winners- trying to find Jeremy. Sweat dripped down my skin, the Australian sun beating down on us with a vengeance. I stared up at it, knowing that I wouldn’t I feel its heat again. Would it be cold where we were going or just as hot as here? The soles of my feet tingled, I swayed from side to side to avoid the burning sensation of the red dirt.
Aside from the ethical what the fuck of this situation, why did these aliens want us? Tiny, fragile and annoying humans? We were going to be snacks for them, probably grilled on a barbie with their version of snags.
Turns out we solved two problems for them. The first being their need for cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline to help regulate the overproduction of dopamine in their brains. In other words, these motherfuckers were depressed and cruising towards psychosis. I was a mood stabiliser! I swallowed down a groan as my chest ached.
Not the way I thought I would go, but what could you do when government dickheads with guns show up at your apartment before the sunrise? Invite them in for a cold one? Ask them to go down to the pub for my last chicken parmie? Yeah, that didn’t work. Begging didn’t either. Did the government consult the population for our opinion on being sold to aliens? No, of course, fucking not. I kicked up red dirt, earning a glare from a soldier — sorry, one of our escorts to claim our prize from the Klards.
Our prime minster said that we were doing a great thing for our world… while we sat in a pen with chains around our wrists waiting to be shipped off! I wasn’t sure if they were trying to bring back my emo phase or had an interesting kink I might’ve been into under the right circumstances.
The person in front of me made a run for it. She got a good five metres away, dodging and weaving before getting hit in the face with the butt of a rifle. She hit the ground hard, a cloud of red dust rising around her before two soldiers dragged her to one of the waiting ships where our new owners- sorry, where the aliens holding the cheque waited in their oh so smelly glory.
I glanced around again, hoping to spot Jeremy. I wanted both of us to escape the hell we were headed toward. Turning back to the ship, I couldn’t fully make out the creatures from this distance.
To my left, two ships down, dead bodies were being loaded onto a ship in mass with two live humans. That brings us to part two of why the klards wanted us. Fertiliser. They had over-farmed their planet, and our dead bodies would rejuvenate their soil with hydrogen sulphide and carbonic acid. The live ones of us were the temporary solution until they could regrow their regular fix. According to our prime minister, from here on out, any dead that would be shipped to the Klards as part of another deal they struck.
I searched again for Jeremy’s red hair in the forty lines of people. I’d hoped we would at least be together and not shipped to different parts of the planet we’re headed to.
My brother and I began a stable life after all the shit we had been through. I had a great job at the hospital, a comfy apartment, and had managed by some miracle to keep a plant alive for over three months. My brother had an amazing girlfriend and they were looking to get their own home together. We were living the dream. Now the fat greedy arsehole of a prime minster, who only cared about saving his own arse, was sending us to our deaths. Selfish bastard. I was coming up to the black metal ramp that would be my red carpet to doom.
There were protests and riots, but we hardly stood a chance against our country’s military and the alien tech the Klards dropped into their hands. Quite a few of those protesters were in these lines now.
Before this deal came to light the government made IVF free and pushed it. They put a lot of money into infertility research out of nowhere. Paper after paper came out claiming that increasing reproductive hormones lead to lower risks of cancer and dementia. Women who weren’t even considering children were being prescribed IVF drugs. It should have sent warning bells ringing in my head, but how the fuck was I meant to know our own people were breeding us?
I knew deep inside that we would not be the last 30 million to be auctioned off. Repairing an ecosystem didn’t happen overnight, and the governments knew that this wasn’t the end. We would feed them for years to come under deals the Klards would come up with, and I don’t think the government realised if they didn’t comply, an invasion would be the Klard’s next move.
I kept moving along as the chains clanged and jingled. My chest was painfully tight, and each breath felt like pulling air through a straw. It wasn’t helped by the putrid mixture of rotten egg, shit, and nail polish that filled my nostrils as an eight-foot-tall alien grabbed me. I never thought I would see what a four-armed white guy, a chicken and a frog looked like blended into one being, but a Klard was the horrid embodiment. My eyes watered at the stench as it squeezed my arm with its three fingered hand. The ugly creature opened its frog like mouth, allowing me to see hooked jagged teeth and its tongue covered in black broken glass like taste buds. Two long vine like appendages slid from its mouth, opening to hissing at me. I recoiled. Well, fuck me dead. My body shook. The feeling of scrapping and tearing of flesh ran wildly through my mind. It would be worse than road rash if this beer bellied frog ate me.
Screw calling them Klards. They were one-eyed shitheads now and any other shitty name I could come up with. My gut turned, the acid burning its way up my throat. Nah, I was not gonna puke; I convinced myself swallowing the vomit down. Who knows, this shithead might eat vomit as an in-flight snack, and I don’t want them to get a taste of me. The huge sack of flesh on chicken legs shoved a gun shaped device to my left shoulder and a sharp pain shot through my flesh. My body shook for a second and the stinging in my arm disappeared. Did it just shoot me? There was a red light under my skin now, flashing its little heart out. A tracking chip, maybe? Or a thermometer to know when I am perfectly cooked later? It was probably the former, but I didn’t think these fuckers would pass up on the perfect roast.
The alien shoved me forward and into one of the two cells in the most empty hold. There were two other women in there before me. I forced myself to steady my breaths as my chest and throat tightened, threatening to suffocate me. The cell was a decent size, with thick black metal bars and the place really held the stench of its’ owners. My skin prickled at the chilly air pumping out of the vents in our cell. I stared at my captor, looking for a way to get out of here or kick its smelly arse. I noted there were protective bones on the one-eyed fucker’s chests and sides, with arms that would make a body builder jealous. Their eight-foot tall, built like a brick shit house vibe made me shrink back. Maybe I could poke that big amphibian eye. Nah, I would barely poke them in the holes they called a nose if I had a run up. My chest squeezed as I realised how little I could to do and how much damage they could do to me. Everything was going to be all good. Maybe we can get out of here.
The two women next to me cried loudly, their bodies racked with sobs. I had worked emergency, but their cries were nothing like the worst cries of pain or loss I’d heard. Their cries were harsher and more broken with each breath they took. My heart pounded against my ribs fiercely as the sounds of banging and cries got louder with each new person dragged into the hold. A pale woman with brown hair was being shoved into our cell. She kicked at the alien with every bit of strength she could muster. She was fighting it with feral rage, but her hits didn’t seem to do anything to the alien. The twisted monster seemed to think it was entertaining, going as far to egg her on to fight more by shaking her and poking her.
She swore and cursed before she bit into the alien's arm. The muscles around the alien’s eye contorted into an unsettling glare. Its two spare arms were now grabbing her waist as the alien stopped pulling her along. Every muscle in my body pulled tight, trapping my breath in my lungs. Silence filled the hold of the ship as I watched the alien grab her brown hair and pull her off the ground in one quick motion. The woman continued fighting frantically. Her limbs flying even as the alien began twisting her skull with one hand while it held her body still with its other three arms. Cold was all I felt as I watched her limbs stop jerking with the sickening crack of her vertebrae. Her once bright brown eyes became unfocused and hollow.
The alien, satisfied by the unmoving body, leaned its head down. Its jaw hyper-extended until its entire mouth fit over her head. The one eyed-shit’s jagged teeth pierced into the flesh at the back of her neck. Its tongue scrapped off layers of her flesh around the back and sides of her neck, blood seeping down the front and back of her clothes, with each new scrap as it pulled bloody muscle tissue into its mouth. The dickhead only stopped when I could see a sliver of bone. I cringed away, shuddering.
The cell was quiet until the alien’s jaw snapped closed, and the crack of her cranium shook the silence, filling the hold with whimpers and screams. The alien’s stomach writhed and wriggled as its vines extended out of its mouth. I watched as the vines appendages thinned themselves out to move into the column of her vertebrae. Uncomfortable slurping sounds filled the cargo hold as its appendages slithered into the woman’s flesh. The muscles of her neck pulsed rapidly, her whole body down to her pelvis, writhed and wriggled. Her legs swayed with each movement, dripping her blood on to the metal below. My throat tightened and my legs felt heavy, welded in place.
Once the slurping stopped, I learnt that there was a fresh horror to witness. The alien ripped its head back and the woman’s spinal cord tore from her body wrapped in the long greenish twisting muscles of its appendages. It was then that I realised the slimy, twisting green muscles split open and lined with jagged teeth that pierced into the woman’s spine. Some of her smaller nerves remained attached. If it wasn’t so bloody, it would have looked like a thin tree pulled from the ground, the entire tree wrapped in life crushing vines. I ground my teeth together to stop the scream that curled at the back of my throat. It retracted its appendages, pulling her bloody spinal cord back into its mouth, spraying blood across the cargo hold.
The one-eyed fuck dropped her body to the floor, leaving her blood to seep out of her neck. Blood dripped on to the black panels, draining away through the gaps. Its beer belly was now rounded like he was nine months along. The movement within was rapidly twisting and shaking. Sloshing sounds came from its belly and its odour becoming more putrid. The sound of her skull cracking and the slurping of her spine replayed through my mind over and over. Hands trembling; my mind was unwilling to accept what I fuck saw. My heart squeezed. The women near me pushed themselves back into a corner of the cell, huddling together until all I could see was the mixture of their blonde and black hair. Fuck, fuckity, fuck. They eat humans. My chest wanted to heave. That was going to happen to me, wasn’t it? I forced down a whimper. An alien was going to crack my head like an egg and tear my spine from my lifeless body like it was fucking spaghetti.
My body shuddered, as a young woman with tight brown curls and pale brown skin. She was shoved forward into the cell, landing next to me on her knees. Her brown irises near swallowed by her pupils. Did I look as freaked as her? My chest wanted to heave again. I couldn’t let that happen. I had to stay calm. Come on, think. Another alien walked out from a room next to a cell across from ours. I couldn’t see into the room as the new alien dragged the headless body back with him. The metal warped as her body dragged over the floor panels, creating an awful banging sound. That sound I feared would haunt my dreams. Fuck, fuck. I squeezed my hands over my mouth to hold in my scream. If that was what these one-eyed freaks will do, what was happening to that poor woman’s body now? Stop thinking and start doing… just not anything that makes them hungry or mad. The woman shoved forward, hitting the cage bars on the way down. They would hurt her if she stayed there. I couldn’t bear to watch that bloody process repeated to another person. Bile rose again. I slowly reached out my hands to her.
“It’ll be right, come this way. They’ll leave ya alone if you are in here.” I whispered putting on my softest strained smile. Her brown eyes were wild, shooting around the cell. “Focus here, it’ll be right. Come closer. I am Ella. What’s your name?”
Her hand took mine when the ramp creaked as the one-eyed dick began dragging another person up it. “Marcella,” she mumbled, her hands holding a death grip around mine. Her breaths were erratic, tears streaming down her cheeks, with no sign of stopping.
“It’s okay Marcella, you’ll be right. Stay close to the girls back there, okay? I’ll stay in front of you guys. They can’t get to ya if I am in the way.” She nodded. It was stupid to tell her that when we both knew deep down, I couldn’t stop them with all my might after what we saw. I helped her shakily crawl to the deepest corner of the cell with the other ladies. The grip she had on my hands was painful, and her nails dug into my palms. I am going to die alone and scared…or live a life where I am forced to make more humans to feed the froggy cyclops.
“You’ll be right. Imma be right near the front and I’ll get the next person, okay? I won’t let anything else happen, okay.” She nodded at me and hesitantly let go of my hands. I gave her my best everything’ll be right smile.
There’s nothing okay about what’s going on. I can’t see a way outta here and I didn’t know how many of these ugly googly eyed aliens there were on this shit box. Even if we got around them, our own people were just gonna hand us back. Our Prime minister made sure of that. If one of us escapes, the government will give people cash and safety from being selected if they were caught. The pressure around my heart grew again. Okay, I needa breathe. I wished Jeremy was by my side. If I had him close by, I could calm down.
It didn’t feel like I got any air. I tried again. I placed my palm on my ribs. My lungs expanded as I inhaled, but it felt like there was no air in them. I couldn’t breathe. What if I die? What if I was having a heart attack? Stop it! I was letting my mind control me again. I was not having a heart attack. This was a panic attack, and I knew how to prevent this. I proved to myself that I was indeed breathing by the rise and fall of each breath. I was in control. My mind doesn’t rule me.
Bullshit! My mind ruled me. This was the perfect time to panic. A one-eyed, six fucking limbed alien tore a woman’s spine from her body! Tears brimmed in my lashes and my lip trembled. The other women and Marcella were weeping and yelping. Why couldn’t I be like them? I was just as frightened of what was happening as they were. I was not at work. I had no fucking training for this.
They looked so small huddled in the corner. Shaking my head as I tried to ignore my chest tightening. I never wanted to be that scared again.
I couldn’t let Jeremy see me like that again… if I ever saw him again. Attempting to steady my breaths and put all my focus on helping the others and looking for Jeremy. Perhaps If I had distracted the government guys, maybe he would have gotten away. No, no more what ifs. If I started going down the what ifs road, I’d be spiralling out of control.
The next woman was dragged up the ramp, her face wet with tears. She could barely keep her feet. The government agents must've drugged her. Her black hair roughed up and, by the look of it, her wrists were bruised from struggling against the chains. The one-eyed dickhead pushed the woman forward, sending her flying into me, a frightened sound leaving her lips. With my chained hands, I gently ushered her to the back corner where the other women all sat huddled together, and found out her name was Jane. Whatever they gave her made even sitting up for her difficult. I felt my fear coil tighter around my throat, my saliva choking me. I kicked down another whimper, fighting to pull in a breath. This should be a dream. The sounds of people panicking pulled me to do something. This wasn’t covered in my training but I could be useful here like I was in the hospital. I needa stay calm and look after the others. If I don’t look scared, they will calm down too. Deep breaths.
Across from our cell I saw the men being ushered into the other cell. The men looked just as frightened as us. I could see that Jeremy and I weren’t the only ones who attempted to fight our kidnappers. Bruises littered some bodies coming up the ramp. Two more women were pushed into the cell, a seemly sweet sun kissed blonde called Hannah and a fiery woman named Evelyn with long black hair braided down her back. Evelyn spent most of the time I was leading her back muttering about how this was unfair and how she wanted to put them on a grill and see how they felt about it. She continued quietly muttering as I left her with Hannah, who tried to soothe her. I noticed that all the women here seemed to be in their late teens to mid-thirties, of all shapes and sizes, and aside from a few bruises, they all seemed to be in perfect health. Same went for the guys that I could see. Most of them looked to be taken either as they slept or rudely awoken, like Jeremy and me.
I choked when I saw Jeremy come up the ramp. A small cloud of relief settled over me, loosening anxiety’s grip on my throat. It left as quickly as it arrived. The whole right side of his jaw was bruised and his bottom lip split. His eyebrow ring had been torn out, leaving a trail of blood over his eye and cheek. Two aliens dragged him up the ramp as he struggled against them looking behind him. Jeremy’s green eyes were wild, searching the hold. When his eyes finally settled on me, he gave me a look of utter despair, and with that, I felt my heart squeezed. The pressure around it once again tightening to the point I felt it would burst. I needed to calm down. If Jeremy seen me upset, he might do something stupid and get himself hurt… or worse, get killed by these one-eyed dickheads.
I shot him a gentle smile, mouthing everything will be okay. Would we be okay? Could we get out of here? Watching as the dickhead tagged him and shoved him into the cell much like they had done to me; I felt nervous laughter bubble up in my throat at the murderous glare he shot them, subtly flipping them off. I could see him mouth to me across the cargo hold, asking if I was good. Nodding my head, I showed him with my eyes to get into the corner of the cell. He would be safest there. I watched as the men mirrored the women in our cell, sheltering themselves as far away from the mono ocular frogs as they could.
I continued with each new woman, quietly asking her name, and getting her to sit with the others in the corner of the cell away from the entrance. This shit bucket of a ship wasn’t big, so it wasn't long before the cells had filled. From what I could tell, there were about thirty women and, let’s say, about twenty-nine men from what I could see. The one-eyed stinkers then shut the cell doors.
One more man was dragged up the ramp and thrown against the wall next to the sliding door. The guy was small and wiry, fighting as the klard tagged him. The one-eyed fucker pulled a cord from a hidden panel in the wall, sticking it into his arm over the implant. His body stiffened, the chip glowing blue under his skin. The mans breathing changed from rapid and short to slow and steady. His eyes glazed over. What the fuck was happening to him? I swallowed my vomit down. My hands shaking.
His veins swelled, their blue clear under his pale skin… Was it draining him? It made sense why there were only two live people on the other ship now. Maybe that fast death was better than whatever the fuck was happening to him.
The hold grew dark as I watched my last view of earth disappeared with the lifting of the ramp. The last time I would see the red dirt. The last time I would feel that warm sun on my skin. My vision swam. This was my fucked-up reality.
A roaring engine came to life, and I assumed we took off. Take off didn’t feel the same as it did in a plane. It was surprisingly forceful and happened swiftly; I felt every one of my limbs pulled down to the panels and I couldn’t lift them. Somehow, the one-eyed dickhead standing in the hold didn’t fall to its knees. It wasn’t long before I could lift my arms again and I assumed we were out of earth’s atmosphere. We were officially fucked. Probably to be fed, bred and then sucked dry.
The remaining alien returned to the room beyond the sliding door. That should’ve brought me relief, but I was more frightened than ever. My mind became worried about when they would return. My stomach turned. Without thinking, I had let the fear creep up. The pressure around my chest didn’t want to subside. I couldn’t let an attack happen here. Steady Ella, I repeated in my head. Jeremy and I would find a way out. We always did. I would get us outta here. I quietly started asking if anyone was injured. Looking at Jane’s wrists, I couldn’t repair the damaged.
I wouldn’t cry here; I wouldn’t hyperventilate here. That would not help. I needed to figure out the differences between the chicken legged dickheads and us. Maybe if we found a weakness, we could get away. What if they had none? We might create one. What if we create one but they overpower us? We might not have time to escape. Even if we escape, where were we going to go? How were we going to control this shit bucket if we overpowered them?
My mind spiralled, and I tried to yank it back. Weaknesses, focus. The alien’s skin was tougher than ours. They retracted the muscles of those fanged appendages into their abdomen, making what looked like a beer belly that wriggled when full. They were incredibly strong. The alien didn’t even flinch when the girl hit it. Her teeth didn’t seem to bite through its white skin either, but it didn’t seem to like her saliva on its skin, it killed her right after she bit it after all. Bitting was a last resort, cause if those ugly froggy chickens tasted as bad as they smelt that would be a nightmare. Their birdlike feet might make it easier to unbalance them… or they could just claw us to death. My idea from earlier might work if someone taller could work up the courage to rush them and hit that eye of theirs.
My mind was so preoccupied I hadn’t realised how long we were travelling until my stomach growled. I felt sick because of the smell that lingered from the one-eyed dickheads. Incredibly hungry and tired, I thought I’d just worn myself out by holding off a panic attack, but most of the girls were sleeping huddled together. I leaned my shoulder against the cell door, feeling weak, but my anxiety didn’t give a shit. My chest still ached, and I attempted to rub the pain out of it. Sadly, that didn’t work. We were going to a planet fuck knows how far away from earth. We were delicacies to these creatures.
This was a panic attack that I couldn’t shut down, but I could make it less overwhelming until it quietly hovered in my chest. I knew they wouldn’t eat most of us until we arrived at their home planet. The double chinned monsters made sure there was a huge water dispenser in each cell that we could freely access and some weird toilet. They wanted us alive and reasonably well looked after. They would feed us, that was for sure, but how much and how often was the question?
The exception the man by the sidling door. His head lulled to the side, drool seeping from his mouth. He hadn’t moved more than to mumble about terrifying things. The most repeated thing was “please don’t hurt me more, stop bitting me, please.” I hadn’t removed my eyes from the sliding door to the other room. With each creak, I would be at full attention and readied for what next horror would walk through the door. My eyes wondered for a moment to Jeremy. He curled his large frame up against the wall of the men’s cell as he slept. For now, he was safe.
I assumed a night had passed when most of the girls woke up after what felt like hours. My arms ached around the wrists and my back was stiff. Hannah stood up from where most of the girls huddled together and came close.
“Mornin' Hannah, ya sleep alright?” I smiled warmly.
“No, I had nightmares... and we’re here,” she yawned quietly wiping her blue eyes. She ran a hand through her hair trying to untangle it as she looked at the sliding door leading to the unknown room, “have they come out again? The bird footed aliens?”
“Nah, they’ve been in there and I haven’t heard much since we took off.” I nodded at the door. Hannah’s stomach growled loudly, her freckled cheeks taking on a shade of red. She nervously fiddled with the hem of her shirt, trying to calm herself.
“Have you slept yet?” She came close and leaned on my free shoulder. She curled up and took my hands. Her skin was cold, her sleep shorts and top definitely not warm enough for the cool air that pumped through the hold. Hannah was a small woman, and she couldn’t be more than nineteen or twenty, I thought. She would be thirteen years younger than Jeremy and me. I put her hands in mine to warm them up.
“Nah, yeah, I napped a bit.” I lied. She looked up at me her, brows creasing. Instead of calling me on my lie, she pulled in a shaky breath.
“Will they feed us?”
“Yeah, I reckon they will. We got a way to go I think,” Her eyes were full of tears as she looked up at the ceiling, trying to stop them from falling down her face. Fuck. “Now don’t ya worry, we’ll be right. We just gotta look out for each other.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to cry. I really miss my mum and dad. I don’t think they know what happened to me and I just moved out and...” she hiccupped as I squeezed her hands. Poor girl. She was just getting ready to live life on her own and now she, like the rest of us, was being carted off to fuck knows where, by ugly aliens that seen her as a snack.
“I am sure they’ll find out and they are missing you right now. It'll be right. What is your favourite memory with em?” I asked as I coxed her mind to happier things.
She smiled to herself, “when I moved out, they helped me put everything in place. My dad kept joking about all the stairs and how the stove looked like a surprised face. My mum kept going over rules for renting and rights...” Hannah seemed to describe it with a bitter sweetness when she remembered where she was. “Do you think we will ever go home?”
I was lucky enough not to have to answer that, because a small hatch opened in each cell and a robotic voice echoed through the hold bouncing off the black walls.
“One piece per human.”
Everyone rushed to crowd around the hatches in chaos. This was a fuck up in the making. I stood up too quickly and my head spun. “Oi, one person at a time please, they will make sure everyone has some. Make a line please.” I said making sure I eye the guys in the cage on the other side as well.
I felt a harsh glare on me as I met a pair of grey eyes. “Why should we listen to you? How do you know they aren’t poisoning us. How do you know there will be food for all of us?” The man was so loud I flinched, eyes snapping to the door. We all paused, holding our breaths, straining to listen.
“I am going to test it with a scratch test. No, I don’t know if there is for all of us but if we do this one at a time, we can make sure there is.” I said quietly, eyes still locked on the door. The tanned bloke with tattoos down his arm looked pissed, opening his mouth to say more.
“What the fuck is a scratch- “
“You a doctor? It is one of those allergy tests, right?” He gruff voice came from beside tanned guys. I nodded as another slightly larger bloke with water colour tattoos down both his arms grabbed mister tattoos by the shoulder and shot me what seemed to be an apologetic smile. It was scary how similar they looked, both of them had dark brown hair and strong jaw line. They could be twins with how similar there faces were. “Derek, why don’t we line up.”
Derek still watched me, eyes full of suspicion before he joined the line. The Jeremy began organising the guys on his side. When my turn came, I picked up a small orange brick. This was food. I thought as I turned over the weird brick in my hand. What was this made from? It didn’t smell like much, maybe a little like potato?
“Is it safe?” Marcelle asked staring at me, and she wasn’t the only one who stared. I doubted they would feed us something that would kill us if they wanted to snack on us. I pricked my skin on my forearm with my nail, digging it in until I drew blood, then rubbing the brink against it, waiting to see if a rash would form. After some time with no swelling or rash occurring, I tried it. I took a bite of the weird flaky brick. It didn’t taste like much either. Sadly, not like potato, but lemony. I took some more time checking my heart rate as it remained steady. “It’s safe.”
There was a scoff for the other cell, grey eyes holding mine with a glare as Derek set the bar to his side shaking his head. What the fuck did I do to you mate? His friend with the water colour tats seemed to think the same clipping him behind the head and shoving the bar into Derek’s hand. Ignoring him, I stared down at the flaky lemon light brick. How many times were they going to feed us? Would they fatten us up now or when we got to their planet? I brought the brick back to my mouth and bit into it again, even as my thoughts made me sick to my stomach.
“Ella, you good?” Jeremy’s call snapped me from my thoughts. He looked worried as he held the tiny brick in his hand.
“Yeah, of course, ya don’t needa worry. Eat and rest up. Everything’ll be right.” I grinned with false hope as I bit into the brick again. Fuck, this lemon light shit was going to get old fast. I grabbed a tiny cup from the water dispenser and cringed at the subtle saltiness of the water. It tasted like bad electrotypes.
“Ella...” His tone pressing, and I could see he wanted to talk about how bat shit all of this was. I avoided shaking up the peace we had.
“Everything’ll be right. We’ll figure this out.” The look I wore suggested I had a plan. I had shit all, but I would get us all out of here. Just gotta keep breathing and I’d find a way.
“Yeah, okay, I believe ya, but Ella, are you okay?” The firmness of his tone surprised me. No, I was millions of kilometres from okay, but everyone here was the same. Jeremy himself wasn’t okay, and I could see it. His jaw clenched, and his hands trembled. He’s scared shitless, trying to be strong. I knew he was trying to comfort me like he would after I had a panic attack at home, but I had to be strong.
“Yeah, I’m good. Everything’ll be right.” Placing my fist on my chest over my heart and he nodded, relieved, believing my lie.
Soon our lives fell into a cycle of sleep, eat the one lemon light a day, talk quietly and sleep some more. Oh, and we got a surprise on day two, a shower with foam and water. I finally got to experience what it was like to be a car at the car wash. Air drying function and all. I soon learned this would happen every second day. I got very little sleep with my eyes trained on that black sliding door, waiting for it to open and for things to go to shit. In between watching the door, I dealt with multiple cases of chain burn, the worst case belonging to a short, curvy girl called Clare. Her skin had broken in multiple places.
What horrified me was the man connected to the tube. His cheeks had hollowed out, his eyes sinking into his head. His body had slid down the wall, now laying limp on the floor. I could see the veins pumping in his temples, his legs covered in bed sores and his body nothing more than bones. This was sick. So fucking sick. He was dying and with each moan, I knew he was feeling all of it.
I tried to use the time the others were sleeping to look at the lock on the cell door, which I soon realised was a lost cause to escape. They must have used a magnetic implement to open it because I couldn’t find a hole for a key. The plan to escape by picking the lock was a failure. Yay, if we don’t get eaten and they abandon us, we’ll starve to death.
During that time, though, Marcella and Evelyn started talking to me about their lives and what they missed most, while Hannah stayed close to my side. I found out Marcella was a culinary student, and she was headed to Paris. Her eyes lit up when she talked about food, and I found it funny how much she hated the bricks we were eating. Evelyn and Hannah found a connection in talking about their dogs and the weird things they got up to. This always made one of them tear up, though. Jane had said little at all, and I worried about her. The men had been getting more restless as each day passed.
On what I think was day six, Derek picked a fight with a larger man because he wouldn’t stop crying. He snapped, jumping on the man only to be pulled off him by Roger that got him to chill out about the food test who earlier. Turns out they were definitely brothers. The dumb arse was lucky the bigger guy didn’t fight back and that his brother had stepped in. It quieted down after that for a while. Most of us found comfort in sleep or silence. Jeremy spent most of his time in the cell sleeping. I was getting more worried about him by the day.
The idea I had to find something to use as a weapon was also a failure. There was nothing in our cell that could be ripped off the walls, and the lights above were too far out of reach. The metal of the bars would not budge, either. So, all I could do was stare at the door with a sense of helplessness that my anxiety fed on. On what I think was day twelve, the man connected to the tube couldn’t talk anymore, his every breath a wheeze. The bed sores had opened, leaving bloody smears on the floor.
I figured it had been about fourteen days by bar count, I was exhausted and wanting nothing more than to cry. Last night, the man attached to the tube stopped breathing. His eyes were a milky white, blood leaking out of his mouth. The blue light in his tracker fading and the pipe disconnected with a hiss. My body shook just thinking about it. His body laid on the floor unmoving, going into rigour. Looking away, I mindlessly braided my red hair. My diaphragm was constricting painfully. Heat flooded up my chest and neck. My body is on the edge of hiccups. I couldn’t let that happen, hiccups led to crying and crying led to hyperventilating. Deep breath in. I held it until my lungs burned and forced myself to let it out.
“Ella?” a deep whisper called from across the cell. Jeremy. I had to stay calm for Jeremy. He smiled while his red hair fell into those pale green eyes we shared, and I slowly smiled back. I couldn’t cry and I couldn’t have a panic attack. I needed to be strong for him. Jeremy was not just my twin, but my closest friend. We had been together since the day we were born and that was true even now.
“Everything’ll be right. Stay near the back corner.” I watched for the smelly Cyclops, but they were still behind the door. Jeremy scrunched up his brow and his eyes pulling tight at the corners. No, I wasn't looking to argue with him, but I could see he had a lot to say. There was a tightness in my chest; Breathe. He was just worried and scared, like everyone else. He no doubt wants to know if I had a plan and what it was.
I had nothing. I had fuck all. I didn’t know how to save us. There was no trick or way I could see out of this. We were heading to our deaths, and I couldn’t see a way out. There were now three paths for my life, bred to make more humans, my spine to become spaghetti or slowly emptied like a juice box. My diaphragm threatened to start its irregular rhythm again. I gripped the bars of the cell hard. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t see a way out. I couldn’t bear to see the look of helplessness and doom fill his face. Hoping to reassure him, I rolled up my pink pj sleeve and the white under shirt on my left forearm. There painted in colourful ink, were two cute jellyfish with star shapes as their heads. I pushed my arm through the bars, chaffing the chains up my forearms so Jeremy could see it. He paused, the furrowed look fell from his face and raised his own sleeve. We got matching tattoos not long after we ran away from the house. When we got them, I promised him we would never go back to mum’s house no matter how hard it got. I promised that no matter what, we would always be there for each other. He smiled now, nodding at me, and tapped his hand to his chest just like he used to when we were little. We really couldn’t go back to that place now. That was one positive.
I pulled my arms back, hearing two sets of clawed feet fall behind the sidling door. There were yelps throughout the cargo hold and the sound of clothes sliding across the metal floor. Two mono ocular hunks of smell exited the room carrying big fucking black sticks. One of them raised a small box to their mouth. For a moment, there was nothing but the hissing of their slithering fangs and growls.
“Humans, place your arms through the bars now!” a robotic male voice came from the box.
There was a moment of hesitation, and they didn’t like that. They hit the rods along the bars and one woman screamed. A three fingered hand flashed through the bars and grabbed Hannah by her hair as she cried out. I quickly shoved my hands through the bars, bashing the chains against the bars.
“Come on girls, you heard em, hands through the bars, it'll be right.” I said loudly and clearly. Quickly the other women followed, watching me like I lost my last remaining marble. My heart agreed, pounding painfully. The alien released Hannah, and they loosened the chains around our arms, tapping a black card against the weird lock. I mouthed to Hannah, asking if she was okay. She was crying, but she roughly nodded.
Jeremy put his hands through the bars, giving me a look of understanding but mouthed I was a dumb arse. He didn’t have to say that cause I already felt like a fucking moron. They began removing the chains from our wrists. Why the fuck are they taking off our chains now? It had been days. Why now? Looking around, I realised why; we were weak and tired with no fight left in us. The stench was eye watering as one of the one-eyed walking blobs came to where I sat quietly with my hands through the bars. Vomit rose into my mouth, and I swallowed it down. My throat squeezed, burning and raw. My vision doubled. I steadied my breaths. Oh, fuck me, I can taste the smell. No matter how bad they stank, I was not passing out in front of them.
I had expected to have my chains removed like they did for the others. With a new pulse of anxiety through my body, a one-eyed guard swiped a black card over the cell door lock and opened it. I was going to die. I caused trouble. I fucked myself. My hands trembled as the eight-foot-tall fucker grabbed the chains binding me, tugged me roughly out of the cell, and shoved it closed behind me. Shit. I pulled with all my might to get away. I struggled with everything in my weak body, but I could barely slow our movement to the sliding door, towards the connector. I don’t want to be a juice box!
“Take your fucking hands off my sister! Let her fucking go, you arsehole.” The cell to my left rattled, as my brother tried with all his might to leave the cell. “Don’t you fucking touch her! Come at me, you ugly cunt. I ain’t scared. I’ll fuck you up, mate!”
The one who wasn’t dragging me through the cargo hold quickly pushed the black stick to Jeremy’s arm on top of the tracker. There was a flash. Jeremy jerked and shook until he fell still on the floor.
I hadn't realised I'd screamed until a strike to my face silenced me. My jaw ached and tears I fought spilled over. My mouth tasted of copper as blood ran down my chin. Jeremy! My heart twisted and burned. No, he can’t be dead. I promised him we would be okay. My eyes watched his body whilst I attempted to fight harder against being pulled away. I was gonna kill these fuckers. Fighting harder, pulling against the ugly froggy fucker and thrashing my arms. I had to get to Jeremy. I had to help him, straining through tears to see his body.
Jeremy’s chest moved. Relief came and warmed my heart. Jeremy wasn’t dead, thank fuck. I was fucked. I was being dragged into that other room. The one eyed fuck head picking up the man's dead body. I was probably gonna be dinner. Fuck my life! Fuck it! The chicken legged motherfucker yanked me roughly into the room, the door sliding shut behind me, when it hit one of the many buttons on the wall next to it. Oh, fuck, I am not a juice box material, I am going to be spaghetti! My panic took hold, my chest heaved, and my breaths became shallow and rapid. Pleading with myself to calm my raging anxiety and only made it worse in doing so. Feeling my pulse travel through every inch of my body so fast, it frightened me. I couldn't hold it back anymore, biting into my hand in hopes I could gain focus again through the pain. I had to get out of this room.
My eyes, blurry with tears, scanned the room for escape. There were monitors and buttons all over the walls and a huge metal table in the centre of the room. The weird rubbery flooring ended a metre before the table, becoming the panels of the cargo hold. On the very opposite end of the room there was one more one-eyed alien in front of a control panel and large windows. No, no windows, huge monitors taking up the entire wall on that side of the room. Dragged to a corner of the room across the rubbery floors, my hands were then swiftly bound to pipes that ran around the room. The pipes were hot, scolding hot. This room was going to be my crime scene, and no one would investigate it once I was gone. These three aliens would eat me. It was shocking there were only three of them. I mean almost sixty humans to three eight-foot-tall, four armed - okay, maybe that made sense to them.
The tears kept running down my face as I stared at my chains and the pipe that held me in place. I didn’t want to die; I wanted to live. I wanted to see Jeremy again. I would do anything to get outta here, even go back to my mother’s shit hole, glaring at the pipe, and noticed the connectors. The connectors had thick ridges that could make it possible to turn them by hand. My eyes turned to the three aliens watching them arguing about something. They were angrily pointing at what I thought was a map. I eyed the taser laying on the table. I don’t know if those tasers worked without the tracking chip. The heaving became relentless and shook my body. I had to calm down and be quiet. They paid me no attention, only argued more aggressively with each other. I had to get Jeremy and the others out of this place. I watched them as I slid slowly up to the closest connector. As my hand gripped the connector, it immediately shot away, and I bit my lip, holding in a tearful yelp. Fuck me dead! That was hot. Fuck fuckity fuck. Fuck this, I am not dying.
This was going to do serious damage to my hands., but it had to be done. Plan, loosen connector and use the hot pipe to beat my way to shocker stick, went into action. My eyes didn’t leave the three froggy fat sacks as my hands returned to the connector. My nerves screamed at the contact with the hot metal. Screw me, I would’ve given anything for a pipe wrench right about now. My skin protested more and more with each movement of my palms over the metal. I was trying to keep as little of my skin in contact with the connector that I could.
Grinding my teeth together, twisting with all my strength. I had forgotten the heaving in my chest as my fingers, my palms shooting searing pain through me. Fuck you, connector. My skin stuck to the connector as I completed one turn. The tears ran hot and fast down my face as the burning turning to a stinging. I wanted to puke; my chest continued its heaving. It hurt more to bend my fingers around the connector, but I kept going. My body trembled and my chest squeezed.
I twisted it until I felt something scolding brush against my hand and my eyes shot away from the one-eyed freaks. Steam. Ouch! I looked up and one of the big fuckers was coming my way. Nope! Fuck fuckity fuck. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. The horrid smelling fucker leaned toward me, teeth bared and drooling. Its jaws hyper-extended and sharp hooked teeth came into view. It’s mouth getting ready to shatter my head. The long-muscled vine like appendages slithered towards me, the internal side of the fangs splitting, and the edges lined with teeth became visible. In a panic, I fully loosened the connector and yanked my chained hands towards its face.
The scream that tore from me as the steam scorched my face and neck following the hiss of steam and warping metal deafened me. A siren blasted through the room making my ears ring. Fuck, I did something wrong! My right eye's vision was nothing but a red blur. The eight-foot-tall asshole was on the ground, holding its massive eye, hissing. It swung wildly with its other two arms, trying to grab me. Its eye melting out of its socket. Oh gods, I trembled.
I frantically ran away from the steam gushing out of the pipe to the table, where I grabbed the shock stick. I withheld the urge to scream as I gripped the shock stick tightly, my fingers and palms burning. Fuck me dead. The right side of my face stung just as much as my hands. My right eye's vision was blurry. Not great. Words in their language yelled through the room coupled by the siren. My cries shook me hard, and my nose was running nonstop. The other two one-eyed dipsticks, now aware that something was wrong, come towards me. Fuck, fuck. The only thing standing between me and them was the metal table with a monitor in the centre.
They paused, seeing the shock stick in my hands. That was good. That means the shock stick works without those arm chips, hopefully. Right? I felt the shock stick vibrate in my hand, making the burning tingles in my fingers. My fingers slide over the stick a finding a slider going from green to red. Red better mean shock these motherfuckers to hell and gone. Blood dripped off the shock stick to the metal floor below. I heard the blinded alien behind me roll on the floor. I would deal with him later. The two fuckheads were standing on either side of the table, treating my ass like a meth-head with a knife. The alarm hadn’t stopped, making my mind spin. Shit. I just wanted this to end. If I didn’t do something soon, they would corner me. If I shocked one the other one grab me. My one good eye in its vision noticed that the aliens each had a hand on that metal table. My right ear pulsed with pain and sound of the hissing words giving me a head ache. Metal. I fucking hoped that alien metal worked like metal in our world. Well, I guess Imma find out. I felt the rubbery floors under my feet and hoped it would protect me from the shock. I stepped back one step and the aliens both now stood with one hand on the table and their feet on the metal. It was now or death.
My aching fingers found what felt like a button and when I pushed down, it sparked. If this didn’t work, I was dead. I was fucking dead. Swiping the slider to red, with one more hysterical cry, I pressed the shock stick to the table and held down the button.
I watched in horror as their bodies shook wildly, their hands unable to leave the table. The monitor in the middle table flashing all kinds of static images. It lit the room with flashes so quick it made it feel like the aliens were still moving towards me. My breaths were rapid and erratic. The tears refusing to stop as my chest heaved harder with each breath. I couldn’t let go of the button. The smell in the room got worse. Burning flesh. My stomach flipped, and I forced the vomit down.
They were going to eat us. They hurt Jeremy and were going to fucking eat me. I heard two loud pops. In mortification, I stared at the oozing eyes of the aliens. In a shaky cry, I released the button. Their bodies fell completely limp, their heads hitting the weird rubber flooring with a bounce. Orange liquid flowed from their mouths and eyes. The liquid stood out painfully against the dark floor. I was a monster. I murdered them. My legs shook, sending me to the floor. The ship dipped downward suddenly, a rattling sound coming from the pipes as more of them burst.
A new alarm started blaring the from the controls and it got my attention. I had been so hysterical I hadn’t noticed the fucker who had been behind me crawled to the control panel. The blinded alien was bashing at the controls and, to my horror, land was coming up to meet the ship. We were hurtling towards death. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I couldn’t be in this room. Snap out of it! Run. Fucking run. Dashing to the corpse of the popped eyed aliens and looked for that key thing. I found a flat black card through my crying and stinging eyes. Turning to the screens, blue-gold and reddish ground was quickly getting closer. Fuck. I slid the card into my sports bra and the shock stick into my pj pants. Door! Door! Get out the fucking door! I ran to the sliding door, pounding the buttons on the wall until the door slid open. I ran towards the men’s cell and wrapped every limb I could around the bars of it.
“OI! BRACE FOR IMPACT! NOW!” I screamed through a raw throat. There was a moment of rushed movement and then my feet lifted off the ground. I scrunched shut my eyes as I barely clung to the bars. My body thrashed against the bars and a sickening shot of pain came up my right leg. There was nothing but the sounds of screaming and warping of metal, but the worst sounds were the banging of bodies against metal. The lights flickered and there were awful thumps around me. The bar I was holding snapped, and I was tumbling until I hit another set of bars. My surroundings disappeared in a flash.