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Planet Earth
Jobless again.
Months later
Macy stilled and lowered the towel, despite her wet tresses curling and cooling her neck. The scratching repeated, skittering shivers down her spine. She unknotted the towel covering her damp body and yanked on a nightshirt and gown. Bolting across her bedroom, she paused to slip on slippers then padded to the back door.
Through the window, she studied the unkempt backyard, peering into the bushes and to the wilds beyond. She’d played there as a child, spending summers careening down the embankment and into the stream below.
At the whine, she slumped, releasing a long breath. “Arnie?” Swinging the door open to the old mix-breed, she tried not to meet his soulful gaze. All she had was noodles with no tokens to purchase anything remotely good for a dog.
“Are you hungry, my boy?” She opened the door wide and scurried to the antiquated kitchen to make her last packet of Ramen.
While the water boiled, she crooned to the mutt. She carried the bowl to the back door where he sat on the threadbare mat. He whined as she huffed at the steam—the aroma of roast chicken was so far from what she could remember eating, but beggars couldn’t be choosy.
She placed the bowl before him and sat on the step, ruffling his coat. He slurped the noodles the way she did after a day without food. When the bowl shone squeaky clean in the fading moonlight, he rested on his haunches and whined again.
“That’s all I have.” She curled in her shoulders, unable to help this desperate soul. “You might as well find someone else, Arnie. I have no job, no tokens—” She sniffed.
He rested his paw on her leg and dipped his head, settling the full weight of his bottomless gaze on her.
“I’m serious, my boy.”
His head whipped up, and with a heartbreaking whimper, he fled, disappearing into the bushes.
She scrambled to her feet and followed. “Arnie. Please.” Ducking to peek under a bush, she called to him. A rustle to her left had her facing it, hopeful she’d find him. “Come, you can sleep by me tonight.”
A light flickered on in the house next door.
She winced. “Sorry, Ms. Carstens.”
The light went off.
“I tell you, Arnie. I can’t feed you anymore. I don’t even have enough for me.” The vise grip on her heart tightened at the thought of abandoning him. A sob tore from her. She smothered it with a deep breath. “But at least you can be warm.” She raised her gaze to the thick velvet navy sky and shivered, pulling the nightgown closed. “Or if you know someone with food...?”
Her singing gig didn’t pay as well as she’d hoped, and it wasn’t as if jobs for shop assistants grew on trees. She snorted. The real issue was her lack of support of any kind. She had no family, not since her gran had died. Her mom, Calida, had died when Macy had just turned thirteen. Her aunt Caldera, as well. They had gone out to celebrate their birthday, being twins it had made sense at the time. Macy couldn’t fault them for that, even though she’d railed at the universe for months after their funeral.
That their accidental run-in with an automated tanker had been just that, accidental, yet it was the start of her cursed karma. Her father? Some dumbass—her mother’s words—had knocked her mother up and run for the hills. So no help from that quarter. If it hadn’t been for her gran, Macy would have fallen to the foster system to raise. Gran would’ve followed her daughters if she hadn’t had to care for her granddaughter. Looking back, Macy understood what a devastation that must have been, to lose her children at the same time.
She could remember lying awake at night listening to Gran’s crying. And every year, on the anniversary of their deaths, they would traipse to the cemetery to place flowers on the gravestone the twin sisters shared. Followed by the appearance of a bottle and Gran’s ragged sobbing into the early hours of the morning.
Once, Macy had tried to console her. That hadn’t ended well. It had left a gaping wound in their relationship with no words spoken for days. She knew then to never mention her mother, her aunt, or their deaths.
“No work, no food.” She crept farther into the backyard.
She glanced over her shoulder at her gran’s old dilapidated home. Her shoulders slumped as she fought the sorrow of her situation, of losing the last link to her family. But she had no choice. She’d put it on the market tomorrow.
“Arnie, come now. It’s cold.”
Something moved in the shadows, too big to be a dog. She gulped, trailing her gaze from its booted feet to black eyes. A squeak escaped her. She shook her head, trying to clear her vision. But when she focused on the shadow splitting into three, she stumbled back. Pressing a hand to her chest, the pounding of her heart beating a staccato rhythm, she cried out.
With the damp grass penetrating her bedroom slippers, she spun on her heels. Bright light flashed, highlighting the house, its cracked windows, and worn, stained walls.
Fire exploded across her shoulders. She fell forward, splaying onto the ground. A scream lodged in her throat, words came out garbled, and her body stiffened as her limbs tingled and numbed. Crawl, dammit. But she couldn’t command herself to move.
Dark shapes loomed over her, cutting off her vision of the night sky and Ms. Carstens’ bedroom light. “Help me,” formed in her mind, but her lips remained shut.
Another flash of light preceded a fiery tingle across her skin.
She convulsed, and blessed darkness claimed her.
~*~
“It’s okay,” a woman said.
Macy struggled into a sitting position, groaning as the throbbing in her head doubled and blurred her vision with shards of pain piercing her skull.
“What happened?” She kept her eyes closed while rubbing her temples. Nausea hit her, churning her stomach. She moaned, swallowing in desperation.
“Here, eat this. It’s a protein bar and tastes like shit, but it might help the nausea.” Something sticky was pressed into her palm.
She opened her eyes and frowned at the unfamiliar surroundings. A sickly yellow light along the bulkhead worsened her nausea. A bubble of bile formed in her throat. She shoved the tasteless food into her mouth, gagging at the strange texture and bitter flavor.
“Are we in a cell?” She darted her gaze from side-to-side, fighting the numbing fear gripping her. The walls were a dark gray, like metal sheets with precise gaps between the panels. “On a submarine?” The door to the room was like something out of The Hunt for the Red October, a classic vid her Gran had had an illegal copy of. The contraband was her treasure due to the yummy man in it, her Gran’s words. He did have a nice voice, though.
“We’ve been kidnapped,” the stranger said.
“What?” The trembling of Macy’s hands worsened. “Why? I’ve no tokens, no family. I’m not even attractive.” She grimaced at the woman with her pale blond hair falling around her face in a halo of curls. She had pretty eyes as well. Macy harrumphed.
“I’m Cyndi Stanford. I’m sorry you got taken too.”
Apologies made no difference, but it felt good to hear it. On the other hand, why did Cyndi feel the need to apologize? She was in the same predicament.
“Macera Mitchell, but you can call me Macy.” She rose to her feet, stretching the kinks out of her back and stamping her left foot which had fallen asleep. “How long have you been in here?”
“Maybe two or three days.” Cyndi shrugged, well tried to, but her slumped shoulders made it difficult.
“You’ve been here all alone?” Macy squeaked, horrified at the thought of seeing these walls without someone to speak to.
When all Cyndi could do was sniff, Macy hugged her. This opened the floodgates. Cyndi cried heart-wrenching sobs.
Macy patted the girl’s back, though what comfort she could offer was minuscule. “We’ll get out of this. There has to be a way.”
Cyndi shook her head. “It’s worse than you can imagine.” She sniffed. “They put a device in my ear so I can understand them. This is their first visit to Earth, and they plan on many more.”
“So, we’re guinea pigs?” Macy asked.
Cyndi nodded before taking a deep breath and dashing her tears away with shaking fingers.
“For what?” Macy leaned back to meet Cyndi’s gaze.
“I think it’s to do with an arena. They mention bets and winning big.”
“What? Arena? Like from the Greek and Roman days?” Macy frowned.
“Yeah, their champion escaped, and they’re searching for a replacement.”
“I’m so not following here. You said Earth like they’re aliens or something?” At Cyndi’s silence, Macy scowled. “I know aliens have made contact somewhere in our known galaxy, but I didn’t think it was to enslave us.” She tried to summon the image she could remember of the alien—green, loads of tentacles? They hadn’t seemed threatening or welcoming.
Or the recent contact with a warrior species known as Etterians. Her heart fluttered, and she held her palm to her chest as if it might soothe her. With the way her life had spiraled out of control, running into one of those was never going to happen. She sighed, dreaming of a tall, broad-shouldered man in military garb storming into the cell and sweeping her off her feet. With those muscles, he’d be able to carry her. She glanced at her dimpled knees and winced.
“Well, the Yithians are desperate. Their Earthian champion was a female, and she brought them great wealth.”
Yithians? Macy mouthed. Nope, not a word she’d heard before. “Earthian?”
“Their word, not mine.” Cyndi tugged on her wrinkled pencil skirt. “I don’t know how many women they’ve taken. There are cells through that door so there might be more of us.”
“I don’t mind traveling the stars. It’s not as if Earth’s special to me,” Macy said, hoping to change the subject or highlight a hidden silver lining. She was desperate to believe there was hope, and that perhaps, she was having a nightmare. Aliens kidnapping humans had been the subject of many novels and vids. That shit couldn’t be real, right?
“Me too. What do you do for a living?” Cyndi scooted back to rest against the inclined metal wall.
“I lost my job as a shop assistant. I’ve tried to make ends meet by singing at an underground jazz club.” Macy pulled up her legs to tuck them under her nightshirt. The cell was cold, and the warmth of the thin fabric sent goosebumps across her skin. “You?”
“Personal secretary to a lazy, arrogant CEO’s son.” She shifted closer to Macy bringing her body heat with her. Macy shivered, wishing the damn aliens had warned her so she could’ve dressed warmer.
“Can you sing something for me?”
No, she wasn’t in the mood, but Cyndi’s tremulous smile made Macy succumb. “Sure, what would you like? Happy? Sad?”
Cyndi folded her arms across her chest and curled her shoulders inward. “Anything. I’ve just been so lonely in here.”
A sad song might not be such a good idea, with the fresh tears pooling in Cyndi’s eyes. So Macy belted out something about happiness and sunshine.
By the end of the second rendition, Cyndi swung her bare foot to the rhythm. “Good choice.”
Macy patted Cyndi on the hand then rocked on her backside until she rested against the wall. When she sang, the weight of their situation had lifted for a few minutes.
“You have a gorgeous voice. I bet you had your male audience panting.” Cyndi pulled on her skirt again, trying to get it to cover her knees.
Macy snorted. “Yeah, something magical and biologically impossible happened. Wouldn’t surprise me if those old farts came in their pants.”
“Ew.” Cyndi giggled.
“Sing with me, Cyndi.”
Cyndi held up her hands as if in self-defense. “I suck.”
Macy gestured to their ‘crowded’ cell. “Does it matter? Who will hear you?”
Even when Macy switched songs, Cyndi sang along, breaking into laughter between verses. The noise they were making didn’t seem to penetrate the cell walls. The door remained shut. Peering into the cell’s dark corners, she searched for security cameras while doubting she’d be able to recognize alien tech.
They sang a few more times before falling into silence.
“Thanks, Macy. That was fun. Let’s make it our theme song.”
“Interesting choice. It’s all about hot sex, you know that, right?” Macy wiggled her eyebrows. At least Cyndi wore a grin. That was progress. “What the hell.” Macy curled onto her side on the cold metal floor and rested her head on her bent arm. “Any chance of a rescue?”
“No,” Cyndi said after a few minutes had passed.
“We’re humans. I bet you these aliens have never dealt with us before.”
“You’re right. We’re stubborn, opinionated, willful.” Cyndi raised her face which the yellow light painted in a jaundiced glow.
“If they knew us well, they wouldn’t let us anywhere near their planets,” Macy mumbled as sleep called to her. Trapped on a spaceship, she couldn’t worry about her gran’s house, unpaid bills, or finding work. None of that mattered anymore.
“Yeah. We haven’t been kind to ours.”
“Or to each other.” Macy smothered a yawn. “Night, Cyndi.”
“Night, Macy. Thanks for keeping me company.”
Macy sighed. “I won’t say it’s a pleasure.”
“I won’t expect you to.”
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