Page 5 of I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com (Cosmic Chaos #1)

I felt a rush of air pass above us; the scent of cotton candy followed. A dart lodged itself in Lok’s shoulder, right where I was just standing. My heart raced as I realized Lok had taken the hit meant for me.

“There’s something in the sky,” Lok shouted. I tried looking up, but he tucked my head under his arm, then hoisted us both up, sprinting toward the trees. He set me down once we were out of the clearing and pulled his spear from his back holster.

Sol’s spots lit up as he scanned the sky. Something blurry floated past the tree with the snare. “There!” I shouted, pointing to it. Toto leapt up to smack it. A loud tink of claw on metal rang through the air. For a brief second, a sliver of gray appeared in the sky, then flickered away. The blur sped toward us, veering when Sol shot at it.

“What is that thing?” I shouted. Lok’s eyes were locked on the approaching blur, his grip on his spear tightening. He positioned himself in front of me, ready to defend us both.

“I don’t know,” Lok replied, his voice steady and focused. “But it looks like it’s got designs on you.”

As the blur drew closer, I noticed the side where Toto had hit it glitch and shudder. It looked like a small space saucer. Lime-green lights flickered in a row along the middle, like the dashboard on my Nissan when it was time to change the headlights, its sleek metallic surface marred with the jagged lines of claw marks. The saucer weaved through the trees, narrowly missing branches as it closed in on us.

Lok aimed his spear, gauging the saucer’s movements. He waited for the perfect moment, his body coiled with tension. As the spacecraft veered toward us, he threw his spear with precise accuracy. The weapon sailed through the air, striking the saucer’s claw-marked side. A loud boom echoed through the forest as the saucer faltered, losing its cloaking ability.

The once-invisible vessel now shimmered into view, revealing its sleek and compact design. It began to spiral out of control, hurtling toward the ground. The sounds of snapping branches and breaking twigs filled the air as the saucer crash-landed, skidding across the forest floor like a skipping stone until it came to a stop.

Silence enveloped the clearing as we cautiously approached the crash site. Smoke billowed from the wreckage, obscuring our view. As the smoke cleared, a small hatch on the craft opened, and a tiny, electric-blue-colored Owlish emerged. He stood no taller than a foot, his large lime-green eyes blinking rapidly as they adjusted to sunlight. Several feathers fell from his wings as he fluttered out of his wrecked space pod and onto the ground. He shook himself out, then froze. The crest of darker feathers on his head fell flat against his skull. Slowly, the Owlish looked at the four of us before scrambling away. Toto slapped a paw down on the Owlish’s tail feathers, holding him in place. The bright creature squawked, desperately trying to flap away.

Lok spoke up first. “What should we do with him?”

Toto licked his chops. “I say we should—”

“Toto, don’t you dare say ‘eat him,’?” I deadpanned.

“It’s a valid solution,” he protested.

Stepping around the bits of broken spacecraft, I picked up the frantic Owlish and waved toward the calf the lion had taken down before. “You go eat; we’ll handle this.”

“Humph, fine,” he said, before slinking off to his kill.

I held the tiny creature up to my face for a moment, assessing his sharp beak. The smell of cotton candy rolled off him, as if I was standing in the middle of a state fair. “Can you understand me?” I asked.

His eyes shifted in between mine. The feathers along his head flicked, but he made no move to speak.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

Sol peered over my shoulder. “Did the ones on the ship talk to you?”

“Not to me. But I could understand them after this blue goop got in my hair.” I turned my attention back to the alien. “Hey, say something.” I demanded.

The alien’s only response was more prolonged eye contact.

“All right, maybe the translator has to be a two-way street. You better not bite me,” I warned, then gave the alien a quick kiss. Wide green eyes stared back, unblinking. A sharp sting hit my leg, and I looked down to a dart in my thigh. The gun in the Owlish’s tiny hand trailed wisps of smoke. “You little shit, you shot me!”

His beak fell open, and he emitted a frantic series of hoots. The bird’s body seemed to shrink in my hands as his feathers fell flat. His neck elongated, as did his feet, while he continued his distressed hooting. Startled, I released the creature and backed up. “Get away from him,” Sol shouted, grabbing me by the waist and pulling me to him.

“What the hell is he doing?” I asked, clinging to him.

Lok trained his spear on the creature, taking a cautious step forward. “Maybe we should just kill him.”

The Owlish fluttered his wings at that, frantically hopping up and down and looking around. Slowly, his hoots and trills formed into words. “Hoo, hoo, hooo, fuck this is bad! This is very, very not good at ALL!”

“At least he can talk now,” I said, relaxing a little. When the frantic blue thing continued hopping around screaming about how not good the situation was, I snapped my fingers in front of him to get his attention. “Hey, do you want to fill us in on what is so not good about the situation? What the hell is going on?”

He froze, somehow getting even skinnier and taller before he slowly turned his head around to look at me. “You can understand me.” He shuddered.

“Yeah, it seems to happen when I kiss someone. I think it might have to do with this blue goop I spilled on myself while I was on your ship. Unless you guys implanted me with a translator chip or something?” I was never that big into sci-fi, but it seemed like a reasonable thing for an alien to do. You know, after they went around kidnapping innocent researchers.

The little bird turned his body around to face the same direction as his head. Then he approached the three of us, looking between Lok, Sol, and me with a wide-eyed, fearful expression. He swallowed thickly, then tilted his head up at Lok. “H-hello?”

Lok raised an eyebrow. “Hello.”

His body shuddered before he fell to his back, wings akimbo. “You’re a class A species,” he said, voice hollow. “Not animals at all, you’re a class A species. Stars above, the war crimes we’ve committed. The Galactic Federation is gonna have our heads. I’m going to get demoted to a waste collector, if the natives don’t just kill me first.”

Getting up, he paced back and forth, then shook his head so hard I feared he might pop it off. “I do not have the necessary training to handle a first-contact debrief with class A species.” He froze, then dove into the wreckage of his ship. “Give me a moment, my com might have survived the crash,” he said. Bits and bobs were tossed out of the craft in his frantic dumpster dive.

The Owlish snapped upright. His bright feathers puffed up until he resembled a distressed cotton ball with eyes. “No!” he cried, getting to his feet. Whirling around, he threw a metal ball on the ground. Its cracked screen revealed a web of fractured lines, mirroring the shattered hopes of the alien. With deep breaths, the Owlish snapped his attention back to us. Straightening his back, he waddled a few steps closer.

Clawed hands tapped nervously against his thighs. After a moment’s hesitation, he lifted his beak to speak. “Hello, alien life-forms, I am a behavioral observation intern with the Biodiversity Conservation Initiative. I hail from a species called Biwban and…and…” He trailed off. The gears churning in his mind were practically visible as he tried to remember the rest of the practiced speech.

He broke in seconds. “None of this was my fault, you hear me? It was the director! He’s the one embezzling our research funds to fund his stupid private estate. All I did was follow the data; in the data sheet you were a class C species completely nonrespondent to our language symbionts.”

Lok elbowed Sol, gesturing to the panicked Biwban. “Any idea what he’s going on about?”

“No idea,” Sol replied. His face hardened as he reached down and grabbed the Biwban, bringing him up to his face. “Why don’t you slow down and start from the beginning. When you’re done, we’ll consider what to do with you then.”

His feathers went flat; the long, purple-tinted tail feathers shook. “Please, I’m just an intern,” he begged. “I swear to you, I didn’t have anything to do with the ship that destroyed your planet. My only task was to retrieve Subject 4 and bring her to the soft-release enclosure with the other females. But with two strong males already with her, I figured I’d take a chance and see if either of you would respond to the Nexus serum.”

“Whoa, slow down. You’re the ones that destroyed our planet?” Lok asked.

“Not me specifically. A Fuel X cargo ship laden with Voxen took a shortcut through a less-regulated part of the Pullvaton galaxy and was attacked by marauders. The ensuing battle caused the ship to veer off course and crash-land into one of your planet’s oceans. Unfortunately, while Voxen can be turned into some of the purest fuel in the galaxy, its crude form is highly toxic when exposed to water. And, well…I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you the details of what happens to the surrounding wildlife when that occurs.”

Sol tightened his grip, and the intern’s words became rushed. “But, I assure you, as soon as we noticed the crash, our government demanded that Fuel X pay for the necessary repairs, and we were able to fund a conservation corporation to save what we could of your planet’s species and relocate you here to a newly terraformed world. Had we known that Krydon 4 was home to a class A species, the transport of Voxen would’ve never been approved so close to it. Fuel shortage or not.”

I narrowed my eyes on him. “Wait a minute. That substance is so volatile that you don’t allow it to even travel near planets with sentient species?”

“Of course not,” he chirped. “That would be incredibly dangerous. If a company wants to transfer dangerous chemicals outside of normal preapproved shipping routes, then they are required by law to test each planet within two parsecs of its route for a class B species at least.”

“And you trusted companies to do this?” Sol spoke up. “You trusted the company that wanted to make money off the shipment of a dangerous chemical to properly test each planet for sentient life-forms and hope that, what—?” He paused, twirling a hand in the air around him. “That they would just follow the law instead of simply saying they found nothing to save money? That’s the reason our planet was destroyed?”

Anger rolled off him like steam, causing the intern to retreat farther back. “Again…I am just an intern. Meaning I had nothing to do with that.”

“Then why am I here?” I asked.

“Well…our field team didn’t have a lot of time to study the Sankado species before we had to make the grab, so they made an educated guess on which specimens would have the highest chance for survival and only picked the largest 30 percent. They assumed that much like our own species, sexual coloration indicated which of you were females, not sexual dimorphism, and only males ended up being rescued. We ran a scanner through our database and found that human females could be a compatible replacement when given a few modifications.”

“You modified me?” I screeched.

He shook, twisting his way out of Sol’s grip to flutter onto a fallen branch outside my striking distance. “Just enough for you to be able to reproduce with them! We used our time displacer to only take females that were near death anyway; your disappearance shouldn’t affect your planet any more than your natural death would.”

My natural death…

The air rushed from my lungs. Across the field, Toto tore apart the fallen calf. The sound of tearing flesh filled the air as the lion’s powerful canines ripped into the carcass. He burped, making my stomach drop. That was supposed to be my fate.

I’m supposed to be dead.

Feeling hollow, I looked around the new world, suddenly realizing I wouldn’t wake up from this terrible dream. Even without the alien interference, I never would have finished my internship. I never would have gotten my PhD. All that hard work just to end up another sad blip on the news. My heart felt like a heavy stone in my chest. I wanted to fall to the ground and scream. Demand to know why my life was always reduced to another failure, why nothing could ever just go right for once. Yet even so, my tears refused to come. Not in front of a crowd. The one strength my mom succeeded in giving me.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and reached for that never-ending well of curiosity that always itched in the back of my mind and asked, “Why dinosaurs?”

The intern tilted his head. “You mean the animals we took from your planet? We sent a research team to gather DNA from your planet to re-create your natural habitat the best we could. Luckily, your planet stored a wide range of specimens in a few buildings they found.”

My head fell to my hands. “Where did they get the DNA from?” I asked, already dreading the answer.

He waved a wing, and the space behind it warped into a screen. “Let me check my notes. I should have a few pictures,” he said, flipping through pages of alien scribbles.

Pictures of familiar museums came onto the screen, each one sinking a knife farther into my gut. “Are you joking?” I bit out. “Those are the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Wagner Free Institute of Science.”

“Oh, you know them?” he asked curiously.

Bringing my hands up to my face, I prayed for the strength not to drop-kick that fucking bird. “Yes, all of them are museums relatively close to the college I used to go to,” I began. Breathing deep, I tried to rein in the growing anger in my voice. “All museums that have a focus on dinosaurs .” I stressed the last word, failing spectacularly at keeping my anger in check.

The intern seemed to notice the change and fluttered to another branch a little farther back. His voice warbled as he spoke. “Are dinosaurs not animals from your planet?” His eyes widened as a look of realization crossed his face. “We made sure not to re-create any venomous animals we found. I assure you we’ve taken great lengths to ensure that this world is full of abundant resources for your species. We’ve even created a few more fruit trees with higher nutrients. Our research shows that humans love sweet fruit—”

“Intern, I don’t care about your stupid fruit,” I snapped. “Dinosaurs may be creatures from our planet, yes, but they were millions of years before the time of humans. We have no defenses against dinosaurs. Have you seen them? They’re massive! You say you made this planet with the ease of humans in mind. Yet I walked around this stupid planet for miles. Where is the damn grocery store? Hmm? Tell me, Intern, where is Target?”

He shifted uncomfortably on his perch. “Do humans require target practice?”

I lost my internal battle and raged. “I don’t want target practice. I want a grocery store. Fully stocked with food I don’t personally have to hunt down and kill. How long did you idiots even study humans?”

His tail feathers shaking, his answer came out in almost a whisper. “Well, what you have to understand is that we were very short on time because of the cost of fuel. Our initial funding was allocated for a month at least. But the director kept funneling our grant money into these useless state-of-the-art features for the research center. By the time we reached your planet, most of our funds were gone. Each day on Earth required a tremendous amount of fuel in order to operate the cloaking feature and the time-manipulation device; don’t even get me started on how much energy the stasis pods take up.”

“Intern, how long was your research period?”

“…Three Earth days.”

“Lok,” I called, turning to him. The man snapped to attention as if he feared I’d turn my wrath on him. “Give me your spear. I’ll kill him myself.”

The Biwban grew frenzied, almost falling off his perch in his attempt to get away after I snatched the weapon. Just before he landed on his face, he remembered he had wings and corrected himself before hopping farther away from me. “Subject 4, please remain calm!”

“DORY.”

“Yes!” he half screamed back. “Dory, my apologies. If you need a target, I’m sure we could help build you one.”

“I don’t want a target,” I hissed through clenched teeth. “I want to go home. NOW, INTERN.”

He flattened himself against a tree, whimpering when the spear brushed against the feathers of his belly. “And trust me Sub—Dory, I’d love to do that for you. But…”

I pressed the spear into his belly, not enough to break the skin, but enough to make him shiver. “But what ?”

“We…we just don’t have the funding for that.”

For a moment, we just stared at each other. Then I lowered the spear. He sighed in relief.

“Toto,” I hollered over my shoulder. “Get over here; we’re eating him after all.”

The intern screamed as he jumped, using the tree trunk behind him to spring higher over my head. The dash to freedom was squashed when Sol snatched him up like a rag doll.

“If you are not responsible for the destruction of my planet, tell me who is,” Sol snarled through clenched teeth. His gaze narrowed with an almost predatory intensity. The Biwban trapped in his grip shook, as if he was held by the grim reaper himself.

“I…I don’t know,” said the intern. “Krylix Krynn is the owner of Fuel X, so probably him. I imagine he’s off on some pleasure cruiser light-years away from here. But you could talk to his son, Vexil. He’s the department head of the BCI.”

If looks could kill, the intern would be dead thrice over. “The son of the company president responsible for the destruction of my planet is the HEAD of the department in charge of fixing it?”

“Well…”

“No one thought that was a conflict of interest?” Lok spoke up.

His beak quivered as he spoke. “Listen, as much as I’d love to give you answers that don’t get me killed, I can’t. This isn’t even a paid internship. I’m just here for job experience.”

Hmm. That hits close to home.

Sol pulled a knife from his belt and held it to the intern’s throat. “Try harder. I don’t see the son of this company head in front of me. I see you. And I’ve got a lot of anger to take out right now.”

As much as I understood his rage, as a fellow intern, my heart went out to the little bird. Moving to Sol’s side, I placed a hand on his arm. “Sol, why don’t we all take it down a notch?”

My gaze fell to my hand on his arm. Noticing the firm muscle underneath, I gave it a little squeeze. His enthralling scent hit my nose like a beckoning finger. Its gentle warmth tingled across my skin, settling into a pleasant thrill that had my toes curling.

Fuck, he feels good. Nope, nope, focus. Remember the last gym rat we dated. Sexy muscles are always attached to narcissistic cheaters.

Jerking my hand away, I reached over to pluck the Biwban from his murderous grip. Sol’s tail flicked behind him, ready to lash out at any provocation. The muscles in his neck and shoulders visibly tensed when I took the intern in my hands.

“Put him down. I don’t enjoy seeing you hold him,” he said with a measured tone.

I narrowed my eyes at him, ready to tear him a new asshole for ordering me around. The Biwban shifted uncomfortably, his eyes darting between Sol and me. Then he placed a hand on my arm and craned his neck to give me a pleading look. “Please put me down. I don’t want to be touching his mate when the serum takes effect.”

For once in my life, I had no words. I stared at the little blue alien, dumbfounded, before finding my voice again. “I’m sorry, his what ?”

Sparks erupted from Sol’s tail, causing the intern to squawk and thrash his way out of my arms. He darted behind Lok, who was just staring at me with a dopey look on his face.

Sol stepped in front of me, blocking Lok’s gaze. In an instant, the larger Sankado’s demeanor shifted. His easygoing posture faded as he stiffened, glaring at Sol.

“Why do you keep looking at her like that?” Sol asked. “She’s already been cut down. I’ll take it from here. Be on your way.”

“Sol, what the hell?” I asked.

Lok didn’t back down. Instead, he stood taller, using his superior height to dwarf Sol before flashing a wicked grin. “Awfully pushy, aren’t we? Why don’t we let the lady decide who she wants to go with?”

Right before my eyes, Sol’s body seemed to grow a little bigger. The horns adorning his head elongated. A bioluminescent golden stripe appeared to run down their length, stopping in a band at the base.

I backed away from him. “What in the world?”

“I won’t tell you again, Roamcrest,” Sol growled. “Leave.”

Lok’s smile grew, showing off long canines as he, too, grew bigger. His ram-like horns grew long enough to coil at the end, before silver bands crisscrossed down their length. “Why don’t you try and make me?”

“Can we not do whatever macho shit this is?” I asked, holding up a hand.

Behind Lok, the Biwban trilled excitedly. “Oh, this is excellent!”

“What is excellent about this? They look like they’re about to kill each other!”

Lok chuckled and boldly stepped around Sol to come to my side. The rings on his horns seemed to pulse. On most people it might have looked ridiculous. But something about when it was combined with those teeth and that big burly form was making me question why I ever sullied my body with whatever the hell I thought was sexy when I was stupid and twenty. He smiled, taking the strength out of my knees. “No need for the concerned face, gorgeous. I’ll be fine.”

Gods, he was a big gorgeous beast of a man. His maddening scent wrapped my mind in a fog of lust until I had to fight the urge to drop to my knees and beg for a taste of his cock.

Fuck, I want him so raw .

I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. Yet the motion only drew Sol to me.

“Are you all right?” He reached up to touch my face, then paused, his hand inches away. A tilt of my head would have my cheek in his waiting palm. His fingers twitched before he drew his hand away, balling it into a fist at his side.

Whatever this sudden intense attraction was, he felt it too.

All right, that settles it. I’ve died and been reincarnated in some stupid anime. If there are any gods at all, please don’t make this a full-blown “why choose.” Just keep it to us three. Lord, you know I don’t have the stamina.

“Hey, Intern, did that serum have something to do with you calling me his mate?”

“Why, yes!” he chirped, obviously having a grand time now.

“It’s an aphrodisiac, isn’t it?”

“Oh, it’s much more than that.” His feathers poofed happily as he waved a wing. The space behind it warped into a screen.

“You see, when a Sankado is put under a lot of stress, such as a near-death experience or a complete exhaustion of the body, their brain triggers—”

“You know what, let me rephrase that question. Based on what you’ve told us, is it safe to assume this is a breeding program?

“Yes.”

“How long do the pairings last?”

“Our records don’t show any bonded specimens straying from their union until death.”

My legs decided it was time to sit. I scooted back against a tree, resting my arms on my knees. With my nose buried against my pants, I could almost block out the scent of the two men. My mates .

“Fuck you, Intern,” I hissed.

“Pardon? Our species isn’t compatible w—”

“Oh hush! Go somewhere.” I waved a dismissive hand at the lot of them. It was all too much. I needed to have a good cry and I couldn’t do that with a damn crowd. Waves of unabashed lust rolled through my body. I squeezed my thighs together, trying to ignore my purring pussy. “All of you go somewhere and give me a minute.”

Sol took a step closer. “Hold on.”

“Sol, I will curse you with my dying breath if you don’t give me a fucking minute. Go. Somewhere.”

He frowned at me, but Lok grabbed him by the forearm and pulled him away. I watched them go, hating how much I was panting after the broad expanse of Lok’s back as he hauled the other man away.

I buried my head in my knees, listening to their retreating footsteps until I was sure I was alone. Then came the tears. I was exhausted, frustrated, and egregiously horny on an alien planet with no way home. Even then, if I wasn’t taken to help some alien race with my species-saving coochie, I’d have fucking died in that lion attack.

All my life I’d fought for a place in the world that wasn’t under my mother’s thumb. Years of meditation, distracting hobbies, endless fad diets, and three sessions of pouring my heart out to a therapist in an attempt to undo the damage of her beauty pageants and the notion that I was only worth as much as the man I’d marry.

The therapist called the hobbies a “Band-Aid” and said that I’d need to do more than crochet my troubles into little giraffes, but their cuteness added extra spice to my application for the Kalahari research program, so what did she know? Hobbies work. That’s why I fired her. No respect for the craft.

Just a few more months of that internship and I would have gotten the credits I needed to get my PhD. I came so fucking close, only for it to be ripped away at the finish line. Now what? I was going to be stuck popping out alien babies for two strangers? A part of me felt bad for even mourning my life. Compared to the destruction of an entire planet, my own life felt meaningless.

Maybe it was. But it was still my life, and I had the right to mourn it.

Not to mention, I had no idea what that serum was going to do to me, aside from making me ridiculously randy. Both Lok and Sol grew bigger in a matter of minutes. Yet, as far as I could tell, I hadn’t grown at all. Not that I wanted to.

A hissing came through the trees, accompanied by rustling leaves and hot breath that blew over my face. “No,” I snapped, not bothering to look at whatever ridiculous creature decided to show up this time. “Get lost, I need a minute.”

The creature loudly sniffed at my side. Annoyed, I slapped it. “What did I just say?”

It let out a deep huff, and I turned to see a fat bright pink T. rex staring back at me.

Oh shit.

My heart took a leap of faith and shot out of my ass. Endless survival scenarios poured through my head. Make yourself look bigger to a big cat, punch a shark in the gills, shout and make a ton of noise for a grizzly bear. None of which prepped me on what to do when a fucking chonk of an ancient predator sniffs your pants. I glanced to the other end of the clearing, but neither man was looking my way. Instead, they were fighting with each other. If I screamed, they’d never reach me in time.

The colossal beast bent farther down and sniffed my hair. Wild red strands snaked their way up her nose, causing the T. rex to back up and sneeze so hard the folds on her neck jiggled with the force of it. It was then I noticed her right arm was missing. The wound was still scabbed over, meaning it couldn’t have been long since she lost it. She rubbed her snout against a nearby tree, glared back at me, then walked off.

When the last of her pink form disappeared back into the trees, my heart rate slowed. Finally alone, I sighed and stared up at the sky. Then I retrieved my phone from my pocket, pulled up the log app, and hit Record . “Captain’s Log, Day 2. Everything is fucked.”

Hitting the End button, I stuffed the phone back in my pocket and let my head fall to my knees. Then I pulled the phone back out. “By the way, T. rexes are pink. Fucking pink. We all had it wrong.”

Through my tears, I could see Toto stride up to me. He carried the severed leg of the stegosaur in his mouth before unceremoniously dropping it at my feet. The lion puffed out his chest, brimming with pride. “I saved you a leg,” he stated.

I blinked down at the bloody appendage. “So you did.” His tail flicked; he was obviously waiting for praise. I obliged. “I’ve never seen a lion take down an animal so quickly. You must be a mighty hunter.”

“I am,” he stated matter-of-factly. He scooted the leg closer to me. “Eat. Scavengers will come soon, and your mates are too busy fighting each other to guard the kill.”

Sighing, I glanced over to Lok and Sol. The two idiots were bickering about something at the far end of the clearing. Lok caught my stare and smiled back at me, before he was shoved by Sol. Blows came shortly after.

“You know, I’m just not that hungry at the moment. A lot on my mind, ya know?”

“No,” he said, coming to sit next to me. “You have two strong males competing for your affections and food you refuse to eat in front of you. What else do you want?”

“An internet connection, coffee, my fucking life back?”

He studied me quizzically. “You are very much alive, Dory.”

“That’s not it,” I groaned, rubbing at my temples. “I just don’t know what to do. I spent my life working toward becoming a wildlife biologist and making a name for myself on my own. Everything was going according to plan, and now all that hard work is up in flames. All thanks to an underfunded research department of all things, the irony of which is NOT lost on me!

“I am stuck! Stuck on a crazy, poorly planned planet where I’m probably gonna die via getting eaten by a dinosaur or trying to push out one of their giant horned babies!” Hot tears spilled down my face. The ache in my chest burned as I thought about the life I was supposed to have.

A sudden weight squished into my side, and I nearly fell over. Toto stretched out against me, his big head lolling into my lap as he got comfortable. “Dory, Dory, my constantly chattering friend.”

“Ouch.”

“Stop worrying about what’s going to happen. Think about where we are right now. Think about what we’ve already done. You say you want to make a name for yourself; well, how many humans have swum past a river monster and lived to tell the tale?”

“We almost died, Toto.”

“So what?”

“What do you mean ‘so what’? I don’t want to die.”

The lion snorted. “Everyone dies. You could catch your last drink at the river before becoming a crocodile’s meal. A hunt gone wrong could leave you trampled. Or maybe you become one of the lucky ones that lasts long enough to see your mane turn gray. If you wanna find some meaning to life, then fine, but maybe it’s just not that serious. Look around you; you’ll be all right. We’ve been here less than two sunrises and look at all that’s happened. Even if we die tomorrow, we’ve walked where no one else has and seen more than most do in a lifetime. If we live to see tomorrow, great. There will be more to see and do. But for now, at least our bellies are full. Stop worrying about your life’s plan and sunbathe with me. It’s a good day.”

“But I’ve done everything according to my life’s plan.”

He grinned up at me. “Yeah? How’s that working out for you?”

“Not great,” I admitted, scratching his ear. “I just don’t know what to do.”

“For starters, you keep scratching my ear. Next, you can embrace this for what it is: an adventure. Let’s see how far we can get.”

“I strive to be as unbothered as you, Toto.”

He chuffed happily, leaning into my petting. “Everyone should strive to be more like me.”

True to his lion nature, Toto had no shortage of self-confidence. I tried to imagine what it must have been like to live one’s life so sure of one’s place in the world and found myself envying him a little. Even so, I drank in his comfort like a lifeline.

When I was a kid, a large gray tomcat lived in my dad’s shed. He was a pissy, half-feral creature that refused any of my many attempts to tame him. He was so wild that my sisters named him Catzilla and refused to go near him. If he weren’t so effective at keeping the shed free of mice, I doubt my mom would have hesitated to get rid of him. Yet whenever I was sad, I’d go out to the shed and hide my tears. Without fail, Catzilla would come find me and clamber his big self into my lap and stay there until I couldn’t cry anymore.

I ran my fingers through Toto’s mane, losing the tension in my shoulders to the soothing rhythm of his breathing. “I’m glad you’re here with me, Toto.”

“Of course you are. Aside from the obvious, if you don’t want to eat, what do you want to do now?”

“Now?” I thought for a moment. “Aside from my growing need to be split like a banana, right now I think I want to find that incompetent department head and punch him right in the face. Then, I don’t know, maybe try to steal one of their ships and see if there’s an equivalent to Google Maps that can take me back to Earth? Hell. If I managed to get back, I’d probably get a fortune for all the pics on my phone. Not to mention any videos I could get of the aliens.” There was no way anyone in my family could look down on my work if I came back with a discovery like this. No one could. Just one video on any news station and I could shut them up forever.

An intoxicating thought.

Though the logistics of that plan grew more abysmal the more I thought about it. “Who am I kidding? I couldn’t even figure out how to land one of their escape pods, let alone pilot a stolen ship. Or figure out how to refuel. Are there gas stations in space?”

My head fell. “If nothing else, I’d still settle for punching that asshole in the face.”

“Ah, vengeance. Now, that is something I can sink my teeth into. Let’s do that.”

“Just like that?” I asked, chuckling.

Toto rolled off me and stood. “Why not? You hate him; your bickering mates probably do too. I say we make you a new life plan. You give in to the call of nature and mate with them,” he said, nodding to the two fighting Sankado.

“I don’t actually want to mate with them!” I protested.

He leveled me with an apathetic glance. “Dory, don’t lie to me. Anyone with a nose can smell you’re in heat.”

“Gross. And bullshit. It’s gross, and it’s bullshit. I overcame my fear of needles just to get this stupid birth control implant, and now it’s”—I paused, running my fingers over my upper left arm where my Nexplanon should be. To my surprise, it was still there. “Hold on.” I pressed against the skin, checking the little matchstick-shaped implant for any damage. “No way.”

“What way?”

“Oh Mylanta,” I said, giggling. “Those idiots didn’t take out my implant. I can’t get pregnant!”

Toto glanced down at me, searching my face. “Are you happy or sad? It’s hard to tell with human faces.”

I laughed, thanking the stars above for small miracles. “Happy. Thrilled.”

“Good.” He nodded. “Then, as I was saying, you give into the call of nature, then we force that sour bird to tell us where the research center is, and we punch the department head right in his feathered face. Then, if you find out if there are gas stations in space, you drive us home. If not, we stay here and run off into the sunset, happily ever after.”

“…I could get behind a life plan like that.”

“Yeah?” he asked sweetly. “All right, let’s go get you your pride.”