Page 19 of The Alien Who Saved Christmas

Food pills roasting on an open fire,

Snake monsters nipping at your nose.

From “An Interstellar Christmas Song”

A Christmas Carol for Non-Earthlings by Sadie Malone

Sadie was stuck wearing her stupid, stolen Kris Kringle robes, which started everything off on the wrong foot.

If she’d had an awesome, Bond-girl dress, the plan would have come together way better.

Just about every plan would go better when you wore an awesome Bond-girl dress, but it was downright essential when doing spy-stuff at a casino.

Granted, the “casino” really, really looked like a Christmas market.

And an awesome Bond-girl dress would have been difficult to find on Planet Craphole.

And her overall plan was sort of sketchy to begin with.

But, still… her clothing was a huge issue.

Even her skating polar bear sweater and jeans would have been preferable to the baggy robes. They were totally useless when it came to bamboozling a bad guy and distracting him with her femme fatale glamour. Unfortunately, Xane refused to see reason and that’s why everything went to hell.

He’d thrown a big, alien fit at the idea of Sadie “revealing herself as a female.” She’d pointed out --pretty logically-- that three-headed snake guys most likely weren’t attracted to human women, anyway.

In fact, Elf might not be able to tell that she even was a woman.

It was a sure bet reptile-girls looked different from mammal-girls, after all. It was probably a non-issue.

Xane had stared at her like she was crazy, “Every male in the universe is attracted to you. Keep those phlarging robes on, unless you want a phlarging war in the phlarging streets!”

Sadie wasn’t a hundred percent sure what “phlarging” meant, but context clues and his increasing volume strongly hinted that it was bad. “Don’t use that kind of language on Christmas.” She’d sniffed.

But she’d kept the phlarging robes on.

Pointedly ignoring Xane, who was brooding a few steps behind her, she approached the booth where Elf stood. Sidling up next to him was harder then she’d like to admit. The massive, multi-headed monster seemed even bigger up close.

It didn’t help that one of his heads was snacking on a squealing piglet-unicorn.

Sadie cringed as he chomped off the adorable creature’s skull and then spat it onto the ground.

He drained the tiny pink body into his leegos glass, giving the concoction a swirl.

Blood and chocolate mixed in a whirlpool of ick.

“Bets!” The armadillo-alien running the game called. “Place your bets.”

Elf slapped a metal chip onto a blue circle on the counter.

Sadie frowned and glanced over her shoulder at Xane. Maybe she should have asked him how to play. Raising her shoulder, she tried to convey how utterly lost she was about the rules.

He gave her an incredulous look and stepped closer. “You must choose a voemont .” He whispered, like she’d forgotten.

Sadie had no idea what that meant. It wasn’t translating into any real word.

“A voemont .” Xane repeated, sensing her confusion. He gestured to the Sesame Street collection of shapes and colors, pictured on the counter. “Bet on any one that is empty.”

Well, how hard could that be? She grabbed a handful of metal bits from the pouch Xane had stolen and dropped them all on a green triangle. It looked like a Christmas tree!

Xane let out a horrified wheeze.

Huh. Maybe that was wrong…?

Before she could reconsider her choice, armadillo-man turned towards the rows of clay pots behind him.

Seemingly at random, he kicked over a brown one that looked just like all the others.

A groan went up from the crowd, some men shaking their heads in disgust and other stomping away.

Armadillo-man ignored their unhappy response and pushed all the metal bits on the counter towards Sadie.

Oh, did she win?

Behind her, Xane made a choked sound of disbelief.

Sadie stacked up her expanded collection of metal bits, doing her best to keep her human-y fingers hidden.

There were a bunch of new types of chips added to her heap now.

Some of them even glowed. Maybe they were different denominations or currency from other planets.

Very pretty. She slid them all onto a blue square. That seemed like a lucky voemont .

Xane cringed and reached up to grip at his forehead.

His claws dug into his green skin, like he was literally hanging onto his sanity by his fingertips.

The armadillo-man surveyed Sadie’s bet and grunted in approval.

A couple of ceiling-fan-looking guys let out awestruck whistles.

Even Elf’s right-side snake-head was suddenly giving her an appraising look.

Clearly, she’d just bet a boatload of cash.

Excellent. Reckless gambling was all part of her plan.

Step two was somehow parleying that reckless gambling into shoplifting the key from Elf’s middle neck.

She wasn’t sure how to do that exactly, but she was confident it would come to her.

She’d taken an acting course in the fall semester. She was a natural at improv.

“Bold playing.” Elf’s right-head hissed.

Sadie gave a negligent “I’m too rich to even care about money” gesture, which would have been so much more effective in an awesome Bond-girl dress.

Elf’s middle-head turned towards her, breathing in her offensive scent and scowling. “Are all the hygiene chambers on your ship broken, Lythion?”

Sadie ignored that and kept her face hidden inside her stifling hood. She watched the armadillo-man turn back towards the pottery. None of it was blue or square. But then none of it had been green and triangle-shaped, either. It was all identical brown pots. Lord, this was such a dumb game.

Another identical brown pot was kicked over. Another groan went up. Another huge stack of metal bits was pushed Sadie’s way.

Hey, she’d won again. Cool.

Xane didn’t move. His eyes were fixed on the counter in something like shock.

Sadie used her forearm to drag all her coins into a makeshift pile, because there were too many of them to stack, now. It was really inconvenient that they didn’t use debit cards. She should just bet it all on that red hexagon and then she wouldn’t have to deal with the…

Xane jolted forward. His hand reached out to grip her wrist before she could push the money onto the next voemont . “We are reevaluating this strategy.” He decided in a slightly frantic tone.

Maybe he was moving onto the part of their plan where he caused a distraction, so she could try and steal the key. If so, he was terrible at it. They really should have rehearsed his role some more, before they jumped right into the live show.

Xane began dumping the coins she’d won into the fur-lined pockets of her robes, which was really not distracting anyone except her. What in the world…?

Thinking that he must want to keep some of the metal bits, Sadie tried to fish them out and hand them to him. Heck, he could have them all, as far as she was concerned.

“No. For you .” Xane insisted, refusing to take the coins. “With this much money, you could hire a hundred pilots.”

Hire a pilot? No way! Sadie couldn’t speak without giving herself away, so she settled for shaking her head at him. Vigorously . They had to rescue Jynn from that mine. Lord C’don’s heart would break without his son.

Xane ignored her emphatic refusal. “What if you cannot get back to your home? You will need money to live, and this is a lot of money.” More metal bits got added to her weighed-down robe. “You must keep it all. I cannot bear to think of you hungry or in need.”

That was sweet, but Sadie didn’t want to keep it. She was going back to Earth, so none of this money was even real to her. She was trying to empty her pockets, just as fast as he filled them. It was a losing battle. His hands were so much bigger that he could hold a lot more coins.

Her fingers brushed something plastic in the depths of the pocket.

Frowning, she pulled out the tube of hand sanitizer.

She’d forgotten she’d hidden the squirty bottle in this robe, when she’d gone to the slave auction.

It had melted the Lythions, so she’d figured it was the only protection she had against aliens.

Now, she didn’t need it. She had Xane. He would protect her.

…Even if his expression currently said he’d like to strangle her.

Who would protect her when she got back to Earth?

The thought seeped through her mind, giving her pause. Who would check that she had food, and kiss her like she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and hold her while she slept?

No one.

No one cared if she returned to Earth. Her friends and classmates would worry for a bit, but none of them would be desperate for her to return. After a while, no one would even notice that she was gone.

Xane was too caught up in keeping her rich to notice her hesitation. “Do you think the Vipri would risk even a tenth of this fortune for you? Of course not! So why would you gamble it away on them? We will leave both of them and you will be…”

“Enough!” Elf bellowed, cutting him off. “Lythion, get control of your slave or I will do it for you.”

Xane’s distraction had actually worked. He’d done it!

“Remember: Loud and obnoxious.” She whispered, so only he could hear.

Xane blinked, like he’d forgotten all about his part in the big caper.

“And if you could pretend to lose and then look very beaten, that would be amazing .” Sadie added quietly. “I’ve got a new step for our plan.”

Xane seemed less than thrilled with that news.

Sadie gave him her saddest, biggest-eyed, “pretty, pretty please” look.

A long exhale and then he moved backwards. Chained and believing this whole thing was a lousy idea, Xane still began shouting insults at the three-headed snake robot. Just because she’d asked him to. Nobody on Earth would do something so stupid, just for her. Only Xane.

Sadie gazed at her maybe-husband, her heart giving that boom again.

All the casino patrons turned to watch the fight, so Sadie forced herself into action.

While Elf and Xane kept the attention away from her, she edged towards the counter.

The hand sanitizer was still in her palm.

She popped the lid and leaned over to squirt some into Elf’s leggos -and-blood-colada.

Not too much, of course.

The spray had melted the See-Through-Alien-Kidnappers.

They were way smaller than Elf, though. If she gave him one teeny, tiny drop, it would probably just make him sick.

That would allow her to get the key, and he was sure to recover from the alcohol-mickey. She didn’t want to hurt the guy, just…

Elf hit Xane with one of his super-strong robot-arms, sending him to the ground. Xane was in shackles, and still that bastard attacked him! Blood dripped down Xane’s face, into his perfect turquoise eyes.

Sadie’s mouth thinned, and she added another healthy dollop of Purell to Elf’s cocktail. Phlarge-hole.

“Let that be a lesson to you and all the other unruly slaves!” Elf crowed, his snake heads twining around each other in victory. “We know how to deal with agitators here on Corono.”

Xane was not working hard to sell his performance, as a beaten man. She’d asked him to take a dive, so Elf would be celebratory. Xane stayed down all right, but he didn’t look subdued. He looked pissed off and ready to continue the fight.

Her maybe-husband was so bad at taking directions.

Ignoring Xane’s inability to stay in character, Sadie lifted Elf’s glass and gave him a grand toast, acting like she was going to sip some for herself. Lord, please let him stop her, before she had to taste piglet-unicorn blood.

“Get your own drink, you smelly son of a bitch!” Elf mercifully snatched it away from her, before the rim touched her lips.

“Gods know, you have the coins.” His middle-head took a deep swallow and promptly belched.

That one seemed to be the leader. “We’re going to have to administer further punishment to your slave.

Letting the insubordinate ones forget their station might incite rebellion. Fifty laser-lashes will do the trick.”

“I saw that man at the tavern, Elf.” A new voice piped up. “He had a woman with him.”