Page 17 of Time Traveling Space Bastards

I suppose any time you left your house, you could get murdered. Someone could want your shit or some asshole with a gun could decide to commit a mass shooting literally anywhere. Knowing it was going to happen was something else.

I didn’t know who did it any more than the future cops did. I had no problem standing up to bullies. The majority of times I ended up on a seventy-two-hour hold or thrown into another hospital, it was because one of my bullies got physical with me and I fought back. No one believed me and kept saying I was being violent for no reason. Which was another reason I left.

I didn’t do that anymore because I didn’t want any attention brought to me. My parents had been trying to put me under a conservatorship as soon as I turned eighteen. I’d never be free. They’d control my entire life. I didn’t want them knowing where I was, so I didn’t draw attention to myself.

It went against my nature, but if someone started yelling at me, I let them instead of yelling back. The time traveling space bastards were different. There was no way in fuck I could have held any of that back.

The only people I pissed off were the men I ghosted and sometimes Kevin. The men I ghosted didn’t know I lived in an entirely different city and they had no way of finding out my address. Kevin was angry all the time, but he was a marshmallow. If I was drunk enough, I could probably take him.

And if they saved my life, then what? I write their book, and they leave me here knowing everything I knew? I didn’t exactly adjust very well after meeting them for ten minutes the first time.

“I think I’m having a crisis,” Enix announced.

“Girl, me, too. What’s wrong?” I asked.

“My stomach is gurgling and there is a lot of pressure.”

“If you were built to be able to digest food, then it also has to come out. I think you need to shit, Enix,” Omi said.

Oh, my god, there was a cyborg on my couch who needed to make a doody for the first time and it should have been weird, but it was kind of adorable.

“Bathroom is the first door on the right. I had a bidet installed, so just turn the knob and it will wash you off. The shit goes in the bowl. If I find it in my bathtub, I’m going to be mad.”

“I’ll access the data,” Enix said, running out of my living room.

“Okay, that’s adorable,” Omi said.

“My bathroom better be adorable when he’s done with it.”

“It will. The Enix are generally very clean, but ours is especially so. Did you know that he knows how to fold fitted sheets?” Torrek said.

“No, because that’s witchcraft. No one knows how to fold those. You ball them up and shove them in the closet like the gods intended.”

Kuka giggled.

“Enix finds that offensive. He takes them out and folds them.”

“He’d better not look in the hall closet then.”

Enix eventually joined us again. He looked visibly shaken.

“That was terrible. I feel violated. The fact that billions of people across multiple galaxies have to go through that is awful.”

“Someone came into the bookstore one day and wanted a copy of Everyone Poops for her kid. I thought Kevin’s brain was going to explode. I could ask him again for shits and giggles when I eventually quit if you want to read it.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Torrek said, clapping Enix on the back. “Sometimes, it’s even enjoyable.”

Enix just shuddered.

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“If you want to enjoy food, you’re going to have to deal with it,” Omi said.

“I know. And I don’t plan to stop eating. I just don’t want to think about what happens after.”

“I’d throw you a party if your first shit wasn’t so traumatic, but we need to be focusing on keeping Baxter alive,” Torrek said.

“I mean, can you? The only reason my grades were bad enough that college was never an option was because my parents kept yanking me out of school to throw me in the hospital. I understood it as soon as I caught up. If you don’t see the news stories that I die, you have no reason to show up two days before I get murdered to try to stop it. It’s a big, giant, timey-wimey fuck you to me.”

“Is she right?” Torrek asked. “I can fight anything but time. I didn’t come all this way just for the final text. She doesn’t deserve that.”

“She’s right, but I’m going to figure it out. Baxter, you don’t know me very well, but they do. I can save your life and it’ll all work out.”

I gave him a look because it sounded like he wanted to have a cage fight with time. He might have figured out time travel and I couldn’t even fathom how Kuka did that, but if one version of him saved my life, then another had no reason to show up and warn me.

“He’ll do it,” Enix said. “Kuka doesn’t want to be king, but he knows his brother is the wrong choice. He saved me and he’ll save you.”

“I’m not one for platitudes, but if anyone can do it, it’s Kuka. He went to university before me and he wasn’t even in the surgery program, but they let him audit the classes. They are teaching a technique he invented when he was just a student in my year.”

“Yeah, but this is time. She’s a sexy beast and you can’t tell her what to do.”

“Something tells me you have that in common,” Torrek chuckled.

I cleared my throat and excused myself for a few minutes. I was attracted to these three aliens. They were probably the only beings in this galaxy I could be myself around who didn’t think I was crazy. They knew I was telling the truth. I couldn’t get attached because once they were done here, they’d have to go back. Kuka was going to be king. They couldn’t stay here.

I didn’t want to stay here, either. What had this galaxy done for me, anyway?