Page 23 of Time Traveling Space Bastards
I started laughing because they weren’t all that familiar with Earth. Especially not in this decade. I went to my bedroom to all the hoodies and band shirts I’ve stolen from guys I’d ghosted over the past few years. None of them were Torrek sized, but one of them could have had a career as a professional basketball player if he didn’t trip over his own feet going to the bathroom. He was clumsy as fuck, but professional basketball player shaped.
I grabbed what I needed because I definitely had a type. Omi and Torrek wore trousers that may have been laser ray proof for all I knew, but they looked like any black leather trousers I could buy at the store. Enix and Kuka needed different shirts, but their trousers would pass. I guess it was a good thing I was a magpie who stole something when I dumped someone because it certainly paid off when time traveling space bastards showed back up to save my life.
“Put these on and you can all go with me,” I said.
“I…don’t understand,” Torrek said. “Our planet has been working on perception filters for a long time. It’s Kuka’s next project when he’s done with time travel. This is just cloth.”
“How could you ever be done with time travel?” I demanded.
“Do I really want to go out in public wearing a shirt with some poor disfigured race on it that also says Thunder Cunt?” Torrek asked.
“Mine has some sort of unknown glyphs on it and says Bitch Priestess,” Kuka said.
“I want that one. Swap with me. Mine says Sperm Bomb. That’s gross,” Omi demanded.
“I don’t mind mine. It says Bone Viking and I’ve accessed the data on Vikings.”
“Why are we putting these on, Baxter?” Kuka asked.
“Okay, so this is the plan. You aren’t aliens, you’re just eccentric. If anyone says anything, I’m going to whip out my phone, act like you’re cosplaying some obscure manga, and we’re filming it for social media. If anyone still wants to ask questions, I’m going to launch into this long-winded monologue about the plot of the manga, but make it super weird until they just go away. And trust me, I can get really weird.”
“What are these shirts?”
“Some pretty underground metal bands. I either found them on my own or a guy I dated introduced me to them. That’s not a disfigured race, it’s a demon. They aren’t real but people are scared of them. The weirder the clothes, the better chance people will buy the story. And you can buy special contacts to have eyes like Kuka and Enix. Plus, what’s the point of going through a black hole to visit a planet in another galaxy if you’re just going to hole up in my really shitty apartment?”
Seriously, if I got to visit their planet, I’d want to see everything. I’d want to talk to every single person there, and I’d want to try all the foods. My apartment was shitty. My landlord was basically a slumlord. Everything in here was thrifted or found on the side of the road. It wasn’t pretty or even remotely comfortable.
They all ripped their shirts off, even Omi. Damn. They looked good topless. It was weird. I wrote about Enix because I’d met him, but they designed him because of what I wrote. He was physical perfection. He had the body of an Olympic swimmer.
Kuka was on the thinner side, but he was still wiry with muscle. I couldn’t see it before with his shirt on, but he had these amazing tattoos all across his chest and arms. Well, at first, I thought they were tattoos. Then, I realized they were a part of his skin. They were a little too shimmery to be tattoos. He had iridescent scales all over his chest and arms. He was beautiful.
When I saw them in their stolen shirts, I threw up devil horns.
“Rock on. Show me time travel.”