Page 3 of Time Traveling Space Bastards

T he elevator was usually broken in my shitty apartment. If it was actually working, there was always the high probability it would stop working while you were in it. Maintenance took hours to get you out during business hours, and I didn’t even want to know how long I’d be stuck at two in the morning.

I had some things to get off my chest with three time traveling space bastards and I could finally say them. I was out of shape. I only ran if someone was chasing me, which basically never happened. If I gained ten pounds, I’d get really into fitness videos for about a week until I got bored, and then stop. That ten pounds hung around until another ten pounds joined it.

Still, I was pissed off enough to attempt to run up all seven flights of stairs. I had some regrets about halfway, but I was really pissed and if those three aliens had broken into my apartment (and I’d be kind of pissed if they did), it would confirm I wasn’t schizophrenic and everything I saw was true.

My lungs and thighs were burning by the time I made it to the landing, but I still stomped all the way to my apartment. I swear to shit, if they busted my door in and got me in trouble with the landlord, I would be kicking their asses. No one in my neighborhood trusted the cops, so even if they saw aliens breaking into my apartment, they’d close their doors and mind their business.

It was usually my favorite thing about this neighborhood.

I unlocked the door and flung it open. There they were. The three aliens were crowded around my tiny dining room table and it looked like they’d raided my fucking kitchen. Rude. I didn’t make a lot of money. I was limited to jobs that didn’t ask a lot of questions. I couldn’t afford to feed time traveling space bastards who crashed into my life a second time. Were they trying to ruin me financially this time?

It had been twenty-one years, and they looked exactly the same, at least from what seven-year-old me remembered. Two looked almost human. It was their eyes that gave them away.

One was thin with frankly great hair, but his bright-green eyes were slit like a snake. It almost looked like really expensive movie contacts, but it was a little too real. I hadn’t really noticed when I was seven, but he was completely gorgeous in a sexy nerd kind of way, and he even had the trench coat on.

The other one that looked mostly human was physically perfect in every way. It was almost like Pygmalion designed the perfect man and he came to life. He had dark skin and was probably the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. His eyes weren’t human. I didn’t know if he was wearing special contacts that were like those AI glasses, just some kind of upgrade, but it was clearly some kind of computer.

The last one was the one that tipped me off these guys weren’t human long before I got a look at any eyes. First of all, he was massive. At least seven feet tall. He also had very long, sharp canines and small horns. His skin was an orangish-red with black stripes like a tiger. Oh, and he had a tail.

Seven-year-old me should have been terrified of the giant horned man, but I wasn’t. He was the first one who put me at ease that there were three strange men, and a bus stop in my pool. And yeah, twenty-eight-year-old me found the tiger guy hot, too, but none of these guys were sexy enough to extinguish my fury. I’d been through a lot of shit and, based on the food on the table, they cooked all the fucking food in my freezer.

“We—”

“Oh, no you don’t! You told me an hour. It’s been twenty-one fucking years and when you finally do show up, you cook the food that was supposed to last me for the next two weeks! I’m not rolling in cash. Seriously, what the fuck?”

“We thought we could feed you while we explained everything, but we aren’t sure how human digestion works. We know you only have one stomach, but we don’t know how big it is, so we cooked everything. I can have Enix transfer ten Nova Credits to your bank account in an instant,” the one with the great hair said.

Because I hadn’t gotten their names last time. They had been fawning over me and calling me the Devouring Mother, but then they realized their time machine was in our pool and needed to get it out and fix it before they had to find a really large bag of rice. I didn’t even know which one Enix was, just that it was really weird I’d chosen that name for one of the characters in my book.

“Great, I can buy a carton of eggs,” I said, throwing up my hands.

Enix must have been the one with the computer eyes because I could see something flashing around his pupils. And…weird.. The Enix standing in front of me was the one I’d named Enix in my books.

“Ten Nova Credits is the equivalent of four million American dollars. Is that enough to feed a human for two weeks? My programming says human females need fewer calories than the males, but you both need fewer calories than people on our planet with only one stomach,” Enix said.

I nearly fainted. Four million dollars was a ton of money and they were just offering to give it to me. I should probably take it. I didn’t know how punitive damages worked on their planet, but I wasn’t about to put myself in front of a jury on this one after my entire past.

“If it’s not enough, I can try to get more. I was only given a set amount for my quest,” Good Hair said.

“You two are idiots and terrible with women. She’s clearly been through a lot. It’s only been two hours for us, but it’s been a lot longer for her. Come sit and eat. We have Earth cookbooks back home, but no one knows how accurate they are. Enix doesn’t eat and Kuka is too fucking spoiled to cook, but I can. I figure grilling meat is the same on any planet, even though I’ve seen your cows now and they are terrifying,” Tiger Man said, leading me to the table.

Shit. Kuka was the name I’d given Good Hair just like I’d given the name Enix to computer man. This was getting way too weird.

“If your name is Torrek, I’m going to lose my fucking mind.”

He just gave me this toothy grin like I was right. I got up from the table and went straight to the cabinet, where I kept a very illegal bottle of Everclear for emergencies. This was an emergency. I chugged it straight from the bottle.

“All of you need to tell me how I knew your names without you giving them to me when I was seven,” I said weakly.

“Kuka and Torrek are common names back home. The cyborgs are all named Enix, they are just distinguished by their model. They are religious names taken from the holy texts,” Kuka said.

“How would I even know that?”

“Because you wrote them,” Enix said.

This was honestly a lot, and I’d just chugged Everclear like water. There were black spots invading my vision and I could feel myself falling as I passed out.