As an only child there were no siblings to grieve me.
My parents, also only children, died a decade before in a head on collision, my Dad had been drunk, my Mum high.
That pretty much summed up my childhood, my parents splurging their government handouts on booze and drugs while I sat hungry, needing a warmer coat for winter.
I supposed it was fitting I’d be the human suffering like this.
Because of me other women wouldn’t suffer this fate.
Failing to sell me at auction after auction, the Zutki trader who abducted me aborted plans to harvest more warm bodies from Earth, and cursed the value of its location as worthless.
“Who wants to know where to find a planet filled with ones such as you?” he’d sneered stuffing me back into stasis, but not before branding Earth’s coordinates onto my forearm with a laser.
I’d made such a bad trial specimen even the L’Odo considered my species too weak to be their slaves.
In a way, my unremarkable ass saved planet Earth.
And my collage professors lectured I’d never amount to anything if I didn’t apply myself.
As Morpo dragged me towards the growing uproar, I remembered how he argued the slaves would tear me apart as they raped me.
Despite his continuous blows, I struggled against his spiked, armoured side, scratching my skin, wishing nothing more than to be thrown back into the lightless hole in the ground.
We approached a platform that jutted into a larger space.
The immense cavern below augmented the ululation of alien screeches.
My knees banged together. I would have pissed myself if my bladder weren’t already empty. “Okay, I admit, we got off to a bad start, with the peeing and all. I don’t think it warrants doing this to me.”
Morpo adjusted his grip to my upper arm. He lugged my floppy body behind him. “This is all you are good for.”
“Can’t I starve to death in my cell?” I’d thought things couldn’t get worse, but I’d been wrong. So bloody wrong. “Did you hear me?”
Ignoring me, he yelled at a brawny male with a whip coiled at his waist. “Phugort. Ready the shackles.”
Snuffling, Phugort peered at me, pity clouding his dull eyes.
Morpo cut away my dirt-smeared blouse.
When he finished ripping off my threadbare jeans, I was left in a pair of panties that passed decent days before.
I recoiled in embarrassment.
I cannot explain how relieved I’d been each time my clothes were thrown into my cell with me.
They’d become my only connection to my past life, mine, a reminder I once had a home. I was once safe, warm, fed, and master of my own existence, even if it had been unremarkable.
My back hunched and my limbs jerked inward in a futile attempt to cover myself.
That last comfort had just been stripped away, as if they hadn’t already stolen so much.
Morpo looked me over with a grunt, handling me with the rough, impersonal touch of a farmer at market.
His skull crest lifted, spread then he spat phlegm from his snout.
“Under me you would have died quickly,” he said then stormed into the tunnel without looking back.
I crawled after him yammering to be taken back to the cell.
The devil you know and all that.
Phugort grabbed me around the throat then hauled me up.
Unseen manacles clamped around my wrists and ankles.
Gripped by a force field, I jerked up and back.
I flailed and whimpered, fettered, spread-eagled within a gleaming circle.
Sparks of energy crackled as it jumped from the beams of light circling my wrists and ankles to the inner surface of the metal.
Phugort bounded off the platform. “Die well.”
My eyes bugged. “Don’t.” The panicked plea turned into a breathless shriek.
The machine holding me prisoner jettisoned into the air then dropped in a vertical decent.
Wrenched to a stop, the air left my lungs.
The energy cuffs bit into my skin with a painful sizzle, and I cried out.
Blood dripped down my wrists onto my shoulders.
Panting in harsh puffs, my eyes darted.
In front of me was a sheer wall of rock.
My head snapped side to side and there was nothing but craggy stone.
A dissonance of sound resonated around me.
It sounded....
It sounded like....
Unable to contextualise the ghoulish symphony without seeing my gaze dropped.
Hundreds of impossible to describe eyes gazed up at me, straining orbs opened wide and set into alien faces savage with sexual hunger.
The optimistic ran up the walls, twisted, launching their bodies airborne.
They reached for me with freakish hands and paws as if they could grab me where I hung thirty feet above.
The mass of bodies surged.
Pushing, shoving, screeching they became agitated, enraged, and a swarm of bodies tried to scale the walls or leap straight up to reach me.
A thunderous voice filled the room ordering for calm.
The slavers cracked their whips and swung their batons, ripping flesh from bone and knocking people senseless.
The restless throng settled.
My stomach churned at the savagery towards the miners, but it also revolted at the sight of the males themselves.
Are those tentacles?
“Slaves,” Sorkbhal’s disembodied voice boomed. “See it above you? It is female. She goes to the strongest. Fight for her,” he finished on a roar as the transmission ended in a tooth-grinding squeal.
The scene became a bloodbath as the males turned on each other.
Smaller, humanoid beings squatted near the fortifications, removing themselves from the struggle and their chance at winning me for a prize.
The monsters enduring resembled human men crossed with mutated predators lost in berserker rage.
A handful of fights with three to five males brawling merged into a penultimate scuffle of aliens biting and slashing in a ferocious mass.
My sob echoed above the skirmish.
I blinked and my tears fell like rain.
Blood sprayed the walls and misted the air.
The stink of sweat and gore mixed with the cloying heat, rising to choke me.
There was a sudden lull.
Tearing my eyes from the dead and clumps of viscera, I realised only two remained standing.
Eerily, they looked at me at the same time as if reminding themselves what they fought for.
The larger male was golden, his features feline and his eyes a vibrant green.
Furred skin the colour of rose gold shone in the dim.
A wild mane of silken hair rippled from the crown of his head to his waist, and twin flesh-coloured horns curled through his hair like a laurel wreath, the points at the back of his head tipped with black.
His expression turned bestial, possessing a domineering slant that made my skin crawl.
He opened his mouth and roared, sounding like an enraged lion.
Muscles slick with sweat rippled and gleamed as he lifted a clawed hand to swipe in my direction.
My gaze darted to the stranger alien.
Seizing, my heart gave up the struggle to regulate itself and blood drained from my face leaving me pale.
There were no words to describe him.
Head turned into my shoulder, I squeezed my eyes shut, praying the more human-looking creature won.
I could not deal with the one that looked like that.
Restless, the horde chanted from the sidelines.
The brash sound bounced off the walls until it seemed a gathering of thousands brayed for blood.
Tension in the room mounted as the two males circled.
The chanting silenced.
Lunging, they clashed in mid air.
A hissing, snarling battle ensued.
Claws and venom spitting fa
ngs were their weapons of choice.
They broke apart.
Feinted.
Came together with primitive fury.
I yanked on my restraints.
Free falling to death was the better alternative than being given to the winner.
Vicious snarling ended with a wet crunch.
Choppy breaths razed from my lungs.
My jaw wrenched open in a silent scream of denial as my mind accepted whom the dying snarl belonged to.
Quivering, I beheld the arena champion.
Head thrown back, arms flung out from heaving sides, the victor stared up at me with intense, narrowed eyes.
He stood triumphant over a broken corpse.
“Give it to ... him,” commanded Sorkbhal’s ghostly voice. “I am entertained.”
I shrieked as I plummeted, my stomach crawling into my throat.
The circle of metal slowed a foot from collision, setting down with a clang on the rocky ground.
It crushed the squidgy body of a dead slave, popped its skull in a mushy splat of oozing puss.
The alien trampled over the dead challenger.
Jarring to a stop at my wail, he reared back, stopped charging me as if about to lop off my head.
Now as he advanced it was with a look of passionate focus.
The vast rise and fall of his powerful chest halted as he inhaled deeply then held it.
Fisted hands, all four of them, clenched and unclenched as the aggression leached from his frame to be replaced with another kind of tension.
Considered by me a far more dangerous kind of tension.
His jaw tensed and his nostrils flared. A slash of blue-black flickered past his lips too fast for me to see.
The manacles of energy holding me bound snapped open.
Weak in the knees, I tumbled forward into a solid wall of flesh.
My arms throbbed as blood rushed into my fingertips.
The shakes of my body were so violent I barely kept upright.
I looked up, and up, and up.
Obsidian eyes peered down at me.
The alien’s mouth parted as it let loose a throaty hissing-growl.
A strangled, “Ugnh?” gurgled from my throat.
Another snarling-rumble from the beast.
I helpfully translated it for him into an outburst that explained in excruciating detail my upcoming rape, torture and death.
Annoyed I didn’t respond with anything other than a strangled rasp, the alien bared twin rows of sharp teeth.
Oh Jesus, oh Lord, take me now.
I swayed on the brink of blacking out as I took in the lethal enormity of the elongated, curved fangs dripping with viscous fluid.
Again, the slash of black with a sheen of electric blue pushed past his lips.
I saw it this time.
A forked tongue flickered at the seam of his lips.
His angular face creased into a scowl, and a clawed hand shot out to grab me by the throat.
Another nabbed my arm as its twin took possession of my thigh.
The last clutched my waist, his hand span so large half my middle was engulfed.
The edges of my world turned dark.
Strength flowed from my limbs in a lingering tingle, and white noise roared in my ears.
Pungent sweat plugged my nose, and the macabre scene bleached into a colourless smudge as the floor rushed me.
Hot points of pressure burned my flesh where his hands held me.
He plucked me off the ground as if I weighed nothing.
Crushed to a hard chest, arms of steel banded about me.
Tight.
Too tightly.
Claws dragged down my back in a spine-chilling stroke.
The world rotated as I was slung over the hard round of a shoulder.
Sucking in a much-needed gulp of air that stuck in my throat, my self-preservation finished kicking in.
Lumen, you are utterly fucked.
I passed out.
CHAPTER TWO
I woke to footsteps.
Hanging limp with rest of my body, my arms swayed in the snarled nest of my curly hair.
My hands bumped into the back of the alien that carried me, fingers grazing over scaled flesh.
Ropey lengths that grew from its head slithered along my naked skin.
Dread had me tensed into rigid, broken lines, and the arm hooped around my legs tightened its possessive clutch.
An acknowledgment of my waking.
Claws landed on my backside in a distracted pat as another hand stroked my calf.
Cold air stung my teeth as I inhaled in slow pulls, and I sucked up a lungful of woody aroma, smoky, spicy.
Rather than relax me, the exotic fragrance made it harder to shake off my disorientation.
The scent reminded me of hot days at the beach, lazing on sand dunes as warm breezes tugged my hair, and the underlying muskiness to the bouquet made me realise the snaking tunnel we haunted smelt as I remembered, dank and mouldy, overlaid with a chemical bite that stuck in my craw.
The heady scent came from the alien.
We forged deeper into the black.
The sound of sodden, guttural breathing.
Scuttling feet.
Decay.
Dozens of unblinking eyes stared from the shadows.
A shape darker than its surroundings emerged from an offshoot behind us.
It stopped in the middle of the passageway.
The alien halted, so I strained to see why, lifting and twisting my body to witness another large shadow blocking the path ahead.
Slumping over, I closed my eyes and waited to be savaged.
An alien was an alien was an alien.
It wouldn’t end well for me whatever happened next.
The being holding me tensed then jerked forward.
A shrill whine as scorching liquid slapped my thigh.
Mass hit the dirt with a flat thud.
The shadow behind took a hasty step back and melted into the darkness.
The one in front was gone, disembowelled judging by the waft of iron-rich blood and faeces, and we moved again, faster than before.
We made a number of turns, and there was no chance of me tracking his movements to plan an escape, even if I had somewhere to flee to.
He jumped, vaulted over something high then landed crouched.
We travelled the labyrinth until we exited from splinter in a mountainside boarded by jungle.
With a silky hiss the alien plunged into the bush.
We moved with such speed leather like leaves and hairy twigs stung like lashes from a whip.
My eyes rounded as I walked my hands up the creature’s back to lift my torso and take in the strange natural world.
Twin moons hung in a starry sky.
Fog hugged the ground, and the lush vegetation pressing in on us was a luminous riot of colour searing my eyes after the empty void of the tunnels.
The mournful howl of a hunting beast soared over the canopy to blend with the screech of a nocturnal raptor that dived into the undergrowth.
Underlying it all, a hushed song akin to crickets chirruping.
The scent of wet soil and green things was cleansing to my palate, welcome after the dank musk I’d grown accustomed to.
The grind of stone moving against stone startled me into again using his lower back to push up.
The alien ducked, stood, and then turned.
Moonlight faded.
The scraping noise returned then silence and artificial light.
Frightened, I dropped to hang lifeless over his shoulder, forcing my mind not to dwell on what was about to happen.
Gruesome images slid in regardless.
The alien bent near double to set me on my feet then straightened in a fast jerk.
The rough floor was cold.
I hopped from foot to foot at the sudden tepid to freezing transition and held out my hands to keep him at bay.
We stared at each other.
>
The alien hadn’t been the biggest of the males but he may as well have been.
His aggressive posture obliterated the meagre courage I had left.
Musky and humid, the den he brought us to was dimly lit by a stark light wrapped in rusted wire.
It was precariously secured to the curve where wall met domed ceiling.
My gaze whipped around.
Oblong, the space was no more than fifteen feet across and twenty feet deep, a sad bundle of blankets shoved into a corner.
A stone worktable lined the straightest wall holding a chaotic assortment of hooked screws, bolts, a jumble of cords, and a snarl of corkscrewed wires.
The reddish-grey clay walls were covered in junk.
At a longer, less harried look, I recognised circuit boards and random pieces of electrical mishmash.
Wedged into another corner was a blackened mesh shelf fastened to the wall above a ring of glowing pebbles.
That was all there was inside the pitiable hole the creature surely lived.
Piteous or not, it’s more than I have to my name.
Chest tightening, I remembered to inhale, and hints of damp rock and smooth chalk flooded my nose.
My attention snapped to the alien when he shifted.
Menacing to behold.
I shuffled backwards until my shoulder blades bumped metal nailed to the wall.
Panting fright, I sank until my bottom hit the floor.
Even motionless he looked fierce.
He was shaped human.
My gaze scudded over his immense frame and my pulse froze.
A bestial countenance bore equivalent features in the right places, but beyond that I failed to comprehend his differences.
The most noteworthy being he possessed six limbs instead of four.
Strange as he appeared he’d yet to make a violent move toward me.
Despite the life forms I’d encountered inflicting nothing but pain, hope kindled in my breast the creature was kinder than its predecessors.
It must be said, and even though his dealings with me were passive, his glare screamed black, painful death.
I was a firm believer actions spoke louder than words though.
Swallowing to ease a dry mouth, I croaked, “Hi.”
An ebon stare.
Intimidated by his hulking size, my gaze skimmed his face as I tried to humanise him, make him less imposing.
There was no hair as I knew it anywhere on his body, and against the rock walls that lack of softness gave him a mean, hard appearance.