Alien Kraken’s Prize (Starlight Brides)

Chapter 2

CHAPTER

TWO

brIDGET

The first thought I have on waking is that I sincerely need a new bra.

The second thought I have is that if I was stupid enough to wear a bra that’s tight enough to restrict my airflow, then maybe I deserve this low-key ache.

When I open my eyes, the truth comes crashing down on me.

There’s something tight wrapped around my chest, yes, but it’s not a bra.

It’s the damned tentacle.

Not only that, but I’m no longer on the Starlight Lottery shuttle.

“Nooooo,” I moan, blinking at the massive, bright light overhead.

Gone. All my dreams of finally having a better life are gone, gone, gone.

My eyes scrunch up and I fling a hand over my eyes, because holy mucin, it’s bright, way, way too bright. Brighter than anywhere I’ve ever been before, especially brighter than the dim energy-saving lights on the space station where I’ve spent most of my life.

No wonder my single sentient tentacle friend is hiding up against my boobs like a very uncomfortable underwire.

“Under-tentacle bra.” My voice is shrill and high-pitched to my own ears. “No need for underwires when you have a tentacle.” I choke a little on the last word as fear starts to override my penchant for humor in the worst situations.

This is definitely the worst situation I’ve been in.

Worse than that time I ran out of money and waited tables in the diciest cantina on the station. Worse than when the owner of said cantina tried to rent me out to dance at private parties. Worse than when I told the cantina owner to shove it up his ass and was only stopped from being hurt by a fight breaking out over one of the gambling tables.

Whew. What a night.

I inhale, trying to calm my racing heart. My eyes are squeezed shut so hard flecks of colored light dance behind my lids. My pulse is a hammer in my ears, my stomach churning with fear.

“Nothing’s tried to kill us yet,” I mutter, and the tentacle loosens its hold slightly, allowing me to take my first deep breath since waking up.

The tentacle, apparently, agrees.

It smells different here than on the station, different than the metallic tang of recycled air I’ve been raised on.

The air has a slightly salty hint to it, and it weighs heavy on my skin, almost like the time I splurged on a spa treatment I certainly could not afford and got to sit in an unbearably hot and moist room as part of the truly bizarre package.

That’s what you get for being a lowly human in a universe full of superior beings.

Okay, I’m going to open my eyes and tackle this problem just like I tackle everything else.

In…

“Three, two, one?—”

I crack one eye open, then the other, and squint into the dimmer light all around me.

It’s like I have been plopped down directly under the light, which is only shining on me.

I read a book once where a woman got a sunburn from being directly in the line of a planet’s star and, panicked, I shuffle backwards on all fours until I’m in a cooler patch of shade.

Bam. Bam. Bam.

A horrifically loud sound cascades through the air towards me, and the tentacle tightens back up around my ribs.

“Too tight,” I wheeze, smacking at it. When it doesn’t let go, I whack it again and it loosens completely, plopping onto the ground.

The ground… which is made up of teeny-tiny particulates, slightly shining, a pale, pale yellow.

I wrinkle my nose. I always thought dirt was brown, or black, or even reddish brown, based on old Earth vids Aileen and I would watch when we got lucky and found one in the station’s virtual repository.

Maybe the colors were screwed up.

Or… maybe this isn’t dirt.

Or maybe dirt isn’t the same color wherever the fuck I am.

Not on the fucking Starlight Lottery Hub, getting ready for a perfectly lovely new life.

A tear trickles down my cheek, and I use the back of my hand to wipe it away angrily.

I don’t have time to cry and feel sorry for myself.

However, I could use a hug—a hug and some water. I smack my lips. I am freaking-fracking parched.

I pick up the tentacle and it wriggles happily, the tip of it slapping my cheek enthusiastically as I hold it close, sniffling.

The not-dirt sucks uncomfortably at my feet, which are now bare, and I mentally pour out a drink at the loss of my shoes, because I don’t have one. If I did, I probably would drink it though, not pour it out.

I am so thirsty.

The tentacle scooches up my chest until it’s draped over my neck like a very rubbery scarf. Sighing, I continue to trudge across the ground, until I finally make it to where the light doesn’t reach.

Relief at the coolness is short-lived, however, because now, instead of being scorching hot, I’m clammy and chilled.

Shivering, I wrap my arms around my waist and peer up as far as I can, trying to figure out what, exactly, is causing this massive shadow to be thrown.

There’s nothing there, save the strange flickering of light reflected… in a way that makes absolutely no logical sense. I mean, I’m not the smartest human who ever lived, just ask any one of my many employers—they’d be all too happy to expound on my many failings—but I did okay in physics courses, and the way that light is acting up there is not normal.

I bite the inside of my cheeks, petting the tentacle.

Oh, how far have I fallen, to be petting the tentacle voluntarily? For my own comfort?

“Pretty far indeed,” I tell it, and it wriggles again, pleased to hear my voice. Or feel its vibrations, because as far as I can tell, the damned thing doesn’t have ears.

My nose wrinkles and I turn in a slow circle, trying to get my bearings.

Stalky leaves protrude from the ground. I tilt my head, slightly freaked out by them. Not trees. Not plants, not like any I’ve ever seen pictures of before, at least. They look wrong.

They look artificial, like someone plunked them straight down into the dirt, single leaves that tower over me.

The feeling of wrongness grows as I look back up, up, up at where the sky should be, and only see flat nothingness.

My eyes narrow and I shield them with one hand, trying to suss out whatever the hell it is that’s so clearly fucked with this place.

“Oh my fucking fuck,” I mutter, my eyes going wide as it hits me.

It’s not a goddamned sun or a star or whatever.

It’s a light.

It’s a fucking light, a heat lamp, like I’ve seen used on living creatures in the curiosity shop I worked in on the space station.

“Shiiiiit,” I say, trying my very best not to freak out.

Which, of course, means I’m running full-tilt across ground that?—

THWACK.

A squeaky noise sounds as my cheek slides down the invisible barrier I’ve smacked right into, and I let myself tumble to the ground.

At least I’m not under the heat lamp.

I lie there for a minute, trying to get air back into my lungs, half-expecting tiny bluebirds to circle above my field of vision like the ancient vids from Earth showed.

No birds appear.

A tentacle appears, however, and briefly waves in concern before plopping onto my cheek in solidarity.

I blow out a breath that turns into a raspberry, frankly glad I have breath at all to spare again.

There’s a greasy streak where my face hit the barrier, and I blink at it a few times before it hits me. That barrier? It’s glass, or something like it.

The sun is a heat lamp.

I’m in a goddamned terrarium.

“The irony,” I yell at the tentacle, which is making soothing pets on my face.

I’ve gone from tending extraterrestrial wonders at a freakshow on my shitty space station to being one on god knows what planet.

Fuuuuuck me!

I’m too stunned to even whimper, much less shed any tears from it. In fact, the best I can do is muster a shocked snort, somewhere between amused and pained.

My reflection swims in the maybe-glass barrier in front of me, the tentacle draped lovingly across my face. I pat it, because what the hell else am I going to do?

If I’m a sideshow attraction now, at least I have a friendly tentacle to keep me company. At least they haven’t thrown me in a gladiator pit or something?—

“I’m gonna stop that line of thinking right there,” I wheeze, my breath still not quite back to normal. My nose hurts, too, and I press my fingers gingerly to it, only to see them come away bloody.

“Cool, cool, cool,” I say. The tentacle wriggles, apparently pleased by the fact I’m talking again.

Guilt swims through me.

“Now I see how you felt,” I tell it, sighing wearily. “Sorry we were dicks to you.”

The tentacle apparently takes this as an invitation, and starts to slither down to my crotch.

“Nope!” I yelp. “Absolutely not, that is not what I meant. I meant sorry we didn’t, you know, free you. Sooner,” I tack on, because I guess I had taken pity on the damned thing. Eventually. “And sorry you’re stuck in a freakin’ tank again.”

Pitiful. That’s what this is.

Fucking pitiful.

I lie on the ground in my new terrarium, and I ponder all the life choices that have led me to this moment.

God, I hope Aileen made it to her lottery hub without being abducted and made into a human pet.

“Well,” I say, summoning a tiny bit of positivity. “At least I don’t have to do anything. We can just laze around all day.”

I wince, though, because that doesn’t sound nearly as good as I would like.

I might hate working for assholes, but that doesn’t mean I necessarily love doing nothing. And now, as a pet in a fucking cage, all I have to do is nothing.

Forever.