with a decisive negative expression which apparently transcends planets.
“The solar winds will be shifting soon enough, human. What adorns you now is admirably suitable, though it does show a great deal of your alluring leg-fur.”
Leg fur? I look down at my exposed calf and see that his description is embarrassingly apt. I haven’t shaved since the plague saw us all confined to our homes. Nobody has seen me from the waist down in literally months. He is the first. And possibly now, the last.
This is humiliating. This is terrible. This is a nightmare from which I am seriously struggling to awaken. Maybe I’m just dreaming. Maybe what Mr. Rogers said to me lodged in my subconscious, and now I’m having a silly dream about it. That would make a lot of sense, arguably more sense than what appears to be actually happening.
I pinch myself on the arm, which is actually harder to do than it seems because I don’t actually want to hurt myself so I just end up sort of squeezing my arm flesh in a way that just feels weird, and probably looks weird if King Tyrant’s expression is anything to go by.
No matter how much I twist and grab, or how much it actually starts to hurt, the alien remains, a persistent beast before me with his scaled chest, his shark or maybe is it dragon-style hair, and… an expression of absolute lust directed at me with laser precision even though I look about as gross as I’ve ever looked.
What’s going on here? I think back to what he said. About the alluringness of my legs. And then I realize it wasn’t some backhanded negging comment like a douchebag would try in a club.
He likes the leg hair.
Does that mean he likes me? At least superficially, in the way all physical beings sort of have to decide if others are appealing or not?
It would seem so.
Wow. Most guys would turn around and head for the nearest hills if they saw me right now. I have been putting on pounds all during quarantine and basically losing contact with my sense of personal hygiene. My bra has become a second storage facility for snacks, when I remember to wear one. Which I’m not, understandably because I was sleeping.
I need to get cleaned up. If he likes me like this, he’s going to really like me when I have basic hygiene in hand.
“Let me put some pants on at least. And I need my computer.”
“We have all the computational power you could ever need, human. And we have all the clothing you could ever carry. Come. The solar tides wait for no one.”
This is my fault. I should have prepared myself. I should have put some clothes on at least, just in case Mr. Rogers wasn’t having a nervous breakdown after all. But how was I supposed to know that aliens are real, and that sometimes they show up at your front door and command you onto their ship?
“Where is your ship?”
“In space, of course. I parked my shuttle on the roof. Come on, come on. Before somebody notices.”
The odds that nobody has noticed seem extremely small. He is the most noticeable thing I have ever seen. But I follow him up onto the roof because he has a commanding sort of presence mixed with a growing impatience which I do not think will end well for me. I am more or less being alien abducted in my jimmy jams and Snoopy slippers, because who needs shoes when you have soft foot coverings with a cartoon dog on them?
I expect to see a small spaceship type thing on the roof. But that’s not what’s there. His ‘shuttle’ looks like a big hot air balloon covered in morphing colors which more or less follow the same iridescence as the king himself, flashing patterns which match his.
“Wow. I didn’t think that’s what an alien spaceship would look like.”
“Do you really think advanced alien species could travel light years and not figure out how to blend in?” The eight-foot alien has the nerve to sound slightly sarcastic. “An alien spaceship could look like a piece of toast if we wanted it to.”
“How nice.”
That’s what I say when I don’t know what to say. It works in all situations, and apparently it works with bare-chested shining alien kings too. Good to know.
He opens the wicker basket door of what is allegedly his shuttle and gestures me in. I follow the path his hand describes,