The Alien Warrior King's Accountant - Loki Renard Page 0,37

get attached. We don’t allow that.”

“What if the client gets in contact?”

“He’s not going to get in contact, Tania. You did your job very well. You should be exceedingly proud of yourself.”

His words ring hollow. The first time I heard them, they meant something, but that was when I was still on the ship, and I was still in Tyrant’s presence. Now Mr. Rogers’ praise means nothing. It’s just sound that doesn’t deliver what I want to hear.

“Go home,” he repeats. “Look for a new place to live. You can afford it now. There are exciting times ahead for you, Tania. You just need to get over this first little hump.”

He’s talking about being forever separated from the alien I fell in love with as if it is a minor inconvenience. He doesn’t know that every word he’s saying feels like it’s cutting me deep.

I force a smile to my face and I nod. “I’m looking forward to all the challenges the future brings.”

“Alright, then let’s get you home.”

I notice that Mr. Rogers escorts me out of the office. He doesn’t want me there on my own. I am guessing that his office contains details for Tyrant. There’s no way Mr. Rogers doesn’t know how to get in touch with his clients. He has to send the bill, after all.

I go home, but somehow the apartment is actually more depressing today than it was yesterday. I don’t know how that’s possible, but it is.

I clean, again.

But I know it is futile. There’s no way I can clean enough to make this dingy little apartment anything like Tyrant's ship. And there’s no way I can find some other apartment that will make me feel at home the way his ship did.

When everything is so clean I can see how irreparably filthy it is, I sit down on the couch and I let the television babble at me as if that’s going to help.

It doesn’t help.

I order some food in. Pizza. It doesn’t taste good. Nothing tastes good. Nothing really tastes like anything. Like oily cardboard, at best. Water has always tasted like nothing, but now it tastes like nothing, now with extra zero.

The colors of the world, from the sky to the grass are bland. Was the grass always this tedious? Silly little blades of plant just sitting there all smug. And then the concrete. Ugh. So gross. It’s so bland and so stoic and it doesn’t move at all. And don’t even get me started on wood.

Did I ever actually like the Earth? Or was I just born here and therefore felt obligated to stay, like a bad relationship. With a planet.

I tell myself that I’m going to settle in and feel better soon.

Days go by, but I don’t settle in. If anything, I feel even more awkward. What even are jeans? They used to feel so comfortable, now they just feel like rough tubes that never fit right around the waist. And socks! Socks used to be one of my greatest pleasures, but now they just seem like floppy shoes.

My work is suffering for it too. As much as I try to pretend I give a fuck, I just can’t. My accounts are getting sloppy, I am forgetting to call clients back. On one occasion, I have a client sitting in my office for forty minutes while I eat a bagel. Just eating a bagel while they sit there expectantly. Chew. Stare. Chew. Stare.

Eventually, maybe three weeks or so later, maybe three months, I don’t know, Mr. Rogers calls me into his office.

“I’m sorry to have to say this, Tania, but if you can’t adjust to life back… in the office, we may have to consider letting you go.”

“You’d fire me?” I say it like I’m shocked, though obviously he’s going to fire me. I’m an employee who doesn’t do anything but draw little spaceships in the margins of ledgers and who still occasionally tries to walk through a wall.

“Not happily, but it may be inevitable.”

Okay. I see what’s happening here. They used me. First, they sent me to the most amazing part of the universe with the most amazing guy king and now that I’m back and not ‘fitting in’ they want to get rid of me.

I’ll end up being a burnt-out lady screeching on the street about aliens, wearing some random collection of things that aren’t clothes. I can feel madness creeping toward me from the corners of my mind. I’m still sane in the middle part,