and the cool air wraps around me, I start to cry.
Big, fat tears drop from my eyes and onto my cracked lips as I wrap my arms around myself and try to stay quiet. Is this my life now?
What happened to the dream the Harvest Girls were promised? Was it all just lies?
Is this nightmare our actual purpose, our future? I can’t be sure. But one thing is quite clear to me…I can’t survive this much longer.
Five
Harlow
Warm liquid splashes my face, and I turn away, wondering who the hell is pouring water on me while I’m sleeping. My guess is Carmen, but I can’t rule out Shiloh either.
“Stop it, bitch!” I shout, moving my hand to block the stream. But then the smell hits me—a putrid, pungent odour.
That’s not water…
Memories assault me like a pack of angry hornets, and my eyes fly open to see one of the brown aliens pissing right on my face. I gag, spitting it off my lips, horrified that it’s gotten into my mouth. The taste is awful, overpowering, reminding me of what a mould-covered rotten egg might taste like. And the smell is almost as bad. The stench is thick, hanging in the air like fog and burning my nostrils.
Anger brews inside me. How dare they treat me like this?
“What the hell are you doing?” I growl louder than maybe I should have, trying to scurry out of the way. The disgusting creature chortles, simply moving his aim to follow me. I turn, offering him my back since I can’t get away.
Despair threatens to drown me. Is this really what my life has become? I’m no mate, I’m a bloody toilet. Swiping at the filthy liquid, I wipe it from my face as best as I can, but with no towel, pillow, or clothing of any sort, much of it just sticks to me. I have to fight back the bile rising in my throat and the angry tears in my eyes, not wanting them to see any weakness. I have a feeling it would only spur them on.
I’m horrified, sad, and angry.
So very angry.
“Wake up, human, you only sleep when we say you do.”
“Fuck you,” I mumble under my breath. Immediately, I know that was the wrong thing to do, because the room grows unnervingly silent.
“What did you say to me?” he snarls, his putrid breath wafting over my hair. Before I can apologise, the cage shakes violently as the alien starts attacking it with fists and feet. The old iron clangs and groans, and I curl up into a ball, covering my ears, softly crying while praying it will stop.
The assault ends as abruptly as it began, and I tentatively look behind me, right into the angry eye of my attacker. “I’m not done with you, human,” he gurgles, before fumbling with the lock keeping me inside.
Of course he’s not.
If I could have just kept my damn mouth shut, I might have survived my first day on Oxious. The tears continue to fall, my anger now directed at myself.
How could I be so stupid?
Great job, Harlow, tell the angry alien to go fuck himself. Yeah, that was bloody smart.
Wallowing in a pool of piss and self-pity, I brace myself for what’s to come when an odd, rhythmic tone sounds, reminding me of an alarm clock or the timer on an oven buzzing when the food inside it is done. “Get over here, Gurk,” the largest of the four calls from their kitchen table. “The Yarek are calling.”
Gurk?
Yarek?
Like the same Yarek that almost destroyed Earth a hundred years ago, the reason I’m here today?
No. It couldn’t be…
The alien I now know is Gurk bashes against the cage one more time, smiling evilly when I flinch in response. “I’m coming, Vyle,” he calls, then he lowers his voice, pressing his grotesque face against the cage bars. “You think things are bad now, human? I can promise you that this is nothing. Things will get much worse for you. So I’d watch that ugly mouth of yours and keep it vekking shut, before I stuff something inside it and shut it for you.”
I don’t take his threat lightly and freeze in fear as he pushes off the cage and lumbers over to the kitchen, his claws almost dragging on the floor when he walks. He smacks another alien upside his head, and gurgled laughter belts out from his mouth as he sits down next to him.
In the center of their table is a small, flat