of you.”
I miss being fuck-drunk. It was easier when I couldn’t think about anything besides pleasure. If he pulled out his cock right now, I’d open my mouth for it, even knowing that another dose too soon could finish what we started and end it all.
“Is that why you went on a rampage against our kind?”
“Yes. Of course it is. You all deserve to die.”
“I do not know about that. I do know that I, and my brood, are in the business of justice. And I know that I might be able to bring you justice, if you will tell me what happened.”
Hope would be a dangerous thing to indulge in right now.
“What are you going to do about it? If I told you? What would happen?”
“If we could find those responsible, they would be slaughtered. It is against our code to harm humans. You know that. You have seen that for yourself on more than one occasion. Tell me what happened, so justice can be done.”
I don’t believe he is interested in justice. He is interested in more control, more knowledge to wind me up with. I am his prisoner, not his lover. I am his captive human, and that means we are enemies. I cannot let my pathetic tendency to hope get in the way.
“You don’t care,” I say, not bothering to hide my bitterness. “You don’t even believe me.”
“I believe something was done to you which broke you,” he says. “And I want to hear your telling of it.”
I have never told anyone what happened that day. Everything I have done over the past few years has been because of that day, but I’ve never said a single word. Some things, once they happen, they write themselves on you, and then everything you do after them is a way of writing them on the world. I don’t want to say the words. I don’t want to bring that memory back and relive it.
Was it ten years ago?
“Ella! Ella, come in. It’s getting cold!”
I can never get that girl in. She spends all day from sunup to sundown running around in the woods outside our house. Sometimes it feels as though I haven’t seen her in days. There’re just quick flashes of her when she comes in to eat.
“Mama! There’s stars in the sky!”
There aren’t any stars in the sky. It’s the middle of the day and the sun is as bright as it gets. Bright enough to tan you instantly, more or less. Ella’s hair is bleached from it, little bits of golden blonde sticking out from her curls. She’s the happiest girl I’ve ever seen. Happier than most of the kids around here, who know nothing but poverty and hunger. My girl is fed, and I am proud of that.
“Come inside, Ella.”
She comes inside, reluctantly, a pout on her face. She’s ten years old. She’ll be eleven in a week. I’ve been storing away sugar so I can make her a cake. She’s never had one before. I want this birthday to be special. I want to show her that even though we’re poor, living all the way out here on a forgotten colony, there are good things in life. There’s something to look forward to.
“What’s for lunch, Mama?”
“Slugs and cabbage,” I tell her. It’s the same thing we’ve had for lunch for the last three years. Her eyes still light up. She loves slugs. They’re little lumps of pure joy as far as her uneducated palate is concerned.
“Where were you?”
Warden interrupts my memories with a question. I’m glad for being pulled out of them. They’re so painful. Even the sweet ones. The sweet memories are what makes the painful ones so painful. I can still see her face. Her perfect, innocent, beautiful little face dancing before my eyes as I answer him.
“We were living on a small planet called Patch. I don’t know how, or why. We woke up one day, and that is where we were…”
“The timesplosion,” he says.
“Timesplosion?”
“Yes. A detonation in time and space, which caused the planet Earth, and those on it to be thrown across, well, time and space. The effects of the timesplosion are notoriously strange and unpredictable. It was not a typical explosion of the kind that you have a tendency to engage in, but one which rippled through time itself.”
“I would have thought an explosion large enough to throw people through time would just kill everybody.”
“It wasn't the kind of explosion you’re thinking of. It’s not the kind