Riv's Sanctuary - A.G. Wilde

1

What’s worse than taking a wee with humans watching?

Taking a wee with aliens watching.

Lauren cast a bored glance toward the transparent shield that served as her outer wall.

Sure enough, there was an alien there watching her.

This one was quite round, she noted. A bit like she’d imagine a cow would look walking upright on two legs—minus the sensitive areas underneath. The alien had long, pointed rabbit-like ears, no tail, and a soft brown fuzz covered its entire body.

Such a sight should alarm her, seeing something so absolutely strange standing there. A strange being sucking on a thick green pouch as it watched her relieve herself…

See, she might have been alarmed, say, several months ago, but today? Today was just another day.

Removing the pee pipe from over her genitals, Lauren cast the alien another glance.

It was still watching her.

Perv.

With a sigh and a roll of her shoulders, she set the pee pipe into its slot in the wall.

A soft hiss told her the trowel-like receptacle at the top of the pipe was cleaning itself of her urine.

There was the sound of a tap on the transparent shield and Lauren stiffened, her eyes closing for a second.

When the tap came again, she cast her eyes toward the shield, her eyes cold.

Apparently, the alien on the other side didn’t understand a death glare because it only continued sucking on its green juice.

Lauren shrugged.

Death glares never seemed to work anyway.

She’d yet to see her glares have any effect on the beings that stopped by her terrarium.

Death glares did nothing to deter curious aliens who saw her as nothing but an animal—and she’d had a lot of time to test that theory…a whole year’s worth of time.

She’d stopped glaring at them after the first month.

At least, she thought that was how long it’d been. Keeping track of time without a proper calendar was tricky.

She’d been using the far right wall as a record of how many days since she’d been abducted from Earth and after she’d passed three hundred days, she’d stopped recording.

It had been starting to depress her.

So the tap on the transparent shield, she was used to. The curious eyes as she used her alien tube toilet, she was used to.

Try pushing out a dookie with several alien eyes on your tush.

Yeah. Don’t worry. You get used to doing it with an audience after the first hundred times or so.

The tap came again and she turned and faced the plump alien fully. The alien paused suddenly before it let its hand—hoof?—fall and it began sucking on its juice again.

It wanted her attention. Needy much?

Why was it here so early in the morning?

Lauren sucked in air through her teeth and folded her lips. It was always the pervs.

She felt like a cam girl. Only she wasn’t paid in money.

Her only payment was the fact the zookeeper fed her…which she guessed she should be thankful for. She’d seen the alien in the terrarium across from her starve to death.

That had been hard to watch.

He’d just stopped moving one day and it had taken another week before they’d realized he was even dead.

Some of the other aliens she could see from her terrarium were only fed when the zookeeper remembered. That’s why she’d started rationing and saving the hard bricks they were given for food. She had several days’ worth hidden under her mattress now.

Leaning back against the slab behind her, she rested her arms on top of the straw roll that served as her mattress.

On the other side of the barrier, a shadow fell over the alien that had been tapping the shield and another alien stepped behind it. This one was a much larger version of the one that had been there first and Lauren realized immediately that the “perv” was a kid.

Raising her eyebrows, she watched as the parent linked hooves with its child and pulled it away to view another poor soul in one of the other terrariums.

The child sucked on its juice pouch, its eyes on her as it walked away.

“Byeee!” She waved, pasting a fake grin on her face.

The child’s weirdly large, dark eyes widened and the faint sound of its squeal came through the shield as it pulled against its parent, trying to return to her terrarium.

Lauren’s eyes widened slightly.

“No, no, keep going. Go with your mama, or papa…” Shit, she had trouble entertaining strange human kids much less strange alien ones. She didn’t need the attention.

“Go away little alien. GO AWAY. Nothing to see here.” She was whispering, speaking