Page 20 of Space Daddy and a Boy Called Twink

“Okay, okay, so then that’s not it for sure… See, I’m trying to determine if Chelsea’s controlling your species.”

What the hell was he talking about?Chelsea?

“My goddamnphone?”

“Yes, that. The device she controls you with.”

“Are you having a psychotic episode?” I asked, for a moment entertaining the thought that Daddy was still a conspiracy theorist, ignoring the things I’d seen withmy own eyes, which prompted me to ask, “AmIhaving a psychotic episode?”

Daddy moved closer, and I tried to jerk away, but I was flush with the table, with no room to maneuver.

“You need to tell me more about your world. I can take you somewhere safe. It’s a tiny planet, but there must be a rebellion or maybe another country where the technology hasn’t seized control yet. Please, I want to help you, Twink.”

His gaze was pleading, sincere. This wasn’t the menacing psychopath I’d expected to encounter. If anything, he seemed to genuinely want to help me, but this shit about my phone was unhinged.

Also, at some point, we’d have to get back to the tail.

I struggled in my restraints, panic setting in. “Please, please untie me. You’re scaring me.”

He nodded. “If I let you go, will you give me a chance to explain and not try to escape right away?”

“Yes,” I said because I would’ve said anything to get free.

Daddy seemed reluctant, inspecting me before his tail pushed back out and hit a spot in the air that lit up green. The restraints around me pulled away, retracting into the table.

I sat up quickly, eyeing Daddy but inspecting the room in my periphery, trying to decide on the best escape route. The room was sparse, the ceiling arched, with white and blue oval panels all across it. Where the hell was I? Why had he abducted me and put me in some weird-ass room? And what the fuck was he on about with my phone?

I’d have to sort out what any of that meant once I was free. For now, the only objective was to get the fuck away from him. Behind Daddy, I spotted an open doorway that appeared to lead into a hallway. The exit!

My relief was short-lived, as Daddy stepped back, blocking it partly. Was he onto me?

He retracted his tail once again. Wherethe fuckwas he pulling it back to?

“I’m not from your planet,” he explained.

Strangely enough, that was about the only thing that sounded reasonable at that point, which only made me think that Roger had gotten me to watch one too many of his UFO enthusiasts’ TikToks.

“I’m from a place very far away,” he went on, his expression serious as ever. “I crashed here the night we met, and I began noticing the signs of your community’s imprisonment nearly immediately.”

Wait. Daddy was telling me he wasreallyan alien? That was impossible. Although…made slightly more possible with basically everything I was looking at now.

“I’ve seen this before,” he went on. “On other planets. I don’t know the term in your language, but it’s—” He opened his mouth wide and released an ear-piercing shrill sound. I had to cover my ears because of how intense it was.

It reminded me of the morning after I met him, when it had seemed like his shout had thrown me against the wall…and he’d caught me so fast.

As he finished his scream, I lowered my hands.

“Sorry, I should have been more mindful of your vulnerable ears,” he said in the sweetest damn way. I had to keep in mind that killers could be good at charming their victims.

Obviously, part of me was still clinging to the hope that there was some perfectly logical reason why this story he was telling about being an alien from another planet had to be a delusion. Maybe he’d sedated me with a hallucinogenic? That must be it, yes. Charles Manson too used drugs to make people hallucinate. Maybe it’d even made me misremember what had happened before I passed out? Drugs do bizarre things to people.

Despite my spiraling, I had to focus—I had to get to that doorway, and having a minute to think allowed me more clarity. In the podcasts I’d listened to, victims sometimes could escape killers by luring them into a false sense of confidence, then leverage the upper hand. Evidently, Daddy was delusional. I could use that against him.

“On that planet,” he went on, “the technology used chips in the native species’ brains to control them, which is what I was expecting to find in your case, but—”

“I’m sorry,” I interjected. “I shouldn’t have fought you. I know you’re only trying to help me.”

I’m no actor, something Dr. Geebley, my high school drama teacher, told me plenty of times when I had those five lines inA Christmas Carolfreshman year. But Daddy’s expression relaxed, like maybe he bought it. My desperation to survive must’ve inspired in me something Oscar-worthy.