Page 59 of I Punched an Alien and Now We’re in Couples Therapy

“Oh!” Blair gasped. She turned to me with a dazed grin on her face. “The Biwban gave us dinner. Came up here to tell you that.”

Just then, my stomach let off a ravenous growl that filled the room.

I covered it with a hand, embarrassed. Blair snorted, and a wave of giggles started with her and soon had me snorting with mirth, tears streaming down both our faces.

In the morning we’d figure out how to face Kaiju Krampus and whatever the odd bond between us would become.

But for now this…

This was nice.

Chapter 24

Blair

The next day I found myself wondering, why couldn’t I just get abducted by the butt-probing aliens? That was what I’d like to know. Yeah, on one hand, it would be extremely invasive. In the movies, they never told you what exactly they were doing with all that booty research. For all I knew, that could have been a precursor to this alien breeding program bullshit. But the real question on my mind was, How much cardio did those initial test subjects have to go through? Because the way my leg started to cramp as soon as we took off running from Krampus…Hate crime. This whole situation felt like a hate crime.

With a roar, Krampus slammed his cane down on the bank building, which crumpled like a cardboard box. The ground shook, and I lost balance, trying to catch myself before I fell. My leg seized in a sudden, sharp cramp.

As a woman in a red dress ran past me, the heel of her stiletto cracked, and she fell to the ground, screaming like those damsels in distress in old horror movies. Krampus lunged, scooping up the woman and stuffing her into his sack before slinging it over his back.

Krampus grabbed a handful of icicles hanging from his beard and threw them like javelins. They made short work of the schoolyard and fountain, reducing both to piles of rubble. Desperate, I tried to stand. But the pain in my leg was enough to make my eyes water. Another icicle spear obliterated the second-story window of the pottery shop I was next to. The glass shattered. Panic spiked under my skin like a thousand tiny needles, but before I could even utter a scream, he was there.

In a swift motion, Osid snatched me up and pressed me firmly against the building’s wall, positioning himself between me and the deadly rain of glass. “Hold on,” he said, voice oddly steady amid the surrounding mayhem.

His arms braced on either side of me, and he tucked my head beneath his chin as he used his body as a protective shield. Then there was only panic, the sound of shattering glass, and the heat of him. The wall behind me cracked, and I gasped.

“Look at me,” he said. Osid held my face, ensuring I obeyed. I saw the fear in my eyes reflected through his. His thumb stoked along my cheek as he said, “Stay perfectly still.”

The glass clattered to the ground behind him, a jagged piece striking him in the shoulder and sinking deep, but he didn’t flinch. His eyes remained locked on me, steady and grounding.

When the last piece fell, he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me away from the destroyed pottery shop. With a steady breath, he grabbed the shard of glass embedded in his shoulder and wrenched it free.

I sucked in a breath. “What are you doing? You can’t just take it out, you’ll cause nerve damage or something!”

Osid tossed the shard of glass to the side with a wry smile. “What’s this? Concern?” Without waiting for an answer, he picked me up, threw me over his good shoulder, and took off running. “Careful, wife, you will give me the wrong idea.”

The townsfolk began to glitch even harder as we ran past them. We dashed past a man holding a snowball, frozen in mid-throw. Krampus’s cane came down on the man, and his friends dissolved into pixelated fragments.

I screamed as Krampus advanced on us. A massive clawed hand came down and wrenched a lamppost covered in red string lights free from the ground and stuffed it into his sack. A reindeer flew past Krampus’s nose, causing the giant to blink away from it and swat at the reindeer like an annoying gnat.

“I can’t outrun him forever, we need some kind of plan!” Osid yelled over the chaos.

“Right, plan!” My eyes darted wildly, trying to find anything that could help. Krampus slammed his sack down again and plucked the red tinsel from the Christmas tree and fed it into the sack. “Red!” I shouted.

“Red?” Osid parroted back, clearly confused. “I asked for a plan, not colors!”

“That is the plan,” I snapped. “Look, he’s only picking up red things and stuffing them into his sack. We can use—”

Krampus roared again, the sound reverberating through the town like an earthquake. He took a step forward and crushed the bakery beneath his hooves. The force of it caused Osid to stumble, and I fell on top of him. I pulled Osid behind a pile of neatly wrapped presents stacked near the Christmas tree as Krampus clawed his way closer.

“I got an idea, but you need to cover me. Think you can keep him distracted long enough for me to get some lights on a reindeer?”

His teal eyes widened, then a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Without answering, the king broke into a sprint, peppering fireballs along Krampus’s side. The monster roared, lashing out at the faster, much more agile king. Not wanting to waste a second, I dashed out into the open, making a beeline for the closest lamppost. Krampus’s head snapped to me, his glowing red eyes zeroing in. His bellowed roar sent piles of snow toppling from rooftops, but Osid cracked a fireball against the side of his face, regaining his attention. It broke against Krampus’s cheek, the fur underneath lighting up as it burned away.

“You’re doing great, babe!” I yelled, tugging the string lights off the lamppost. By some miracle, there was no plug. I didn’t know if it was battery powered or some kind of alien power tech Earth was too dumb or too capitalistic to figure out, but either way, never look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Rudolph!” I screamed, coiling the lights around my arm. “Where are you, you sad-sack reindeer?”