AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This human — I won’t bother learning her name — is mulling things over quite calmly. She pulls the furry blanket I laid over her closer around her shoulders and looks around again. The cave has been decorated in what I consider to be a homey fashion. Skulls and bones decorate the walls. I have a pleasant chevron pattern of shins and thighs running up and over the doorway. It’s nice. She catches my gaze and follows it with her own.
“Are those…”
“Various species,” I say. “But all belong to bounty hunters.”
She swallows and looks at me with fear in her gaze. Proper fear. The kind that turns a person to ice from the inside out.
“Are you going to put my bones on the wall?”
“You’re still using them at the moment.”
That is as comforting as I get.
“I am,” she says. “I’m hoping to keep using them for a long time yet. It’s just, the warranty period is usually about eighty-something years and I’m not quite halfway there. So.”
“Understood,” I smile. She amuses me, and as long as she continues to amuse me, she will be in no real danger. There's also the small matter of how very pretty she is. Dark hair, dark eyes, and the sort of generic creamy browny skin hue that most humans seem to subscribe to these days. They're actually quite a bland little species. Certainly not a threat to me. Those whose bones adorn the walls did at one point or another represent a concern. I consumed the flesh, scoured the bone, and now I have a functional and aesthetically pleasing environment in which to hibernate until better times come.
“Well, so far, so good,” she says. “What shall we do next?”
“I intend to remain here until the last of the dregs of the local system’s bounty hunters fry themselves in the atmosphere and everyone has forgotten about me.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know. They’ve been coming for quite some time and show little signs of slowing. The more that perish, the more that come. It’s almost as if they enjoy dying for no particular reason. What’s the bounty on me now?”
"A lot of zeroes,” she says. “I do mean a very great many. Enough for anybody to set themselves up independently for a lifetime.”
“That’s very flattering,” I muse.
“Eventually, they might just send an army.” She laughs as if it is a joke. It would be funny, but not for the reason she might imagine. I would enjoy doing battle with an army. The weather and atmosphere have done most of my fighting for me of late.
“They might,” I say. “And they might all perish horribly.”
“If you don’t mind me saying,” she says, looking at me curiously. “You are very big, and very strong…”
“Flattery will get you nowhere, human.”
“It’s not flattery. It’s just facts, but that’s not what I was saying. You’re very big, and strong, but there's only one of you. How would you ever handle an army of hundreds or thousands?”
I wink at my little human captive. “That’s for me to know, and you to possibly find out.”
Lyssa
He’s being coy. It’s very strange to see a ten-foot-tall alien with a reputation for casual atrocity — a reputation very well earned given the bones absolutely fucking everywhere — become coy. There’s a smirk around his generous lips, and a particular wrinkle to his scaled nose. I do find him handsome, though I am sure I shouldn’t. After all, a creature like him would no doubt cause great damage if he were to…
I blush at the very thought. My mind is taking entirely unwholesome avenues. I blame it on shock, trauma, and the fact that he insists on being shirtless and muscular right next to me.
“What do you want from me?”
That’s a dangerous question to ask. He might say something awful, and then I’d have to know about the awful thing before it happened, which is always absolutely terrible. One of the worst things about being sentient is knowing about awful things before they happen.
“I don’t know,” he muses aloud. “You are fairly useless, but most pets are. I find you weak and pleasing. That may be enough for now.”
Weak and pleasing, like a pet. He left out the word dependent, but that is also very much what I am. Suddenly and desperately dependent on him for my very existence.
“You’re hungry,” he declares. “And I bet you’ll turn your nose up if I defrost some bounty hunter for you, so that leaves you with a vegetable ration. Pumpkin soup. Will you eat that?”
“Yes. Please. Thank you very much.”
