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Arkan
Ding-a-ling-a-ling!
The little bell at the door of the human pet shop rings inside my mind. I hear the creaking of the hinges, and then a great deal of psychic cursing and physical scuffling as some previous customers attempt to make a return. The psychic sound of the doorbell and the hushed telepathic whispers of a good family man trying to handle a wild human is quickly overridden by the sound of that human female’s voice.
“Let me go, assholes! I’ll bite your whole goddamn family!”
A smile crosses my face, a broad and excited expression that I must immediately school into composure.
She’s back.
My brother sold her, assuming she was stock like any other. He did not know I had any attachment to the human woman who, by the psychic grunts of pain and calls for help is unloading every bit of her small human female fury on the unsuspecting and undeserving family who bought her. They thought she was cute. She is. They thought she would make a good family pet. They were wrong.
I emerge from the back of the shop where I was feeding a freshly caught male, to discover a young human female named Jennifer making a huge scene both in my shop and out on the street at the same time. Quite an impressive feat for a relatively small creature.
Her hands and arms are wrapped around the door frame. Her head is stuck out into the street, and her owner has her by the legs and is trying to pull her off the door and into the shop, which is going to end badly for the human if they are not more careful. They have dressed her in a style which I can only describe as a sweet little ballerina. She has a tutu on and a pink legging bodysuit to match. The rear of it snugs extra tight over her shapely human haunches, which have always been in dire need of spanking, and are even more so now.
Her owners are a couple of well-dressed Euphorians, both with cascading raven hair and highly polished scales. The woman stands back, keeping her distance with an air of haughty disapproval on her face. She is beautiful, as are all women and men of our species. She is wearing a casual floor-length gown spun in skeins of highly reflective glittering fabric, as is the fashion. Her hair has been swept into a coiled updo and is adorned with a pin denoting her as a descendent of one of the original families of Euphoria. There is an expression of pure disgust on her elegant face as she is forced to confront a display of pure animal rebellion in the human.
The man, such as he is, is also dark haired. I do believe that these two are lesser members of the Wrathelder clan. They are a family not known for patience or kindness, and most of their wealth has come from the new construction in the central city. He has cut his hair short and chooses to wear silver tips on his lower mandibular tusks. His clothing is not as formal as his wife’s. He has chosen a cross between a pretense at warrior attire, with a hint of construction. His clothing is made of fake animal skin tailored to fit him perfectly, beige trousers, high brown boots, and a jerkin with mesh sewn into the fabric in various places to create an appearance of flesh and metal meeting. Together they make an absolutely disparate sight. There is nothing coherent about this little family.
He wanted to play beast master, I think. His wife probably wanted a pet for the children. The children, it seems, wanted a ballerina. My brother may have sold him a beast, but it takes more than money or privilege to tame one, and as for the other roles, this particular human was never going to be suited to any of them.
This unfortunate pet’s owners are silently screaming at her to comply and obey, but the human has no telepathic powers. We Euphorians are a hyper-intelligent, advanced race of aliens who by all accounts have put aside the many petty tribulations of most civilizations. We know no war and little conflict. We are also very tall, and relative to humans, incredibly strong. It is quite remarkable then, that this one young human female in her mid-twenties is managing to best an entire family of our species.
It might help if they remembered any of the human language commands they are supposed to use when interacting with their human pet, but like many families who buy a cute human without thinking about all the responsibilities and work that comes with forging a true bond with an intelligent creature from another world, they have clearly not followed a single shred of the Human Pet Book, sold at the front and back of our store for a very reasonable 3.99.
“No! You stupid fish-scaled psychopaths! I’m not going back to that fucking store!” The human continues to protest at the top of her lungs. Of course, her owners have absolutely no idea what she is saying. To them, it is nothing but incoherent yelling, and judging by the way the lady of the house is covering her ears with her hands, it is quite upsetting.
“Let me help you,”I say to the owners in a soothing telepathic tone.
“You know better than to act this way, pet,” I drawl in my deep tones. I speak perfect human, and the one currently pitching a fit at the front of my store for all the world and good society to see, recognizes it instantly. Her head turns, and she shoots me a look of pure venom with her big brown human eyes.
“This is your fault, you fucking…” She goes off on another verbal tear, even more outraged now than she was before. I knew better than to think she would start behaving herself when she heard me. This is what happens when an untamed pet is sold. Jen needed a lot more training before she was ready to go to a new home.
I come forward and take the human’s feet from the owner’s hands. He is yanking on her alarmingly while still not managing to break her grip. Humans are not large, or strong, but they do have simian lineage in their DNA, and when they want to hold onto something, they can hold on for dear life. Still, his artless pulling and twisting could do damage to her relatively weak tendons and ligaments. If she does let go of the frame, she also has a significant chance of slamming her head into the ground, which could kill her. Humans can be surprisingly strong for their size, but they can also be easily injured.
I am careful when I take hold of her, running my hands up the curves of her body and then moving her back out into the street in the same direction as she was gripping, making it impossible for her to hold on, before tossing her up and over my shoulder in a position I’ve found very stable for most humans. Sure, they can kick you in the stomach, but the easy availability of a padded rear evens that risk out.
I take one hefty kick to my gut, and follow it up with a firm but not too hard slap to both of her cheeks. She lets out a squeal of outrage but stops kicking for the moment. She is out of breath. I can hear and feel her panting over my shoulder, as she finally takes a small break in the ongoing struggle against her alien captors.
“What seems to be the problem?”I address the owners.
The male sighs audibly, indicating an almost uncontrollable level of frustration.“She’s not working out. She’s destroyed three couches since we took her home last week. She’s eaten the children’s homework every night. My son is getting a failing grade as it is. And every time we get a visitor she attempts to attack them. The final straw was when she sent my wife to the emergency room with a nasty bite. They told us we should have her destroyed.”
The human they are talking about is oblivious to their frustrations, being far too concerned instead with her own. She is about five foot five in stature, with dark eyes, caramel tan skin, and rainbow pink hair, a popular combination ever since a similarly marked human became popular in an advertisement for insurance. She is wearing what can only be described as a rainbow tutu attached to a pink bodysuit. I sell these in my store, albeit reluctantly. I call them ballerina dresses, though they’re not really dresses at all. They make most humans look cute. They make this one look absolutely adorable, in spite of the fact it is clearly an aesthetic at odds with her mood. Some of the fluffy material brushes against my nose as she squirms. I do like the fact that the bodysuit provides little protection for her deserving rear, as well as snaps in the lower region which can and in all likelihood will be used to bare her ass.
Most Euphorians are capable of maintaining basic discipline with their human pets once order is established. Humans like to know where they stand. They generally do very well once they settle into a new home and new routine. Most of the pets we have sold have done very well. But there are always exceptions, and this little human has been an exception from the moment I caught her.
The owner’s complaints continue in a silent tirade. My species abandoned small mouth noises early in our development and now relies almost entirely on telepathy. We are able to be much more precise with the language of the mind than we ever were with verbal speech. This shift is credited with the unprecedented peace we now live in. Of course, small children still babble, and often are the only ones in a family capable of communicating linguistically with human pets. That is because, as in all species, the young have not lost their roots to their ancestral animal past.
“We tried introducing her to the neighbor’s human, but they didn’t get along, and now they fight through the fence. I don’t know what a bay-sic bi-ch is, but every time this one sees theirs, she shouts it at full volume.”
“Introducing humans has to be done carefully,”I remind them.“You can’t just put them together and expect them to get along. And training is essential, especially for a human her age. She’s only in her twenties. With the right training, she will be an excellent companion for the next thirty to forty years.”
“I know. We had to put our last human down when he got out on the interstellar highway. We thought a younger female would be easier.”
