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“Now,” Arkan says, coming back. “What to do with you?”
He’s looking at me, but it’s the guy who replies. I wonder what his name is. I doubt he cares. They’ll give him a new one in his new home anyway. They called me Fifi. That was actually closer to Jennifer than I would have imagined. Maybe they caught some psychic vibe of my name.
“Mr Alien, sir? Is that family still out there? Will they take me?”
“Eager to be rehomed? Good. Makes for a nice change. Jennifer here isn’t a fan of being a pet.”
“I am.”
“Of course you are. Because you’re a good boy. Who is a good boy? You are! Of course you are!” The alien is praising the guy like there’s no other guy in the universe and the dude is absolutely soaking it up. He’s just been turned from a free man into a commodity, and he doesn’t care. Some people are beyond saving, I guess.
Arkan opens the cage and lifts the man out, carrying the full-grown dude the same way humans carry little dogs, under his arm like he weighs absolutely fucking nothing.
That’ll be the last time I see that guy. He’s going to a home the size of a small apartment building back on Earth. He’ll have a bowl with the name Fifi written on it and a comfortable bed under the stairs. He’ll shit in a box, and he’ll probably like it.
* * *
“The males of your species are often much more sensible than the females,” Arkan observes when he returns. “I think he will be a much more suitable pet for that family. You, on the other hand, are going to take a little more training. I think it’s time I took you home.”
I’ve never been anywhere other than out the back of his store. I wonder if his home is worse than this. I wonder if anywhere is worse than this. I don’t think so.
“I don’t want to go to your stinking home. Let me go back to my home.”
“Your planet is dying,” he reminds me. “Every human I take from your world is another human that doesn’t have to suffer. I’m singlehandedly saving your species, potentially, from extinction.”
“We didn’t ask for you to save us. And we definitely didn’t ask you to sell us. Jerk.”
Arkan’s cool, calm facade is starting to crack. I’ve cost him money, probably. He wanted to sell two of us and he’s only been able to sell one. He’ll have to make another run back to Earth to scoop some more of us up, and when he does that, I’ll be ready. I have two plans. One of them is to sneak onboard his human thieving ship and hitchhike my way back to Earth. The other option is even better.
“You’ve got a hell of an attitude for someone who was starving when I found her. You’re still underweight.”
“Fuck off, I am not.”
“You didn’t eat what they fed you,” he says. “They told me you refused practically everything they gave you. You will eat what I give you.”
“Or what?”
He fixes me with a stern alien stare. “Or I will discipline you.”
“I’ll bite you, and you know my mouth is full of all sorts of nasty human germs. You might get sick. You might have to go to the hospital. I bit one of the aliens and they went to the hospital.”
“I know. They told me. And then I covered their bill.”
“Wow, that was dumb of you.”
He gives me an indulgent but stern look. “You were not ready to be sold. It was an accident. I do not know that you would ever be suitable as a pet. You lack the ability to be comfortable.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that even provided with the means to be happy, you cannot be happy.”
I know he said he was going to punish me, but I never thought he’d hit that deep.
“That’s cold.”
“It’s the truth.” He gives me a look that penetrates all the way to the very core of all my fucked up problems and places, the parts of me I’ve tried to hide. I hate that he’s so perceptive. I’d say it’s just because he’s an alien, but the other aliens had no fucking idea what to do with me. He seems to know exactly what to do with me.
As soon as I have that thought, he proves me correct.
