Collette

 

Purple rain lashes at my face, and a strangled whimper escapes my mouth as the hairless rat-faced dwarf aliens drag me out of their spaceship face up and across a bright pink field of grass.

I’m inside Willy Wonkas chocolate factory—I must be, otherwise I’m hallucinating. The sky above me is lilac with swirling baby blue coloured clouds, and there is an imprint of a khaki green planet hovering in the sky, dotted with yellow oceans. It has white swirling rings angled around it but it doesn't look real.

I gawp at the sky and my surroundings trying to make sense of it all. There is even a sweet smell lingering in the air reminiscent to hot treacle.

 My shoulder blades feel like they might snap at any moment and I grimace but hold in the cry of pain, for fear the ugly aliens dragging me will dig their sharp claws deeper into my soft flesh.  My ankles are bound and my heels drag and bounce through the three foot parting grass as the dwarfed aliens drag me through it. I’m like a marionette puppet caught up in its own strings. I wiggle my bound wrists trying desperately to break free of the bindings but it’s no good, the restraints are there to stay.

The sound emitting from my throat is a mix of fear, anxiety and irony. Fear because I’ve been drowning in the emotion since being abducted days ago—in fact my stomach is so knotted up I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d never be able to digest another morsel of food ever again.

Anxiety because the handful of women who were abducted after me have been disappearing at an alarming rate with every landing we’ve made since we left Earth, and now I have no idea if this is my turn to disappear.

Irony, because as I’m dragged away from the spaceship, I’m watching huge purple rain drops fall from the sky and bounce off the ground. The irony stems from the fact I had been focusing on the falling rain while riding my bike home from college after staying late to work on my doctorate while listening to Purple Rain by Prince in my ear pods. That’s when I had been abducted. The irony is farcical.

That was the last time I saw Earth. Since then I have been held prisoner on a freaking space ship by the ugliest, most rancid smelling species I have ever had the displeasure of meeting. Not that I’ve ever met any other species other than Humans before, but as far as aliens go, these are not what I ever imagined extra-terrestrials to look like.

According to my sleep pattern, and at a guess, I think my abduction was at least a week ago, although I have no sense of time, and since then I have been living off scraps, sour water and my nerves. None of the abducted Human women were allowed to talk to each other. One of them made that mistake on my second day in the ship. They dragged her form her cell kicking and screaming, and that was the last we saw of her.

My mental state has deteriorated because all I can think about as I’m dragged along the ground is whether the rain and the grass will leave stains on my new shiny white sneakers. Shouldn’t I be worried the ugly motherfuckers might be dragging me to my doom instead? I’m guessing this irrational thought process is because I’m in shock—maybe thinking about something as trivial as dirtying my sneakers is my coping mechanism?

Every time they’ve taken women out from the ship before me they’ve used a glowing light to levitate them, but not with me. Why do my sneakers have to suffer? There I go again—weird thoughts to help me cope. I’m being manhandled and they’re pulling me along with about as much regard as they’d have for a felled log. Am I not worthy of the levitation light? I shake my head to rid myself of my strange thoughts. These are not rational thoughts. Why am I pissed off because I’m not receiving the same abduction treatment as my fellow abductees! What the fuck is wrong with me? Get a grip Collette. This way of thinking has to be caused by shock.

I scan my surrounding again and gasp as more of the area we are in comes into view. It truly is a beautiful planet. Monstrous trees line the football sized field we have landed in. They are as tall as mini skyscrapers and they are adorned with leaves as big as cars, all in different shades and tones of blue.

I look back up to the sky again as the purple rain suddenly stops. It’s now a swirl of blues, violets and pinks and I’m comforted by the blue which is the exact same colour as an Earth sky on a perfect sunny day. The only ugly things here to disrupt the balance of this magical Willy Wonker world is the spaceship and its crew.

Finally, we stop half way across the large meadow and the hairless rat-faced aliens push me back against something hard. My wrists are untied and then re-tied around whatever it is they pushed me against. My stomach shrinks into a tight ball.

What is to become of me?

They walk away from me without looking back or exchanging words between themselves. A couple of them are carrying sacks on their shoulders and they pull them off and withdraw circular metal discs which they begin to lay on the ground at least five feet apart in two large circles around me. All I can do is watch in fascination. When the circles are complete, they retreat back into the ship with my bugged out eyes burning holes into the back of their heads.

What the—they’re leaving me here?

My heart hammers wildly and I’m prickled my fear, holding my breath with eyes trained on the spaceship waiting to see if they are going to take off and leave me here stranded. But they don’t. The spaceship remains where it is.

What sort of sick game are they playing with me?

I look around frantically and tug at my wrist bindings.

Are other aliens going to come and collect me now? Is this a collection point? Should I call for help?

Then I hear a noise come out of the tree line that sends every hair on my body’s surface to attention. My skin instantly resemble a plucked chicken.

I’m bait!

I’m fucking bait!

I tug at my bindings with a newfound urgency. Whatever that noise is it doesn’t sound friendly.

Then another sound of equal intensity comes from the opposite side of the forest and my head snaps in that direction. My vertebrae have turned into an iced xylophone and terror is playing a merry tune up and down it.

My peripheral vision catches movement back over to my right and I see foliage underneath the trees move and shake violently before a tumultuous, pulsating noise emits from the spot, taking my breath away.

Oh my God! That sounds hostile and as scary as fuck!

A wail with equal velocity and aggression comes from the left.

I fully pee myself. Not a great deal because I am seriously dehydrated, but still—I pee my panties. I haven’t peed my panties since Timmy from next door put a spider in my hair when I was four years old.

A creature the deepest blue colour that it’s almost black crashes out of the foliage to my right and starts to run towards me. I’m so shocked my eyes are having trouble comprehending what I am seeing.

 It runs on two thick hind legs with numerous smaller legs or arms, I have no fucking idea what they are, hanging down from a colossal chest, tipped with what appears to be foot long curved talons. Before I can even draw my eyes up to scrutinise its face another crash of branches and leaves to my left has me turning my head in that direction like the possessed woman from the Exorcist movie.

It’s another creature, and this one has skin as black night. It also sprints towards me. I scream at the top of my lungs, but my voice is instantly hoarse because my throat is dry and the noise it emits is not a range it’s used to. I think I might have damaged my vocal cords but given the dire situation of being a Human kebab for two monsters, it’s the least of my worries. But my scream has a strange effect on the creatures. They change direction and begin to run towards each other, meeting in the centre of the meadow with a butting of heads.

A vicious fight ensues and the air is filled with shrieks and growls. The slightly bigger blue creature is slower but has the advantage of which I can now confirm to be numerous arms and not legs, because they are grappling and scratching at the other creature. But the smaller four legged jet black creature has a long tail lined with spear headed spinesand tipped with a ball that looks like a boulder which it is using to its full advantage, bashing at the larger one.

I don’t want to watch but I cannot draw my bugging eyes away from them. They are clearly fighting over me and before I die of fright, I have a macabre instinct to witness the creatures fighting. It’s probably the closest real-like prehistoric battle I’ll ever get to witness.

Both creatures have large mouths lined with razor-sharp teeth. The blue one’s snout is wider and shorter, and the black one, longer and thinner. The black creature changes tactics and wraps its tail around the blue creature’s neck while sinking its teeth into its lower leg. The blue creature stumbles forward, dragging the black creature along with it. They are heading in my direction, getter closer with every excruciating second.

When they are within a couple of feet of the metallic discs on the ground, two of the discs[WU1]  expel beams of light which enclose both creatures. They freeze stock still and the silence is deafening.

I begin to hyperventilate. That was too fucking close.

I hear a hissing of air coming from the direction of the spaceship and a whole bunch of the rat-faces alien men come scurrying out and make a beeline for the creatures.

Is that it? Is my job done? Will they take me back home now?

Then I remember the other women. None of them had been brought back into the spaceship, and now there was only me, and one other woman still left inside, now on her own.

My stomach drops into my feet. I suddenly have a six-sense that I will never fly in that spaceship again.

One of the alien holds what looks like a cattle prod and he puts it into the light and zaps the black creature. It does not move or make a sound again but I can see by its four eyes that it’s not asleep, it’s been put into some type of hypnotic state. They do the same to the blue creature and then begin to converse in their god-awful screeching voices while looking over at me.

The icy tingle of fear returns, this time running from my scalp right down to my tail bone. Half of the group begin walking back to the spaceship with the two unconscious creatures levitating in the light to the side of them. The other half of the group start to walk my way and one of them is still[WU2]  carrying the cattle-alien prod which is pointing menacingly in my direction.

Fuck!

Meters from me I suddenly see a flash of pink that is a darker shade to the baby-pink of the grass in the meadow.  Then my eyes are pulled from that spot to the rat-faced aliens at the back of the group heading towards the spaceship. One of them drops down on the ground oblivious to the other aliens. My eyes widen when he doesn’t get back up. Then the same thing happens to one of the aliens at the back of the group walking towards me. I gasp.

This sequence continues. Each of the rat-faced aliens drops into the tall pink grass until the final two are almost upon me. Only then do they realise their companions are missing.

One of them lets out a high pierced grating screech at the exact time as a large pink fluffy body launches out of the long pink grass and twists the neck of the alien carrying the cattle prod. The alien slumps to the ground dead dropping the cattle prod and the pink blur grabs it and zaps the remaining alien before he gets a chance react.

My mouth drops open aghast as I watch the last hairless biped rodent creature face-plant into the grass.

I’m suddenly in fear of my own mortality and look up to see the pink fluffy blur is now stationary. My jaw slackens. I’m astonished to see it’s a sort of humanoid alien man. His pink albino eyes stare intently back at me, but he can’t be an albino because his fury body is pink. Not only that, I’m certain albinos have weak vision, but there is no doubt from his glare that he can see every millimetre of me perfectly.

I shudder under the scrutiny of his gaze.

His nose is straight and strong, his cheek bones high and his jaw square. I’m vaguely aware my jaw has become even slacker and is hanging open from my gawp. Now, this is the certainly more like the type of alien I’d imagined roaming the universe. He is much more in keeping with the aliens from the TV shows I’d watched as a child.

His wide shoulders are imposing and I find it hard to believe he wasn’t spotted in the pink grasses by the rat aliens being as they were no more than four-feet tall.

Although his entire body is covered in light fluffy pink hair, his chest is surprisingly sparse and I’m able to see every chiselled muscle rippling under his taught skin, from his two slabs of Big Texan seventy-two inch steak pectoral muscles, down to the stepping stones of his eight abdominals, where a line of pink fluff begins up again and disappears into his grey pants. That’s where my eyes get stuck—glued to a bulge that would take a man from Earth, three pairs of socks shoved down underwear to achieve the same size in ratio.

“Waurwooire?”

His weird alien dialect pulls me from my daze and I look up at his face and snap my mouth closed.

“I-I don’t understand you! Are you here to help me?”

My heart rate has stepped up a gear. He and whatever is at the other end of the field have just taken out about ten biped rat-faced aliens between them. Was I to be next?

He takes a menacing step towards me and blocks out all of the sunlight behind him with his triangular hulk of a body. My legs tremble threatening to give way beneath me.

Another male voice calls out from the bottom of the field and I hear a woman shouting out in a language I vaguely recognise as an Arabic language, an area of my language doctorate that I was yet to start research on.

The fluffy humanoid alien in front of me looks back over his shoulder towards the spaceship and calls out to his companion before turning back to peer down at me, raking his eyes slowly down my body, stopping at the wet patch from my pee. My cheeks burn as tiny atom bombs of adrenaline cause the capillaries under my skin’s surface to widen.

He stoops down so that his eyes are now eye-level with my crotch embarrassment and he[WU3]  cuts off my ankle bindings with a flick of a three inch claw on the end of his index finger. Then he leans his arm around me, bringing his face even closer to my pee embarrassment and cuts the bindings on my wrist. Before I get a chance to cover my wet patch with my hands, he’s pulled me down onto his shoulder and is up on his feet and racing through the grasses towards the spaceship. After a moment of silent shock, I finally find my lungs.

I bash my fists on the base of his back. “Let me go you hairy ball of cotton candy!”

In seconds we have made the full length of the field and I turn to see another pink furry dude, one a little taller, with the last Human female from inside the spaceship flung over his shoulder too.

She turns her head towards me with panic filled eyes, but I have nothing to offer her in the way of comfort. I am equally as traumatized by the situation as she is. I hear more of the scary creature noises coming from the forest surrounding us, but so do the others. The pink humanoid’s back suddenly tenses and he talks to the other man in sharp quick words.

They begin to run towards the trees.

I pound his granite hard back. “No! Not in there. That’s where the black creature came from!”

My words of warning fall on deaf ears and we all head straight into the depths of doom.

 [WU1]Do one of the taraquest cut Colletteto draw the creatures?

 [WU2]Say how far back from Collette the rings were placed.

 [WU3]Smell and temperature of place