Chapter 4

"Yessss,"the giant scary snake man with a neck apparently made out of steel beams said, his voice strangely gentle even as I leaned over his shoulder.

My phone was on the floor, perfectly in line with the length of his humanoid body where it connected to his inhumanly gargantuan tail, where his two... holy shit, there were two... shafts bobbed stiffly in mid air.

The live stream camera was pointed up.

Millions of people had a first hand view of the underside of the two... appendages that now jutted firmly from my monster of an alien fiancé.

I could see myself, beautifully framed in the shot, half slung over his shoulder like a demented primate, the shock on my face morphing to horror as the chat erupted.

"No!" I screamed as I flung myself to the floor. I hadn"t thought more than the singular frantic desire to turn the device off. It was only after I was falling that I realized how high off the ground I was, and how I really shouldn"t have launched myself head first.

A leathery hand closed around my ankle and I stopped, head one foot from the floor.

I swung there for a moment, my hair brushing the ground like the torn edges of a broken

pinata.

I reached out and gently pressed the button to end the livestream.

I looked up at the hand around my ankle. I could see up the length of his body, and for the first time I took a good long look at him.

His entire body was a rock green, with sections that were a darker color of green that had a metallic shine to it. He was humanoid enough from the waist up, his bare abdominals and chest displaying gorgeous lines of carved muscle overlaid with a shiny leathery skin that looked supple and smooth despite the texture of it. Where his waist met where on a human would be legs was his hand.

He had put his hand over his junk, pressing it back against his body.

It didn't hide everything.

His hand was huge, and I could see the edges of him around the thick muscles that corded his wrist and forearm. The fact that I could see the edges of anything meant that the girth of what he was hiding was… not functional.

There was no way I was fitting that monster inside of me.

He did something with his hand, then reached around me with his free arm to support my weight and gently set me down. I glanced just below his waist. The log was gone. I felt a momentary irrational flash of disappointment at not getting a good look at it, but immediately pushed that feeling to the side with a rush of apprehension.

It was on my livestream.

There was no way that a screenshot of that didn't get turned into a meme and spread all over the internet.

"I accept your enticement to take my place as your first male," the monster snake man said.

I snapped my eyes back up to his face.

He was handsome in a strange way, with sharp lines for his cheekbones and a flat nose that had no bridge to it at all. He had a crown of leathery spikes on the top of his head and down his neck - I hadn't noticed them at all when I was trying and failing to choke him. As I stared at them, they expanded out to the sides like the hood on a cobra, surrounding his face with a sudden flare of iridescent color that shifted as he fluttered them.

It was mesmerizing.

I felt my body relaxing and I closed my eyes for a moment and shook my head, blurting the first thing that came out of my mouth.

"You would not be my first. I've been with dozens of guys." I slapped my hand over my mouth after the words escaped. Why did I say that in response? To him? Why was I even still in this room talking to him? I just attacked him and he got excited by it.

I should have run right out that door.

But for some reason I was still standing here.

"I thought…" For a moment the hood surrounding his face fluttered, almost falling as the color seeped out of it. Then it snapped back up and out and his eyes captured mine with an intense gaze.

"I can fight dozens." His voice held steel in it. "Though I request that I have rest breaks between fights."

I needed out.

"I need a minute," I said.

I snatched my phone off the floor, turned, and fled the room, slamming the door shut behind me. My heart was beating loud in my ears. I tore across the garden that separated the meeting house from the main building. Caley opened the door as I stormed up the stairs, a smile on her face.

"That went well?" she asked, her smile tentative.

"You…" I pushed past her into the house. "Where is your whiskey?"

"I'm not much of a drinker," Caley said, following after me. "But we do have a stocked mini fridge in case clients want something before their meeting. We were thinking of having a one or two drink limit maybe? What do you think about that?"

"Show me to the booze!" I whirled on her, planting my hands on my hips.

"The plan is after the initial meeting, we separate the couple and have a talk to make sure both parties want to continue. The human waiting room is this way," she said as she led me down a hallway and into a side room.

My phone chimed.

I ignored it.

In it was a couple of soft arm chairs, a side table, and a mini fridge. I went straight to the mini fridge and yanked it open.

My phone chimed again. And again.

"This is kombucha," I said. "Your booze is booch."

"Hard booch," she said. "It's like seven percent. I'm pretty sure that is a lot."

"I will take whatever." I grabbed the first can that looked pretty, cracked it open, and took a swig, the delightful carbonation hitting that satisfying note at the back of my tongue. My phone chimed again. "This is pretty good."

"Your phone keeps going off," Caley said.

"I can't look at it right now." I looked at it anyway.

In the midst of notifications on the lock screen of my phone was a text from the producer of my show. I swiped it open, read the text, then flung my phone across the room.

It hit the back of the armchair and fell into the padded seat. It chimed as it landed.

"What is going on?" Caley said.

"You need cameras in the meeting room." I pinched the bridge of my nose with my fingers. "Then you'd know what was going on."

"Oh," Caley said. "We do have cameras."

I took another swig of the kombucha and rounded on my friend. She was just standing there, smiling at me with that look on her face that made me absolutely certain she didn't know why I was so upset.

My phone chimed.

"What part of that meeting looked like it went well?" I asked.

"Well, you essentially declared your interest in him in a very traditional way for his culture and he clearly was interested in it. I didn't even know you knew how to hit on him like that. It was so assertive," she stammered, looking down at the floor. "He behaved very well. He was very careful not to hurt you, including taking preventative measures like flattening down his spikes so you didn't hurt yourself when you went at him. He accepted your interest and said he was down to marry you, and when you told him you had a whole bunch of husbands he had to fight, he was still interested. He came here thinking he wouldn't have to do that and was still okay with it. You made a really good first impression. Overall, it was a pretty great first meeting."

I sighed.

My phone chimed.

"Caley," I said. "Caley, Caley, Caley!"

She tore her eyes off the floor with visible effort to meet my eyes briefly before looking back down at the floor.

"How was I supposed to know anything about his culture?" I asked. "I knew nothing about him walking in, including the fact that he was a MASSIVE FREAKING SNAKE! He flattened his spikes? Caley? Shouldn't you have told me he had spikes in the first place? Do I need to worry about barbs in other places? Caley, I thought I was meeting one of those hot space cat elves that you're shacked up with. You should have prepared me for this."

My phone chimed.

"They're called Atisari." Her voice got really small. "And he isn't a snake. In the historical context of our interactions with their species, they are called Naga. You can read about them in several ancient cultures, though there isn't that much information. I thought it would be better for you to meet him without any expectations."

"Caley, I had expectations." I stared up at the ceiling. "And you need more input on how to run this whole thing. You need to hire a licensed therapist to do this part of the job." I gestured at the room. "I love you, babe, but you are not qualified to consult people on whether or not they want to marry an alien after a first meeting. Especially if you're setting them up with someone so… inhuman."

"That's valid." She frowned. "Except for the inhuman part. His upper body is very humanoid. Next time I do this, I'll give basic courting information and stuff about the species they're meeting."

"Yes, Caley," I said. "That would be a good start."

The silence was filled with my phone chiming several times in a row.

"Were you by any chance live streaming when… you know…" she asked, extending two fingers out straight as she glanced over at my phone.

"I was," I said.

My phone chimed again.

"Oh well, no publicity is bad publicity?" she said.

"Caley," I repeated. "I just showed millions of people a giant alien dick."

"Dicks. Does Aeson know that?" Caley frowned.

"Who the fuck is Aeson?" I asked, taking another chug of the kombucha.

"The owner of said phalluses," Caley replied.

"No, the Naga doesn't know that he just sent a dick pic to the entire planet," I replied.

I finished off the kombucha, dropped the can on the ground and then stomped on it, flattening it. I scooped it up and held it out to my friend.

"Recycling?" I asked.

She took it from me.

My phone chimed again.

"Maybe you should look at that," Caley said. "Do you think you're getting so many messages because of the picture? You weren't in it, were you?"

I dug another kombucha out of the fridge and then picked up my phone from where I threw it, lifting it up to my face to unlock it.

"It wasn't just a picture," I said. "I've been saying picture because the producer of my show texted me asking about a picture, and I'm absolutely certain someone screenshotted the live stream I was running."

Caley fell silent for a moment, her face reflecting the horror that was swelling in my chest like quicksand wrapping around my ribcage, sucking me down into the depths of the suffering that awaited me.

There were a few texts but I ignored them, opening up the BirdSong social app.

I'd been tagged in a photo and I pulled it up. It was marked NSFW, so I clicked on it. There I was, my face in perfect, horrified glory, stationed in the background as I looked down at a still shot from the livestream, getting my first clear look at the hard alien member. What I'd caught a glimpse of before I thought for a moment I'd not seen properly, but I did.

There wasn't just one of them.

He had two.

There was the massive inhumane log of a beast on top, but under it was a smaller, white, tubular looking thing that looked slightly above average for what I would expect on a human man. It was at least six inches long and the width of a banana, but the tip was curled in like a water wiggly toy, one of those water-filled tube toys.

The impossibly sized log on top was a darker color than his blue green skin, and the entire thing was shiny like an oil spill. There was a glowing teal tattoo running up and down it like an electrical burn from a lightning strike. It had loose skin at the tip that looked like it could pull back to reveal something else entirely.

I scrolled down, reading some of the comments and winced.

They were just as bad as I knew they would be.

No one was worried about me, concerned about me, wondering if I was okay or what had happened after the stream ended. Instead there was comment after comment mocking me. There were a few comments about me being a traitor to my species. There were a whole lot of love me long time racist comments.

This was ridiculous.

I had literally had one disastrous meetup with this alien and these random internet keyboard warriors were freaking out about my loyalty to the human race as a whole. The things they were writing. They didn't know me at all and they were assigning an entire world of meaning to the tiniest details of the look on my face.

"Should I go tell Aeson you aren't interested?" Caley said. "I can tell him about the whole… incident too if you want. This is all my fault anyway."

I looked at my friend.

She was gripping the crushed can so tightly her knuckles were white. She was staring at the floor, her shoulders hunched as she looked down at the ground like the entire weight of the world was pressing down on her.

It was clear she felt bad about this, and she didn't even know how bad it really was.

She wasn't a social media kind of person.

For a moment, I struggled between rage and compassion. Yes, this was partially her fault for not telling me anything about this guy or giving me any knowledge about how to handle a first contact situation, information she clearly had. Yes, she was responsible given that this was her job and her responsibility was to make sure that these meetups were safe and comfortable for everyone involved.

At the same time, this was Caley.

This was my gentle, loving, quiet friend who let everyone in her life walk all over her like she was a welcome mat at a brewery in a tourist destination. This was a woman who had been my friend through thick and thin, never judging me for any aspect of me, always accepting me for exactly who I was.

She just wasn't good at some things.

Like reading people or stopping people from taking advantage of her. She had never been in a place where that mattered to others, just herself. She had been put in bad situations because of her unwillingness to confront others for causing her harm. She was here in this business because of me, because I tried to help her. But now, because of me, because of my connection with an old acquaintance who messaged me out of nowhere and left out some pertinent details, I hooked her up with an alien roommate who swept her off her feet. It was one of the best things that ever happened to her, but now she had taken on a role in an upstart dating agency that was well beyond her capabilities.

It wasn't that she didn't know this about herself.

She had asked me to be the first person to try out her dating agency workflow because even she was smart enough to listen to people who would tell her straight how to do better.

I glanced back down at the image of the gargantuan double decker dick on my phone.

I opened my mouth, not sure what I was going to say.

My phone rang.

"Don't do anything," I said, holding up one finger to my friend as I swiped the call on and held the phone up next to my ear. I took a breath in, making sure I was breathing in on a smile so that the tone that came out of my mouth was full of warmth and affection. "Joseph, hiiiiiiiiiii!"

"Listen, I have bad news, so I'm just going to break it to you straight." Joseph's tone was brusk and harsh. "You're being written off the show. Your character is going to have a car accident off screen. The writers are reworking the script for next week's shoot so you're not even coming back on set. You're done."

"What?" I asked. "What are you even saying?"

"You're fired, Jessica," Joseph said. "You're blacklisted. No one is going to hire you."

"You can't do that," I gasped. "What are you even saying?"

I felt empty, like there was supposed to be an emotion there but I couldn't quite feel it because this wasn't real. This had to be some sort of bad joke. I had spent my life working towards getting this job. This job was my big break. I had put up with so much shit, smiling and kissing ass. I had done the groundwork, and finally, I had landed the role on this soap opera. It wasn't perfect, but it was mine. It paid the bills, which was something I couldn't say about any other acting job I'd gotten.

I hadn't gotten into the big leagues, but I was in the minor leagues, and most of the waiters in Los Angeles couldn't say that they did that.

"It's not me, I'm just the messenger," Joseph's voice cut back in, snapping me back to the reality of this horrible moment. "You know I love you, babe, but I cannot save you from this. You fucked the pooch hard this time."

"What did I even do?" I asked.

"You can't just put anything online, you know that, right? You say one thing wrong and the mob comes to rip down your straw house and burn it to the ground." Joseph's voice took on a softer tone. "You have to toe the line, and you didn't do that and the studios don't want to deal with the guillotine parade."

"What line?" I demanded. "You gotta give me something, Josie boy, I don't know what is going on."

"There is a photo of you with an alien," Joseph hissed.

For a moment, it seemed as if the world around me went grey, the color sucked out of it as the only noise was the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears. This couldn't be happening. This wasn't happening.

I could salvage this, couldn't I?

"You have to be kidding me?" I said. "I'm being fired and blacklisted from the industry because of something that wasn't my fault and wasn't in my control? What if that picture was AI generated? Did they even consider that?"

"I'm just the messenger, babe," Joseph said. "I'm just giving it to you straight. The timing of this was shit and they made their decision. You're too much of a liability."

"This isn't right." I could feel my lower lip trembling and I sucked in a breath. I couldn't cry. I had to be strong. I had to find a way through this.

"This is show business," Joseph said. "Listen, I"ll let you know. I'll call you later, okay? Maybe we can get coffee and talk about what is going down."

Maybe that was the way out.

Maybe if I could explain to Joseph what happened he would go to bat for me with the studio. Maybe that would be enough to get me a meeting where I could talk to them and work this out.

"There is a great coffee place on Silverlake if you want to-"

"Oh no, I can't be seen with you at all," Joseph interrupted. "You're going to be a pariah for a while. Have you seen what they're saying about you. I'm going to have to write a whole thing denouncing you on BirdSong. Don't take it personally okay? We could just do a video chat or something. Drink coffee at the same time."

Every fiber of my being wanted to scream well fuck you too at him.

Instead, I made sure to plant a big ole smile on my face so my tone would be warm.

"Yeah, we can do that," I lied.

"Listen, maybe you should try to pivot and go to South Korea. Their industry is really popping off; just look at what they have on the streaming services. I'm sure there is a lot of opportunity for someone who is bilingual," he said.

"I'm not Korean or bilingual, Joseph." I pinched the bridge of my nose with my fingers, squeezing my eyes shut. "The closest thing I have to a second language is taking Spanish in high school."

"I'm sure they'd hire a Japanese or whatever you are actor just as well," he said.

"Goodbye, Joseph," I said, holding in the rage and trying to keep a pleasant tone in my voice. Why was I even trying?

"Good luck, babe." Joseph hung up.

I closed my eyes and counted to ten.

"What happened?" Caley asked. "Are you okay?"

"I'm not okay," I said, putting my phone in my back pocket. I couldn't look at it right now. "But I can fix this."

"Fix what?" she asked.

I couldn't tell her. She would find out eventually, but right now I couldn't handle how she would feel if I told her that I was just fired and blacklisted from the one thing I had ever wanted in my life. She would blame herself.

Right now was not the time to focus on blame; it was time to figure out a solution.

"Ok, listen," I said. "I'm going to give you a list of everything you need to change about this situation and you're going to follow it - okay? For example, you're hiring a marriage counselor therapist to help the person decide if they want to move forward after meeting the alien and this room needs a coffee maker."

"That would be great, thank you," she said.

"Second, I'm not turning Aeson down." The words echoed with certainty in my heart. There was one way out of this, and it wasn't crumpling in a ball or begging the internet for forgiveness.

No, sometimes the only way out was through.

"But… why?" she said. "You just said it went badly."

My phone chimed again.

"I have my reasons." I focused back on her.

I needed to do what I always did when the world went topsy turvy on me.

I was going to land on my feet like a cat that grew up in hell.

Part of doing that was taking advantage of every opportunity that came my way, and that included taking full advantage of the world wide spotlight that was now fixed on me. Yes, that spotlight was made out of hate and derision, but it was attention all the same.

My phone chimed again.

I pulled it out of my pocket and put it on do not disturb.

"I'm going back in," I said. "Let's do this thing."

"You mean the marriage?" she said. "I'll have to call the priest I have on standby. I didn't have him ready to go because I thought you were going to turn this down. You told me you weren't going through with it before you even came here."

"I've changed my mind." I tucked my phone back in my pocket. "I'm going to go talk to him, and if he is willing to work with my conditions, then we're doing this."

"Really?" Caley gasped. "I have a bunch of dresses in that closet."

I looked at her.

"You went shopping for wedding dresses?" I asked.

She blushed.

"Yes," she said. "I thought I should have options for people who didn't come prepared. It"s a special day, and not everyone is going to be coming here in the best of circumstances, so I thought I should make an effort to make it feel like a good thing, because this is a good thing."

That was the kind loving woman I grew up with.

She might not be good at thinking she needed to warn her friend she was meeting a giant snake man, but she knew that at least at first, her clientele was going to include women who needed an escape of some sort, and that not everyone was going to come here because they believed in love.

That or they would be thirsty bitches looking for some fat monster peen.

Especially after my livestream.

I brushed those thoughts away.

"Let me talk to him first," I said. "But if I yell spaghetti, you and your cat elf come in with claws out and weapons drawn, okay?"

"You got it," she nodded. "The nope word is spaghetti. You won't need it though. Our aliens are thoroughly vetted and we have them take a mandatory course on human consent communication. Just say ‘no' or ‘stop' and he will. Still, yell spaghetti and we will come in."

I took a deep breath, thinking about the way the strong muscles of his tail had felt pressed against me. I felt my skin flush with heat.

"Ok, here goes deciding a major pivotal point in my life," I said.

"You can just walk away," Caley reminded me.

"Well, yeah, this is all about choices, my choice in this moment in particular," I replied. "I want to make sure I know for certain what I'm getting or giving up before I decide."

Caley nodded and didn't say anything.

I walked out of the room and headed to negotiate my future.