Chapter 3

3

“Oh baby, I don’t think this is an improvement,” I tell the flink, staring at what looks like a closet the size of a small house (bigger than my apartment) with half empty racks of clothes.

More importantly there’s a mirror that doesn’t reflect. Well, it doesn’t reflect my body. It reflects the closet, but I don’t exist in the mirror and neither does the flink.

Most importantly, there’s a group of naked Hell-type people in the middle of what looks like an excellent orgy, who’ve all stopped mid-whatever to stare at me. It’s a little unnerving and fully cringe because of the flink. Fortunately the flink immediately nuzzles back into my hair and starts baby-snoring again. I don’t even think it looked around. Hopefully it didn’t look around because this isn’t the type of environment that children should be exposed to.

I turn in a circle, spot the door, and ignore everyone else until I’m on the other side of it. Yay. A bedroom. With more orgy happening. At least this time no one really notices me. Keeping my mouth shut helps me pass unnoticed toward the next door I see, which leads to a hallway. No one is in the hall, and I blow out a relieved breath at that. I guess they’re all a little too busy with the party.

I say hallway, but really, it’s a corridor with pillars, paintings twice my size, and huge windows with billowing curtains. The floor is black and white checkered with what looks like glowing veins of lava through it.

I push the curtains to the side to look through the window and find a lovely courtyard with a lava pond and a few dozen people-ish beings wandering around, looking at the statues and chatting. A massive castle surrounds the courtyard on three sides, and I’m looking out from the center toward some beautiful wrought iron gates. I suppose this is an improvement from what looked like an imminent battle, even if the landing zone was unfortunate.

A cough from down the corridor has me pulling myself back around the curtain and coming face to face with a dozen armed guards with various expressions of anger and fear on their primarily humanoid faces. Don’t get me wrong, everyone is extremely exotic, but it’s not like they’re talking stegosauruses. Stegosaurs? How is that word pluralized?

“Google would be helpful right about now.”

“Hands up where we can see them and disarm yourself,” the lead guard commands. They’re wearing a uniform, but it’s so revealing that I can see their dick and their rather bountiful breasts. I don’t know if that’s a normal gender presentation for them, but more concerning is that the clothing seems to be made to enhance the nude form rather than cover the bits that humans don’t show in public.

“Is it xenophobic of me to wish you were a bit more covered? It’s really distracting for a person who doesn’t usually get to see what’s happening under the clothes, if you know what I mean. Also, I’ve got this baby flink sleeping on me, and I’ve recently been made aware that removing them from where they fall asleep is illegal. Which, to be honest, kinda worries me.”

Mouth, you could stand to learn a little discipline.

“Do you have any weapons on you?” the guard asks, completely ignoring my little overshare.

“I am completely unarmed and really not a danger to anyone.” Unless I count myself. I am definitely a danger to my own self on any given day, but I doubt they’re interested in how often I fall.

“Hands on your head!” the guard person shouts—a completely unnecessary intimidation tactic.

“Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” that voice from before suddenly says from behind me.

“Does he have a tracker on my ass?”

The voice laughs, and I turn to see the Asian dude floating above me again, covered in a lot more blood than the last time I saw him, not ten minutes ago. “I’m tracking the flink, who's behind your head right now.”

“Well, I guess that makes sense.” I admit.

“ Chirrup! ” That is an annoyed chirp if I ever heard one.

And the scenery changes again. Dizziness causes me to sway on my feet as I find myself in a throne room. It’s dark except for a couple of lanterns. There’s no one in here, and the emptiness makes me feel like my breaths are echoing.

“The acoustics are incredible,” I tell myself just to hear the way the place echoes. “I honestly didn’t really think about what my own voice sounds like until this moment. Well, I mean, I’ve talked into a microphone before, but I think speakers distort your voice a bit?”

“I always sound a bit strange when I karaoke.”

“Oh good, you followed me,” I tell the Asian guy, turning around to find him floating above me, this time without the guards to distract him.

“There is literally nowhere in all the realms and universes that the flink can take you that I can’t find you,” he replies with a smirk. “I’m the best tracker in all the realms, and it’s time to take you and the baby home.”

I shrug. “I’m happy to take the baby home, but I’m going to be put out if that means you’re going to put me in jail or something. This little guy jumped on me and abducted me; I didn’t do anything.”

“No one is putting you in jail. Most everyone involved knows how precocious this little one is,” he assures me as the platform he’s riding on lowers enough for me to step up onto it. “Hop on.”

I laugh. “You do not want me to hop unless you want me to faceplant.” I step carefully up onto the platform. It’s made of light, and if I wasn’t currently seeing him standing on it like it’s a solid surface, I’d expect to fall through, but the thing holds up just fine under my weight.

Now that we’re on the same level I realize the guy is super short—less than five feet tall—and he’s also old as fuck. He doesn’t look old, really, but he’s just got that vibe, like he’s older than he looks. Like an old soul, but he’s not just an old soul. He’s one of those people who doesn’t look their age at all. He offers me a hand. “Darcy Hellspinner.”

I take his hand, shaking it. “Elijah Penn.”

Darcy has a knife in the other hand, and he hesitates zero seconds before using it to cut my forearm.

I try to jerk my hand out of his, but his grip on me is a vise, and he bends, licking at the wound.

“I might faint,” I warn him as little stars start dancing in my vision.

“Why’re so many people afraid of a little blood,” Darcy questions, taking his knife, rubbing it into an open and actively bleeding wound in his arm, and then pressing it into the one he just gave me.

My stomach churns. “I did not consent to a blood exchange with you,” I choke out, swallowing the excess saliva in my mouth to stop myself from puking all over us.

Darcy snorts. “You’re currently in the possession of a baby flink. If they don’t give up their claim on you when we get them back to their parents, you’re gonna find yourself in an impossible situation. I’m making sure you can’t be lost. Trust me, you want me to be able to find you anywhere the flink takes you, especially if they suddenly decide they don’t want to bring you home again. You hear me?”

“You could have asked,” I point out.

“I could do a lot of things I ain’t gonna do.”

“Pretty sure that’s true for everyone, but consent matters.” I’m going to die on this hill as I bleed out from the wound he put in my arm “Can I have my arm back now?

Darcy rolls his eyes, says something in a language I don’t recognize, and then he leans over and licks my wound again.

It tingles, and suddenly it doesn’t exist anymore. I’m not saying it healed, because there isn’t a scar; it’s like he never cut me at all.

“That’s a neat trick.”

“I don’t do tricks,” he grunts, releasing me back into my own custody. Or I guess it’s the baby flink’s custody. “Do not puke on my shoes. I will make you clean them up if you do or possibly replace them.” He scans me head to toe. “Somehow I don’t think you’d be able to afford ten thousand dollar shoes.”

“You’re right about that,” I agree.

“College student?” he questions as the platform starts moving through the roof.

I don’t scream, and I’m pretty proud of myself for that. “Yeah. Sports medicine—I think I’d make an excellent PT.”

He thinks about that for a moment. “Physical therapist?”

I nod, looking around as the things around us blur for a moment. It’s like we pass through some kind of foggy barrier. On the other side of the barrier is a planet that looks like Earth, and since the signage is in English, I’m going to assume we made it back to our home planet. We don’t stop going up, though. We just keep heading upwards at a dizzying speed. “So, where’re we headed?”

“Space station,” Darcy responds.

I take that in with a nod. “Awesome. I’ve always wondered what the ISS was like.”

“Not the human space station.”

“Right, why would we go to the human space station? We’re obviously going to the alien space station.”

“Obviously,” Darcy agrees, giving me a look that makes me think he’s either annoyed or confused. Maybe both.

I shrug. “That’ll be interesting to see.”

“Is your last name Butcher by any chance?”

That’s an out of the blue question. “No, it’s Penn,” I remind him.

Darcy shakes his head. “No one in your family’s named Butcher?”

“Nah. I come from a long line of Penns. My family only throws boys. I think the last woman born with the Penn name was in the fifteen hundreds. It turned out that she was trans. On the plus side my family has a strong history of trans support, and I’m pretty proud of them for that.”

Darcy chuckles, shaking his head as if he doesn’t believe me. “No, I get that your family only throws boys. It’s your attitude that surprises me.”

“My attitude?” I didn’t think I’d been giving him attitude.

“You’re very chill about”—he waves around us, which draws my attention that we’ve left Earth’s atmosphere—“all this.”

I shrug. “I don’t see any point in getting my underoos in a twist, ya know? I’m not in control here, and trying to take control will probably result in a long, hard fall with a short, sudden stop.” I’m not jumping off the magic light platform that’s providing me atmosphere in the vacuum of space.

“It’s uncanny how much you remind me of—”

“Butcher! I got a letter from a guy named Romily Butcher. He was very into my plants. He also house-sat for me even though I didn’t hire him to do it. It was a little weird but also nice of him. I think he left some books at my apartment.”

Darcy presses his lips into a thin line, studying me for a second before giving in and smiling. “That’s the Butcher I was thinking about. He’s as blasé as you are. You two would probably get along well.”

I think about that for a moment. “He did leave my apartment in better condition than he found it in.” I’m not going to admit it aloud, but I’m not the best at cleaning. It’s not that I don’t know how, it’s that I don’t want to do it and I’m bad at doing things I don’t want to do.

“Most people would be upset that someone was squatting in their house,” he points out, and I shrug again.

I feel like I'm doing that a lot—shrugging, that is. “He didn’t steal my stuff, and in fact, he left me some freezer meals and some books. It was kind of nice of him. Well, I guess he took my plants, but those were gifts from my ex who thinks everyone’s house should be a jungle. When she finds out they’re gone, she’ll replace them.”

Darcy’s eyes narrow in interest. “I was under the impression that your ex was male and a stalker.”

“Well, yes, according to Romily’s note, but a person can have more than one ex. Sam was an ex before I ever dated Stalker Steve.”

“I don’t have any exes that I know of,” he murmurs.

I’m saved from having to say anything about that by our arrival at the “space station.”