Avel and the Alien, Part 2

Check out Part 1 (or any of my other mostly fictional blog series) before you start reading! -m

We went into the house and I made Avel lay on the kitchen counter so Fuzz and I could be on the same level.  I grabbed a pair of kitchen shears and found one of the tentacles under the green fur.  I placed it between the blades.

"OK, brace yourself," I said, and squeezed.

Nothing happened.  Well, something happened, of course.  There was a ton of screaming from both Avel and the thing.  But the scissors didn't do their job.  In fact, they snapped in half.

"Crap," I said.

Avel was moaning.  "That hurt!"

"Sorry.  Want me to try again?" I reached for the tentacle again, even as Avel yelled at me to stop.  The green creature made unhappy sounds and dug its barbed tubies deeper into the side of Avel's waist.

"Stop!" Avel bellowed.

I let go and the fuzzy thing settled back down.  "What's your problem?"  I growled, annoyed with his tone.  "I'm trying to help."

"Well, you're hurting more than your helping."  He sighed heavily  and pulled himself to a sitting position.  He was really pale and covered in a shiny sheen of sweat.  Avel sat still for a minute, silently inspecting his parasite. 

It was dark green and covered in fur that was thick and coarse.  There weren't any eyes, or even an "up" or "down" end.  I had no idea where the noises were coming from.  The tentacles were about the width of my pinky and edged with sharp barbs, like thorns on a rose.  Around the mouth of each tubular tentacle was a ring of those barbs, which was how the thing had attached itself to Avel.

"Can I ask you what happened, exactly?" I asked warily.  I glanced outside, where the rain was beginning to let up.

Avel didn't look up at me as he continued to carefully prod at the green thing.  "There was some sort of box in the middle of the yard.  I went to check it out and this thing jumped out and attacked me."

I grunted and walked away, tossing the broken shears in the trash on my way.

"Where are you going?" Avel asked, sounding dismayed.

"I'm gonna check out the box thing," I said.  I slid open the door and looked around.  There was a black metal box sitting in a small crater in the middle of the formerly pristine lawn.  I whistled and went over, inspecting it with my foot.  The metal was hot and the whole thing was steaming.  I looked up, half expecting to see something else in the sky.  Stray raindrops tickled my cheeks.  There was nothing but gray clouds in the sky.

Back inside, Avel was on his feet and waiting for me.

"I think it's an alien," I declared as I shut the door.

Avel rolled his eyes.  "Don't be ridiculous."

"I'm not being ridiculous.  I seriously think it is."  He still appeared skeptical.  "Well, what do you think it is?"

We both looked at the thing.  It looked like Avel had glued a green, headless stuffed animal to his shirt.

"Mutant leech?" Avel ventured.  I almost laughed, but he shuddered and I held it in.

"Alien.  Leeches don't have tentacles."

"Fine.  Here," he said.  He handed me a small bag.

"Your shaver?"  I pulled out Avel's electric shaver and flipped it on, then turned it off again.  It took me a second to catch up.  "No.  That's just nasty," I said.  "You seriously want me to shave it?"

Avel shrugged, then grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled.  The tentacles had burned through enough of it that the shirt – which had been one of my favorites, by the way – came right off.

Even with a fuzzy green alien sticking its barbed tentacles into his skin, I couldn't help but grin at my bare-chested boyfriend.  Lord, was he attractive.  Is attractive.  Anyways.

"Why are we doing this?"  I asked.

Avel talked to me over his shoulder as he went over to the couch, which he had covered with an old sheet.  "I need to see what it looks like," he said matter-of-factly.

"Oh."  Of course.  All I could see was fur.  Without the fur, we'd be able to see what the thing really was. I tossed the shaver bag onto a chair and tried to grin.  "So, are we thinking 'buzz cut' or something a little longer?"

Avel snorted, which was probably as close to a laugh as I was going to get. "Just use the head that's on there."  He beckoned for me to follow as he lay on his side, full-length on the couch, but I was frozen.

All I could think was that something was going to go wrong, the shaver was going to slip, the alien was going to suck out all his blood, then go after me...I think they were very typical worries for when an alien leeches onto your boyfriend.

"Meli?"

"Yeah?"  I shook my head, clearing it of the mental image of a half-shaved green monster tearing me and Avel to pieces.  It wasn't very pretty.

"You gonna do it?"

"Oh.  Yeah.  Sorry."  I turned on the shaver and lowered it to the green fur.  I was shaking, my heart was pounding like crazy, and I was holding my breath.  Oh, yes.  This was going to go well.

Avel and the Alien, Part 1

Before I split with Avel and went to work for Mr. Oulara, there was about a year when things were good.  Great, even.  I mean, I wasn't treated like a princess or anything, but he didn't run off when the police were coming and stuff like that.

The weather was strangely rainy that summer.  I should have taken that as a clue that everything else would be strange, too.  But, no.  I maintained a positive outlook.  Silly me.

So it was a Tuesday, and we didn't have a con going, which was even stranger that the rain wildly pattering on the windows and roof.  Avel was reading a book about Nikola Tesla, and I was trying to think of something sweet and clever to write in my sister's birthday card.

"What was that?"  Avel shut his book quickly and sat up straight, head cocked to the side in prime listening mode.

"I didn't hear anything," I said, the end of my pen clenched between my teeth.

"It came from the back," he said.

I grunted.  His house was large, and we were in the den near the front of the house.  I have no idea how he'd heard anything.  But Avel stood up and dropped his book on the couch.  "I'll be back.  I'm gonna go check on things."

"Uh-huh," I said, writing You're freaking AWESOME  very carefully in the center of the blank space of my sister's card.

Avel stepped over me and I tried to playfully grab his foot as he did, but he just ignored me.  I labeled the envelope, stuck the card in, and licked the nasty adhesive.  I was pinching it all together to make sure it stuck when I heard Avel scream.

"Meliora!"

I was on my feet and halfway to the back door before he could call my name again.  I was moving so fast I almost forgot to slide the glass door open before I barged through it.

Avel was writhing on the grass, sopping wet.  His hands were clawing at something on his left hip, and he was still screaming.

I blinked in the rain and almost face-planted on the slipperyness of the ground. "What's wrong?  What is it?"  I had to yell over Avel's screams.  I landed on my knees next to him and tried to keep him from writhing.  I couldn't see anything in that dang rain, and he just wouldn't stop moving.

"It's on me!  God! Shit! It's on me!"

"What?"  I reached and rolled him over, half sitting on him so he couldn't twist away.  I could feel something hot and fuzzy stuck on him, just underneath his ribcage on his left side. "Stop moving!"

Avel shuddered and held his arms aloft, struggling not to move.  The fuzzy thing squeaked when I poked it.

I breathed deeply, flinging soaked hair out of my eyes.  The fuzzy thing was literally attached to Avel.  I carefully lifted the fur on the sides and saw that it had tentacles...tentacles that had burned through Avel's t-shirt and were now sinking into his skin.

"Oh, shhhh...oot," I said, trying to not sound too freaked out.

"Get it off!" Avel yelled.

I stuck my fingers under the green fur and pulled.  Avel screamed, and the thing screeched.  The tentacles stretched to their limit but didn't come free.  The thing shivered and pulled itself back down, landing with a THWOP against Avel's ribs.

"I...uh, I don't think it's going to come off."

"Try again!"

So I stood up, got on the same side as the thing, and grabbed it.  And pulled.  And yanked.  And twisted.  But that little booger had a death grip on my boyfriend.  I gave it one last pull, a pull which was so hard and ill-planned that I ended up on my butt on the ground, thunder and lightning overhead, icy rain pelting my freezing skin.

Avel stopped writhing and screaming long enough to yank me up and drag me inside, where we would hopefully have better luck detaching the fuzzy green parasite.  

Tristessa's Story, Part 8

This is the final chapter in a series of 8 posts. I hope you've enjoyed the others. -m

My mother was so weak she couldn't stand on her own, so Ambreel and Ravigie picked her up by the arms and carried her into the house. 

The imaginary children followed me like puppies, their eyes trained on me as though they were afraid I'd leave them.  They made me uncomfortable.  Such wide, scared eyes.  And such blank features. 

I didn't even have enough imagination to give them faces, I thought without much amusement.  But even as I thought it, the children's faces grew even more interesting with different sized noses, freckles, acne... any little thing I could think of to distinguish them, I planted it on their faces.  When I was satisfied, I pulled away from them, feeling faint.

Mama was lying on the couch, and Ambreel was brushing the hair away from her forehead in a way that made me feel like an intruder.  I wanted to go to her, but I felt suddenly shy.  She had not even called to me, so I stayed where I was, waiting.  Ravigie came in then carrying a tray with a bowl of hot water, a towel, and a glass of goat's milk.  I don't know where she found the water, but I remember feeling very angry with her for wasting it on a towel.

"Feliciterra, can you hear me?" Ambreel whispered into her ear.

Mama's eyes were closed, but she swallowed and nodded her head.  Her mouth worked for a little bit, like she was practicing words with her lips still closed.  Ravigie set the tray down and began to wet the rag, but my mother didn't look at Ravigie or Ambreel when she opened her eyes.  She looked at me.

"Tristessa," my mother whispered hoarsely.  Ambreel turned and beckoned to me, so I went to them.  My mother touched my hair and tried to smile.

"You released me," she said, finally succeeding in her smile.

I looked at Ambreel, eyebrows raised.

"It's true," Mama said.  "Thank you for putting on the necklace."

"I'm confused," I said.  "What did I do?"  I reached up and touched the cool stones of the necklace.  They felt like droplets of cold water on my hand.  I smirked, wishing I was touching real water, so I could drink it.

And then, suddenly, I was. 

My hands were wet, the floor was wet, everything was a flood of water.  It was coming out of the necklace.  My mother smiled at me through the torrent.  As every wave of the water hit her, a bruise seemed to be washed away.  Soon there was so much water, so many waves of rushing water, that I closed my eyes and turned my head away. 

Ambreel stood strong through the deluge, his arms around Mama, keeping her safe.  Ravigie was gone, and I was thrown against the wall, drinking it all in.  The water was blue with my electricity, and I didn't want it to stop, but then my mother put out her hand.

"Fermati!"  she yelled.  The waters heard her and stopped their throws.  Her black hair was like a shining blanket over her shoulders, and her smiling cheeks were pink and wet.  No more bruises, no more weakness.  She stood on her own and came to me, giving me the biggest hug I'd ever had, and have ever had since then.

"Oh, Tessa.  My girl.  Thank you for bringing the water back," she said into my hair.  "Thank you."

Ambreel's hand was on my shoulder, a warm connection to the real world.  He knew I didn't understand.  He knew I didn't know what was happening.  "She is the land, and you are the rain," he said. 

Like that explained anything.

But then, just as I realized that Ravigie and the children were all gone, I remembered a day when I was flying over everything, and my mother was with me, and the land below us was green with life. I looked around me with new eyes, and I could feel the weight of the necklace my mother had given me as it hung around my neck.  I knew in that moment that I had almost killed everyone in the world, depriving them of water while I mourned my missing mother.

Ambreel squeezed my arm.  "I didn't think you'd believe me if I'd told you.  You didn't even remember your magic," he said to me.  It almost sounded like an excuse, but it was so true that I couldn't deny him. 

"Mama, can we fly again?" I asked.  It was the only thing I wanted to do.  I didn't want to think about what I had done.  I didn't want to think about Ravigie and the children.  So my mother and I left Ambreel standing on the green hill around the house, squinting up into the sun at us as we flew over the hills, my mother checking her land, me making sure that the rain fell on everyone and everything.

Sometimes I think about that day and I wonder: How much of any of my life has been real?

I suppose I'll never know.