The following is the Intellectual Property of Willem Tobey (nom de plume). Usage outside of personal entertainment purposes will bring shame upon you and your family. This writing\story\novel, its characters, and the events portrayed within are purely fictitious. Any similarity to other writings\stories\novels, characters, and events is purely coincidental and unintentional.
WARNING: May contain coarse language, violence, gore or sexual content. Reader discretion is advised.

Chapter 3. “Machinations Of A Madman”

This is what death was. Nothingness. No thoughts. No sight. No sound. Nothing. A bit uncomfortable, though. But...why? There was nothingness. He was dead...right? But...that light…

His eyes parted slightly and more light was allowed to his eyes. It was bright. So bright. His hand that disappeared was in front of him. He moved it to make sure it was still attached. Pain resonated from his eye sockets as he moved them to look around. They felt so dry, but he willed himself to see. It smelled of singed hair. Sounds of footsteps ‘clacking’ or ‘ticking’ off the floor. His mouth tasted like metal. 

Shadowy figures darted this way and that. Deformed figures. Not human. Thin or thick frames with projected ears on their heads. Maybe horns? Or antennae? Tails even. Were these animals? Very similar to their depiction in photos or films he’d seen. Except...bipedal. Human...ish?

It seemed all his faculties were functional. Actually, moving was quite difficult. His eyes felt heavy. Sleep beckoned him to accept its embrace. He smelled something familiar. A spicy, musk scent. He knew that scent!

He looked over his shoulder at a large arm that seemed to be draped over his back. “Jon?” He tried to say, but only raspy air came out.

One of the creatures stopped and stomped over to him. It...leaned over and looked at him through its green eyes. They looked speckled with black and the pupil was a vertical slit. The eyes seemed to blink twice. A groan-like crackle came from its...snout...as the creature raised it to show jagged teeth. Troy felt his arm raise with force and he was hoisted up into the air. He felt his stomach squish into a hard, broad shoulder - if that’s what it called that body part. The last thing he saw before he passed out was a thick tail base that narrowed at the end with smooth, jagged spines along it.

When he awoke, he was still being carried over the shoulder of the creature. He felt a bit more awake than earlier. He felt metal against his hand. He assumed it was metal. It felt like metal, but moved like leather. He glanced over. Even its...head...was covered in this material? No, that looked like actual scales and natural looking. The tail and...skin...was lizard or reptilian in nature, but with smaller scales. His abductors were...mutant alien lizard men?

He forced his head back so he could look around better. The floors and walls appeared to be made out of metal. There was another creature behind them. It was carrying another body on its “shoulder” as well. That one appeared to be a mammal. A gorilla almost - with its broad, large shoulders and arms with a smaller waist, hips and legs. It, too, was adorned in this material. The armor appeared to be scaly. The helmet that one wore formed to its features, but had a mouth area featuring a blue liquid in a canister that bubbled as they seemed to “breathe”. Not alien reptile or lizard men...mutant alien zoo creatures!?

The creature stopped abruptly, turned right and continued without missing a beat. It was like “he” was marching while carrying him. Troy assumed they were male. No features indicated either way. He wondered if he’d live to find out for sure. 

For now, he was a concrete mix bag along for the ride without a care for his well-being and tossed upon a table. One by one his arms and legs, then neck were fastened to the table with straps. It sounded like velcro being slowly pulled apart as it tightened. But the straps were thin bands like what wrapped roof trusses, floor joists and other lumber. He didn’t recognize the metal used. It felt...alive.

Quickly and methodically, the creature worked, then turned and left as unceremoniously as they had entered. 

Troy regained his mind, but his body still felt heavy and weak. He knew the electrical current - if that’s what it truly was - weakened and interrupted the synapses of his brain causing the blackout and inability to think. The brain was dictating which functions to restore in an act of self preservation. It was this knowledge of anatomy and its biological makeup that kept him calm in his weakened state. He’d be okay. He just needed to wait until he regained full function of his mobility.

Then what?

He took his mind off that conundrum by looking around. The light in the room wasn’t coming from any singular source. It just seemed to permeate from the surface of the ceiling, walls and floor. Bioluminescence. But it looked metallic. Though this was probably not the best scenario to be curious and want to investigate and analyze something. It was fascinating. 

He turned his head as best he could. The straps seemed metallic, yet felt like cotton. There didn’t appear to be any latches, hasps or buckles to them. They appeared to be part of the table. The table was surprisingly comfortable. More comfortable than his mattress at home. How was this all possible?

His brain was forcing him to rest. He wasn’t about to argue. He needed to recuperate and figure out how to get out of this. At the moment, it seemed like he was a prisoner. For what reason was still unclear. He got in. There had to be a way out.

********

He was sitting in a softly upholstered reclining chair. Angel slept next to him. He was attempting to read - what looked like - a medical journal on his home communicator - which was much larger than his personal one. It was easier to read and watch movies or videos from the World Hyper-Information Platform on. There was more to watch or look at than what was on television.

Angel’s head popped up out of sleep and she stared to Troy’s left. She got to her feet and leapt from the screen in his hand to the floor, then bolted for the door. She cried at the door as she walked back and forth. He noticed a flicker from the direction she was looking before she got up. Fire seemed to emerge from under the door to the kitchen. 

Troy set down the device and started looking for something to put the fire out. He picked up a towel from the next room and started to swat at the base of the flames. Angel continued to voice her displeasure of the situation by pacing back and forth, coming up to him, then going back to pacing. The door started to burn through until it revealed the kitchen floor, walls and ceiling covered in orange and yellow flame. The stove top spewed flames like an endless geyser. 

The sense of urgency to leave heightened. He turned towards the outside door, but that, too, was ablaze. He ran and jumped at the window - covering his face with his hands and forearms - and broke through the glass with his knees and arms. He landed on his feet and ran to the cornfield to meet up with his parents. He looked back at the house. There was no saving it. He realized something was missing.

“Where’s Angel?” He asked as he looked around.

The remains of the door fell. Angle slowly walked from the wreckage. Her face was matted and singed in places. As she walked closer, he realized something was very wrong. Her closed eyelids were concave - as if she had no eyes.

“No no no,” he kept repeating. He looked to his parents. “How could this happen? Why didn’t you try and save her?” He accused.

His anger left him beside himself. He couldn’t believe this happened. He didn’t want to believe it happened. He was especially mad that he hadn’t made any attempt to save her, either. Everywhere he walked, she would follow. By scent, smell, or sound he wasn’t sure. It made him sick to his stomach. That was NOT Angel. But, it was.

They started to settle in to their new place. He opened the door and saw Angel, as usual. She perked up and looked at him. He took a step back. Something touched his calf. It was Angel. The ugly, mangy version. He looked back at the other one.

“You’re not Angel. You aren’t my cat!” 

His anger rose with each syllable. This fully functional Angle was not his Angel. “His” angel was deformed. He looked around, but “his” Angel was nowhere to be found. The impostor kept following him around as he looked for the original. He looked everywhere. He would rather have his deformed friend than this...whatever this strange creature was.

********

He awoke suddenly - his whole body reacting in stride. He felt the bondage restrict his movement. Even his neck. It made him cough after pressing his esophagus against the strap. He looked around. All the same. His eyes welled up as he thought about the dream. He’d never cried over an animal. It didn’t help remembering the situation he was in, either. He wondered if anyone was alive. He wondered how long he had himself. There was no superhero or other brave being out there that was going to save him.

With all his might, he pulled on the band covering his right wrist. Of any of them, he knew he had two chances: Right leg or arm. After that, he could find a way out. However, his plan fell flat. He tried to raise his arm and leg as hard as he could. Nothing doing. Panic set in. He lifted every extremity with all his might, but got nowhere. They weren’t budging at all. No give in the material. Again: It was like metal, but didn’t feel like it. It was mind-boggling...no...it was pissing him off. He had to get loose or else he was at his end. 

He gave every last thing he had into lifting himself and try to break the bands. His muscles ached and he was reaching his limit holding his breath. No matter how hard he pulled his wrists or ankles up, he couldn’t budge the bands. No matter how hard he pushed up, pulled away or pushed up on the leg bands, it was the same thing. With his last bit of strength, he even tried to press his neck into the collar band. He collapsed in a heap of failure. His eyes clouded over black as his face flushed. His chest heaved oxygen back into his body. His whole body felt numb and tingled with the feeling of pain. It felt as if pins poked his face and his vision slowly returned. His mouth felt dry and he kept having to lick his lips every few breaths. 

Panic set in further. Bit-by-bit his breath calmed and his panic rose. His eyes darted each way. There had to be something he could do. Yelling wasn’t going to help, but he had options. Again, he tried to pull, push, lift...anything to break the bands. Again he tried - the panic starting to cloud his thoughts. Adrenaline started to flow and ease the pain to make him feel stronger. 

What he was falling to realize, at this point, was that he was flailing around without any semblance of a concentrated effort. The bands chaffed and soon broke the skin. The blood started to coat his restraints as well as the table. His first rational thought, in the past fifteen minutes of hysterical struggling, was to use the blood to lubricate the bondage and try to slip out. 

He turned his wrist one way as far as he could, then the other way. He made his hand as small as he could and started to slowly pull his arms towards his body. The more pain he felt, the harder he pulled. He grit his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut - his whole upper body tense and straining against these bonds of...metal or whatever they were. He opened his eyes to look over and see if he was making any sort of progress. His eyes took a few seconds to adjust to having light in them. His vision was blurry, but he could swear his left hand was at rest. He looked to the right to find the same thing. There was blood pooling by his wrists, but anything else must have been in his imagination because there was no other explanation.

The door clicked open and clicked again as it came to rest inside the wall. 

“The door went in the wall?”

A creature walked in the room and the door clicked again to spring from the wall to click back in place inside the door frame. The creature walked to his left and reached one of its…”arms” up to a hidden door panel. This creature looked like a shark! A shark with arms and legs! It had a triangle-like shape on its back and a wide tail-like thing protruding from its gluteus area that had…”fins” in the middle and two “fins” protruding from the end of the tail. 

A vacuum-like noise filled the room. Then, it was quiet again. The shark creature moved its “hands” and the panel closed. 

The monster creature looked over him with eyes that seemed to glow like the tail lights of a Sturley Classic I90E motorcycle. Its lips parted. A thick, wide…”tongue” protruded from its “lips” and licked them. Its “lips” parted to show spittle-covered teeth that were jagged and sharp and pointy and scary! 

Was it smiling? Or sizing him up?

His heart slammed in his chest. Being stuck to the table was nothing compared to being eaten alive on a glowing-from-no-light-source-maybe-metal spaceship populated by animal...monster...reptile...shark...devil creatures!

The room started caving in on him. No. It was the shark creature lunging at him and getting bigger. Its mouth opened wide enough to engulf his head. Its “hand” came up and ripped its hood off revealing a skeletal, undead shark monster creature from hell and…

He was dead. He had to be! The last image he was taking to his afterlife was that of a skeletal shark monster coming at his head - its jaws reaching beyond his line of sight and seeing the inside of its spine and rib cage. 

Darkness.

Black.

Nothing.

********

His eyes opened to see the inside of a disheveled and broken house - dilapidated even. A crumbling concrete wall surrounded him. It wasn’t large. Maybe about the size of a city home. Broken timber and burned debris littered the area. Two mattresses line the floor and two dresser units were the only thing not broken or burned. It seemed to be the basement. 

Was he living here? Who was this next to him?

The face...no, everything about her was indistinguishable. The only thing he could make out was shoulder-length brown hair split down the middle and straight as straight got with some volume up top. She wore a large shirt - large enough to be considered a knee-length dress. Whoever or whatever it was felt like family and someone he needed to protect. Sister perhaps? Troy didn’t have a sister.

There were stairs. He felt he needed to climb the stairs. It was time to leave. It felt like they’d been discovered by whatever they were hiding from. A breeze blew through the rotting or missing wood of the walls. Following the breeze was a shadow that briefly blocked out the sun. Something large was outside. It was circling the roofless, well weathered structure from the air. 

He felt hands touch his abdomen, arms at his sides and a body press into his. Their head touched between his shoulders along his spine. Very noticeably, the one he was to protect was afraid. Her fear fueled his bravery. It was time to act! He placed his arms over hers and gave a squeeze before carefully prying them from his torso.

“I’m coming for you!” Bellowed a disturbing voice, the shadow passing overhead again. 

He gathered force in his legs and sprung forward like a rubber band stretching and snapping ahead. He rounded the corner of the basement and gained enough speed to leap from the hip-high dresser to the broken stairs that seemed to hang from nothing. He could’ve hit his head on them if he tried to walk under them. 

He landed the double jump perfectly and planted his right foot to cut left to reach outside. The shadowy figure seemed to taunt him as he chased it away from the house. He slowed as the figure shot up behind him and hovered toward the house. Several figures now circled the house in the air. He ran back to the house after the shadow. The figures surrounding the house landed, facing away from it.

They were strange creatures. He stopped several feet from the initial...thing. It was like a cotton ball as depicted in an animated cartoon - 2D face and all. The face looked to be that of a dog of sorts. Perhaps a wolf if only based on the gray fur in the drawing. It was like a vintage 3D image drawn in 2D format - unblinking eyes and a permanent, toothy grin upon a muzzle pointing to the right. Thin, round arms and legs came from within its body that ended in large hands and feet.

The other figure was a wingless deer thing. Perhaps an antelope or a gazelle with brown fur, black stripes and white upon its lower jaw down to its torso. Short, black horns protruded from…”her” head. Another looked like a “female” cheetah with a sparsely-furred smaller “boy” cheetah next to it. 

The others began to move from the house and flank him. It was hard to distinguish what exactly they were with how distorted their images were. One looked like a lizard wearing a red dress. Another looked like a bull with the faded horns on its head. A shorter body was next to that. It looked like a massive rodent with a hand that glowed blue. Another, larger figure walked up on the other side. It looked like a massive wolf man. 

He looked back at the caricature of the first wolf man to find the figure changed to that of one similar to the wolf man at his right. Azure and Navy swirled approximately where its eyes should have been and shadowy wings stretched from its back before coming to rest behind its back.

“I’m coming for you,” the distorted voice rasped, sounding as if it came from everywhere. “Soon.”

********

	Troy came to. His eyes opened slowly. They slowly adjusted to the dimly lit room. A blob-ish figure was next to him facing towards a small cart. When his eyes finally focused, he saw that he was still in the same room. The tools on the cart looked medical in nature. 

The figure turned towards him. It was a shark man...woman? If it wasn’t such a terrifying situation, he might have been more fascinated that aliens were really bipedal anthropomorphs. Unless it was a mask or an illusion. Maybe he was still feeling the effects of whatever caused him to see that terrifying vision of the skeletal shark monster eating him. 

Were they all sharks then? Maybe aquatic creatures? That didn’t explain the gorilla-looking one.

“Mmm,” the creature hummed as she looked over her shoulder.

“Sliv?” 

“She” - he decided - had a voice that was raspy, but had a sort of sweetness to it. 

Based on height, build, voice and noticeable chest bumps, he figured “she” was a female. The “hair” looked thick like tendrils that were shoulder-length and black. He would call them braids, but they looked rubbery - like her skin.

“Démortee...”

He noticed that each time she spoke, it was with a different inflection or accent as if they were different languages. 

Her face didn’t seem as sinister as the situation prescribed. Her eyes were slate or concrete gray and looked a bit larger than a human’s. Her “skin” was a soft shade of blue with white covering her bottom jaw and the front of her neck. Her cheekbones extended from the sides of her face and met at the longest point of a rounded nose. Very much like a dolphin’s, but much shorter and wider. Two slits on the end must have been nostrils. Horizontal lines on her neck must have been gills or were at one point. Her slim bottom jaw met the top just inside the end of her “nose”. The rest of her was covered in the dark gray, scaly suit. He noticed the hood of the suit was bunched up behind her neck. 

She placed her “fingers” up to her mouth as if she were thinking. She brought the hand away, but left in in the air away from her snout.

“Kórvesis.”

She gave him a look of disappointment when he shook his head slightly in confusion. He wondered…

He looked over at his hand and pointed to it as best he could and tapped the band across his wrist. He looked at her, then his hand. She glanced at his hand and locked eyes with him. Her expression seemed to change, from what he assumed, annoyance to empathy, then worry. This was backed by her bottom lip curling in and exposing some of her pointed front, top teeth as if biting at it. The lip flicked out and she mashed her lips together as she brought her hands to her “hips”. Once again, he pointed, then looked at her with his best pouty “trust me” expression. Air rushed out of her nose.

She mumbled something as she stepped forward and hooked a finger as it reached out. She used it to touch the band in a pattern like a symbol. The band slowly released with a slight velcro-like sound. She immediately stepped back and assumed a defensive fighting pose. He didn’t want to alarm her so he left his arm still for a few seconds. He was hoping that all those years of sign language would finally pay off. If not, he could try the telegraph code he’d learned in Youth Survival Camp. 

He tried that first since it had been around longer. Alien enthusiasts sent the telegraph system of tones into outer space before. Maybe they were more familiar with it. Slowly, he lifted his outstretched arm and brought his hand to his side. He began knocking on the table with a knuckle on his loose fist. 

F . . _ .
R . _ .
I . .
E .
N _ .
D _ . .

The shark lady eased up on her defensive pose after a long pause. He sighed happily and brought his hand up slowly by his chest and did his best to spell “friend” with the different hand gestures. Her expression didn’t waver.

Indistinguishable, muffled shouting and screaming came from the door. He looked that way, then back at her several times before he’d had the feeling he was about to die. It seemed definitive. Maybe not now, but from the screams, he assumed soon. His chest tightened, his throat ached and the pressure moved up to well up his eyes. They stung with the sodium within them with how dry his eyes felt. He pressed his lips together and swallowed against the lump in his throat. He nodded and slowly placed his hand back through the band. The liquid in his eyes began to streak down either side of his face.

This was it. This was the end.

Her posture changed to a more passive, normal stance. She blinked several times. She appeared to begin to speak, but stopped and blinked a few more times. She sighed and stepped forward slowly. Not so much cautious, but more so forced. She held one hand on his arm below the wrist as she brought the other up to her mouth. She paused as her eyes met his. She licked her finger and pressed it to the band. The band made the velcro sound and secured his wrist again.

She glanced over at him with a quizzical expression. “Koëh?” 

With how she said it, he had to wonder if she just asked him, “Why?”

They stared at each other for some time. Her eyes blinked, but shifted left and right as if scanning his face. Something just felt like she had no intention of hurting him. Empathy or sympathy? The problem was he knew that look from when he met Jackie the first time. He forced himself to look up at the ceiling as a couple more drops streamed down his head. 

Her hand moved from his arm toward his face. With the back of her fingers, she gently stroked his cheek and by his temple as if wiping his tears. 

“Ya non ti ferirò,” she said, sounding almost motherly.

He wondered if these creatures knew what feelings were. Judging by her tone, he was almost happy it’d be her because it seemed like she cared and wanted no part of what was happening around her. Maybe it was just a play to gain his trust before she drove a knife through his chest. 

She reached over and used her thumb to wipe across the other side. She spoke softly through her jagged teeth the last phrase again along with some other string of utter nonsense. Their eyes met again. He saw a very noticeable lack of sadness in her watering eyes. She sniffled as she closed her eyes and turned away from him - her hair in the back rising from and falling onto the back of her neck. He looked over and saw her hands move over the front of her face. Her hands fell to the cart as she appeared to collect herself. 

She moved her hands along the cart and slowly turned toward him. She held up a needle attached to a small vial. It looked more like a quick injection gun. She spoke again. She held up a small jar with a sort of powder inside of it. As she spoke, she reached with her right hand with the needle and touched his forearm. She brought the hand back and mocked tipping its invisible contents into the jar, then shook the jar. She continued to speak as she pointed to the jar, then tugged on his shirt sleeve. She paused and smiled. It was an unnerving, toothy smile that seemed to beam with some unknown happiness. Her happiness seemed to reflect in her speech as she sounded like an overexcited teenage girl. She kept going on and on. The only thing she really emphasized was “Tay-ho-ba,” “El-kin-vuld,” and “Ooh-mah-shin-vuld.” Whatever any of that meant.

She looked at him from head to toe and back. Again she spoke with a happy tone. She caressed his arm by the bicep as she spoke. She stopped and applied a slight pressure around his bicep just above the elbow crease. 

After about a minute of talking passed, she lowered the needle into his arm. It stabbed through his flesh into his median cubital vein. The vial filled with blood. As the vial filled, she grabbed the jar of powder and set it on the cart. She opened an opaque, dark green jar and dabbed her finger inside. In a fluid motion, she removed the needle and wiped the green substance over his arm. It felt like a large ball of phlegm and smelled like rotten lettuce. 

She recapped the rotten lettuce jar and stuck the needle into the jar of powder. She flicked her thumb and squeezed the trigger. Blood began to completely empty from the vial. As it soaked in, she placed the needle down and picked up the powder and blood jar. She brought it up to look at it at eye level. She looked at him and spoke in a more normal tone. She pointed to the jar, then to her suit. She made a hand gesture with her open palm parallel to her body, then again over his chest. The happy tone returned. She pointed at his legs, then at the jar and began to say something. She drew a finger along his body starting from the top of his head, down along his nose, past his neck, along his chest, over the bump of his belly button, angled towards his right leg, and down to his foot. 

Even with the cool feeling of her finger, it had been a long time since he’d been touched in any of those places by a...female. It felt good compared to the dull ache in his wrists, neck and ankles. Maybe even inappropriately so considering the goosebumps he felt.

It wasn’t good, in this moment, that he noticed the front of her suit was partially open. She spoke softly as she shook the jar. Her “breasts” began to jiggle with each jerk of her arm. She brought the jar back up to her eyes and stared at it with her mouth slightly agape. After a few moments, she placed the jar back onto the cart. 

Here came the coup de grâce. 

She smiled as she placed her hands together by her thighs with her shoulders rotated forward. Her breasts squeezed together between her arms - giving him a better view of the ample cleavage. This normally would be a very attractive pose as she hovered slightly. But, this thing was a beast! Was she…

No. No way. There had to be something else. Some ulterior motive. He was back to the original thought that this was all a charade. A play to give him a false sense of hope. 

But why? What did she, or they, have to gain?

He couldn’t understand her so speaking some secrets would be pointless. She didn’t understand his sign language or his telegraph code. Any bits of other languages he knew would be about as useless. This was torturous not knowing what they wanted or what they were going to do to him.

She gave a, seemingly, sultry smile - if it meant the same in their culture - as she kept her eyes on him while moving her snout away. She placed a finger on his nose, then quickly pulled it away. She started speaking in a sensual voice as she looked at his chest. She brought her finger up and followed it with her eyes as she traced it down to his waist. He swallowed mightily as he couldn’t believe his nerve endings were positively reacting to this. Maybe she was attractive in her culture. No denying she would be fetching if her skin were pinker and her various other parts matched his with a body like that. 

But...wait...what in all sanity was he thinking with a thought like that?

She stood upright and grabbed a tool from the cart. She held it up so he could see it. It looked like a dull hook knife. It looked like the ones on his planet. It had a handle and a blade that looked metal and hooked around at the end. It definitely looked like a hook knife. It just wasn’t as impressive without a sharp blade to it. Unless…

She brought her left thumb up to her mouth and licked it. She pressed her thumb onto the table. He startled as the table began to tilt forward and raise slightly. Something pressed up into the soles of his shoes. It felt like the whole table was changing. His arms began to move down to his sides as he stood up. The table moved from along his forearm to under it. It finally stopped so that he was standing in a relaxed, slightly spread position. 

It was strange. He became less panicked and more fascinated by the things around him. The table was amazing! He got a better look at the instruments on the cart. They didn’t look impressive, but they definitely weren’t like back home. She placed the hook part of the blade against his arm just under the sleeve as she said something. 

He hated not knowing what she was saying. He liked sci-fi movies and shows with space themes. Unrealistic, sure. Until he found himself here. But the depictions of mixed humans and humanoid aliens living on a ship with humans with the intergalactic relations they had. Well there was insinuated sex. But this was different. Much different. It would be like having sex with a fish. Or lizards. Or gorillas. He thought he saw a cat-eared...cat...Angel! He never found what happened to her!

She grabbed his shirt and his attention. She held the fabric between her first finger and her thumb. She pressed the knife to her cheek and smiled again. Her “cheeks” looked to be a shade darker than they were a moment ago. She seemed to bite her lip again - exposing those thumb-width, jagged teeth points. Her mouth was larger than his. Larger mouth, larger teeth. His thoughts were a mess right now.

She brought the blade back to his shirt and pressed the flat, inner hook to the fabric. Her mouth parted slightly as she brought the blade up towards his neck. He tensed and closed his eyes while turning his head as her hand came closer. He wasn’t entirely sure what she was doing or thinking with that tool, but he didn’t want to see her hand bash his face when her hand slipped from struggling.

He felt a tug by his neck as his shirt was being pulled. He opened his eyes as the sensation ended. He looked over at her. Her cheeks were an even slightly darker shade of blue. She was staring at his exposed flesh with her pale pink tongue peeking out from between her pressed lips. The left sleeve tugged as he watched her hand move along the line of his arm. He continued to stare at the knife, but couldn’t tell how exactly it was cutting his shirt. 

She slid the knife free from the neck band and the remnants of his shirt fell to his chest. She grabbed the front of the fabric and slid the knife down the middle. It split in two, then fell to his feet when she pulled it free from his back. Either things were about to get weird with freaky alien sex, or she was getting excited at the thought of dissecting him after peeling off his clothes. She had to have been a doctor or nurse in her society and was prepping him for surgery. On the other hand, she hummed as if in approval with her eyes scanning his bare flesh. Their eyes met. Her cheeks became a dark blue color that was used in paintings or in cartoons.

“Is she blushing? Why is she blushing...blue? What is she taking my clothing off for? What exactly comes next?” Some questions he thought as she sliced off his shoes. “Again, how exactly is the knife cutting through everything like it was paper? Am I a science experiment? A sex slave? I’ll be the best slave she ever had! But, what if others came in? With...with them, too? Alien harem?” He shuddered and swallowed hard. “Teh...teh...ten...ti...cles? Vuh-vore?”

He’d seen some things, but never thought he’d be involved in any way with it. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. It would take some time to get used to having sex with anim-...beast people...and reptiles...and fish.

“What if the sex is mind-blowingly amazing and the shark becomes my bride? She’s not rough on the eyes and her body is human enough...”

A cool breeze pulled him out of fantasy land. He looked down as best he could. His penis was painfully erect. And...bare. His thoughts must’ve dulled his senses because he didn’t know she’d cut off his pants and boxer briefs. He didn’t know what to do, say or think. He was naked as a babe, strapped to a table like a prisoner and thinking dirty thoughts about fish women harems. He was dying to know what she was thinking.

His query was...answered? She looked up at him. Her eyes were wide. Her nostrils were flaring as she breathed slowly through her mouth. That seemed to be where the cool breeze was coming from. Though he wanted to know why her breath was cool and wasn’t warm, he couldn’t help but notice her heaving chest and the slight expansion and contraction of her cleavage. It made his penis react in ways he couldn’t prevent. It’d been so long since he’d seen a woman this close, staring at his naked body and this blessed in the chest. 

Her face. A dark band of blue stretched from her cheeks and wrapped around her snout. 

“Wrong wrong wrong! Everything about this is wrong! I’m strapped to a table...NAKED! Erection! SHARK LADY! SEX with shark lady? She’s...blushing? No. Poison collecting in a hidden sac. Those are gills. Her nostrils shoot poison acid!” He nervously swallowed. “I’ve been watching WAY too much horror and sci-fi. Is this a horror movie? Sci-fi horror? Sci-fi horror smut? Is she going to eat me? Am I an offering to her god? Maybe I’ll be skinned and tanned - become someone’s suit? Will they harvest my blood and organs? Keep me alive and take it all? They have the technology...could they possibly keep me alive and produce organs within me to...blood! Human blood is their space fuel!”

His eyes widened at the sight of the next instrument she pulled off the cart.