‘When you’re finished…’ Lati yawned.
‘Oh, sit on my faculae,’ Baby retorted, snapping out of her reverie. ‘And don’t just stand there. Give us a hand.’ Together they picked Jake up and carried him into the chamber, where they dumped him unceremoniously on the gleaming table.
Doll watched with studied indifference as Baby and Lati pulled off Jake’s boots and socks and tossed them onto the floor. Next, they hoisted him up to a sitting position and yanked his Kyuss t-shirt up over his head. As his long arms slid out of the sleeves, they slapped heavily down on his sides. There was a sharp intake of breath but he didn’t wake up. Around his neck hung a leather thong upon which were threaded several pieces of flattened metal. Pulling this off, Lati experimentally bit into what was in fact Jake’s house key. ‘Yum,’ she approved, tossing the second key to Doll, who was perched on the side
bench, swinging her legs back and forth. Doll caught it easily and popped it into her mouth.
Baby traced with her finger the tattoo of a scorpion that decorated Jake’s right shoulder blade. ‘Looks a bit like one of those guys from Zeta Reticuli,’ she observed. ‘I hope this doesn’t mean he’s had contact before,’ she added, a trace of apprehension in her voice. ‘I was hoping we’d get an alien virgin.’
‘Oh, I reckon he’s pretty pure,’ said Lati. ‘He could barely cope with us, and we’re nothing compared to some of the ayles out there. It’s probably just a coincidence.’
Baby nodded, untying the flannelette shirt from around his waist. As they laid him back down, Baby’s eyes roamed over the breadth of his shoulders, the gentle curves of his long freckled arms, the soft, light down carpeting his forearms and chest, the lean lines of his torso, and the neat pink mounds of his nipples, one of which strained erect over a small silver barbell. A wee tuft of brown hair poked up out of the top of his trousers and curled around the strange little hole in his stomach. Now where would that line of fur lead to?
Baby tugged impatiently at Jake’s jeans, but couldn’t pull them down past his slender hips. ‘Damn,’ she cursed.
Lati, who was wearing 501s herself, shouldered Baby aside and unbuttoned the fly. Together, they shucked the jeans off Jake’s long legs and threw them on the floor as well. Some coins fell out of the pocket, making a chinking sound which caught Lati’s attention. She bent down, scooped up a handful and offered them to the others. Doll was still munching thoughtfully on the key and shook her head. Baby didn’t even register the offer.
Baby was rapt. Jake’s smell clung to her nostrils, the touch of his skin set hers aflame, and the very sight of his
handsome face was causing a liquid longing to mist her ears. (Nufonians had
very
sensitive ears.) This Earth boy, she was thinking, was truly a thing divine. Lati, if asked, would have said she was having fun. Then again, she always had fun. As far as she was concerned, Jake wasn’t a bad biological sample, but that was about it. Doll, for her part, was utterly unmoved. She was thinking about drum kits—Pearl or Brady? One of each?
It all boils down to chemistry, really.
While Lati amused herself by tossing the coins in the air and catching them, one by one, in her mouth, Baby slipped trembling fingers into the waistband of Jake’s red jocks and eased them off. She gasped. What was this? The other parts of the Earth boy’s body had not contained so much surprise, for they were but variations on the forms the girls themselves had taken. But this fat pink plaything resting on its plump pillow and crowned with a coarse burst of hair, this was something else. She put a tentative finger upon its head. It twitched under her curious touch.
Lati began to spool out Bind-a-Bean tape. According to the manual that came with the Abduct-o-matic, Bind-a-Bean was the best method for securing a live abductee. Bind-a-Bean felt like silk and held like steel. Baby reluctantly stepped aside so that Lati could tape Jake’s hands and feet to the table.
‘Well, girls, this is it!’ Baby exclaimed breathlessly when he lay spreadeagled and naked before them. She rubbed her hands together. ‘The moment we’ve been waiting for.’
‘
One
of the moments we’ve been waiting for,’ Doll corrected. Earth girls were
her
weakness. Still sitting on the bench, she picked up a speculum and began tapping out a beat on a row of carefully labelled beakers and jars.
‘Personally, I’m hanging out for the day we become rock stars. I wanna be the biggest fucken rock star in the yoon. Bigger than Been Her.’
‘What’s Been Her?’ Lati asked.
Doll shrugged noncommittally. ‘Dunno. Must be an all-girl band. It’s something I heard one of the Earthlings say at the Agent Mulder gig. He turned to his friend and said, “L7, dude, they’re bigger ‘n Been Her.”’
Baby had picked up a magnifying glass and was examining Jake’s skin. ‘This is so exciting,’ she marvelled. ‘It’s full of tiny holes. Have a look.’
Lati sauntered over. ‘Weird-o-rama,’ she said. ‘Wonder why he doesn’t leak?’
‘They’ve got holes everywhere,’ Baby observed wistfully. ‘Wish we did. You know, on a permanent basis.’
‘We do all right,’ said Doll.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ said Baby, leaning over and sniffing at Jake’s armpit. ‘Sweet,’ she remarked.
Lati poked her nose into the other one. ‘Smells like teen spirit,’ she joked.
‘Teen Spirit’s a brand of deodorant,’ Doll commented. ‘Betcha didn’t know that.’
‘No way,’ exclaimed Lati.
‘Way,’ insisted Doll.
‘So,’ Lati asked after a pause, ‘What’s deodorant?’
‘Who the fuck knows,’ shrugged Doll, hammering out the beat of ‘Israel’s Son’ while managing a startling imitation of the song’s subterranean bass with the lower registers of her voice. ‘I just read it somewhere. Doesn’t this song make you feel like going out and killing someone?’
‘You’re a sick puppy,’ remarked Lati appreciatively, walking round to the other end of the table. Scrutinising
Jake’s crusty toes, she recoiled at the smell. ‘Eeyuurgh!’ She waved a hand in front of her face. ‘What d’ya reckon we should do now?’
‘According to the manual,’ Doll replied, ‘you wake them up. Then you get some long hollow steel needles, point them at the abductee’s head and scare the shit out of them.’
‘It doesn’t really say that, does it?’ Baby protested, shocked and a little excited, too.
‘Nah, it doesn’t,’ Doll admitted. ‘I got that from the film
Communion.
Remember that scene?’
‘Sure do,’ said Lati. ‘I say we throw Earth boy here into a bathtub with lots of dry ice for effect, bring him to, and see what he does.’
‘Har har har.’ Baby shook her head. She picked up a probe and examined his navel with it. ‘Funny little crater,’ she remarked.
‘Looks all wrong to me,’ Lati asserted. ‘Could have been an accident.’
Doll was kicking her ankles together. Doc on Doc. A good sound. Solid. ‘Did you know that
Communion
was based on a true story?’
‘No way!’ cried Lati. ‘You don’t believe in
aliens,
do you?’
They all fell about laughing hysterically. Jake slept on oblivious.
‘You know,’ said Baby, wiping a blue tear of mirth from her eyes, ‘this is making it really hard to get into the mood. Oh no! Now look at
this
.’ One hand resting possessively on Jake’s thigh, she pointed under the table with the other.
Um um um! Socky wocky wocky! Um um um! Chp chp chp. Ooooooh. Smelly welly welly! Shlrp shlrp. Um
um um um! Nnf nnf. Shlrp. Nnf nnf. Socky wocky! Oooky woooky! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
‘
Someone’s
in the mood,’ she chuckled. Even Doll had to smile. Revor had insinuated his snout deep into one of Jake’s woolly black socks and, clutching it to his face with eager claws, was rolling and tumbling and wriggling ecstatically around the floor, burbling and sniggling and cooing. The sock may have been old, unwashed, threadbare at the toe and down at heel, the kind of footwear that was an embarrassment to mothers, a disgrace to sheep, an aesthetic and olfactory repellent to normal affection. To Revor, it was sex incarnate. Um um! Um!
‘Now
that’s
a sick puppy,’ commented Doll dryly. ‘Music anyone?’ Without waiting for an answer, she jumped down from the bench and disappeared into the rumpus room. Soon, a wave of energetic rock swept through the saucer. Doll returned, headbanging as she came. Her antennae and horns of hair were bobbing madly, and she sang along in a growly voice.
‘Who’s this, Doll?’
‘Foo Fighters.’
‘Foo Fighters? That’s a band?’ Baby’s jaw dropped. ‘That’s hilarious,’ she hooted. ‘What a cack. How do Earthlings know about Foo Fighters? That’s pretty specialised knowledge even on Nufon. I mean, we didn’t know what they were until Lati pressed that button on the spaceship and one just kind of popped out.’ She shook her head. ‘Earthlings are
so
cool,’ she sighed, snapping on a pair of rubber gloves. ‘Damn,’ she cursed, looking down. ‘These only have four fingers.’
Doll laughed, still thinking about Foo Fighters. ‘We sure scared that pilot,’ she chortled, recalling how Mum had ejillulated a thick white stream of electricity that
congealed into a tight sphere and cannonballed off towards Earth. Whooping encouragement, they had watched the Foo Fighter’s progress on the Foo Monitor, a previously blank screen on the control panel. The Foo Fighter had homed in on a US Air Force plane on a mission of intimidation over some Middle Eastern nation. The fiery ball had loomed suddenly in the pilot’s sights, filling his vision with light, and causing a celestial music to ring in his ears. The trembling pilot had a vision of God as a small silvery man with hooves. Upon returning to base, he quit the military, let his hair grow long and joined a troop of feral firestick twirlers with a sideline in environmental activism.
The Foo Fighter incident had definitely been a highlight of the girls’ trip to Earth. Almost as good as when they shot through a small cloud of ash that turned out to be the remains of Dr Timothy Leary, and Mum herself had a hallucination that she was the alien who abducted Elvis.
Lati was getting antsy. ‘Pass the strigil.’ She indicated a small instrument near where Doll had resettled herself on the bench. ‘Something has to be done about these toes.’
Baby, meanwhile, turned her attention to Jake’s testicles. ‘These look like fun.’ She stroked and pulled the dark, cool scrotal skin curiously. ‘Ohhhh,’ groaned Jake, now semi-conscious. She cupped the balls in one palm. She bounced them up and down. She rocked them back and forth and pinched them between latex fingertips. She pulled off her gloves and did it all again. ‘I wonder if maybe this sexual experimentation thing isn’t a bit overrated,’ she commented, a trace of disappointment in her voice.
Something occurred to her. ‘Maybe,’ Baby wondered, her antennae trembling at the thought, ‘it would be more
fun if he were awake?’ Performing sexual experiments on an Earthling who was actually conscious—it was too
transgressive
for words. She leaned over and, not too hard but not too gently either, bit Jake’s balls. His eyes flew open.
‘It’s awake now,’ Doll noted dryly.
‘Oi,’ yelled Jake, trying to raise his head. What the hell was happening to him now? Who the fuck
were
these girls and what were they doing to his
balls?
‘Oi!’ he repeated. ‘Oi!’
Revor looked up from his sock with spermy eyes. Did someone call me?
‘Mind telling me what’s going down?’ Jake asked in as normal a tone as he could muster.
Baby shrugged. ‘Sex,’ she replied, gripping his balls in her hand. He was
very
cute, she thought.
‘Sex,’ Jake echoed flatly, attempting to pull an ankle free of its Bind-a-Bean. No go. Jake was not into bondage. Sure, he’d tied up a few girls with scarves when they’d asked for it, and had even used handcuffs on one kinky older woman. But he had never let anyone tie him up. Ever. He did not like feeling vulnerable and powerless. Not one bit. And finding yourself utterly starkers, bound hand and foot to an examining table under mysterious circs at the mercy of three very attractive but sexually predatory aliens did tend to inspire feelings of vulnerability and powerlessness. Not to mention intellectual confusion and spiritual crisis. Christ. It was almost as bad as being in a relationship. He tried to jerk a hand free. ‘Ow,’ he miserabled.
‘What’s a relationship?’ asked Baby curiously, reading his mind. She wasn’t taking the piss. Relationships were, if you’ll pardon the expression, an alien concept in the outer.
Alien civilisations had evolved way,
way
beyond relationships. Earthling society, which in yoonal terms was still dragging its knuckles on the ground, was only just beginning to shed the concept that a moment’s fuckability did not automatically lead to a lifetime’s compatibility. Aliens had long ago figured out that it was usually best just to give the night’s mateling breakfast and a kiss and send it on its way.
Jake’s jaw dropped. He stared at Baby. He stopped struggling. His eyes widened and his whole body visibly relaxed. A bright white light filled his vision and formed a shining halo around her head. It suddenly occurred to him that here standing before him—looming over him, whatever—was a beautiful, clever, full-on chick who
didn’t know the meaning of the word relationship.
This was the girl of his dreams. Granted, his dreams had never accounted for antennae or green skin, and he’d have to have a serious word to her about this b/d scenario, but…
kyooool.
‘Oh, you know,’ he explained, gazing at her with eyes gone soft with longing, ‘relationships are when you hang out a lot, you know, for more time than it takes just to get each other into bed, and pretend to like the same films and music and each other’s friends, and have really dumb arguments over things like, you know’—the pressure of her hand on his balls was starting seriously to distract him—‘you stealing the covers at night and stuff, which really is dumb because, if you’re bigger, you need more covers, right? Or like her getting jealous cuz you once said you thought Kylie Purr was a big spunk?’
Baby was nodding her head in agreement, but what she was thinking was: why would anyone steal the covers at night? Weren’t they just old songs sung by new people?
How did you steal a cover anyway? And who was Kylie Purr? Was she that little blonde thing who sang ‘Locomotion’? She was also studying his long legs with their soft matting, his lean torso with its coat-hanger shoulders, and the geometric manner in which the fur covered his chin. Goatees hadn’t yet caught on in the outer, mainly because, when aliens grew fur, it tended to be in places like behind the knees, or just under the eyes, or in other bodily sectors where it was either too difficult or painful to shave.