“Just let it get away!”
Beast seems to hesitate. He looks at me, then back to the baby creature. His brow furrows as if he’s thinking.
The baby stops trembling. It takes a couple of steps forward.
“Go! Run back to your mommy!”
The little creature stops then spins around.
It’s the ugliest fucking baby I’ve ever seen.
Maybe I wanted the creature to live so bad because it survived something that could have killed me. Or maybe I just can’t bear to witness something dying unless it’s actively trying to kill me. Either way, when I look upon the hideous face of the thing I just saved, I immediately know I’ve made a big mistake.
It has so many teeth!
There are no lips to its mouth, and even if there were lips, they would probably be shredded to ribbons by its layers upon layers of razor sharp, pointy fangs. It’s a thing of nightmares, and now it’s headed straight for me.
The creature lowers its head and charges forward.
“Kill it! Kill it!” I scream at Beast.
Beast looks back at me with his brow raised as if he’s asking if I’m sure.
Meanwhile, the little creature is getting closer and closer to him. It’s either going to attack Beast, or bypass him and come directly for me.
I scream, “Please! Just shoot the damn thing!” and back away.
Beast’s lips curl into a smirk. He aims his guns and fires off two rounds at the nightmare baby. It squeals and drops to the ground.
“Thank you,” I exhale in relief. For a moment there, I was quite afraid that hideous thing was going to get past Beast and get to me, but he’s acting as if it’s no big deal, so perhaps I shouldn’t have even been worried.
Beast nods his head in acknowledgment. I flash him a grateful smile. His face softens and he walks towards me.
From the ground, the little creature lets out a loud, shrill noise. Beast spins around and unloads a few more rounds into its dying, hideous little body. It falls silent but now Beast is rushing towards me, his face marred with lines of worry.
“What’s wrong?” I ask as he grabs my hand. The jolt this time isn’t so bad. My fingers only twitch a little when he squeezes them.
Beast shakes his head and touches his hand to his lips. He wants me to be quiet.
I sigh, frustrated, and bit worried that he’s worried. Maybe he’s not worried, I reassure myself. Maybe I’m just reading too much into his expression.
Perhaps he’s just afraid we’re going to get back late or something? Dinner could be burning.
By the arm, he tugs me along. I suddenly notice he’s leading me in the direction I think my pod is in.
Just thinking about my pod gets me excited. I’m anxious to check the console, to see if I have any messages. Maybe Beast will know how to use the system. Maybe I can get him to send a distress signal for me.
Beast stops all of a sudden and I crash into his back. Before I can get my bearings, he’s tugging me by the arm and rushing me in another direction.
“Hey, no, wait!” I protest and try to yank back.
Beast growls and glares back at me.
“We’re going the wrong way. My pod is the other way…”
At least I think it is.
Beast again stops suddenly. This time I catch myself before crashing into his back but only because I was already trying to walk the other way.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
I look around, I don’t see anything out of the ordinary, just a bunch of trees. Beast seems to be listening for something, though. I don’t think he likes what he hears because he turns to me and grabs me.
Before I know what’s happening or can do anything to stop it, he lifts me up, tosses me over his shoulder, and takes off running.
“What are you doing?!” I ask shrilly.
He smacks me on the butt.
“You put me down right this instant!” I thump on his back.
He keeps on running and smacks me on the butt again.
The nerve! I can’t believe he’s doing this! I guess this is what I get for forgetting that he’s a barbarian.
I look down and consider his ass. I could so give him a killer wedgie. It got his attention last time, and would serve him right for doing this. But with as fast as he’s running, I don’t want him to fall over and squash me.
We tear through the forest at break-neck speed. I have to admit, he’s running faster than I’d be able to keep up with. The trees blur by, brown mixes with blue and green.
Beast stops so fast, I clutch at his back, afraid I’m going to fall off. His shirt slips from my fingers as he grabs me by the hips and lifts me in the air.
I blink and now I have a wooden ladder in front of me.
It’s all happening so fast, I can’t keep up with it.
Beast impatiently thrusts me into the ladder. I have no choice but to reach out and grab hold of it. He holds on to me until my feet find the rung below me then he lets go. I look down and he’s drawing his guns.
What is going on? I look up. The ladder goes so high, there’s no way I can make the climb. I haven’t climbed anything since I was little, when I was too dumb to be afraid. And this tree is as tall as a building to me. I’m not just deathly afraid of heights, I’m also deathly afraid of falling.
“I can’t.” I shake my head and take a step down.
Beast growls menacingly. He holsters his guns and grabs me by the butt, pushing me up.
“No, I can’t!” I cry. “I’m afraid.”
Beast growls some more. He gives me a hard shove. My arms flail as I go above the rung I was holding on to. I have to grab the higher rung that was above my head.
“Stop! Don’t make me!”
Beast makes the most awful sound. It sounds like he just got hurt. I look down. He jumps away from me, pulls out his guns, and starts firing.
Oh, no. Did he just get hurt trying to protect me?
I feel sick to my stomach. My feet scramble to find the rung below me. Somehow, I force my arms to go up.
I can do this
. I grab on to the next highest rung above me.
It’s not for me, it’s for him.
I pull myself up.
Who knows what nasty creatures are down there.
I glance down. I’ve only gone up a couple of feet, but the ground and Beast look so far away.
No, don’t look down.
I look up again.
Just grab it, you can do it. He’d do it for you.
Over and over, rung by rung, I pull myself up until I finally hear Beast stop firing.
Is he below me or did something bad happen to him?
Before I can muster the courage to look down, something grabs my leg and I scream.
A familiar grumble and growl reassures me. It’s Beast.
“Is it all clear now? Can I come down?” I ask, but I only get silence for an answer.
Dammit. I tip my head back and look up. I can see what looks like some kind of floor made out of wood planks, but it's still half a tree up.
I’m pretty sure that’s where he wants me to go, but I ask anyway, “Do I have to keep going?”
He gives my leg a squeeze. Double dammit. Pretty sure that means I have to climb the rest of the way up.
If only he could throw me over his shoulder and do the climbing for me….
I make it. Somehow I make it. Once I reach the top, I have the strongest urge to kiss the wood floor. I’m so relieved just to have something solid beneath me for the moment, I don’t care how far up I am. I don’t care that I’m hundreds of feet above the ground in a flimsy little house built into a tree.
Beast climbs up just behind me. He grunts as his feet hit the floor and that’s when I remember that he might have gotten hurt because of me.
“What happened down there?” I ask before realizing it was a waste of breath.
The tree house has three walls with half a roof over them, all made of wooden planks. There are two corners that are safe. He limps over to the left corner and takes a seat on the floor. I walk over to him and kneel beside his legs.
“How bad is it?” I ask.
His face is emotionless as he looks back at me. He reaches down and starts to roll up the left leg of his black pants.
I gasp. Something tore into him, just above his ankle. He’s bleeding, but I can’t tell how badly he’s hurt.
“May I look?” I ask.
He nods and I scoot closer. It feels as if his eyes are burning into the top of my head as I bend and take a closer look at his wound. His blood is black. It oozes from his wound and makes it pretty much impossible for me to tell just how big the actual wound is.
I sigh and have to think. I need something to soak the blood up with.
“Did you bring a first aid kit?” I remember there were quite a few of them in the storage room.
I peek up and he shakes his head at me.
“Of course you didn’t,” I think out loud. “I didn’t either. All I brought is this knife and the water on my back…”
I forgot I had anything on me. I slip out of the backpack, then reach down and grab my knife.
Beast grumbles something at me. I look up.
“I have no clue what you’re saying.”
He narrows his eyes and grumbles again.
“Still no clue.”
I grab my shirt, pull it away from my stomach and stab it with the knife.
Beast makes a choking noise. I look over at him and for a purple guy, he’s looking awfully green.
“Are you alright?”
I use the knife to cut at my shirt some more, then I lay the knife on the floor and start tearing the bottom off.
Before I finish tearing the swath of my shirt off, Beast leans forward and reaches for my knife.
I snatch it first and frown at him, “Mine.”
It’s the only weapon on this world I have. I won’t let him take it away from me.
Beast grumbles and leans back. I narrow my eyes at him and secure the knife in its spot at my hip. I’m not taking any chances.
I rip the rest of my shirt off, exposing my stomach. I’m mostly decent still, what remains of the shirt still covers my breasts, but it’s going to be a long night if it gets chilly. I then rip the fabric I have into strips. Balling up one of the strips, I bend over his leg and soak up the blood with it.
Beast doesn’t make a sound. I clear away the blood until I can see the damage. His wound doesn’t seem to be terribly bad. I mean, it’s obvious he got bit by something with sharp teeth, but it looks like there are only a dozen or so deep puncture wounds. The puncture wounds are oozing, and the bleed is slowing. There doesn’t appear to be any tearing or ripping. Still, it must have hurt awfully bad to climb up the tree.
“Is it okay if I bandage your leg?”
I don’t wait for an answer, I just start doing it. I press a dry bunch of balled up fabric against his wound, then I wrap the strips of fabric I have around it.
“I’m sorry you got hurt because of me,” I say softly.
I tie the bandage in a knot then look up at him.
“I’m glad you’re okay, though. I was a little worried down there.”
He grumbles something and stares at me intensely.
I sigh, “I wish I could understand you."
He nods his head in agreement.
“Do you mind if I sit beside you?”
He pats his lap and I scowl.
Perhaps that was lost in translation?
“Beside you, not on you,” I say as I start to scoot towards the wall.
I grab the backpack and bring it with me. It takes me forever to get settled but once I do, I feel much better with my back up against the wall. Heights make me feel very dizzy. Feeling dizzy and clumsy only increases the fear that I’m going to slip, trip, or fall over the edge.
I was so focused on him, so focused on his injury, I forgot just where we are. I look up, through the open part of the roof. The sky is getting darker.
The clouds are way too close.
I hope we don’t have to stay here long.
“Are we staying the night here?”
Please say no. Please say no.
He nods his head.
Dammit.
“We can’t go back to the ship?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“We can’t make it to my pod?”
He shakes his head again.
I’m not going to get any sleep at all.
“Who builds a treehouse with only three walls and half a roof?” I ask and take a sip of the water from my backpack. Just then I realize if I need to relieve myself tonight, I’m up a tree, and out of luck. I push the water away in disgust then wrap my arms around myself.
Beast is a quiet presence beside me. No matter how much I try to relax, I feel overly aware of him. There’s static in the space between us. It has all the tiny hairs on my body standing on end, pointing at him.
As the sky grows darker, the red glow from his eyes burns brighter. I try not to look at him. I try to keep my eyes glued to the sky. I can’t look at him because every time I do, he just looks so damn hungry.
And I have nothing to feed him, though, I’m pretty sure it’s me he wants to eat.
The stars start to appear. At first, there’s only a stray one here and there, twinkling lonely in the sky. But as full night falls, I can’t recognize the glittering constellations. It makes it all the more real that I’m far away from home. The stars here are too different. Everything here is too different. Oh, how I miss Terrea.
“No one is coming for me,” I say sadly. My heart feels like it’s breaking just to admit it. “No one is looking for me. I’m stuck here forever.”
Beast reaches out and touches my arm. His touch is warm. I didn’t realize I was so cold.
“I’m the Princess. All my life they’ve been drilling into my head how important I am. If I was so important, they would have come for me by now.”
I sense Beast scooting closer to me. I don’t try to stop him, but I don’t encourage him either.
“Maybe no one cares. Maybe they’ve abandoned me.”
Beast grumbles something softly.
I go quiet and then I feel him nudging my shoulder as if he wants me to elaborate. It hurts. It hurts to think I’ll never go home again. It hurts even worse because it’s all my fault. If I would have only followed the rule, I wouldn’t be here.
“It was my birthday party, the night I crashed here. My stepbrother had a special surprise for me….”
I close my eyes as I remember.
“I’m not allowed to leave the planet, so I’d never been up before. The next day, my betrothal was to be announced so…”
Beast cuts me off with a menacing growl.
I let him finish growling then look at him to ask, “Are you done?”
He nods.
“Do you want to hear the rest?”
He nods again so I go on, “So it was pretty much my last chance to ever do it. He convinced me we would be back before anyone would even know we were gone.”
I trusted Vrillum. When my father married his mother, Sarcia, I welcomed Vrillum with open arms. In my heart, I made a place for him as my brother because he was always so nice to me, even when his mother was distant and cold. Now, I wonder why he was so friendly. If it was all a farce.
“The ride up actually made me sick. I appreciated the thought but immediately wanted to return home. Vrillum got angry with me. He called me an ungrateful, spoiled brat and refused to take me back down. He made me feel bad, made me feel guilty for not appreciating the risk he took for me so I apologized and stop asking him to take me back home. Then, out of nowhere, another ship came and he freaked out. He said they were slavers and they must have known I was on the ship. He put me in the escape pod and told me he would distract them.”
I take in a deep breath. I can feel the tears building behind my eyes. My nose starts to sting with the pressure of holding them back.
“The pod went crazy. Instead of safely transporting me to Terrea, it somehow accelerated and crash landed here.”
Beast rubs his hand up and down my arm. It would be comforting if it didn’t tingle so much.
I look over at him and regret it. His demon eyes are filled with pity which somehow makes me feel even worse. The first tear drops, cold and unwanted against my cheek. Another follows, then another, until Beast becomes one great big red blur.
“I think he planned all of this. I think Vrillum programmed the pod to purposely crash me here and disabled the UPS so no one can find it. I just don’t understand why he left me to die here.”
The tears really start coming now. Vrillum left me to die here, alone and suffering, on this god forsaken planet. I’ll never speak to my father again. I’ll never see his smile or hear his voice. He probably thinks I’m dead or something worse. What if he thinks I ran off?
All this time, I’ve tried not to think about it too much. I’ve tried to block it out and just focus on surviving. With everything going on, I let myself get consumed by the moment. Now, all this pent up emotion, all this stuff I’ve been too afraid to face has me bawling my eyes out. The tears just keep coming and I don’t know how to turn them off.
At some point, Beast wraps his arms around me and pulls me into his lap. I fall asleep crying my heart out while snuggled up against the warmth of his chest.