Page 72 of Married to the All Hallows' Eve Alien

"Stop! What are they stealing? Oh god, what are they doing to me?"

The doctor stops the memory and says something to Sem.

He doesn't translate it.

I repeat myself. "What are they stealing from me?"

Sem clears his voice. "Your eggs."

I begin to cry.

The doctor says something.

"What is he saying? God dammit, Sem, don't make this any harder than it has to be."

"Ivy, I'm just making sure I'm getting all the information you'll want. As for your eggs, we have the technology to know how many you have left. If you want to know. This is forbidden by the goddesses, but our doctor always says, ‘The goddesses have a blind spot near Earth.'"

"I want him to check, yes. Absolutely. Now, continue with this horror show. I want to know what happened to me.”

I'm glad the doctor doesn't ask me if I'm sure because the truth is that I might have given up if he questioned my bravery one more time. What I'm experiencing is awful. Undoubtedly, I will suffer from PTSD for a long time.

In the memory, after my medical procedure, I'm brought back to the cage with Scarlett and the other women. The cage is filthy. For some reason, I don't tell Scarlett what had just happened. I’m given some scraps of clothing.

The doctor interjects here, and Sem translates, "The Dulu erased your memory of what they had done so you wouldn't be able to tell us."

"How do you know what they did now and you didn’t then?"

"Our doctor is the best. The Dulu used AI to change memories; we have the real thing, and he's there really looking in your mind now. Before, his only objective was to hide all of your memories of your abduction, and he had fifty or so women to do that within a short amount of time. But, right now, he's only looking at yours and very closely without having changed forty-nine other women's memories before yours. You were the last to come in. Even the best doctors can get tired and miss things. He apologizes.”

“Fine. I understand. I'm ready to keep going."

The memory continues. It seems like days pass, and we've no idea why aliens are keeping us. They give us food and hose us down with a water-like substance to keep us clean that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Otherwise, we're just alone.

Until we hear shots, there’s a lot of confusion, and we are rescued, but not without some injuries. My leg was hit in the crossfire of our rescue. I watch in horror as my skin is disintegrating around my thigh. I’ve never experienced pain like this. I want to cut my leg off as I feel that will hurt less. Scarlett is trying to help me get out of the cage, but I can't move. I'm close to passing out or dying.

Then Sem sees me from across the crowded cage, picks me up, and says, "It's okay. I'm going to get you out of here." He holds me like I weigh nothing and continues to give commands in his accented English to the other humans in one breath and then, in the next breath, issues commands in his language. I feel instinctively safe next to him. His scent is familiar to me now, and the smell of his petrichor surrounds me.

The memory from Sem’s perspective that he gave to me comes up here too. The doctor says something, but Sem doesn’t translate.

"What did he say?" I ask.

"He said that he hoped that was useful in bridging our relationship now. Meaning he saw it before and left it for you as a favor to me."

"You must be a good man that all these people wanted us to be together," I say. Then add as an afterthought, "Or really desperate."

The doctor laughs then, through Sem's translation, says, "I'm going to link your memory of first meeting Sem to his that he anchored there. It'll help outweigh the severity of what else happened on the Dulu ship. Now let's continue."

Now that the Alliance officers are onboard, there's lots of talk about galactic law and what will happen to us. Then I say to Sem, out of the blue, "I want to go with you."

He looks down at me with sympathy in his grey eyes, like how one looks at a kitten they have to leave at an animal shelter. "No. You should go with the other humans."

"But my leg, I can't feel the pain anymore."

"I only gave you a painkiller. The doctors will see you soon."

"Are you taking me there now?"

"Yes, all of you will go there and then back to Earth."

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