Page 11 of Married to the All Hallows' Eve Alien

“It says here, ‘Sexy Little Red Riding Hood,’ and she matches the sexy wolf costume, I’m sure of it. It’s part of the ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ fairytale as I understand it; as custom goes, if you’re a couple, you choose costumes that culturally go together. If you’re single, you can still choose one of these costumes and have something to say to women who are also single but wearing the other half of your costume.”

I glance at the sexy wolf costume again. It looks ridiculous. The male model in the picture is showing off the costume with a disingenuous smile: a grey synthetic hoodie, furry trousers, and fluffy gloves. But what if Ivy is dressed as this woman in the red cape? Even though we read all the women’s messages meticulously, we couldn’t distinguish which woman would wear which costume.

“The description says, ‘The men’s sexy wolf costume is perfect for a man of any complexion. Perfect for your grey complexion.”

I look at Ash without expression.

His green eyes are filled with humor. He enjoys this kind of thing, whereas I find it embarrassing.

I’d be too ashamed to be dressed like this. “The sexy wolf costume doesn’t seem right. What are you going to wear?”

Ash flips through the computer files and finds a picture of an archaic-looking robot man with an amateur red heart shape painted on his chest. “This is the Tin Man.”

“Why this?” I feel better about what he chose for me, given his costume looks unattractive.

“The Tin Man is looking for his heart. I thought that was appropriate, given I’m looking for a wife,” Ash explains.

“Oh,” now I feel like he’s got a better costume. “What’s the woman’s costume counterpart for that one?”

He shows me a picture of a woman in a checkered blue dress. “She’s got red shoes and is looking for a wizard.”

“What if she wants to find a wizard more than you?”

He hadn’t considered that. Then, in complete Ash fashion, after a second, he answers me so self-assured, “No, I’m sure she’ll want me more than any wizard. Now that we’ve decided on our costumes, we need to read these stories so we can talk to the women about it.”

“I’m already looking mine up,” I say as I search the database. When I read the description of the story, I’m surprised. “What’s wrong with you, Sem? It’s a blazing children’s story. This can’t be right,” I say. “How can I be looking for an adult woman to marry dressed as a character from a children’s story? No, something is seriously wrong here.”

“They wouldn’t be making ‘sexy Halloween’ anything if it weren’t some kind of fetish. Don’t question any of humanity’s curious cultural practices. Just go with them and enjoy.”

I run my hands through my long black long hair. This doesn’t feel right. “Let me look through the other costumes.”

Ash shows me the file where he marked costumes that would suit our grey skin. I stop on one with a sword. “Why didn’t you choose this one?” To me, this seems to be the most appropriate. “Knight in shining armor.”

“First, the knight only has grey skin if he’s dead or has been turned to stone. Not much of a warrior.”

“Oh, but Halloween is supposed to be a bit scary. You have a zombie here,” I point out. Not that I’d ever want to be a zombie, but it shows the potential. A shiver runs through my body, thinking about zombies. Sometimes, when Alliance doctors try to bring people back from the dead, it doesn’t quite work, and the men are zombies. Shells of the men they once were. I make eye contact with Ash. “You didn’t want to be a zombie?”

He gives me a hand signal for a profanity, and I laugh.

“There’s no definite Halloween coupling for a dead knight that I could find, and it doesn’t seem as popular as ‘sexy wolf.’ And when I read about knights, it was a really mixed bag. That’s why I didn’t suggest it.”

“Show me the Halloween women’s costumes accompanying this dead knight.”

Ash brings up women in long dresses, not unlike Alliance dresses, but in different colors.

“The knight may portray a dead man or a man turned to stone, but that’s perfect for my situation,” I say, “because I feel lifeless without my other half. I don’t want to be some silly wolf. I’ll be the knight,” I pause and read the costume description, “complete with a plastic sword.”

“You might as well take your own sword,” Ash says disappointedly. “It’ll be the best thing about this costume because when I looked through the statistics of women dressing up as the Halloween couple’s match to dead knight, it wasn’t impressive. Not many women want to wear that long dress.”

“If it doesn’t work out, I’ll only blame myself. Thank you for researching this,” I say and yawn. “I’m exhausted; I’ve got to go to bed now.”

“Fine. Knight it is. By the way, good work today. Thank the goddesses it was you and not me on that final sweep. I’ll never forget the way you squeezed that Octopod’s head…” Ash says, changing the subject to my earlier encounter with an Octopod pirate. He and some other officers had rewatched my surprise encounter with an Octopod from my armor cam when I did a final sweep of a ship. Octopods can hide anywhere and lately have amazing body deflectors to conceal their life signs. I almost died. He was on me so quickly, and everything was instinct for my own survival.

I acknowledge his compliment by placing my hand on my chest. “It was him or me.” Ash takes my cue and doesn’t mention it again. I don’t even want to remember it myself. Since returning to the base, I don’t know how many times I’ve washed my hands since I burst the Octopod’s head. I had even been wearing gloves, but my mind likes to play tricks on me and suggest, ‘But what if you hadn’t been wearing gloves?’ I push that thought to the back of my mind and ask Ash, “What are the odds that every time we increase our security, the Dulu increase their tactics, tech, and allies? It didn’t used to be this way.”

“Humans still fetch an incredibly high price on the black market. And it’s not just the Dulu who have a stake in the trade, but we need to figure out who else and why. What’s changed.”

“If only the GC would enforce the laws.”

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