Page 30 of Conquering the Alien Emperor

“And this.” He pointed at the overflowing trash can.

“I-I didn’t know what to do with it,” I admitted.

He rolled his three eyes, two in opposite directions, making me dizzy. “To the trash incinerator of course, you lazy filth.”

“And where is that?” I asked, refusing to roll my eyes at him in return.

He pointed to the door I entered through last night. I shook my head. “I can’t go outside.” I put my fingers to the collar around my neck.

“You have to stay within five hundred paces, you nitwit.”

Now that he said it, I recalled the instructions again.

“Besides, it will warn you before you get zapped,” he added.

“It will?”

“Get the trash out.”

I wasn’t going to say yes, sir. I simply got up and moved to the trash container and grabbed it without saying anything. My knees shook and my arms and legs felt like jelly, but the prospect of going outside, seeing where I was in the daylight revived me some. Maybe I could figure out a way to escape.

The alien wasn’t going to open the door for me, so I had to put the trash down before I disengaged the locks and opened it. I picked up the trash again and stepped out into the sunlit alley that didn’t look any better in the daylight than it had in the shadows of the night.

Barely twenty feet separated the door from the dilapidated, dirty wall on the other side. I looked left and right until I saw an older-model trash incinerator to my right.

A low buzzing sensation by my neck stopped me about five feet from the incinerator. That had to be the warning the alien told me about, and I figured it would be just like him to send me here knowing I was only a few feet short of reaching my target.

I didn’t dare step another foot forward, and I couldn’t reach my arms out far enough to activate the incinerator to open.

“Sucks to be you,” a small voice snickered from behind the incinerator.

“Who’s there?” I asked, ready to bolt.

“Me,” a dirty-looking Pandraxian child poked out from behind the machine. She looked skinny, and her clothes were tattered.

“Can you help me?” I asked.

“That depends, what’s in it?” She pointed at the trash.

“Dirt, spoiled food, rags.” I shrugged, not having investigated what had already been inside before I added more during my cleaning spree.

“Can I have it?”

“You can have it all, just not the trash can,” I promised, wondering how I would stop her if she decided to take it and make a run for it. Would the alien zap me because I lost it?

“You’re staying with Gitgo?” she wanted to know.

“Yes.”

“Is he going to sell you?”

I blinked back tears. “I don’t know.”

“Probably. I’ve never seen something like you before. What are you?”

“A human,” I filled her in.

She shrugged, not caring. An idea formed in my head. “Listen, would you send a message for me? You will be highly rewarded,” I added for good measure.

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