Page 25 of Holiday with the Aliens

I was ready to give up on that aisle when a woman’s scream cut through the store.

I froze, unsure of what to do. What was going on? Was it Evil Alien Santa? Or maybe the other Santa? Or the hot alien? What was going on?

A braver person would have run towards the action to figure it out. Or maybe would have called the authorities. I was frozen, unable to do anything but clutch the toy I was holding like it was a real blaster.

I didn’t know what to do.

The woman screamed again.

I had to move. I had to dosomething. But before I could take a step, a force hit me hard enough to knock the wind out of me and I fell to the ground as blackness swallowed me whole.

Chapter 2

Jody

What was going on? Where was I?

My eyes flickered open and any hope that I had collapsed from low blood sugar evaporated. There was something metallic overhead and lights flashed. My body felt weird. Like I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.

Was I on a spaceship?

I had never left the planet before. I didn’t know what it felt like to be subject to anti-grav. But a quick shift of my head revealed the toys that I had been looking at only a few minutes ago.

Was it a few minutes? How long had I been out?

Whyhad I been out? I had never fainted before in my life. I hadn’t been feeling sick. Had the Evil Santa done something?

I had no proof. No reason to really think it, other than the fact that he looked kind of scary. But the suspicion made me bite back a groan as I turned over and scrambled onto my hands and knees. I didn’t want to stand all the way up. With the way my stomach was roiling and my vision was fuzzy, I wasn’t sure that I could. And I wasn’t going to risk falling back over and making a noise.

I had to stay quiet.

Something was up. I had to figure out what, or there was no getting out of the situation. Or maybe I had hit my head when I fell, and now I was suffering from paranoid delusions.

Wouldn’t I know if I was suffering from paranoid delusions?

No. That’s why they call them delusions.

I was getting sidetracked. Delusions or not, I needed to act, otherwise I was never getting out of the aisle.

Crawling wasn’t as easy as some of my preschoolers made it look. The floor underneath me was some kind of hard tile, and though it looked clean when I was standing up, now that I had my hands on it I could tell it was filthy.

I shuddered. Gross.

I kept my head down. Eventually I made it to the edge of the aisle, where I could peek out and see what was going on. Was I the only one who had collapsed? Was this really something that was just about me? Or had the other people in the store been affected?

My answer came swiftly.

It wasn’t just me. The human Santa and his green-clad elf were sitting against a counter and they looked terrified. From the vicious look on Evil Santa’s face, it was obvious why. He had done something. He was saying something. Ranting. But I was too far away to make it out. I didn’t even know if he was speaking English.

I didn’t have a subdermal translator. They were expensive, and I didn’t really need one in my day-to-day life. So hopefully the alien either had a translator of his own or he spoke English. And maybe he just looked angry. Hopefully.

Resting alien bitch face. It was a thing. Right?

Given the way human Santa and the elf flinched away from his latest roar, it wasn’t resting alien bitch face.

Damn. I crawled back into the aisle before anyone could see me. But not before I saw Evil Santa banging something against the counter. It was dark and small enough to be held in his hand. A communicator? No way to know without getting close. And there was no way I was getting close.

But that made me think of my own communicator. If something was up… if he was doing something to us… if he wanted to hold us hostage… I needed to get help here.

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