Page 102 of Earth Girls are Easy… To Dominate
“Do you see love? Or is it too soon? For I have fallen in love with you…Jenny.”
The spaceship shakes. Alarms blare overhead.
“Don’t be frightened,” Var’n commands. “It’s time to drop patient 11760 in Earth’s Venezuela!”
The next few hours fly by as each of my ladies is returned home. We’ve talked about what will happen after their return, and Var’n assured me they won’t remember their time aboard. My job is to remove their pajamas and dress them in their own clothes. Each lady has a team of four little men disconnecting tubes and sliding them from their table to their transport pod. Each time an empty pod returns, the team runs a complex maintenance protocol before starting on the next lady. It’s swift, efficient, and terribly sad. I know the mission is to collect as much fluid as possible, so another group will be selected, but…
What about me?
“I can’t bear the sadness on your face, pet,” Var’n says after the last lady is returned. “Do you miss home?”
“Home?” Is Earth home? My little apartment, filled with more dreams than possessions, wasn’t home. My parents’ house hasn’t been home since I came of age, and my role went from daughter to voiceless pawn. My home is supposed to be the church, but how can I go back to hiding my body and hating my independence? How can I look forward to a loveless marriage under the thumb of Jimmy’s mother? Will I ever enjoy sex again without a strong man to dominate me and touch me where I need it most? Would that even be possible under a modesty gown?
“Is that your answer? Do you want to go home?” He looks over his shoulder at some imaginary noise, but I catch the pain in his eyes before we break eye contact. My commander would love nothing more than to order me to stay with him…but at heart, he is a fair man who would never force me.
“I can’t just disappear…” Or can I? Lisa’s warning rings in my ears as visions of my parents crying in my abandoned room haunt my mind.
“Then to Earth you shall go,” he snaps.
My mind spins with indecision until the stench of my corndog uniform hits my nose. What am I doing? My heart screams at me to say something, do something to stop him. I press my lips into the shapes, but none of the words come out. The layers of conditioning tobe sweetare too thick. I can’t fight my way through. I’m injected with something to make my limbs heavy.
“I had many hearts, but now they all belong to you,” Var’n says before turning away. He storms out of the laboratory in a flutter of robes.
As the glass over the transport pod lowers over me, I’m shut away from the life I’ve always wanted. Independence, purpose, love, and confidence are on the other side of the glass. I screamwith grief as the pod drops from the spaceship and hurtles toward the ground.
If I’m lucky, it will shatter.
“Hey, kid! Get up, lady! You shouldn’t sleep out here. There are drug addicts and weirdos in this parking lot at night!”
My mouth is dry as the desert, and my throat is raspy like I swallowed cotton balls, but otherwise I’m in one piece. A mall cop, wearing the nameSamon his badge, leans over me. His tinny voice rattles around my skull and pierces the vessel between my eyes. “Shh, shh, I’ll go. Just stop shouting.”
“You’ve been lights out. It was either yell at you to wake or ride inside to call for an ambulance,” he yells. His mustache twitches with each syllable, as if it’s alive. Maybe his normal speaking voice is the volume of a jet taking off. I shouldn’t judge him when he was kind enough to wake me instead of robbing me. “Did you get into a fight with someone? Were you attacked?”
“No,” I say, sitting up. My fingers snag on a bobby pin. While my hat lies a few feet away—in a puddle of sludge leaking out from the bottom of the dumpster—my bobby pins are ensnared in my hair. “I knocked over the bikes on the bike rack. I remember that much.”
“The bike rack is on the opposite end of the loading dock. Are you sure you’re okay? Maybe you should wait to stand up.”
“I need to go home,” flies out of my mouth. I don’t remember why, but I must go home. I must tell someone something. Something about hearts. I rub my chest as if that will help me remember. Do I have a heart condition? Did I have a heartattack? My fingers catch on something embedded in my skin. I tear at the buttons of my shirt.
“Whoa, whoa, lady, I’m an officer of the…the…mall. I can’t have you exposing yourself on mall property. I’m just doing my duty. You said you’re going home? Why don’t you call your folks from the security office?” He hikes his belt over his bulbous belly as he rocks back on his heels.
“My folks? Oh no, I don’t live with them. I live with Lisa,” I babble as my memories come flooding back. Damn buttons! They slip through their eyelets whenever I lean over the fryer, but now that I want them open, they give me fits! Wait, where is my turtleneck? Rad! Ditching the extra layer is a step toward reclaiming my life.
“Lisa?”
“You know, Lisa, from Chi-chi’s,” I reply, wiggling my hips with glee as the last button releases. Tucking my fingers under the harsh cotton, I feel the metal disc embedded in my skin. Where did I get this? Is it for my heart?
“I don’t know Lisa from Chi-Chi’s. I can’t eat that spicy stuff. It gives me heartburn, and I’m on my second one!”
“Multiple hearts?” Why does that make me sad? What are the odds that I had a heart transplant too, or that this is a pacemaker? No! I’m not the one with multiple hearts.
Var’n. I broke his hearts when I didn’t ask to stay. What have I done?
“Oh yeah, had my ticker replaced in ’84, that’s why I’m not on the force.”
“Fascinating,” I say with no real emotion. I sprint toward the bike rack, leaving Officer Sam in the dust with my soaking, smelly hat. Yes, I must get home…but not to my folks’ house or my apartment with Lisa. I belong in Var’n’s spaceship. There must be some articles at the library on UFOs. Maybe there willbe instructions on how to flag down a spaceship in one of the encyclopedias.
As the sun rises over the houses of suburbia, my heart breaks. The libraries won’t be open…it’s Sunday. I got back just in time to get ready for church and brunch. Nothing like a reunion with Jimmy, my parents, the prophet, and my future in-laws to rub my nose in my latest mistake. I let true love and bodily autonomy slip through my fingers…for what?
