Page 7 of Beauty and the Alien Beast
“Smile, earthling,”my bull-horned captor instructed in a syrupy voice while his fists clenched around a crystal pain stick. “You do not smile enough.” The scar tissue that stretched across his skin pulled the side of his mouth into a permanent smirk that I desperately wanted smack away.
“How about you hop in this cage in my place and tell me how much you feel like smiling, you bull-horned freak?” I snapped.
Fuck you, asshole alien. You can make me bleed, but you cannot break me.
I didn’t know his name, and he hadn’t asked for mine. All I knew was this overseer was even bigger than the other Omers I’d seen so far.
He smiled, stepping a little closer to the bars of my cage before running his thumb over what he called the pain stick. I barely had time to brace for impact before my body started to lock up and waves of agony jolted up my spine. But I forced myself to stay on my feet.
He turned up the power. My knees shook, forcing me to brace myself against the wall as the pain raced through my veins. Logically, I knew this torture was just remote nerve stimulation, but it felt like my spine was being yanked out of my body.
Fuck! Fuck! Oh God, Ella—no, don’t start crying. Don’t scream. Don’t give him the fucking satisfaction!
I held on and held on and held on, while his scowl deepened and he turned up the dial on the pain stick.
“Stubborn female. Don’t you know this could kill you?” He never ceased to be shocked at my pain tolerance.
Finally, he deactivated the stick.
I sagged against the bars, wheezing with every breath I took.
He stared at me wide-eyed. “Is it your desire to die, human? Is that it? If you do not learn compliance, you will be euthanized.”
“Do it,” I hissed. “Put me out of my misery. I’d rather die than shame myself and my mother by turning into some smiling, compliant little ‘hostess.’”
“Stupid earthling!” He snarled before activating the pain stick again.
I doubled over, feeling the energy punch against my stomach as though I’d been hit by a boxer fighting for a championship belt. I gagged, determined to avoid vomiting my last meal. But he just kept increasing the pain, which felt like a spiked baseball bat pummeling my body.
Growling in frustration, he cut off the pain stick again.
I was shaking all over and bathed in sweat, but I still met his gaze when he locked eyes with me.
“What madness afflicts you, earthling?” he demanded.
I smirked at him through the bars. “Go ahead. Hit it again. Knock me out. Make me shit myself. All you’re doing is fueling my hate fire, asshole.”
I didn’t know how many days and nights had gone by since I’d been brought to this place. Very little changed day to day, and the bland beige slop they fed me showed up irregularly. I suspected they were trying to disorient me. Sometimes the food arrived only when I had been starving for hours, but occasionally, they brought the slop while I was still digesting the last serving of the tasteless mess.
And my cage became an uncomfortable home they kept me in for hours without fail. The only time I was permitted to leave was after every meal when they took me to a small white cubicle with a squat toilet and handheld shower. There I could take care of my bodily needs and clean myself up. Right now, my death grip on the bars was the only thing keeping me upright, and I knew the sweat would itch once it dried on my skin. I craved one of those showers, but I wasn’t about to kiss his ass to get it.
The overseer frowned. “The longer you fight, the longer your conditioning period and the more you get tortured. Give in, human. Accept your fate, and things will go better for you.”
Oh, really, asshole? You want to feed me that line of bullshit? I know you’ll torture me either way because you like it. There are guys like you on Earth… I know the type.
I smiled sweetly up at him, which made his brow knit in confusion. He bent a little closer to me, examining my face. Then in a low, intimate voice, I said simply, “Go fuck yourself.”
“I’ll break you. This I swear,” he barked before stomping out of the space.
Alone, I let my knees buckle and fell onto my cage floor. The pain from being tortured had left me nauseated and exhausted, but I hung on to my emotional strength. I would survive, and no amount of torture was going to break me. They could continue their abuse, but I’d still cling to my free will.
“Girl, you are crazy,” came a voice from my left.
Turning my head, I glared at the tiny, athletic woman with a Los Angeles accent who watched me knowingly from inside her own cage. She had the same gold translator disks hooked into the lobes of her small ears.
“Don’t you know they have a time limit on how long they’ll put up with your shit? He isn’t kidding about euthanizing you if you won’t get with the program.”
During my stay, the room had slowly filled with other kidnapped human women. There were maybe a dozen of us now, of all ethnic backgrounds. From the looks of it, we varied slightly in age. And we were all dressed in assorted colors of weird alien lingerie, which ranged from flattering to stripper-embarrassing.
