Page 5 of My Big Alien Bodyguard

“Anything I decide makes you more compliant and productive is on the table.”

I take a deep breath and calm myself. Okay. I see what’s happening here. They’re ganging up on me. Trying to make me compliant. It’s not going to work. I have to show these guys that they’re not going to treat me like they usually treat their contracted starlets. They want to play hardball? I’ve got some hard fucking balls.

“Take it the fuck off the table, buddy, or I walk.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Simon Scowl purrs, his voice low, his eyes narrowed at me. “I don’t think you fully understand your situation.”

“I guess not. Why don’t you make it clear to me?” I try very hard to sound polite and in control. This is the voice I reserve for assholes who are fucking around, and at imminent risk of finding out. I know that he is giving me the world, maybe even a thousand worlds, but I still have my nerve.

“For all intents and purposes, I own you for the next three years, and I do mean literally own. There is nothing I cannot do to you,” Simon growls. “You have fewer rights than this rug.” He curls his sharp, clawed toes into the rug pile.

I feel a very unpleasant shiver run down the length of my spine. His words are bad enough, but his tone is worse. It is cold, devoid of any kind of emotion, and even worse, charm. Simon Scowl has always been the most charming, kind, engaging creature to interact with, but now there is none of any of that. I realize that I’m seeing the real Simon Scowl. The void that lives inside him is on full display in his leonine eyes. I am seeing the end of all things for one long moment. As soon as that blank stare comes, it goes again, replaced with a big, toothy grin and a charming smirk. “Do we understand one another?”

“Oh yeah. I understand.”

I understand I’ve fucked up. Big time. I need to get a lawyer, and I need to get the hell out of this situation.

“I need to make some calls,” I say. My ass is still stinging, and so is my pride. I need to regroup after all this physical and now emotional humiliation. It’s almost more than I can take. I can feel tears pricking at my eyes, threatening to have me break down completely. God, that would be so fucking embarrassing.

“No time for a call. You have the first of several placements to get ready for,” Simon says. “You’re advertising Schlorp Fish Stock, and after that, you’re advertising vodka. And Lyric. Try to look like you’re having a good time. We’re not paying you to look like a sad sack. Go wash your face. The makeup artist will be here soon to make you look presentable.”

I cast a brief glance over at Zayne, expecting to see him smirking. I was so sure that he was going to get in trouble for manhandling me. Instead, he got to watch Simon hand me my ass. But he’s not looking pleased at all. He’s frowning, and not at me for once, but at Simon Scowl. But he doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t do anything, and I leave with my nonexistent tail between my legs.

2

Lyric

“She’s a schlut for Schlorp!”An objectionable jingle is playing through speakers and filling the room all around us. It’s devastatingly cheerful and entirely saccharine, and very offensive.

It took over an hour of makeup to get me to look media ready. When I look at myself in the mirror, I barely recognize myself. I have been contoured, powdered, and colored down and up with various shades until I look…. Honestly, frighteningly like every other starlet from the last nine years. A curly blonde wig has been installed on my head, and blue contacts have been put into my eyes. I already have blue eyes, but these make my eyes seem wider and brighter and even bluer. I’m almost not even myself at this point. Makes me wonder why they signed me at all, given they could have chosen literally any female-shaped human for what is turning out to be a dream nightmare.

“Here’s the script, memorize it.” Simon thrusts a piece of paper into my hand. There’s literally one line on it.

“I’m a schlu… for Schlorp… I’m not saying this!”

“Say the lines, or you’ll be having another very unhappy conversation, with me this time,” Simon Scowl threatens. I glance at him, because that is all I dare to do. If he sees the full expression in my eyes, he might decide to come for me regardless.

I am stuck on a set that has been put together in one of the rooms of my suite. There’re cameras, lighting, and a product that makes me gag. Schlorp’s Fish Stock is made out of rancid fish put into old stockings and left to marinate for years. It’s truly pungent, to the extent I am almost certain they are not going to be able to get the stench out of the soft furnishings.

“We need you to appear to drink the product,” the director says. He’s human and entirely uninterested in anything that doesn’t further the goal of selling fish sauce to the masses.

“No, man. Absolutely no.”

“Say the line. I’m a schlut for Schlorp!” Simon prompts me.

And that’s when I hit my breaking point. It sort of sneaks up on me, just out of the blue. Being stopped from talking to my fans was the first straw, being spanked was a good bale or two, but being forced to drink rancid fish is a whole damn haystack. I know that I’ve been given the chance of a lifetime, but the chance of a lifetime doesn’t feel like it’s worth a damn right now.

“You’re a schlut,” he repeats the humiliating tagline.

“You’re a fucking schlut,” I reply, tossing the open vessel of sauce directly at Simon Scowl. I follow up by storming off the set.

This time, Zayne doesn’t stop me. He has been leaning back against the wall, his arms folded over his chest, watchingproceedings with an eagle eye. I pull the fingers to him on my way past, discarding the wig as I go. That’s not an easy job. The thing is pinned in there so many ways it’s probably going to take a small extraction team to release it.

I curse up a storm until I finally have the thing off. My actual hair is aching all the way down to the roots, and I feel like my face is caked in about half a mile of makeup. I want it off. I want it all off. I don’t want to be the Interstellar Starlet anymore. I just want to be me.

Zayne

I just barely repress my smirk as Simon Scowl comes up to me, dripping fish sauce from the end of his mane. He licks the back of his hand, wipes it over his face and nose, then licks the furred back of his hand again with obvious enjoyment.

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