Alkedi Outpost 8

Alkedi Quartet at Outpost 8

I was kidnapped from earth along with hundreds of other women, stripped naked and folded into a cage no bigger than a dog crate. I was fed white bars once a day that were nearly impossible to chew.  I drank greenish water from a slow trickling tube that tasted like algae.  I crapped and pissed in the corner of my own cage.  Maybe once a week the alien kidnappers threw white powder at us, coating us in what I assumed was a talcum powder like substance but never rinsed it off.  It was disgusting.  The huge warehouse like space we were in reeked. The low hum of an engine barely noticeable under the screams, shouts and crying of the women. This was my existence for weeks.  Maybe longer.  I really thought I was going to die. Or I was in purgatory already.

I was jerked awake during one of my moments of actually sleeping by a huge shudder through the chamber.  Red lights and alarms started flashing and screeching. The women began wailing all over again.

I was so exhausted, malnourished, and beat down to the point that I just laid there waiting for what could truly be worse than this.

Male shouts and loud blasts were heard from outside the cave of doom and then a long silence, permeated by the acrid smell of smoke.

I simply closed my eyes and willed myself back to sleep.  I was weak, starved, and covered in months of my own fecal matter and white talcum powder.  I was defeated.

The big bay doors opened and instead of the lizard men, in walked dozens of black scaled barbarians with huge luminescent eyes.  They covered their noses, peeked into the cages and spoke in a foreign tongue to each other.  They opened the first cage nearest the door and pulled out the first listless woman.

I watched as their eyes narrowed and rage took them over.  I couldn't say why they were so upset in that moment. I was too out of it.  But they seemed to be retrieving all of us now with more vigor, passing us down the line of their men, out into the hall to who knows where.

When they got to my cage and pulled me out, I was genuinely surprised at how gentle they handled me.  My legs screamed, as they haven't been extended straight in what seemed like an eternity.  At arms length I was handed from one to another, like a bucket brigade until the dark grimy walls shifted to clean cream colored ones.  Had we changed ships?

There was a pause as I was held erect inside a tube with one of them and gold light shimmered all over my body, a fizzling tickle coursing over my skin.

Then I was out of the tube and being carried again, realizing I had just undergone a shower of some sort.  I was squeaky clean without ever using water.  I was then placed on a bed where a blue light scanned over my body.  This took a few seconds, but looking around me there were other beds with women in them and some still empty, so it looks like we were not holding up their efficient little line.

Once the blue scan was complete, one of the black scaled guys stepped up next to my head and turned it to the side.  He pressed something behind my ear then shot something into me. It stung.  But I could hardly move to even react to it.

I was then given what I'm guessing were either vitamins or inoculations into my forearm via a hand held gun that sounded like compressed air. 

I was carried by a single one of these guys to an actual bed, a bunk bed, but a bed none the less, and laid down.  Another one showed up two seconds later with a bowl of broth and a tin cup of tea by the smell of it.  I was so starved and thirsty and didn't even question it.  By the looks of the other women, neither did they. 

The second the bowls were empty they were removed and someone came by with long t-shirts and thick wool like blankets.

Nobody really talked.  It was kind of crazy how nobody talked actually.  We were all so grateful to get out of that hell hole, so shell shocked by it all, that we just accepted whatever these new guys were throwing our way without question simply because it was better.  They weren't human, they were definitely alien.  This wasn't Earth, and we weren't at home.  But I wasn't hurting or starving, or covered in my own shit anymore.  This was better.  All that mattered was this was better.