Invited

Twelve - Wicken

The thing that sucks most about janitor duty is people do a lot of crappy things – literally and figuratively speaking. There are messes in the public restrooms that made me cringe. When I worked food service back home, I thought I had seen it all. Nope, the Persistence hit a whole new level of disgusting. I figured it was some kind of bizarre coping mechanism, like a rebellious teenager, or someone who just needed something to control in their life. Either way, ew. But I guess it gave me things to do besides wheel around trash all day from the marketplace.

While I worked, I thought a lot about Layla's proposal. Being her assistant would be a nice step up from being on the group chore wheel and hoping I didn't get stuck with the bad job for the day. Since I was newer to the ship, I tended to get the bad stuff a lot. Story of my life, right? Sure, I could work my way up the totem pole again, but why bother? Something was only going to squash me down again. That's how it always seemed to go.

Even before all of the alien business happened, I always got the short end of the stick it seemed. My family was great, happy, and thriving until I was three. Then my dad died and we lost everything because my mom got the bright idea to blow it on liquid comfort. As soon as he could, my older brother left home and didn't come back. Every so often we got a card letting us know he was okay, or you know, alive at least. I assume that means he's okay. For all I know he's a meth addict. On the other side of the spectrum, he could also be married with five kids. It's hard to say because his cards are always short and to the point. The message he sent was loud and clear: "I don't want anything to do with you. I'm only doing this to be polite."

High school I was popular because one of the cool girls decided to date me. She didn't want me though. I was a little too secretive in an effort to keep all of the family drama as far away from my school life as possible. After we broke up, she did the catty thing and ruined my social life by spreading rumors about me. Some of them I recovered from, and others I didn't bother trying. I stopped caring pretty quickly. Jobs came and went. I'd work my way up only to be screwed over by someone else in the company. Like I said, story of my life. Though the worst of all my letdowns came when I was removed from Salvation and sold over to Persistence.

Chevelle. I missed her like air. Most days, I had a hard time willing myself to even get out of bed because my heart hurt so badly without her. The only motivation I had to keep moving was the fact that maybe there was a small chance we'd be reunited again. Nothing I did would make this happen, of course. Knowing her, though, I was positive she was working day and night to come up with a plan along with everyone else. If not for that, I would have given up a long time ago and let myself be Gorgachan food.

Yeah, they ate people. Even if they looked human in appearance at first glance, there were a number of differences to their physical make-up that separated them far from the people of Earth. One was their large quantity of razor-sharp teeth, no doubt used to rip apart their high-meat diet. Their eyes were different too. Kind of similar to a cat. Finally, their skin was more pale. I'm not sure if that was because of the lack of natural sun or not.

On the Achlivan ship, there was a fake sun that assimilated the real thing pretty accurately. I certainly wouldn't have known the difference if I wasn't aware of being on a freaking spaceship. The Gorgachan ship, however, was another story. I'd yet to see anything that replicated sunlight, not even a tanning bed. How long would it take for that to mess a person up? I'd never stopped to think about how important such a simple thing was until I arrived on Persistence. Good thing I didn't plan on staying long.

I hummed while I made my rounds of the marketplace. The key was to push the trash around and make it look like I was working even though I wasn't. There was only so much to do and most of it was stuff I was going to pawn off on the other janitors of the day. Mean, I know. I needed to focus if I was going to weigh the pros and cons of Layla's offer. Deals with aliens were not something to be taken lightly.