The Spinster's Club

Amy: Eight

She didn't know what was more uncomfortable: the skin on her leg after having it scrubbed with paint thinner or her ass having tried to scrub off a permanent tattoo. No matter which, her body did not feel good.

Carrying her bowl of ice cream to the computer, Amy opened the word program and stared again at the file Cece had left her.

It wasn't the first time she'd read one of her friend's romances but it was the first time she realized that there was actual work involved in writing it.

All she had to do was resolve the final misunderstanding between the couple, give them a hot make up session of sex and write THE END. Cece practically gift wrapped her the damned book but Amy just stared at the screen and couldn't think of a single word to type.

"It's ridiculous," she told herself, "it's not like War and Peace. It's just nonsense."

She spooned some ice cream into her mouth and stared at the screen a little longer. The problem, she thought, was that it was romance. Anyone with any sense knew that romance was bunk. Just look at her friends: Cece was rutting like a crazed wombat with a Spanish karaoke second placer, Romy was freaking out over a tall firefighter and Cass, the most sensible of them, was completely insensible about a sleeping man in leathers.

And worst of all of them, was herself. All this time treating Dr McFrenchy like a gay best friend when he was straight all along and laughing at her all the damned while.

There wasn't enough ice cream in the world to survive that humiliation.

What she needed was an alien boyfriend, like in that cool Sci-Fi romance where the woman was overweight and bossy but ended up having hot alien sex.

"I'm overweight and bossy," Amy declared, "where's my alien boyfriend?"

Ha. Amy started chuckling as she typed. Instead of the heroine rushing back into the hero's arms, she drove out into an empty field with a gallon of fudge ripple ice cream to console her broken heart. As she sat on her car's hood eating her sorrows away and admiring the night sky, a bright light pierced the darkness and came to focus on her.

Ice cream and humiliation was forgotten as the words began to flow.

Shmurgh, an alien prince, fell madly in love at his first sight of the willowy redhead, Cinnomina, and transported her to his spaceship. Since Cinnomina was clutching her ice cream carton, that got transported too.

Despite their language barrier, Shmurgh did figure out how to regenerate the ice cream to keep Cinnomina fed. And the more ice cream she ate, the plumper she got which made Shmurgh love her even more.

When finally Cinnomina realized she had growing feelings for the alien prince, it was too late to run when he revealed his three headed, monster sized alien penis.

The telephone rang.

"Wait a minute," Amy said, "there are no telephones on spaceships."

It rang again.

It took her a moment to recognize that it was her phone ringing and she picked it up, shocked to see the main screen showing 7:37 am.

"Make it good," Amy barked, "or bring me a doughnut. I'm starving."

"Ames," Romy said, "I'm at the Coffee Klatsch. Where are you? I thought we were caffeinating together."

"Busy woman. Got a horny alien to take care of. Talk to you later."

She hung up on Romy's squawk of protest and readdressed the horny alien prince. Until the phone rang again at 8:15.

"Amy, it's Cass. Dr. Shepard's office needs a surgery scheduler and I told them about you and they're interested. Call them."

"Too busy. Did you know the planet Kreplach doesn't have a sugar equivalent?"

"Amy," Cass cried but Amy disconnected the call.

At 9:00 when the phone rang she almost didn't answer but curiosity got in the way.

"Speak."

"Amy, it's Sebastien. Are you free for lunch?"

"Of course not, I'm in the middle of an alien threesome. Thank God some of the Kreplachians are androgynous."

"What?"

"Sex, Seb. Rumpy pumpy. Hide the salami. The beast with two backs although they're not beasts, they're aliens and the backs are a little scaly. Oh hell, what if their scales changed color when they were being pleasures. Geez, I'll have to edit that in, it's brilliant."

"Amy, what are you talking about?"

"It's time that I take control. Grab the bull by the horns. I don't know Seb, I haven't slept in 32 hours. But the muse is biting my ass and I need to get back to my alien boyfriend. Is it normal to see purple dots in front of your eyes?'

"Amy..." he started but she had hung up.

Seb disconnected and stared at the phone in his hand. He had no reason to be concerned, she sounded off but not in danger. The muse and writing, well, he didn't know she was an author but that wasn't entirely unexpected. There was a lot of Amy and she probably needed at times to spill out onto a page.

But the alien boyfriend thing? That he didn't like. Amy could have a boyfriend but he was going to be French and he was going to be him.

It seemed like it was time to stop playing around and get down to real business. Seb pushed a few buttons on his phone.

"'Allo Bridget, I'm going to take the rest of the day off. Send my patients to Dr. Kildare. And if you don't hear from me tomorrow, do the fist pump in my honor."

He disconnected and headed toward the hospital exit.