Tales Between the Lines

V.I The Set Up

One fateful morning, Amber, who doesn't know her father has been the last king of Atlantis,* falls in love with an alpha werewolf, gets rescued by a vampire, abducted by Harry S., freed by a sexy, psychopathic mafia boss, loses her innocence to her zombified teddy bear, and finally marries prince charming aka Draco Malfoy who pretends to be a band member of bts.

Unfortunately, Amber instragrammed all of this to her best friend (live, including the scene with the teddy bear), who tried to warn her of prince charming. Yet, she thought she knew better.

However, Amber soon discovers her Draco's secret Wattpad account, where his HarryP fanfiction scores over 1M reads.

Desperate, disillusioned, and jealous, Amber seeks her friend's advice on Instagram just to find out said friend hit the hay with teddy bear and posted a video of it on YouTube, where she and teddy got instantly famous, leaving Amber alone to mourn her past relationships.

Amber spends a sleepless night locked into the hotel's honeymoon suite's bathroom and leaves Draco the first thing next morning.

That's the moment the alien spaceship lands and everything, really everything changes. For example, starting with that day, political leaders cease to be vain egomaniacs and start striving for the common good. Chocolate with less than 50% cocoa is banned. Pi changes from 3.1415926... to 3 to make life easier. Yet none of that matters. Some of the changes that do matter are the following:

1. Amber's Instagram friend discovers she is pregnant from the zombified teddy bear. While this has no further impact on this story, it matters a lot to the wider teddy bear community.

2. The seamless, flawless wall of the alien spaceship ripples. A pair of red lips forms on its surface and parts to reveal a dark opening. A red tongue glides out, licks the lips, and ventures forth, its tip searching for and finally finding the ground to form a soft, wet ramp. Gnash clears his throat and starts singing 'I hate u I love u' as the outlines of a brilliant figure paint themselves against the mouth's dark backdrop. Amber forgets about Draco and Harry as she lays eyes on the alien descending the ramp and swaggering into her world.

To Amber's considerable dismay, the sparkling** alien doesn't spare her a glance while strutting down the street in long strides. Aware that batting her fail-proof eyelashes at the retreating alien's back won't help her cause, Amber briefly considers to fake a fainting fit. But immediately she decides against it as her sister Ashley,*** clad in a neon pink miniskirt, enters the scene on a skirt-fitting pink scooter, giving Ashley all the advantages of the terrain.**** She swoops up to the alien, clearly in hunting mode. Amber has to act, and fast.

Meanwhile the alien stops unexpectedly at the corner shop, ignoring both his female admirers, and orders a pizza with extra mozzarella and basil. Chatting happily away with the pizzaiolo, he continues to ignore the sisterly chick fight taking place behind his back.

He picks up his cardboard box, hands over some cash, and returns to his ship in a cloud of hot pizza fragrance. Arrogantly ignoring the policeman trying to stick a parking ticket under the lid of the closed left eye of the spaceship, the alien enters his craft. The lips close behind him with a smacking sound around the still outstretched tongue.

For a moment, the latter conveys an unmistakable nonverbal message, one our law-abiding and self-important police officer is not ready to let pass.

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* A fact that is utterly irrelevant for the further development of this story, so you can safely forget about it.

** No, the alien's name isn't Edward. And it sparkles because it wears a sparkly alien space suit, not because it's a fancy vampire derivative.

*** Ashley is Amber's twin and half-sister (don't ask, it's complicated).

**** As happens in the best families, Amber and Ashley aren't exactly on the best terms when it comes to impressing their male prey.