Page 2 of His to Worship

My body shudders as my eyes nearly bulge out of my head in the face of the creature’s prism-shaped oculars. It stares at me before slowly tilting its head to the side as if analyzing. To my horror, it opens its manacles wide and makes the same clicking sound I remember from my dream. The weird laugh-gurgle. Mercifully, it turns away and leaves. I hear the slide of the lock and then a scurry of legs against the floor. And then silence.

Feeling like a deer in headlights, my eyes shift to the girls on the floor. I see each one’s chest give a small rise and fall, and I feel a grain of relief that they’re all alive. But it hits me then. I may not know exactly where I am, but I do know one thing with complete certainty. I’ve been abducted.

By aliens.

***

They’ll probably foreclose on my house within the year.

For some reason, it’s the thing my mind continues to circle back to after the hours I’ve been stuck in this caged room. At least it feels like hours; there isn’t exactly a clock in here. But, what about my house, though?

After spending my entire life giving everything to other people, whether my family or romantic relationships or friendships, my house was the first thing I ever did for me. And to have bought a house at twenty-five? I am—was so proud of that little place.

No one else liked it. It was a fixer-upper, old, and had a lingering mothball smell from the elderly woman I bought it from—but it was mine, I bought it just for my enjoyment and I loved it.

So my brain keeps circling back to thinking about what happened to it. Who would have finally gone to my house and figured out I was missing? I could guess it would be someone from my job conducting a wellness check when I no-call, no-showed multiple times in a row. It’s not like Perfectly Reliable Sedona Branco to up and disappear. I’d been teaching at that school since I graduated college. In three years, I’d only missed two days, both of which I had a doctor’s note to excuse.

Sometimes, my mind flits over the thought of what my mom said when she found out. We’d been no-contact for almost five years. What a way to break that streak. “Hey, I know you haven’t seen her in years and didn’t even know where she was located, but your daughter appears to have been abducted. No biggie.”

I clutch my hand to my heart, trying to squeeze hard enough to push away the pain creeping into my chest from my thoughts. I’m quickly realizing that thinking about my life on Earth is a no-go. Who I was and what I had before this moment just seems frivolous now. I’m no idiot; I know that I won’t make it back home and the girl that I once was is light years away. Literally. Now, I have to figure out how Space Sedona survives. Besides, stewing on it can make you hysterical.

“Please be a dream. Please be a dream. Please…” The sudden, repeated plea breaks out, and harsh sniffles quickly follow before a broken sob echoes off the metal walls.

Hysterical like that.

The other girls had finally woken up and we were all coping…differently. There’s the town crier, an absolutely gorgeous brown-skinned girl with wide eyes and round cheeks. She’s the one repeating the litany of pleas. Then, there’s the stony silent one who looks to be the oldest of us here, maybe in her thirties, with long locs and sharp faerie-like features. And the last one is the curvy pixie-looking woman with shorn curls and tanned skin. She’s been staring calmly at her hands the whole time. Of all of us, she seems the least surprised or bothered to have ended up here.

For my part, I’ve been curled in the ball I’d been in since the aliens left, trying my best to process that I am never getting home and that my life as I knew it is over.

“Where are we?” The question comes out of nowhere and completely derails my existential thoughts. I look up at the speaker, the older girl, in surprise. She’s looking directly at me, so I know the question is meant for me. She was the first of the three to wake up, so she knows that I woke up before everyone else.

“I don’t really know.” I hesitate, wondering if they’ll think I’m crazy with what I say next. “I think we were kidnapped by aliens.”

I expect everyone to scoff at me and call me a liar or insane. But instead, they each look around us and it’s as if I can see the belief settle over them as they take in our surroundings. The crying one actually looks…relieved?

“Aliens did this?” she asks, her tears slowing.

“Yeah,” my voice is hoarse and I clear my throat, “these praying mantis alien things.”

“You were awake the whole time?” Pixie Girl asks me.

“Not for everything. I woke up here just like you guys, but I was alone. Then they brought you all in right after I woke up.”

“Do you think they can understand us?” Cryer questions. “Should we try to tell them there’s been a mistake?”

Giving a shrug, I say, “I don’t know if they can speak to us. They make clicking noises when they talk.”

“Besides, I don’t think they kidnapped us by mistake.” It’s Locs Girl who says this, giving Cryer a raised eyebrow.

“Oh, right.” Her words are forlorn but for now, the tears seem to be gone.

“If I had to guess,” Pixie tells Cryer, “I’d imagine that they can’t hear or really understand us. They probably only sense vibrations.” We all look at her and there’s silence followed by her sheepish addition, “I am—was an entomologist back home.”

“Wow, well, we should come up with a plan, you guys.” Locs Girl moves to sit near me and the other two girls shift creating a circle of the four of us.

“Is it even worth trying?” The entomologist picks at her nails as she speaks.

“Everything feels pretty hopeless right about now,” Cryer adds in a forlorn voice.

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