Page 2 of Alien's Challenge
Alice was better off without Travis. Miriam could have him. The ink wasn’t even dry on the divorce papers before he started putting the moves on her coworker.
Not that Miriam was anything but professional during work hours. She seemed to recognize that Travis was a giant douchebag. A fact that had taken Alice years to see. So it was a complicated mess of feelings, most of which fell on Alice.
Ugh. She wanted to get away from this garbage.
Alice tilted her face to the sky, which had turned a deep violet as the sun slipped behind the trees. She needed a drink. She needed to get laid.
She couldn’t do anything about that, but there was pizza.
“We might as well eat before it gets cold,” Alice said. A low-carb pizza sounded like it would taste terrible. Being cold would only make it worse. “Pull up a piece of ground. I’ve only got one chair.”
Alice had no intention of being a gracious host and giving up her seat. Miriam was ten years younger than her and probably did yoga every morning. She could sit on the ground without her knees and back complaining.
“Awesome.” Miriam folded her legs and sat gracefully on the ground like it was nothing. “I really am sorry. I just posted a picture to my Insta, and it became a thing.”
Alice saw the photo, a dumpster behind the school filled with old textbooks they had weeded out to make room for new books. #backtoschool #weedingthelibrary
The internet lost its collective mind.
Look, twenty-year-old textbooks did not help anyone. In fact, parents screamed about outdated textbooks. Old textbooks got weeded to make room for the new books, and that usually meant going to the dumpster. There wasn’t a farm upstate that took elderly textbooks, and precious few places accepted donations, let alone two hundred and fifty copies of US History that didn’t include the last two presidents.
Yeah, it was unfair, but sometimes books have to go to the big library in the sky.
But there was Shakespeare in the dumpster!
The internet was not having it.
The world will not miss thirty copies of a 1997 edition of Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare will survive,she wrote.
Maybe that hadn’t been the smartest comment. Live and learn. Ever since her inane decision to engage on social media, the messages and emails hadn’t stopped. Her mother called wanting to know what Alice had done. Even Travis seemed concerned.
So a weekend in the woods seemed a good idea. Smart, even.
The problem was, between the earnest but insulting comments about her weight and trekking all the way out here with a pizza, Alice couldn’t tell if Miriam was sincere or not.
That’s a lot of work just to get a fat joke in. So, probably sincere. Clueless, but sincere.
“I’m not upset with you,” Alice said.
A white light flooded the area, blinding her.
Chapter 1
Alice
Today’s outlook: it’s gonna suck.
In all fairness, all the days had sucked since Alice went camping and subsequently got abducted by aliens. Nothing about today was remarkable on the suckage meter. Same old, same old, sitting on an ornate cushion on the floor, wearing a collar attached to a leash.
There were certain unexpected events that Alice had mentally prepared for. Sinking in quicksand? She had a plan. Need to send a message to her past self to save the future? She already picked out a password. Zombies? Aim for the head and destroy the brains.
Alien abduction while camping? Not so much. It was ironic because that was how it always happened in the movies. Okay, maybe one movie, but it made an impression on her.
That she was even camping was bullshit. Yeah. She wasn’t a fan of camping, even if that had more to do with the alien abduction than actually struggling to pitch a tent.
Long story short, bright light, floating off the ground, little green— gray? —men, and she woke up here.
Well, nothere, here. At a warehouse was her best guess. The building had that cold, industrial look with concrete floors and harsh lighting.
