Page 1 of Time Traveling Space Bastards
When I was seven, three time traveling space bastards crashed into our pool and ruined my life.
Twenty-one years, a lot of psychologists, and a lot of bullying later, I've gone no contact with everyone from back then. I'm now a twenty-eight-year-old commitment-phobe who runs a bookshop and writes Sci-Fi smut based on the aliens who crashed into my pool. Well, that's not right. I'm just a cashier at the bookshop and I have so few fans, the bookshop I work at won't even stock my books.
I didn't think anyone from my old life even knew where I was until the time traveling space bastards show back up with a little more information on why they ruined my life. They are archaeologists from an alien planet and my little unloved Sci-fi series is their bible. I never finished the last book because I have writer's block, but I intended to.
I mean, I'm twenty-eight. I thought I had time. They said in four weeks, I'm going to get murdered. It's never solved. They are here to save my life so I can finish this series because their society is on the brink of a religious war. Except aside from a few guys I ghosted and stole their hoodies, I can't think who would want to kill me or why. And I really don't want to get murdered.
No pressure on beating the writer's block.
When I was a kid, my dad used to say I’d be a surgeon, or a classically trained musician. Sorry, Dad. I still play the piano, but I grew up to write alien smut. You saw my math grades. Med school never would have accepted me.
Focus that telescope, Mrs. Peterman. Catch my long, blue hair that you hate so much. I’m hoping you see me sneaking out of the fire escape of your neighbor’s apartment and hate me so much, you just want me gone. I don’t need you calling him or the cops.
Because I couldn’t explain myself. Not in any way that made sense. There wasnothingwrong with the guy I was leaving. He was sweet, supportive, funny, and easy to look at. We got along great and Damon would probably make someone an amazing partner one day.
I just had massive commitment issues, and I didn’t need anyone looking that hard at me. Not boyfriends and definitely not cops. My IDs and social security numbers were all fake. They belonged to some boy who died when he was five, but was the same age as me. The person I bought them from encouraged me to go with a girl, but I just vibed with the name.
Baxter Holmes was just a badass name. It was much better than the one I was given at birth, but I didn’t want to be that girl anymore. I’d planned to run and go no contact for as long as I could remember.
Tonight was the anniversary that started all the bad shit in my life. I’d been gaslit, medicated, and bullied over that night because everyone insisted I was making up stories, but I knew what I saw. It was fucked up, but it happened.
So, it was a combination of things that had me sneaking out of the fire escape of a frankly really great guy after he’d fallen asleep with the intention of ghosting him after. We’d been dating for two months and I hadn’t told him a damned thing about my past.
He'd started asking and even the most patient person was bound to get irritated if they knew someone was keeping secrets. I wasn’t going to lie and give him a sunshine and roses story. Best to just cut my losses and run. But yeah, this was my pattern. I’d been in enough therapy to know that.
Today also seriously fucked with my head. It hit me as soon as the clock on the nightstand hit midnight. It was the weirdest night of my life and Iknewwhat the story sounded like, even at seven-years-old, but it was real.
I could see Mrs. Peterson’s shadow behind the sheer drapes of her window. She’d been watching me climb out of the window and scale the fire escape. She was a busybody who spied on everyone and called the cops over everything. Mrs. Peterson called a few times if she didn’t like the look of the driver if someone was ordering delivery.
I had a few things on my side. Dispatch was used to Mrs. Peterson, her telescope, and her constant phone calls, and so was the local police station. They weren’t going to come flying in their squad cars with the lights on. I’d known Damon two months, and he told me all about her. She called at least twice aweek and there was never a crime going on. This was a fairly safe neighborhood.
Parking was a bitch, though. My car was about a block away. I knew Mrs. Peterson was watching me through her telescope. I threw up both middle fingers and grinned. I pulled the hood of Damon’s hoodie over my head and started walking towards my car.
Because I always left at the two-month mark and stole a hoodie to remember them by.
Iplanned to get shitfaced when I got home, pass out, and do nothing all day. I worked at an indie book shop and the owner, Kevin, was a complete turd, but he at least gave me this day off every year with little grousing.
Therapy and anti-psychotics didn’t help me deal with what I saw. Nah, that was all focusing on making me think it was all in my head and trying to prevent future hallucinations. It was real and I couldn’t talk toanyoneabout it without them thinking I was insane.
Sometimes, they just made fun of me, but there were a few seventy-two hours holds in here and a lot of side effects from the various drugs they put me on until I started playing their game and pretending like it never happened.
Now that I was away from all those people, I still didn’t talk about it with people because I’d learned my lessons, but I needed to make sense of it. They clearly weren’t going to come back and explain like they promised.
So, I wrote a story. Fuck, I wrote a whole series. I couldn’t exactly ask on the internet if my story had happened to other people. There were way too many bots and trolls for that. So, I self-published it thinking maybe someone would read the blurb and reach out.
That was kind of a bust. I sold exactly twenty-five copies. Of an entire four book series. There were supposed to be five books, but I had a wicked case of writers’ block and had no idea how to end the series because I still didn’t know what all of this meant.
I asked Kevin to stock my books in his store and he gave me this long-winded, pretentious speech that I frankly drowned out right after he said no, but sometimes, he said things like he read it, liked it, and was waiting for the last book. He’d never admit it, but he’d say things when he was yelling at me that you’d only say if you’d read my books more than once.
Parking wasn’t great at my apartment either, and my neighborhood wasn’t as safe as Damon’s. Still, I’d done this enough times that I could walk of shame in a stolen hoodie without getting mugged or murdered.
Except there was a bus stop near my apartment that wasn’t there before and I knew that bus stop. The graffiti looked like it was done by someone with a hard on for Sci-fi movies, but the bus stop itself was a little too nice to have been put in by literally any of the cities I lived in.
That was the same bus stop that landed in our pool when I was home alone at seven-years-old and startedallthe bad shit in my life. Which meanttheywere back. Oh, that was rich. They promised they needed to fix a little machinery and they would be back in minutes.
It had been twenty-one fucking years.
I had no proof they ever crash landed in our pool because that fucking bus stop was really a time machine or a spacecraft or some shit and they were all aliens who kept calling me theDevouring Mother. They took their bus stop time machine to fix it and weresupposedto come back for me in minutes.
