Epsilon Mate: An Omegaverse sci-fi tale

Chapter 5

Jessie

He fucked me again. I had been angry with him, trying to make him see how weird this whole setup was, but he did it anyway. And then, when I thought it was all over, he bit me. Sheer white blinding agony burst through my consciousness. I scratched at him but my stupid nails were too short, following the regulations for working with food. I tried to beat him off but I wasn't strong enough. He was enormous, built like a boxer or a WWE wrestler, and I had no chance of overpowering him.

The whole time, he was making that weird purring noise, that seemed designed to block out any thoughts or feelings I had, and make me more compliant.

I hated it. Hated what it did to me. And I hated him, too. He was seriously starting to piss me off.

I fizzed with energy. It radiated through me from the place where he'd bitten me. I didn't want to know what was happening. Probably something grim.

It was difficult to stay awake and present. The stupid purring made my eyes heavy. My mind wandered. Distant. Like this was all happening to someone else.

Maybe it was.

There were too many different things to take in. Aliens were real. Let's start there. How long had they been out there? Watching. Waiting for a moment like this.

In my mind they were the worst kind of predators. They were invading us. And I didn't believe for one minute that I was one of them. Bollocks to that. Was I really the first girl they'd taken? Given how manipulative he was, I shouldn't believe a word he said. They'd probably taken dozens of us. I'd watched V. It made perfect sense that aliens would try to breed with us. It was always male aliens and female humans. How long had they been here? Were all those sci-fi books and movies written by aliens to make us believe aliens were just stories?

How long had they been here? That was the most important question. They could have been watching. Grooming us. Getting us ready for them to pounce. Teaching us to be pacifists so we wouldn't fight back. People were so scared of confrontation, they'd accept almost anything these days rather than fight for themselves.

How long had they been here? How many of them walked among us, with passports, and driving licenses, mortgages and council tax bills? It must have been so easy for them to infiltrate the planet. Did I go to school with any of them? The thought twanged against my brain at the same moment another one appeared. My foster parents. A parade of them. I'd had more foster parents than class teachers at school. Some of them had kept me a few days. Others had me for months. None had ever wanted me for more than a year or two.

Any of them might have been aliens. Dad number five, Bob Simpkins, had been a gym instructor. A huge man.

You didn't eat your vegetables. Drop and give me three hundred!

His voice still echoed in my mind, making me feel sick to think about. Five-year-old me had tried so hard to please him in the hope that he'd stop forcing me to do exercise. He'd been barred from having any more foster kids after he made Lucas run up and down the street at one in the morning. Punishment for not going to sleep. Lucas had died of exhaustion. Bob had gotten a slap on the wrist from the police and a GoFundMe for his legal bills from other men who liked to "keep order" in their homes. Sick fucks, the lot of them.

But now I wondered if he was one of these aliens. Whether his friends had been, too. Men who liked to boast about how they'd punished their kids.

My nine-year-old got lippy with me so I gave her a backhander across the face. Knocked her clean off the sofa. Heh.

Bob had nothing on dad number twelve. No. There was no dad number twelve. I drowned out half-memories of a man who I still had nightmares about. Mom number twelve had been a single parent. If I said it enough times, one day, I'd believe it. Right?