Epsilon Mate: An Omegaverse sci-fi tale

Chapter 6

Several weeks later

Jessie

I closed the door to my room in the flat I shared with two other young professionals. Correction. They were professional. Office jobs or something. I was earning more money than them and probably having more fun. Sometimes I even wore a shirt.

I kicked off my shoes and laid on the bed, enjoying not being upright for a few minutes, and savoring my room. It was the nicest space I'd ever slept in.

The walls were a pale gray, and I'd hung pictures which I'd made by flicking a paint brush at thick sheets of paper I'd found in a discount art store. I called it abstract. I'd been learning from YouTube. I'd never had the money to do art, before, and I regularly had sheets of newspaper covering the floor so I could do some creative work without messing up the landlady's carpet. It was a pleasant floral carpet, but I couldn't see it beneath pages of The Daily Telegraph.

On my nightstand there were two things; a big glass of fruit juice and my new phone. I had become an avid reader since I'd discovered I could download books onto my phone and read them anywhere.

But my favorite thing in this room stood near the door. My work shoes. Eight-inch stripper heels with big platforms. Transparent, just like Cinderella's glass slippers. Every time I put them on, I felt like a princess. I wasn't a stripper, but I couldn't understand why women didn't wear shoes like this more often.

It was two months since I'd been abducted by the creepy sex cult aliens. On a good day, I could almost believe I imagined it all to gloss over however I arrived here from Aberford.

The mark on my neck had scabbed and turned into a swollen, dark blue bruise. Over the weeks, it had faded to purple several times, but each time I bumped it, or forgot about it and wore my shoulder bag on that side, it flared up again, angry and painful. I took a shower and put some cream on, not worrying too much about letting it show since I was alone at home. Usually I hid it with waterproof concealer.

I settled down on the sofa with a big bag of Doritos. Flicked through channels. Sloshy crap. Jeremy Vine or Jeremy Kyle? I could never remember which one talked about unemployed and poor people behind their backs and which one hated on them upfront. Either way, I didn't want to know. I switched over to Box or No Box, the quiz show that centered around whether the contestants had a box in their pocket or not.

Of course, the producers always knew who had a box and who didn't.

I was looking up an online TV guide on my phone when the front door banged.

"Hello?" I called out. "Bex? Zara?"

"Hey, Jessica!" Bex's voice was a relief. Every time I heard the front door, for a split-second I always thought one of those giant aliens had caught up with me. Or whatever they were. The jury was still out on whether they had been aliens or not.

I'd been seeing Dr. Google, the free psychotherapist who didn't write reports, about the whole ordeal and Dr. Google had suggested I might have interpreted the traumatic situation as aliens, when in reality it was just a kidnapping and rape, to explain to myself why I'd been unable to fight back.

"Oh my God, what did you do to your neck?" Bex asked. I hesitated, because I didn't know how to explain or even if my memory was reliable. Even if it was, I'd sound bonkers to other people.

"I think it was a bite. Not sure."

"You don't know? But it's huge!" She pulled down my bathrobe on that side and stared at the thing in its entirety.