Star Side

Chapter 17

Stellar date (Earth Time): 01-30-2914

I woke up to a monster.

At first I thought I was dreaming still (a really horrible dream, mind you). It had the look of something from the old Diablo video games, red and purple, demonic, horned, fanged, broad, ugly and malformed.

Then I realized it had a hand on my neck and fingers in my hair.

I screamed.

Its eyes popped open, yellow and slit-pupiled. It threw itself back and clicked its teeth in a mad chatter, taking several strands of my hair with it. Ow.

I dove towards my phone, which worked more like a small, interactive screen with the rest of the space station than it did an actual phone. My hand went past it, though, to the collar pin that pared with it and squeezed the buttons on either side hard.

"Levi! Alien! Levi!"

Said alien shook its head, as though to clear rattles from it and gave me an unmistakable, human-like frown.

This startled and unnerved me more than an actual demon ever would. It reminded me a an extracurricular class I took in college once studying the mechanics of horror entertainment, be it in books in movies. An important aspect of making something 'terrifying' was to mix the familiar and the unfamiliar, making it 'uncanny.'

That alien's frown made it the perfect mixture. I was terrified.

The pin buzzed. "Jo? You're awake?"

The alien's yellow eyes shifted to the button. The big, pointy ears on either side of his head twitched. A little tamer, they could be elf ears. That didn't help.

I snatched the pin to my chest in case the alien thought of making a dive for it, which wasn't the greatest idea looking back. "Demon alien," I choked. "Here. In the observatory." The yellow eyes flicked back to me and my breath caught in my throat, making my voice come out as a high pitched whine. "It's looking at me."

"Try to stay calm, Jo. Breathe. Don't give it a reason to—just hold still and breathe. I'm coming right now."

The demon was still frowning at me. I swallowed a whine and tried to breathe, as he said, but I only succeeded in making my nose whistle.

It ducked its horned head towards me, to better level it's creepy yellow eyes on me, and I swallowed back another scream.

It clicked its teeth again, this time behind closed teeth. A long, purple mane hung about its shoulders, broken only by the spike like horns on its head. A tail swung behind it, slow and steady, like a cat ready to pounce. The purple hair covered the tip of the tail, failing in hiding the black spikes within.

I thought of Joshua and venom.

My attention shot back up to the demon's face when it gave a low croon from its chest that vibrated through the floor to tickle the one heel I'd gotten out of my covers. A strange warmth went over my mind, as though a wave of hot water had brushed over my brain.

Safe. It didn't come through words, or even images, but in feelings and intention that, at first, I thought were my own, but then realized it couldn't be.

I shuddered beneath the reoccurring waves of safe across my mind, though it only served to make me feel just the opposite of that.

I pinched the communicator. "It's got some sort of telepathy. It wants me to think I'm safe with it."

Its eyes flicked down to the pin in my fingers, then to my mouth. Its tail gave a sharp flick.

"It can communicate with you? Damn, wait, did you say demon?"