Colonel Seeders' Mail Order Bride, Hank

4 Rachelle

Red lights flashed around the ceiling. A dull buzz echoed through the silent office. Blood stained the white walls and smooth, dark varnish of the redwood desk that she despised as much as the man that usually sat behind it.

Robert Frebasch, Senior manager of the Beta-district on Space station GNT54-B12, stared up at the red lights, no longer seeing anything or sneering in that hungry way he always did. The whale blubber around his waist hung limply to the side as though it might slide right off at any second. The stench of a dead, polluted ocean hung around him, burning her sinuses.

Rachelle Spencer wrapped her fingers tighter around the jewel-encrusted handle of the letter opener. The jewels cut into her skin, but she welcomed the discomfort. She needed the distraction from the satisfaction running through her veins. She had finally struck back.

How long had she been waiting? She called the space station's guards a while ago, right after she realised what she did.

Didn't she?

Her bloody hand print on the desk and red smears on the receiver told her she did make the call. Eddy Tanner answered. Eddy always answered.

He told her to stay in the office and he would send help, but no one could help her now. Nor could they help the bloody, bald headed mess on the floor that used to be her boss.

She turned towards him, spread out on the floor like a spilled tub of lard. He reminded her of her life on Earth, of all the reports about washed up whales and sharks, before the big flood took her parents and ten-year-old sister away from her.

Tsunami. That's what they called it. A natural disaster. But it had been so much more. It swept over islands, then continents, leaving very few survivors. Some people heard the warnings and headed up the mountains, others below the earth into bomb shelters. The government had blamed aliens, the aliens that arrived to help had blamed man kind, and the few people that survived had blamed God, but He said that He would never destroy the Earth in a flood again, so who did it? Did the answer matter anymore?

She had been too busy with her nose in her books on Tera-Plurato, in a different solar system, to go to her family for a vacation. She received the news of the tsunami and, instead of taking time off to morn their passing, she delved deeper into her studies, more determined than ever to succeed. Her dream of becoming the first woman to run a space station had consumed her every thought.

She would no longer see that dream come true, but Robert made it clear that he would never give his consent for her to study further, or his recommendation so that she could move to a different space station. She had been the perfect candidate to be his new toy, too afraid to say anything lest he went through with his threat of getting her fired. She needed the job to keep paying her rent and loans.

So, after being threatened once again, when he pushed her too far, took that one step she refused to go, she took matters into her own hands.

One minute he stood behind her, slamming her head against the desk, the next she stood over his bloodied body. She still clutched the letter opener she grabbed and drove into every part of his body that made her feel dirty and used, not that she gave him the chance to use her in that way. Never in that way.

His black suit pants still hung around his knees, his black tie pulled loose so that he could unbutton his bright pink shirt, and his suit jacket hung on the chair he usually tried to force her into. The leather straps fastened around anyone that did not know any better, that sat down to take a load off their tired feet. She had only been fooled once and only made it out with her dignity and chastity intact, because his wife called to remind him of his meeting.