Chasing Cthulhu (Urf Oomons #2)

Someone put me in a bikini. That’s the first thing I notice when I wake up. It’s red with white polka dots. I can feel that it’s not exactly the same as other bathing suits I’ve worn. It’s smoother, has no bumpy seams, and has no liner. And the material is kind of thick, but it’s light and kind of, well, squishy? It’s comfortable though, breathable, and it fits well. But why am I wearing a bikini? I look around me to find I’m in a very strange room. No windows, no door. The walls and ceiling are a very light, dull metallic kind of material and the floor is made out of stuff like foam mats, but it’s the whole floor and seamless. And the light is strange. There’s no source, soft light seems to be coming from everywhere in the room. I mean, there’s no lamps anywhere and I’m not casting any shadow. The light must just be coming from everywhere, right?

I push myself up to stand and that’s when I realize I was sleeping on a pile of blankets. Weird. Everything about this situation is frickin weird! Including this swimsuit!

It seems like no matter how surreal my life gets lately, it always gets weirder.

There is noise to the left and I’m startled to see that there is in fact a door and it’s just whisked open. One of those gray aliens comes into the room.

I scramble back into the corner, but they just pull a cart in behind them. I squeeze as far into the corner as I can. They don’t seem to take any notice of me, as their sole focus is the cart.

The door remains open, and the gray alien isn’t even looking at me. I make a split-second decision and dash out of the room. Full tilt, I’m running down space-ship corridors. My hair is streaming behind me, and this bikini obviously has zero support because I’m extra bouncy as I run. I take every single turn I come to, and I have no idea where I’m going, just a vague notion that I should get free, find a way out. There are gray aliens all over the place, moving with purpose and not even noticing me.

Now I’m feeling kind of silly.

Nobody is trying to catch me. I’m just running myself out of breath for no reason. Slowing to a walk to catch my breath, I glance all around.

I wonder where Lu is. Why did he make such a big deal out of keeping me with him and then just leave me? Turning, I check every direction, half-expecting to find him standing behind me. But he’s not.

What are these aliens doing anyway? There is no order to it. They are just walking from one door to another. Some are carrying things, a tray of bowls filled with noodles, a blanket, and other things that I can’t even identify.

Then I hear a bark. Peach! How could I have forgotten about her? I don’t even know when I lost track of her!

I’m the worst dog mom.

I follow the sound and see one of the gray aliens carrying her off as Peach looks over their shoulder and yaps excitedly, wagging his tail.

“Hey!” I yell. The alien doesn’t hear me. “Hey, you with my dog! Get back here!”

The alien turns and walks through a door that opens to his right. I’m jogging to catch up and slide through the door quickly, so it doesn’t close on me. I arrive just in time to see the alien hand my dog off to—Karen?

“Hey!” I yell again. “Karen!”

She doesn’t have that querulous look on her face when she catches sight of me. She looks…relieved.

“Oh, thank goodness!” she says as she runs over and hands me Peach. “We were so worried when you left with those aliens!”

She gives me a quick hug, squeezing me tightly as I stand there in shocked silence. This is another weird experience, being hugged by a naked woman. But it’s kind of nice that she was so worried.

Grabbing my shoulders, she stands back to take a look at my bikini.

“Where did you get this?”

“I don’t know!” I yell at her and her eyes widen in alarm. “Sorry, it’s just this has been the single craziest day of my life! And the aliens just keep killing each other! And I woke up alone! I didn’t know where I was or how to get back!”

I might be losing my shit a little bit.

“Shhhh,” Karen soothes me, patting my back. “Honey, it’ll be okay, don’t worry.” She starts leading me farther into the room and I can see now that all of the abducted women are here. They aren’t in any kind of cages, just milling around. “Listen, they let us all out and brought us to this room. See?” She gestures around at everyone who’s silently staring at us. “We are all okay. And one of those grays said they’re getting a shuttle ready to take us back to Earth. Now, isn’t that good news?”

I nod my head and let her coddle me as all the shock and fear I’ve experienced comes to the surface. She steers me toward a corner, patting and soothing me the whole time. I sit against the wall, and she sits next to me until I am calmer.

“So which aliens got murdered? The spider one? Your tentacle friend?” she asks.

“No.” I gasp. “They—” I take a shuddering breath. “They killed grays! So many of them! Stabbing and bashing and twisting their heads around!” I’m getting worked up again. I take another breath trying to calm and center myself before I continue. “At least twenty of them. And then there was this monstrous thing! It was so huge, it was like a wall! And that spider-alien, Baht, he killed it and ate part of it! It was so disgusting, I just can’t—”

“Shhhh. It’s okay. You don’t have to keep talking about it. Look, as far as we can tell there has been some kind of mutiny. Or maybe just a change in management. But whoever’s in charge now is sending us home. Soon this will all be a crazy memory that we can’t tell anyone. Who will believe it?”

I continue focusing on breathing and calming down, but I don’t feel well. My body feels kind of floaty, but my head feels heavy. I’ve never been emotionally out of control like this.

A warm smooth hand grabs my wrist and I look to the side to see a young woman. It’s the reasonable one. I never got her name. Right now, she is obviously taking my pulse. I don’t know how she can do that without a clock. Don’t you need to count and keep time?

She lets go but then grabs my shoulder, turning me toward her, and peers into my eyes, first one then the other. Her dark, expressive eyes are concerned, but calm. Cupping my shoulders, she moves her palms down my naked arms then squeezes my hands when she reaches them.

“I think you’re in shock,” she says.

I nod. That makes sense.

“Are you hurt at all? In any pain?”

I shake my head then say, “My ears were damaged, but they seem fine now. And I was shocked. With electricity.”

“Any burns?”

“No.”

“Ok, well I need you to lie down on the floor and elevate your legs.” she moves me around and I allow her to reposition me. “Let’s rest your legs here. You don’t mind, do you?” she asks Karen as she drapes my legs over Karen’s lap.

“Not a bit.”

“Ok. then,” she wipes her hands on her thighs. “I’ll go see if I can find a blanket for her.”

It is only minutes later when another Gray enters the room.

“Earth-Humans,” he addresses us loudly from the door. “Follow. A shuttle is ready to return you to your planet’s surface.”

I get up too quickly and it makes me dizzy, but Karen lends me a hand and leads me out of the room with her.

There’s a bottleneck of naked women waiting around the side of the shuttle, and it gives me a moment to take a look at it and start to feel apprehensive. It looks very new. Did they just make this shuttle today? How do they know it will work safely? Do they even care if it does? We could all burn up in the atmosphere if this thing—

“Hey, shhhh.” Karen is rubbing my back again. “It’s all right. They make these shuttles all the time and it’s perfectly safe. One of the Grays explained it before you came back.”

I nod my head and feel silly. I need to get ahold of myself.

A Gray hands me and Karen blankets that are thin, but soft and warm and we quickly wrap ourselves in them and move toward the shuttle. It just looks like a rectangular box with rounded corners and a large hole in one side. I can see through the hole that there are rows of seats.

The uneasy feeling returns. It’s a mistake to board this thing, I know it. But what else is there to do? Just stay here and live with creepy aliens for the rest of my life?

There are straps on the seats, but no buckles, and when I sit down the straps on either side just come together like magnets, and now it looks like it’s all one piece and always has been. I wonder how I’ll get out of this seat when we land? Karen hands me Peach. When did I let her go? I can’t remember. I tuck the little dog under the straps and under my blanket so only her face is sticking out.

The door closes slowly from both sides, the wall just seems to magically expand to cover the opening, and right before it closes completely Lu, my giant tentacled alien comes through the doorway. His eyes zero in on me. I only have a glance at him before I can’t see anymore because we are totally enclosed in this shuttle.

He looks stricken.

Is he upset that I’m leaving? Didn’t he know about the shuttle?

I’m going to miss him. He’s a nice guy, for a monstrous alien.

There is a click sound, then a kind of shhhleppp, and then we are falling. I feel that lifting, floating feeling, like when an elevator starts moving down, only a hundred times worse.

The women all seem to start talking at once and my anxious brain is screaming at me. We are falling through the sky! From space! This isn’t safe! We could all die!

Karen is gripping my hand, deathly tight.

Then that falling feeling tapers off and we aren’t moving anymore. I can feel that we are still and on the ground. And alive.

All of the walls fall away and float to the ground and our restraints fall off our bodies and off the seats. The seats themselves start to crumble and then we are all just standing among debris that is crumbling to dust and blowing away.

We are in a plowed field. It’s all furrowed dirt, no plants yet.

Add this to the list of unbelievable things that have happened today. Our shuttle just disintegrated.

And there are men all around us in a circle. They are in uniforms and helmets and they’re pointing guns at us.