I’ll keep doing these once every other day, as long as interest persists.  Sorry to the uninterested!

Content Warnings:  Threats, Violence, Use of Guns, Gun Shot Wounds, Vicious Animal Attack, Murder Threats, Murder, Deadly Police Violence, Chemical Abuse, Ableism, Menacing Vibes, Mortal Despair, Unpleasant Depiction of an Unhoused Person and Drug Addicts, Slut-Shaming Language, Racism Against a Filipino Including a Slur.

If I’m done with the edgiest part of the story, what’s next?

–

CENTENNIAL HILLS CONTINUES

by Bébé Mélange

Nate appeared from around a pile of tires and almost caught a plasma bolt from the weary alien.  Snar held the gun now with both hands, pointed it at their former ally.

“Water, Mate.  Water, ogay.”

“Yeah, Smar, yeah!  Whatever you say, home girl.  I am so sorry, I am so sorry!”  He stumbled along, only turning his back when it became too difficult to see where he was going.  He led her back to the shack, opened the door and went in.

He walked behind a mini-bar, looking for the stuff, and noticed a sawed off shotgun strapped to the wall.  He looked up to the alien gun, then back to the shotgun.  She’ll let you go.  Don’t risk it.  She’ll let you go.

Nate opened a bottle of Perrier.  “It’s water.  Just bubbly, but it’s water, OK?  I swear to God.”

Snar took the green bottle and sniffed it, then drank it down.  They paused a few times to choke up gas.  Their gun hand was feeble, wobbling, but they wouldn’t let it drop.

Nate looked around, found a two liter of Canada Dry, and offered it.

“No.  Water, ogay.”

He emptied it onto the floor, went a little further back to the sink, and filled it with tap water.  It wasn’t as disgusting as the water in his apartment.  How the fuck did Mike make that work out here?  Rich bitches.  He brought the bottle back to Smar.

“Please, drink all you need.  Take all the time you need, Smar, I swear.”

They drank it down, and more.

Snar did not immediately kill the guy, when their body recovered enough to do so.  They had neglected to save the beastmaster from his attack animal, but really didn’t want to become a killer.  But still, what to do with this jerk?  Couldn’t very well have Nate following them around.

“Mate, gum on.”  They wagged the gun, showing him where to go.

Nate was immediately reminded of movies where hitmen march a victim to a spot, have them get down on their knees, and pop.  “Smar, no!  Please!  I don’t wanna die!”

“Mate, gum on.”

There was no way he was fast enough now to make a move for the gun.  He surrendered, walking out of the trailer ahead of Smar.  “This sucks.”

Snar walked Nate to the stacks of tires, then somehow pantomimed their intent – for the human to climb inside one of the stacks.  Nate considered it a good sign that the alien hadn’t filled them with gasoline first, but then pictured her blasting a hole through the stack with him inside.

Nevertheless, he complied.  The sensations were vivid.  The smell of dirt and animal stench in the lot, the smell of tire rubber, the feel of the tread under his palms, the tiny extruded filaments flipping this way and that as he brushed by them.  Then he was in darkness, hemmed in.

Snar body slammed the stack once.  It wobbled.  They did it again and it fell over.  The tires wanted to come apart, but Snar swooped down and pushed the bottom ones upright, to produce a rolling rubber cylinder with a human axle.

“What are you doin’ Smar?  No!”

“Gum on, Mate.”  They rolled him into the big ditch.  The other human was still down there, apparently hiding from the vicious beast, and was shocked to see tires raining from above.

Then Snar walked away.

 

Kirsten had her dining room and kitchen brightly lit, boiling up a fresh dog chew for Tmai as the alien lady used paper and pencil to explain the situation visually.  Her flying saucer had crashed, and she needed to get to another alien named Smar.  The hand sign for Smar was pretty unique, not easy to put another meaning onto, so she had to go by what it sounded like coming from her lips.

Tmai drew a crude car, circled her drawings of Kirsten, Olivia, and herself, and drew lines from them to the car.  Then she drew a line to Smar.  She put her metal sliver on the table and let it go, then caught it before it zipped away from her grasp.

Olivia signed, “We’ll get you to Snar.  You can count on us.”

Kirsten said and signed, “Olivia, I’ll take you with us, even though I really don’t want to, but I need you to understand.  This could be dangerous.  Smar could be dead, could run into bad problems.  This isn’t a movie – you can have faith that whatever happens is God’s plan, but this isn’t Heaven.  Anything that happens down here could be a tragedy, y’know?  Like when Barky passed away.  Do you understand, baby?”

She looked serious and sad, but nodded, “Yes.”

“We’ll hope for the best, but just be ready for anything, and do everything I say, please.  For real this time.”

“I will, mom,” she signed.

Tmai considered their allies.  Kirsten, like Olivia, like the people who helped them escape the aggressive one, responded to the existence of an alien with happiness.  What did that mean?  They were emotionally worn out and couldn’t extend their empathy to that point of view.  It was too hard to imagine what it would feel like, being a member of an uncontacted industrial culture.

They couldn’t speak, but tried their happy expression on, and reached out a hand to each of them.  Olivia and Kirsten took their hands, and linked their own hands as well, forming a triangle of arms on the table.  Tmai nodded, “Yes, yes, yes.”

Kirsten got up to check the dog chew.  Not ready yet.  She came back to the table and said, “Tell us about Ainab, about you, about anything…  God, I wish we could understand, but we’ll try.”

Tmai didn’t understand any of that and looked down, blinking.

Olivia handed her the pen, then flipped over to a new piece of paper.  Then she made a rolling gesture like, “Go on.”

Tmai considered what they could say or not in the time they had.  They settled on language lessons, drew their flying saucer, and signed the word for ship.  The people tried to make the sign back.  Not bad.  They were about to move on, when Kirsten gestured to her mouth.  She wanted the spoken word for it.

“Zanbateem, Geershteem.”

“Zanbateem,” she said.

It was close enough.  They moved on, learning English and Ainavian words, signed and spoken, as much as they could.  It was serious business, but they took moments to express their powerful, inscrutable emotions as well.  That went both ways.  Tmai couldn’t imagine why they felt the way they did, or what the feeling was, beyond an affection and willingness to help, but they felt a great Ainavian sense of gratitude of their own, and affection for Olivia in particular.

 

Down in the pit, Nate recovered from the fall, and ended up with a face full of Barbie.  She shushed him violently, then leaned close and whispered, “I’d kill you just to shut you up, but I ain’t got a quiet way to do that shit.  One of the fucking dogs is out, and just got a taste for human blood.  You be fucking silent.”

Bruised, abraded, worn raw, and come down completely from the cocaine, Nate could almost imagine the closeness of her face, the silken blond tresses of the wig on his neck were a kind of intimacy, of kindness.  He could almost imagine it, but not quite.  “Yeah.”

A roaring bark sounded from above.  They’d been noticed.  The bloody pit bull stared down at them.  Then it erupted into more furious barking, scrabbling at the edge, considering the best way down to its new prey.

“Jesus christ!,” Barbie yelled.

The dog quickly figured out all it had to do to reach them was run around to the ramp area, and it took off.  But along the way it was trailing a long leather and chain leash, and that leash slipped down into the pit.

Barbie was thinking a lot quicker than Nate, and grabbed it.  “Quick, asshole!  Help me tie this shit to the fence, and we climb out the other side!”  When the dog reached the end of the tether she was almost pulled out of her boots.

“Fuck!”  Nate wasn’t in an eloquent headspace.  He grabbed the leash as well.

The dog gave up running around and hopped down into the pit, rushing the fence from the far side.  It even zeroed right in on the weak spot Barbie had cut.  She left the leash wrangling to Nate while she tried to keep the fence shut.

The killer dog snapped at her hands wherever she grabbed the loose fence, making her adjust grip over and over again.  Sometimes she kicked at the dog when it got close enough to the fence for a real push through.  It was a frantic battle that could not last long.

Nate got the leash tied into the fence.  “I fuckin’ got it!  Let’s run!”

“Me first!”  She bolted down the length of the fence, swiping Nate’s calf with her cowboy boot, making him stagger.  Before he could recover, she was using the chain link down the way to climb out of the pit.

Also before he could recover, the dog got through to his side of the fence.  “Barbie!,” he screamed.  Why did he even do that?  The only thing it would bring her was some sick satisfaction – no sympathy.

Just ahead of the dog, he leapt up the fence, grabbing the top, bending over it at the waist, and flipping down to the other side.  It was painful as hell, but surely better than a killing bite.  As much as speed was essential, he couldn’t help but look back to see what the dog was doing.

It clambered up the fence after him, coming over the top right as he looked.  As it flew down to catch him, he desperately lashed out with a right cross.  He connected with that terribly powerful head – hard bone and meat.  Had he actually felt teeth on his knuckles?

The dog fell to the side, and he didn’t wait for it to recover before dashing away.  Miraculously, he got to the top of the ramp alive.  Glancing back then, he knew why.  The dog was freaking out and barking at him, trapped by the leash.  It was twisted around the fence quite thoroughly.

Of course, it was easy for him to imagine that in the monster’s thrashing, it would escape the collar.  He noticed Barbie on the far side of the pool and paid her no mind, ran for the aluminum-sided shacks – and the gun.

He got the shotgun off the mini-bar, uncorked the dinosaur, and took a quick snort.  Before he’d quite finished, Barbie came through the door.  He panicked and pulled the trigger, blasting the ceiling above her head.

She squawked as an errant pellet ricocheted and pierced her leg.  Blood started pumping out of the little hole.  She grabbed the leg with one hand, and put up the other to keep him from blasting again.  “STOP!  For fuck’s sake, please!”

He looked at the counter, realized the white powder on it had spilled from the dinosaur.  “God DAMN it.  Look what you made me do, bitch!  Fuck you!”

“Just don’t kill me, Nate.  Take the rest of ya coke, take the shotgun, and get the fuck out my life, OK?”

“Fuck!”  He shook his head angrily, but took her advice.  He was a piece of shit, but he wasn’t a murderer.  Before long, he was driving off the lot in a burgundy ’78 Thunderbird that looked like a shiny overgrown meat tenderizer.

 

Snar walked the side of the road, not knowing where to go.  They realized that in the time the collection belt had been running, it picked up both communicators.  They could call theirself, but they couldn’t reach Tmai.  Who cares?, they thought.  The captain was probably a paper-thin pile of jelly on the side of a mountain.

They let the gun snap back into place on the collection belt and staggered along.  What next?  Go back to the city.  Try your luck with another collection of local miscreants.  Go to the desert, die of thirst.

Cars whipped by every five or so minutes, some honking horns, some slowing for a look, but all moving along.  At last, one did not.  A few loud whooping chirps announced its presence, then a familiar blue and red light.

What would the gunny aliens actually do to Snar?  Shoot them?  They didn’t know, but they did know they didn’t have the strength to run away again.

“Put your hands where I can see them, whore!  Hands where I can see them NOW!”

Snar turned around slowly, and was cut down in a hail of bullets.  They hit the ground inert, unmoving, with big holes in their neck, chest, abdomen, and left arm.  Every bullet had gone straight through, with barely any resistance.

Officer Sheridan huffed in the exhilaration of a clean kill.  Nobody could or would fault him for this one.  It was a streetwalker – by the looks of it mentally ill – and she had not complied with his orders.  No hands up.  What was she thinking?

But as he got closer, he realized something that made his stomach flip and his brain spin.  This hooker did not have red blood.  That was not a mask.  He had killed a real live alien.

People would blame him for this one.  They would hate him for this one.  What could he do?  What could he do?  He paced, clutching his head.  Then he radioed in a special code.  “Control, this is four sixty-two bravo.  You got eyes for me?”

“Roger, four-six-two-bee.”

That actually was a request to see if they had the dash feed turned off.  As a gimme to the night squad, they gave them random outages to cover their asses.  The affirmative meant the camera was “malfunctioning.”

“Thank you kindly.”  He got back in the cruiser and pulled it where the dashcam wouldn’t see the alien’s body – or him moving it.  He dragged it to the trunk and hefted it inside.

Why was a real live alien out walking the highway, in lace stockings and a cuban collar shirt?  What was all the hardware on the girdle about?  No time to dwell on that.  His hands and arms were covered in the thing’s viscous fluids.

He drove hard for one place he knew he could offload a problem, no questions asked:  Jeremiah’s Junkyard.  A t-bird passed him doing eighty the other direction and he let it go.  He was doing closer to a hundred himself.

Sheridan resisted the urge to tokyo drift into the place, beginning his deceleration a mile shy of the gate.  He got out and pressed the button on the speaker box.  “Melvin, I know you’re in there, you fucking insomniac prick.  LV’s finest need you.  Pick the fuck up.”

“Shit, man.  Chill.  This Sheridan?”

“Yes.”

“You’re buzzed.  Open it.”

He hadn’t heard anything, but the gate opened when he pushed it.  He got back in his cruiser, drove into the lot, past the front, past the little house, to the big backyard of scrap and misdeeds, where he parked next to a .50 caliber machine gun mounted in a bathtub full of weedy desert earth.

The fat shaggy Filipino was stepping out of his back door, strolling to meet him in flip-flops.  Sheridan was too jumped up and closed the distance quicker.

“You gotta help me, man.  I got something in my trunk.”

“Dude, I don’t wanna…  What is it?”

“You better see for yourself.”  He stomped back to the cruiser, angrily waving for Melvin to come faster.  He popped the trunk and waited.  An internal light came on, revealing his victim.

Melvin hesitated more than once, but finally reached the trunk.  He realized what it was slowly.  “That can’t be real.”

“Feel it, man!  Put your fucking fingers in these bullet holes.  It was walking down Fifteen ’til I shot it.  Ain’t a motherfucking toy.”

“Jesus in Heaven, Sheridan.  This is wrong.  You can’t just kill an alien hooker.”

“Jesus don’t care about human whores.  Why would he give a shit about ETs?”

“You ever heard of Mary Magd–”

“You want it or not?”

“Fine, whatever.”

“Help me clean up.”

“No, Sheridan.”

“I’m not asking you, flip.”

“I know.”

He helped the shitty cop clean his car and his person enough to reduce suspicion.  By the time they were done, he could just tell a tale of bodily fluids and people would believe it.  Nobody would imagine the source of the slimy organic traces was blood.  All the while, the body lay in the bathtub, awaiting its final disposition.

Sheridan peeled out of there like a jackrabbit when they finished, and Melvin looked at his sad bounty.  “I bet this is what a dolphin feels like,” he said, squishing the face.  “Let’s get you inside and find out what you can do for me, baby.”

He easily carried Snar in through the back door.  The light buzzed out.

–

Alien Autopsy Time!  What will be revealed?  Next time, on Centennial Hills.