Scratch (Feral Aliens) Read online

  I’m trying to think of how I get out of this, but I don’t think I can. It takes city technology to move one’s consciousness. I got sloppy and lazy and now I’m inhabiting what should be a dead body. What might still end up being a dead body by the way it feels. This host has been wounded badly. Using his brain is difficult because blood loss is making him faint. Making me faint. There’s no difference between the two of us now. In fact, there might not be a him at all. His soul might already have fled. This flesh feels empty, and I am alone inside it.

  That is the second strangeness. I have become accustomed to the constant companionship of another mind alongside my own. Finding myself fundamentally abandoned between the ears of a skull is an adjustment.

  The cat I have lived inside trots along quite happily beside us, and part way through the journey, he jumps up on the stretcher and curls up on my legs. I think he likes me. He should. I got that guy the best of everything while I was living inside his skull.

  The village is a quaint and charming little nest of hovel homes, all made from bracken and mud daubed along wood walls. It melts into the hills on which it is built, crystal streams trickling between mossy rocks creating an ever present aural soundscape of calm.

  I liked it when I was the cat. I liked the way the warmth filters through breaks in the canopy in a few specific spots. I liked the way it warmed my belly when I rolled onto my back.

  Now the light is a painful glare and I want to shut my eyes against it. I don’t need to see where we’re going. I already know. It’s the roundhouse in the middle of the village, a building which serves both as a gathering house for all the village, and private sanctum of the tribe’s matriarch.

  Shanti.

  She used to scratch me behind the ears and give me extra scraps of meat after the tribe were finished eating. I don’t think she’ll do that this time.

  The light changes as they carry me inside, past the great circular room where everybody gathers and sleeps and into the back where her private chambers are. I’ve curled up next to that warm hearth dozens of times before. I’d like to do it again, but the body I’ve found myself in is very damaged. I’m experiencing a lot of pain. I might actually die, a prospect I find frightening.

  “We’ve found a survivor, Ma!” Falkri might be chief of the tribe, but he still talks to his mother like he’s her boy.

  She gets up from the bed she was sitting by, and gestures toward the other side of the room, where another bed is waiting. She was ready for this, somehow. I wonder if she already knew. She’s a wise woman and she has seen much even though she isn’t that old. Wild grimalkin matriarchs are credited with all sorts of supernatural powers. I used to think that was bullshit. Now I hope it is true.

  I am laid on the bed. She crouches down besides me and takes my hand in hers.

  “What is your name?” She asks the question kindly.

  That’s a question I hadn’t planned on answering. I can’t give her my real name. And I can’t give her my fugitive name, and I don’t know what this dead guy's name is. So I guess I’m going with my old nickname.

  “Scratch,” I tell her.

  “Is it.” She says the words flatly.

  “Yep.”

  She tilts her head and I know she doesn't believe me, but it doesn’t matter. A city prisoner wouldn’t tell them the truth anyway. It’s not suspicious that I’m being suspicious. If anything, being suspicious is ideal.

  “LET ME THE FUCK UP!”

  A female screech comes from across the room. It’s the girl they found earlier. The beautiful one with the bad temper. She’s a welcome distraction, causing Shanti to leave my side and redirect her attention to the caterwauling human.

  Pixie

  “Behave,” Shanti says, appearing over me. “There's someone seriously injured who I have to attend to. If you will not be quiet, I will gag you.”

  “Kinky,” I smirk.

  She does not smile. She cuts me a look which I can only describe as vicious.

  “Let me up. Being tied down is uncomfortable.”

  “I don’t have anybody to hold you down, so you will remain tied down until I am ready. And until you learn to behave.”

  “What counts as behaving, whiskers?”

  “Doing as I tell you,” she says with a wry smile, which surprises me because I was pretty sure calling her whiskers would piss her off. “Were you this combative in your old home?

  “Hell yes, I was.”

  “You do not need to fight here. No harm is going to come to you.”

  “You say that, but I’m stuck here, aren’t I. I want to go home.”

  “Unfortunately, the door you came through has been destroyed and we do not have the technology to open another one. But there is another human living with us. Her name is Kitty, and she has a mate among our people, and a baby. You may find speaking to her helps you settle.”

  “I don’t need to settle, lady. I have shit to do back home. I have people who are going to notice me not being there anymore. My face is going to be on milk cartons.”

  She does not look as though she understood anything I just said.

  “Be quiet,” she says. “I will deal with you later.”

  I fall silent as she returns to the new guy, who seems wounded, but also not terribly concerned about it. He must be an impressive warrior to face the people who damn near killed him with so much equilibrium. I take it from the conversation around me that he is an enemy warrior from the city, whatever might pass for a city in this world.

  She treats the wounded soldier. I don’t know how because I can barely see anything, but there is the smell of plants and medicine-y type things and there’s cloth bandages and a sharp needle with gut thread.

  I fall asleep on and off through the procedure going on next to me. The guy barely makes a sound. He must be stoic as fuck to put up with being sewed up like a ripped teddybear without any kind of real medical facilities.

  When I’m not asleep, I’m listening. Listening gives me a chance to understand what’s happening here.

  I don’t know how much time passes over that first period of wound tending. It could be hours. It could also be days before my head clears and I feel properly awake again.

  The next time I am fully alert, I wake to hear Shanti asking the dude where he comes from. He sort of stammers and avoids the questions.

  “He’s lying!” I yell out. Mostly just to fuck with them, though I do think he is lying.

  “She deserves a beating,” he growls back.

  “You can both be quiet,” Shanti says with a sigh. “The good news is I think you will both survive your initial injuries. Whether you will survive the consequences of your mouths is less certain.”

  “I’ve barely said a word,” he says. What was his name again? Oh, right, Scratch. Not a real name. An alias for something I bet. His real name is probably something lame like Edmund.

  “Quiet," Shanti repeats, drawing herself up to her full height, which is quite tall, especially when viewed from a prone position from which I cannot rise. “Both of you. I need to speak with my sons and make decisions regarding your fates.”

  “Well, that was ominous,” I say when she’s gone. “Is this place for real? Am I still tripping? Or are you really cat people?”

  “We’re cat people, and you're stuck here.” He answers me directly.

  “What do you mean, stuck?”

  “I mean the door you came through has been ripped into a thousand pieces and the nearest other one is a thousand miles away in a city you’ll never be allowed to see.”

  “Well, fuck. That doesn’t sound real.”

  He lets out a mirthless laugh. “It’s real. All of this is painfully real.”

  “That’s what a hallucination would say, though. One time, I spent a whole night arguing with a phone booth. You’re not a phone booth, are you?”

  He lets out a groan. “Save me from inane humans.”

  “Hey, fuck you!”

  “You wish,” he d
rawls. “Be quiet, would you? This body is halfway dead. It’s suffered enough without your chattering.”

  He’s weird. But all of this is weird. I have to breathe deep. Maybe get some orange juice. That’s supposed to help shit like this stop.

  Our conversation ends as Shanti returns with her sons, two big, strong, black-pelted creatures with golden eyes like hers. One is taller and seems older by the breadth of his shoulders and the slight graying of his mane at the temples. He is introduced as Falkri. The younger one is Fenrir. I met him before when he was staring down at me and freaking me the fuck out.

  The humanity of their features is actually more eerie and striking than the animalness of their appearance. It’s not that they have fangs and manes and pelts of fur, it’s that they have those human eyes and sentient intellect and language which I somehow understand and actually speak. When they look at me, I don’t feel like I’m being looked at by an animal. I feel like I’m being looked at by a very dominant set of human-like creatures who consider me to be less than them in some very fundamental way.

  I can’t stop thinking about what Scratch said. There’s a way out of this weirdness. It’s just a thousand miles away. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. I might be able to take one soon if they’ll let me out of the bindings.

  “So, we have a human stuck here, and a city cat who came here to destroy us,” Falkri says.

  “Should probably let us both go. We’ll just wander into the forest and you’ll never see us again,” I say.

  Shanti gives me one of those looks which are starting to become familiar. It’s a look that tells me she’s considering doing something about my smart mouth.

  “This human is mouthy,” one of her sons says.

  "She is,” Shanti agrees. “But she is innocent. She had no control over coming here, and she will need patience to learn to adjust. The warrior, however…”

  “Warrior's a strong word,” Scratch says. “I wouldn’t call myself a warrior.”

  “You’re wearing a badge on your uniform which marks you as an elite warrior,” Falkri says.

  “Am I? Huh. So I am.”

  I snort. This guy’s so full of shit. He’s trying to play it off like he’s not dangerous, but we all know he is. Even I know there’s something going on with this dude, and I don’t even understand the new construct of reality I appear to be operating in.

  “You are shady as fuck,” I declare.

  “Quiet.”

  At least three voices speak at the same time, which is galling. These cat people are kind of rude. I’m supposed to be quiet, but they get to talk whenever they want.

  “You be quiet,” I snap back, squirming on the bed to try to free myself from the bonds which still keep me secured. “I’m just trying to talk. This dude is telling me some crazy shit. Shit so crazy I’m starting to think I’m not the crazy one.”

  “Is there some reason you don't understand that you’re being told to be quiet?” Falkri asks.

  “I understand, I just don’t care.”

  “She’s not going to accept her new reality,” Scratch comments, talking like he knows me. “Humans aren’t easily persuaded from their deeply held beliefs. It’s their greatest strength and their greatest weakness.”

  Dude’s talking like he’s at a job interview. Greatest weaknesses and strengths. I snort derisively and try harder to get free.

  “What would you know, city cat?” Falkri asks the question. He’s a smart kitty.

  Scratch hesitates. “I’ve been on Earth.”

  “So has Skoll. We should get Skoll,” Fenrir says. “They may know each other. Skoll is a city cat too.”

  “No, Fenrir,” Shanti says. “Skoll just became a father. Leave him and Kitty with their baby. We can handle these two.”

  “Oh, you can’t handle me,” I declare. “I tell you now, whatever the fuck is going on here, I’m going to make you regret it.”

  “Skoll’s human is much nicer than this one,” Fenrir says.

  “Pixie has been wounded and found herself in a foreign world. It is not surprising she is being difficult,” Shanti says. “She needs rest and healing. Both will likely improve her mood.”

  She doesn’t know me. There is no improving my mood. My day starts with irritation and ends with totally pissed off.

  Shanti draws her sons back out of the room and leaves me tied to the bed, with the warrior called Scratch on the other side of the room.

  I see him get up out of the corner of my eye. He’s moving really gingerly. Looks like he’s pretty seriously injured. I guess he got really fucked up in the battle. I still don’t know what happened to me. Are my injuries from the journey, or the war? I’m kind of glad I don’t remember any of it. It sounds like it would have been frightening if I were aware of any of it.

  “Where are you going?”

  He doesn’t answer. He staggers to his feet, swears, and slumps back down on the bed clutching his stomach. I don’t think either one of us is going anywhere, no matter how much we want to. I can’t get out of bed, and this dude cannot walk without assistance.

  An idea strikes me.

  “Untie me,” I tell him. “Crawl your fucked-up ass over here, get me out of these bindings, and I’ll help you out of here.”

  He looks at me under dark brows. He’s trying to work out if I’m going to fuck him over. It’s a good question. I’m trying to work out if I’m going to fuck him over too. He seems to be willing to tell me how to get out of here, and more importantly, he seems to know where we need to go.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I want to go home. And you know where home is. So you show me the way home and I’ll help you get out of here where you’re kind of a prisoner of war.”

  “I am, aren’t I.”

  “You are. They’re suspicious of you. They don’t suspect me of anything.”

  “That’s because you don’t know where you are or how you got here,” he puts out. “You’re essentially a pet.”

  “I’d rather be a pet than a prisoner. Besides, you’re the cats. You’re the pets.”

  “Not here. Here you’re the helpless captive who has to be fed and watered.”

  “You’re not really endearing yourself to me,” I tell him. “I’m your only ally.”

  He snorts and shakes his head, which makes his mane flow around his face dramatically. His hair is fucking fabulous. I’m kind of jealous. He’s hot as hell actually, for a cat-man. I like his green eyes, and the flash of irregular white which runs across the top of his head and down his back. Most of his fur is a rich chocolatey brown with patches of gold among it. His stomach is a hard abdominal plane replete with fur. Goddamn. There are a whole lot of human dudes who would pay money to look like this, maybe with a bit of laser therapy.

  “How did you spend time on Earth without people noticing you’re an alien?”

  “It’s complicated,” he says. “But mostly, people aren't that observant. They mostly think about themselves. There’s a lot they miss.”

  He’s not wrong.

  If I was still high, and we weren’t both mortally injured, I think I’d fuck him. I wonder what his ‘thing’ looks like. I can’t see anything, and even if I could, I wouldn’t want to obviously stare and put my thirst on display. He’s got an attitude. I don’t want him knowing I want him. Plus, I’m not sure it’s okay for me to want to fuck a cat alien beast. There's a lot of human-ness about him, but there’s also a lot of strange animal alienness to all these creatures. I think I’m still slightly twisted, because I can't stop staring at him and I can't stop wondering if it would be more hot or more weird to have sex with him.

  “You alright?” he asks the question and briefly shocks me out of my lust-trance.

  “Yeah. Of course. Just thinking about going home.”

  “We will both have to heal up a bit before we go. It's a long way and it is dangerous. You don’t look like you’re conditioned for a long march.”

  “Bitc
h, I do pilates, yoga, and spin class.”

  He smirks at me, the tips of his fangs poking out from under his upper lip. He’s cute in an asshole kind of way, the kind of way that makes me weak. He’s triggering me into a kind of less than healthy desire I've been fighting against and losing my whole life. Show me a complete fucking asshole and I’ll show you a dude I want in my pants.

  I judge myself as hard for that as anybody else, but good decisions don’t come easy to me. Bad decisions? Those I’ve got in spades.

  “I think you’ve also got a gut wound. That’s going to put you out for a month at least. I’ve got flesh wounds which will heal faster. They performed a sloppy kill on this guy.”

  On this guy? He talks about himself as if he isn't him. That’s weird, even for a cat alien.

  “What do you mean this guy?”

  “I mean me. Of course.”

  “Uh huh. Dude, I know suspicious liars. All my friends are suspicious liars, and you are the most suspicious liar I’ve ever seen.”

  “Is that right?” He’s pretty relaxed for being called out, which tells me he’s the kind of suspicious liar who doesn’t give a fuck. This guy has been lying his whole life, I’d bet. I bet every word out of his mouth is bullshit. Goddammit, this is making him even more attractive to me. Only I could be sucked through a wormhole to another planet and immediately find a douchebag to fall for.

  “I’ll cut you a deal, human,” he says, getting up from his bed more successfully. “I will undo one binding for every time you make me orgasm.”

  He moves incredibly well for a wounded man, but I guess these aliens are like humans when it comes to sex drive. He staggers to come to stand over me, looking down at me with a wickedly carnal expression in his eyes. Half dead, and he still wants to fuck. Turns out I’m not the only one feeling twisted attraction.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me…”

  Scratch

  It has been three years since I had a body to fuck with. Three years stuck inside an animal whose balls had been chopped off before I got to it. Being back in grimalkin form, even this broken, aching, probably dying body, has made me one thing above all else: horny.