The Fate Excerpt

Aliens and Alcohol

- X



.........Twenty years ago…….

It was the night my life began.

Well, at least the first time I remember it.

About twenty years before our story begins, I was determined that drinking myself to death was the best end I could find to an otherwise abysmal existence.

I’d only managed it about three times in the few thousand years I’ve been alive. As one of the Nine, I’ve died just about every way there is. Other than old age, obviously.

Rather than being reincarnated to a new body or life, to me death is nothing more than a cat nap. Something like a coma, where my body and mind resets to twenty-something every time it happens.

I’m well over the three hundred year life expectancy for humans, just as much as I am the thousand or so for Fey.

Even though I’m considered immortal, like the jelly fish that does the same thing, I’ve died in the most varied and painful of ways, since I was a child.

No breath, no heart beat, no cognitive function until all my parts are working right again. Anything and everything can be killed, but other ‘immortals’ have markers that identify them.

Not the nine.

We’re every bit as weak and fragile as humans. So, six bottles of the cheapest alcohol known to man in, I’m on the floor of a Quikmart, fumbling to snag myself a seventh. I say Quickmart because all the vehicles in Haven are electric, so there’s no gas, in the ‘gas station’ set up.

I have a perfect view of the door when a little blue alien in a neoprene costume walks in. I have no clue what time it is, but am still lucid enough to remember it’s Harvest Fest.

Rather than a single night, we get a full week of playing dress up for Halloween each year. Each day has a theme, but few stick to it anymore.

She, on the other hand, is. Alien invaders is a full six days away from Pandemonium. The parade of a hundred demons that ends the festivities each year.

The day I always belong in, and don’t need a costume for. Hence, the drinking.

Anyhow, the extraterrestrial may be short, but the glittery sky-blue leotard hugs a figure that says she’s grown, and isn’t starving like most. The black smudge around her hairline is more likely a bad dye job than a whimsical addition to the blue paint coating the rest of her face.

I’m sure that the thick black lines around her eyes and over her cheeks started as something pretty, but are as smudged as her blue foundation is peeled at this point.

The girl goes from semi intimidating alien to a lost kitten coming around the corner with those naturally blue eyes widening on me. Letting out the most adorable sneeze in place of the yip she so clearly wanted to make nearly tripping over me.

Said yip sneeze, only comes after her foot bumps my sprawled legs in the aisle. It as much as her frantic leap sends an indeterminable shower of spittle, seawater, and or snot over me.

Once she’s landed, the washed out alien’s lips twist with worry. Every hair raised in warning most likely with the glance she steels in my direction.

I can’t blame her. The lollipop is an accident waiting to happen in a place like this. The Hollow being the most dangerous part of all Haven in broad daylight, let alone this time of night.

A curvy, sweet thing like her on her lonesome is just asking for trouble.

Just because I’m not the type doesn’t mean that others aren’t. I’m all hot-blooded male, but that’s never an excuse for being a scum-bag.

Like any guy, I go through the process of deciding on things. Yes, I’m inebriated, and that makes the whole can I eat it, do I want to fuck it, or will it entertain me process all guys go through simpler?

Sex for sure if she’d give me half a chance, but given how fast she scampers around the corner for cold medicine as much as feminine products says that wouldn’t happen even if I wasn’t ancient.

I’d look twenty, maybe thirty, if this life wasn’t as difficult as it had been. Oh, the joys of modern medicine that didn’t just let me die after getting blown up.

Nope, fancy surgeries and the whole no man left behind military mentality had all the shrapnel removed from the right side of my body, which took the worst of the blast.

As one of the Nine, who treats death like a vacation, I could just blow my brains out. No fuss, no muss, but it takes forever to come back from that.

Plus, my memory isn’t what it used to be, and regardless of the video diaries I’ve relented to keeping there are times it has taken me years to remember I have them, let alone watch them.

I also feel like they are missing a lot of information these days.

It depends on the level of damage and where the Nine take it as to how long our cat naps last. Not to mention the in-between waking up without a clue and all the pieces falling into their places.

At this point, it’s so bad that I really wouldn’t say no to a few years of no pulse, no breath, and barely there brain function like vegetables in a comatose state.

Difference being the Nine come back faster without the machines.

I have no idea why I’m being so stubborn on how I meet my end this go around. My face looks like a rabid raccoon got a hold of it, not to mention the all over aches of knitted bones, torn muscles and burn scars.......

Yep.

No chance the cute little alien would be interested. I still have this feeling like I’m close, or balancing on a tightrope or something.

I realize the girl I’m contemplating trying to talk to has made it to the counter, grabbing a prepaid as the clerk rings up the rest of her items.

The docks are right on the bay she just came out of, if the trailing water and seaweed are any indication. I’m also fairly certain there is a crab latching for dear life on one of her thick legs.

It’s a baby one though.

A baby that the clerk’s cat is all too enthusiastic about testing the clamp of. “Mr. Smithers!” The woman with more chins than teeth gasps at the fat tabby, who never misses a shift with her.

With the alien’s slight turn to me as much as the woman and tabby, I find a tenacious little army of clamping things that refuse to give up the fight.

“Oh, dear,” Jabba gasps. Rather than freak out or go into another little sneezing fit when the alien spies her predicament in the security mirror, she laughs.

Really laughs, and it sounds like a fairy glade ringing with spring.

“Don’t worry about it, Miss Fran,” the girl chuckles. “If I’m silly enough to get caught in Collin’s net and stromp the bay in here with me, the least I can do is offer Mr. Smithers breakfast.” Being on a first name basis with the yocals says the little thing has nothing to worry about.

A knot I didn’t know was bubbling in my stomach loosens with the knowledge that she’s safe, whether I stalk her as intended or not.

Given the situation, costume included, the alien should be hysterical or an absolute terror about the tabby swiping at her. Instead, the blue mystery just turns her crap covered back for the pair to help her, giggling through the experience.

It is the oddest thing I’ve seen in a long while.

The only way that I can really describe that smile, on what I’m assuming is a late teenage girl based on her figure, is the sunrise.

In all my plastered and curious glory, I follow her out, getting a very squinted, if not warning, glare from Jabba tutting over her cat.

The alien knows how to roll with the punches. So she’s upgraded from random fuck to an actual date I’d be interested in.

Even without the sex part, I’d like to know her...... Odd for me.

Sex of every flavor, absolutely. Relationships... dating. I’m a little too complicated for that.

It’s that point right before the sun hits. When light bands the horizon of the sea across the street, making all the little outlines of ships on the water visible.

The girl seems to take in the sight with another one of those smiles.

It’s not until a crack of lightning breaks her concentration that she turns from the port to face the sky again. “Well here comes the thunder,” it’s a huff, that comes with an ‘of course’ eye roll.

Clouds I hadn’t even noticed follow her comment, and I’m sure whatever happened is more entertaining in my head than the real story could be, but this is the most fun I’ve had in..... well, ages.

Rather than squeal, duck or run from the storm, my extraterrestrial opens her arms to the downpour.

In the middle of the street in all her washed out seaweed and congested glory she snarks to the heavens, “I hope you are having a good laugh!”

After years of situations too uncanny and or terrible to explain, I’ve definitely lost that. The ability to find the humor and bright side of any situation. Roll with the punches like she is. Clearly not letting anything dampen those bubbly spirits.

I’m sure it’s the precarious amounts of liquor, but the wall is the only thing that is keeping me standing. So when I feel like my feet have more control than my head, and my knees get lost in translation from the hopeful introduction, and I’m swept away from all the bad decisions alcohol wanted me to make.

Right into the bay she came out of with the practical storm surge of the flash floods we occasionally get.