Close Encounters 08: of the 11th Kind

And since we don't know where we're going, we end up going to the place where one can always get this sort of info, as well as any other type of info. The place that commercial streets in settlements like this always lead to.

You know the saying, "All roads lead to Rome"? Well, all roads lead to Rome because there were lots and lots of brothels in Rome and that's where people wanted to go.

The brothel that, as usual, is also a trading place, a bar, a hotel, a repair workshop, a supermarket, a restaurant, a news station, and a post office is located at the very end of the mercantile district in a cute little park. I mean, it looks cute and little from afar and then turns out to be something of a Grimm fairy tale forest, with gnarled, thorned and suspiciously sentient-seeming vegetation. We pass by a couple of trees with reddish-brown leaves that flutter in the drizzling rain like so many butterfly wings and I don't know whether I'm delighted or wigged out. A fitting feeling, really, considering where we're going.

There are three bouncers. They look like a grasshopper begat a space shuttle. Rune and Bane ignore them entirely, so I do my best to do that as well.

Bane steps in through the open door, followed by Kay, me, and Rune bringing up the rear, and then we're all... here.

Okay. So. I'm definitely more wigged out than delighted.

Not only does this place look like a freaking replica of "my" brothel on Vurn X'lora 15 - slightly nicer and bigger, and good gods, is that hardwood floor? That is gorgeous! - so that the sheer trip-down-memory-lane-ness of it makes my palms itch.

But there's also a violent murder in progress, and there's blood and brain matter dripping off the bar. (That can't be up to health code.)

A tan-skinned female alien is pounding something that looks like an ashtray into the pulpy leftovers of an alien of indeterminable race. Said pulpy leftovers are making gurgling noises interspersed with high-pitched warbles that must be that particular race's cries for help. Another, smaller female alien of the same coloring as the murderess is standing by, hollering up a storm and apparently trying (and failing) to stop her fellow alien from continuing her gory work.

A handful of people are sitting around at the scattered tables and watching the goings-on with that special Thursday Afternoon DGAFerrence. Up on a stage in the mid-center of the floor, a very pink, pixie-sized alien is standing with two of her hands on her hips, watching with her one eye and a definite air of 'Can we get on with this? I was in the middle of my set'.

Eventually, there is nothing left for the ashtray-wielding female to pound and the noises have died, and she chucks the bloody hunk of heavy material to the floor, getting off the counter herself and looking around at her audience.

"Kat-xat neg aituk Sneferu bexet je-t!" she scoffs and spits at the mound of organ-and-bone jello. "The next round is on manager Sneferu."

And then she slings an arm around the other female's shoulders and leads her out of the main room and through the side door. As they go, I can see an angry-looking, red-and-black-singed pattern on the other female's right buttock, standing out starkly against her sandy skin tone. A fresh brand, and an ugly and massive one at that, spanning the entire glute. The female is limping heavily to avoid jostling it. I grimace in sympathy. "Looks like Sneferu had it coming," I mumble to myself. I had almost forgotten how much I loathe managers, but some are definitely more garbage than others.

Since every other patron ignores the bloody mess, we do as well and find ourselves an empty table. The pink pixie resumes undulating, contorting, and whistling on her stage, although I see her eye flick over to the corpse every now and then. The 'I wonder who's gonna pay me now' is really clear on her face.

Rune manages to chat up an alien that looks like a frightened mop and extracts some information regarding the mercantile district from him before the authorities inevitably arrive.

The authorities on Vevvy Oylee V'lva are... well. They are orange, tall, large and wide in stature, bulbous and wobbly in the belly area, with a weird bow-legged yet stiff-kneed gait. Bald except for a wispy, almost colorless combover. They're brandishing wicked-looking guns clenched in strangely small hands. They remind me of someone, but I can't put my finger on it. Seven or eight of them swarm the brothel's main room, screaming and shouting at nobody in particular and for no discernible reason like the galaxy's most obnoxious SWAT team.

None of the patrons, including us, moves. Not in a "rabbit in danger" kind of way, more in the "unbothered capybara" way. Alright. So, this seems to be a somewhat everyday occurrence in this establishment, then? Pink pixie throws all of her arms up and vanishes, chittering and grumbling loudly, behind her curtain.

Rune and Bane both just sit and watch, watchful but not tense. That means we're safe. I act like I'm sipping my complimentary tea - it's much hotter than water on Earth could ever be so I won't be able to drink it, but it smells nice and the cup it's in is pleasantly toasty warm in my palms - and still wish we could get out of here.

Then, two of the tangerine 'officers' are pulling the murderess through the side door. She's shouting expletives, absolutely livid and writhing in the orange one's grip while a third of them is leading her smaller, newly-branded friend behind them. His stubby fingers are fisted in that one's hair. There's a contraption slapped around her delicate throat, like a heretics fork. She's naturally wailing in pain and fear and clearly fighting for her life.

I'm starting to feel ill and angry with sympathy. A voice in my brain - for once, it's my own - is starting to go 'No no no this ain't right', followed by 'This is going to hell in a handbasket, fast'.

I should start a soothsaying business.

One of the Carrot Constabulary grabs the smaller one by her ass - clearly aiming for her pussy, though - with the air of a male who does that routinely and probably justifies it by saying that it's a surefire way to control a truculent female and that they secretly all like it when he does that. This female has a painful fresh brand on her ass, though, and starts to howl in absolute agony and tries to get away from him even harder.

Her murderous friend then starts biting people. It's not the wisest course of action, but damn, I can't say it's the wrong one.

Electro-guns go off. The sizzle and smell of burning flesh fills the air. More shouts, more howls.

Rune's bird screeches a warning in my brain that sets my teeth on edge. Easy, there, easy.

More officers barge in through the front door, and then go through to the back rooms, quickly and none-too-gently pulling out a handful more workers, the pixie contortionist among them. She's barely half their height and maybe a sixth of their weight, and still, they also put one of those torture devices around her neck.

What a bunch of motherfuckers. I grind my teeth and scowl.

"Jai na bigli covfefe--" One of the officers starts shouting, and my translator takes over: "This shithole is being cleaned up. All vermin whores come with us."

I have the time to pull a face and think 'Wow, you are such a massive asshole', and then realize that he and two of his asshole friends have turned to and are addressing us.

Our table, specifically.

Kay and me, to be precise.

Oh. Ohh. We're apparently two of those vermin whores he's talking about and whom he wants to come with him.

They come at us from the side and the one at the front grabs for Kay who's sitting a little closer.

My Kay. Our Kay. Pregnant Kay with her adorable cantaloupe-sized baby bump called Bun, or Bunbun, Buns, or Bunny.

I'm on my feet before he makes contact with her skin and throw the uber-hot tea in his face with a subtle and concise, "DON'T YOU FUCKING TOUCH HER, YOU FUCKING FUCK!", and then hurl the emptied teacup itself for good measure, missing his head by a bare inch.

The bird that is Rune is now something closer to a vengeful thundercloud, and I can feel him exerting his awesome, horrible power on the fucking fuck and his friend both, boiling their synapses inside of their ugly heads.

At the very same moment, Bane's halberd-machete zings through the air and cleanly slices off three of the officer's stubby fingers. (I think he originally aimed for the arm, but the fucking fuck moved after he got a face full of lava tea.)

Blood sprays. Wilhelm screams. Severed limbs. I want to ask Bane if it's also reminding him very much of our meet cute. Ah, good times, good times.

As I look at the severed fingers and see them writhe on the floor like little maggots, I decide that I can hold my shit together right now and delay my puking for at least thirty to forty minutes. Until then, I'm gonna be milking the adrenaline cow for all she's worth.

So I get up on my stool and start yelling.

"And you!" I point at the assholes manhandling the murderess and her branded pal by the bar. I point with my index finger, like I'm Hulk Hogan, except less problematic, and with only one nipple out. It's bloody brilliant. "Yes, you, you mango-tango-colored bastards! Unhand these females, right the fuck now!"

And then one thing leads to another - shots, yelling, blood, gore, Rune making some heads explode with his brain, Kay poisoning some people with her quills (you wouldn't believe where they come from!), Bane throwing his scythe-thing around, tear gas, female empowerment, negotiations, a wee bit of trench warfare, yadda-yadda-yadda - and suddenly, a couple of grateful bordello workers and a newly-sole shareholder of the establishment, by a show of hands and hands-equivalent appendages, appoint me, Valerie Magdalena Greene, the new manager of a brothel at the end of the universe.

Someone call Alanis Morrissette. I have an idea for a song.

***

When I look out the window from the masters' (and mistresses') bedroom, I can see the dark outline of our ship in the garden, illuminated by the white moon. The dockyard workers have patched her up in record time - and, according to Rune, armed her to the teeth. She's programmed to act like an antiballistic missile system and intercept anything and anyone that comes flying at the Volvo with the intent of doing harm.

Yes, I've renamed the brothel. The Volvo of Vevvy Oylee V'lva. I think it has a ring to it, personally.

Of the former workers, all but one have stayed after the takeover, and one of my first official acts was to emancipate them and hire them as proper contractors. Naurity is the only one who's technically still enslaved because she murdered someone, and the slavery laws on this planet are such that she, being a 'thing', can't be held responsible; her owner is. However, her owner - I - can't be persecuted for a crime they didn't commit themselves. Neat loophole, that. After some talk with the lawyers, I paid off the aggrieved party with the help of Bane and Rune and the matter was settled. To be honest, Sneferu's family didn't seem terribly aggrieved to me. Gee, I wonder why.

Naurity is now managing the bar, and the ashtrays, and has a therapist to help her manage her anger issues. (...and her statue plans. You see, Naurity has been saving all of her bar money for a nine-foot-tall statue of me - on a stool, pointing my index finger while yelling, one tit out - that she wants installed on the brothel's main floor. The therapist is trying to talk her out of it, with limited success so far.) (Send help.)

I also got all of my workers some health care - especially Evnity, who's going to get a skin graft next month that'll hopefully erase the horrific mark on her buttock -, updated the kitchen to their dietary needs, hired personal bodyguards, and had their rooms upgraded and their doors fitted with personalized locks - there had been, up to that point, locks on the outside of them.

Sneferu is lucky he's already dead, really.

The grasshopper-bouncers were chased off... and possibly hunted to death... I didn't really ask. Bane and Rune did the honors after the workers told me that the bouncers' main job was to shoot fleeing workers in the back.

The longer I think about my predecessor, the more I'm tempted to join Naurity in her anger issues therapy session, and maybe commission a nine-foot-tall statue of Sneferu that we can use as target practice.

The place now has a Dryth duo as bouncers/security bosses. Management and staff are very, very happy with them indeed. They're not super talkative, but they're dependable and fierce and fuuucking sexy in their armor.

The postal workers that were managing their mysterious postal-worker-y things in a downstairs archival room have renegotiated their terms with me. There's a little-old-lady alien who came in one day last week and has been wordlessly working the kitchen all by herself (and scaring the living snot out of me ever since). (She also does take-out.) (It's really good, too!) There's an honest-to-goodness cobbler who's interested in renting a space, a robot who fixes robots who wants to work out of an adjacent garage, and just yesterday, a vendor moved onto the premise and put their little drugstore-on-wheels by the driveway. Several of the sex workers have created additional jobs here as well - gardening, decoration, singing and entertainment, dance lessons, video classes, cleaning, and repairs. Br'na-Eelk is working on the equivalent of her PhD between her dancing sets.

Thinking about it all makes me a bit misty-eyed. It's all going so... so well! I mean, we had a bit of a slow start after the chaos with the cops, but the patrons/clients/customers are coming back to the Volvo now - according to the workers, in slightly greater and increasing numbers than before. Just a little more, and my brothel (restau-market-bar-thel-arage) will be breaking even.

My brothel. That's insane. Let's say it again: This is my brothel. I partially own and fully manage this establishment. My signature is at the bottom of that sheet of digital paper. My brothel. Mine.

It's really more than that, though. It's also our fortress.

Apart from the missile beast that is our ship that's parked right outside, Bane and Rune have their supporting security personnel patrol the grounds with leashed gordruns, installed a permanent sniper on the roof, have commissioned the building of two bomb shelters, a subterranean maze of secret passageways, and an honest-to-goodness moat.

A moat with flesh-eating critters in it. Kay feeds them regularly. (I don't ask.)

Seeing that a) we've managed (ha!) to come to an agreement with the police force, b) we've buttered enough fingers of the local politicians to be benignly tolerated for the next fifty years or so, c) all the patrons, clients, and travelers coming through are extremely chill, and d) there almost certainly isn't a single hostile Dryth coming this way anytime soon (Planet Traffic Island perks), the ground defense Rune and Bane have set up seems a little bit like overkill.

I have a feeling, though, that this might just be the Dryth version of nesting.

Kay has popped out overnight, and suddenly Bun is roughly twice their former size. Apparently, Drahta gestation periods are a bit shorter than humans' and fetal development a bit more... erratic. Rune and Bane are around Kay like she's the last musical chair in the whole universe and the song is about to stop. It's actually adorable in a bossy kind of way.

I turn away from the view and look over at them on our big platform bed. (It's more of a karate mat on stumpy stilts, but it has a pillow, so it counts. I haven't been able to persuade my three paramours to allow me to have a blanket - they all insist that I don't need one since I have them to cover me. Which is... technically correct. Grrr.)

Bane is at Kay's head, Rune at her feet, she between them on her back. If I didn't know any better, I'd say they're trying to tickle and/or strangle her. She seems about 85% okay with that. What's really going on is that they're peeling Kay out of her multiple layers of armored clothes which they insist she wear while she's running around in the grove outside. She haaaates these clothes. But she haaaates getting out of them again even more. Pregnancy has made Kay a bit of a moody, irritable grump, to be honest. Or maybe she's just not genetically hardwired to accept anyone's, let alone two male's, overbearing ministrations.

Grumpy or sunny, with or without clothes, she's magnificent.

Personally, I like seeing any of them strip, or be stripped. Not picky.

Val, Val, Val!

I can hear Kay across small distances now. Only single words and it takes some 'shouting' on Kay's part, but I get her. I don't know if it's a natural development, or if it's because of her pregnancy - maybe it makes her stronger? - or maybe she's riding on Rune's frequency. I don't really care. All I know is that we're in tune.

She sounds extra whiny tonight. She reaches for me with an actorly hand, which quickly gets snatched by Bane and divested of its wrist protectors. Vaaaal. Fucking shit hornyyyy.

Yeah, there had never been any hope for her vocabulary.

"Who's horny, darling? Me or you?" I snort and walk over, un'zipping' my bio-garment and leaving it on the floor. It's white and gauzy and very comfortable - a gift from Naurity. (I have a closet full of those now. She crochets them herself.) "Or Rune? Or Bane?"

She pouts, which looks charmingly weird on her alien face, and replies, Yes.

I laugh and lean down to give her a peck on the pouty lips. She catches my lower lip between her teeth, sucks on it a bit, and then snakes her tongue deep into my mouth. Ungh, yes please thank you.

Hot. Hot hot hot. My alien girlfriend is so fucking sexy, I want to eat her up.

Fortunately, with the help of my distraction, the boys are quickly finished undressing her, and I seize the opportunity to enjoy her now-bared tits - deliciously swollen and tender, tipped with newly puffy and extra-sensitive nipples that the boys (and I) love to chew on to drive her crazy (how convenient that there's four of them!). Only after I'm good and done with that, do I pepper kisses on her taut stomach.

Drahta's pregnancy bellies are shaped like a gourd instead of a watermelon. Kay has some insane abdominal muscles that are keeping it all in place like an inbuilt belly-sling/corset, giving her skin actual tiger stripes that just look so, so badass. I like to imagine that the smaller bulb at the top of the gourd is Bunbun's head, and the bigger one is their body, limbs all folded up and the tail tied around them like a bow, like Alien meets Anne Geddes.

Just in case they can somehow hear me or my thoughts, I think and murmur a couple of fond greetings at Bun while I caress their mother-to-be's stretched skin with my fingertips and lips.

And then I slide lower, between Kay's legs, ready to lick her slit, tongue her hole, nibble on the sensitive fold of skin just where her tail attaches to her behind - and I rear back.

"Uhm. Kay?" There's a... there's something coming out of her. It looks a little like a... uuuh.

Is that a prolapse? I squint at it. It doesn't quite look like the one I've seen in that leaflet in my OBGYN's waiting room. (Mildly traumatizing, to be honest. I was not prepared.) But it does seem to be a flesh-colored something that's coming out of her vagina, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't there yesterday.

I'm worried. My brain immediately starts computing which of the health care professionals I've had over for my workers these past weeks might also be able to help my A'Draht. S's'siki is a lelepxi and they kinda sorta look like Drahta, and the ooli woman called Mirt once mentioned that her vagina prolapses as a part of normal intercourse, so maybe...