Page 1 of Beast Unburdened

Chapter 1

Abigail

I was shaking with cold; utterly and completely frozen to the bone. I noticed it first thing when I woke up and it took a while before my brain rallied enough to pay attention to anything other than that terrible bone-rattling cold. The second thing was that I was most assuredly not in my cozy bedroom with its marvelous queen-sized bed with memory foam mattress.

It did not smell like my lavender detergent here, instead, the air was stale and musty. Although it was pitch black even with my eyes open to the max I could tell I was in what amounted to a coffin made of glass from the glimmer above my head. Fear and panic bubbled through my bloodstream and I wanted to scream for help, pound against the glass but I was shaking so badly from the pervasive cold I couldn’t get a single muscle, not even my vocal cords, to obey.

Shit, shit, shit! This was a nightmare! This had to be a nightmare! But something told me that it wasn’t, this was real. Trying to make sense of it all I worried I’d somehow died in my sleep or maybe slipped into some kind of coma and got mistaken for dead, and then I’d been buried. That was a thing right? Didn’t I read somewhere that sometimes (though rarely) doctors mistakenly pronounced someone dead?

The air around me was warming though and as it did my shaking subsided a little until I could finally better sense my own skin instead of numbness from the cold. I was dressed, a relief for sure, in my suit from work. What idiot had decided to bury me in my work clothes? That was the last thing I wanted! If I never saw another day at my bank teller job again I’d be forever grateful.

In fact, moving my head I could tell the two rubber bands I’d used my last workday to restrain my thick curly hair were still in there. I’d used the makeshift solution because my favorite hairband had given out halfway through my work shift. What did that tell me? Whatever had happened to me must have happened right after work, or I’d have gotten home and changed my clothes.

Moving my hands to touch the glass just above me I felt something dangle from my wrists. Wires, stuck to my skin like electrodes from a medical exam. Now that I was aware I felt more of them attached to my chest, tucked into my blouse, and a pair attached to my temples and the sides of my neck. I yanked them off with a shiver, as if they were cobwebs. What the hell was this?

This wasn’t a coffin, was it? Why would they hook me up to electrodes inside a coffin? My brain tried to grasp for logical explanations and came up with a CT-scan or MRI, those were like a tube or something they stuck you in weren’t they? Did I get into a car accident and didn’t remember?

Then, from one moment to the next, light suddenly permeated the tiny space I was crammed into. It seared my eyes and blinded me. Before my eyes had even adjusted I was yanked from my resting place by rough, sandpaper textured hands until I dropped to a hard metal floor. Guttural, male voices were talking around me but I couldn’t understand a word they were saying.

When my eyes finally adjusted I wished immediately that they hadn’t. I had landed in a real nightmare, it was the only conclusion I could draw. The room around me was bright white and decked out with futuristic displays with blinking lights and a terrifying-looking mechanical arm tucked in behind a glass panel against one wall, right beside a medical cot of some kind.

Antiseptic smells singed my nostrils making it at once clear this was indeed a medical room except it looked like something out of a sci-fi. Then there were the nightmarish-looking wart-faced men looming around me. Big and hulking with gray skin and tusks they looked to me like someone had crossed a Klingon with a warthog, with disastrous results.

One of them yanked me roughly off the floor and threw me onto the medical cot. I nearly rolled off on the other side, only stopped by the fact the bed rail on that side was raised. I screamed though, I couldn’t help it, that thing was hideous and his grip had hurt on my upper arm. That more than accounted for the pinch to prove this wasn’t a dream. Shit, shit, and double shit! What the hell was going on?

I tried not to let another round of panic overcome me, I had to stay focused, I had to find out what was going on. Except it was really hard when these ugly gray fuckers were looming around me looking menacing and talking in an indecipherable guttural language.

Futuristic medical-looking room, alien creatures, was I on a spaceship? About to be probed? Holy crap had I lost my mind completely or what? I knew I needed to get a grip but I couldn't seem to control my hyperventilating. As I struggled against the grip of the one pinning me to the medical cot there was excited talking among the others; something that sounded like orders being barked.

A new alien stepped into my field of view then, this one stunningly beautiful if terrifying looking in its otherness. Anthracite color shimmered and glittered with long, straight black hair draped around broad shoulders clad in white. Through the hair poked sharply pointed ears with silver rings and studs glinting against the dark skin.

It was his eyes though that freaked me out. They were like shimmering black mirrors, not a speck of white, not even an iris or pupil visible. Just a sheet of glimmering black that reflected everything like mirrors. It was truly terrifying to look at. These eyes, they were the kind of eyes they put on demons in movies or TV shows. They were truly evil.

Shaking I felt my body give in to the freeze part of fight, flight, or freeze; all of my muscles turning to stone. They were talking to the evil-looking doctor-alien in harsh tones and then he pulled a tray of tools to him and approached me. Was that a scalpel? Fuck no!

When I struggled again the warthog aliens jumped into action, strapping me down to the medical bed until I couldn’t move an inch. The shimmering black alien leaned over me and I couldn’t keep looking when the scalpel approached my face. I squeezed my eyes shut tight; only briefly did I fight to keep my head straight when the alien grabbed my face and pressed down so my ear was pointing up.

Hot searing pain shot through me when the knife touched my skin just behind my ear. Oh god, what were they doing to me? It seemed far too long that the alien was rooting around behind my ear with his knife and god knows what else. It was searing pain and freezing cold and I screamed and screamed until my throat was raw and I tasted blood.

The pain eased when some cool gel was smeared across the incision and then my head was turned and the whole process started again on my other ear. My voice gave out halfway through that side but to my shock, as the sound of my screaming faded I realized I could hear the guttural voices of the aliens around me and now their words made sense.

“I love how she screams, such a pretty sound,” one was saying as he elbowed the ugly brute next to him. “Oh yeah,” that one replied and he made a lewd gesture, “Too bad she’s worth more intact.”

The anthracite alien above me smeared cool gel behind my ear and the pain faded away. His large but fine fingered hand lifted away from pinning my head in place and as I twisted to better see the room he spoke to, his voice low and mournful, pitched so the gray-skinned warthogs couldn’t hear him. “I’m so sorry little human, they don’t waste painkillers on slaves. Please forgive me.” His voice was perhaps the most gentle thing I’d ever heard, so sad and apologetic.

“Are you done yet Doc?” demanded one of them and the doctor who’d just done surgery on my ears shook his head. “I need to do another check to make sure everything’s healthy before I give her the fertility drugs you wanted.”

“Well hurry up!” was the response from the mangiest and small looking of the four ugly aliens. “Oh shut it Frek!” the largest one responded, “You were against spending credits on those faulty pods!” The huge monster gestured at the glass pod they’d pulled me out of propped in a corner. “And now you’re invested because it worked?”

Everyone but Frek laughed, a creaking, sharp sound that had me flinching back into the medical cot I was on. It was at that moment that the doctor leaned over me, his hand pressing something into mine, which was hidden from the others behind my leg. “Bide your time, please try to survive. You can’t fight the Krektar. Not alone.”

It was the scalpel, still bloody from his surgery on me. I tucked it away into my pocket, hoping it wasn’t going to slice open my leg. Why was this doctor giving me a weapon? Apologizing? And advising me against the ugly gray creatures?

I didn’t get it until one of the Krektar, the huge one, approached and snapped a collar around my throat. It was a black metal band with a small box with lights attached to it and he pointed at the one around the doctor’s throat. “Listen, little slave, this is a pain collar.” He held up a small remote, “One flick of this button and this is what happens.” The ugly creature then pointed the remote at the doctor and with a mean grin turned it on.

Immediately the anthracite-colored male grunted, his eyes scrunching closed while his whole body tensed up. Then he dropped to his knees and only just caught himself on clenched fists; his entire body shaking with pain. He didn’t immediately start screaming but as the Krektar appeared to dial it up the doctor lost the fight, screaming out hoarsely before biting down hard on his bottom lip with teeth far too sharp to be human until he bled red blood in a puddle on the metal floor in front of him.

I stared in horror, torn between abject fear for myself and the need to stop this horrid slaver from inflicting pain on someone. Even if that someone had just inflicted terrible pain on me. Thankfully one of the other Krektar intervened, “Farn you idiot! That’s enough! He still needs to make the fertility drug, he can’t if you make the weakling pass out.”