But if I keep not looking at it, maybe I can retain some kind of plausible deniability. Maybe I can just act like it isn’t capable of speech, isn’t capable of thought, isn’t capable of pain, isn’t…
Fuck…no, there’s no way I can do that.
“That’s fine, I’ll just desiccate here, and you can…go back to your life or whatever.” It says.
I turn around and see the thing sitting up, staring at me, the jade skin shimmering a bit in the light. It’s…oddly attractive in a way that something that isn’t a human definitely shouldn’t be, but I can’t really ignore the feelings it stirs inside of me.
Wonderful job, Lucy, always the monsterfucker, and now you’re horny for the tube creature.
“I wasn’t…going to just leave you to die.” I say.
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” I hope that this thing can’t read my mind…or read less than convincing lies as what they are. “I was going to go get you help…”
“And how’d you know what help for me would be?”
“I was going to call the owner of the building, I don’t know.” I take a step toward the thing, the briny smell of the liquid that was formerly in the tube with this thing filling the room.
“You were going to call the people who kidnapped and imprisoned me?” It says, an incredulous smile spreading across its ovaloid head.
“That’s…I…” I step a little closer.
“To your credit, you didn’t know that. I know.” The thing nods. “I’m…Xyzo, by the way. At least that’s what I’m using as my name here.” Xyzo reaches its hand out to me, a hand that is oddly tentacle-like despite retaining five fingers.
“Hi Xyzo, I’m…” I wonder if I should give this thing my real name, but, hell, I’ve had so much shit in my life about giving different names that I’m done trying to hide anything. “I’m Lucy. She/her.” I shake the somewhat slimy hand.
Xyzo nods, “I’m just going to tell you that gender is a whole…really complicated thing with my kind that we aren’t going to get into right now, but, let’s just go with I’m the rough equivalent of a she/they in terms you’d understand.”
“I was she/they for a bit…before I just fully transitioned to she/her.”
“Whatever you use, I’ll remember. My brain is about nine hundred times as dense with neurons as yours, so, there’s plenty of room for whatever pronoun configurations you throw at me.” Xyzo smirks.
“That’s, um…that’s cool, thanks for understanding. And, uh, speaking of transitioning…”
“This early?” Xyzo raises what would be eyebrows if she had them. “You’re telling me that right away?”
I shrug, “I figured it would come up eventually…” I take another step toward Xyzo’s pod, gaining confidence from somewhere to try to confront this strange situation head-on. “It always does, one way or another. And then people get to have their reaction, and I have to just deal with it.”
Xyzo sits up in the tube, carefully lifting themselves up without slashing a tentacle on an errant shard. “Have you talked about transitioning to a lot of extraterrestrials before that had a bad reaction or something?”
“No…” I smirk. “It’s just that…it’s never really up to me how things will change when they know, so I want to get it out of the way right from the top.”
“Well, I’ll just say that my home planet has about 780 possible genital configurations, so we can’t spend our time policing what’s in everybody’s pants.” Xyzo swipes at some glass shards on the edge of the tube. “So whatever someone says they are, that’s what they are, and we worry about genetic compatibility later.”
For as scary as this situation started, I can’t help but to be charmed by Xyzo at this point. Maybe it’s the instant acceptance…but maybe it’s also the fact that she’s a hot alien with tentacles. Either way, I can’t help but be captivated by her.
“How did you end up…here?” I say. I extend a hand to help her out of the tube, and to my relief she accepts, wrapping her long fingers around my wrists as she carefully extracts herself from the goo and glass.
“It’s silly, really. Just poor focus on my part when I was flying on a foggy night about five years ago.”
I help Xyzo get to her…feet…tentacles, whatever, and she stands in front of me. I’m five feet ten inches, something that’s always made me self-conscious since I began transitioning, but Xyzo is at least six feet and makes me feel small, which is nice.
“I was coming down to do some field observations and misjudged my altitude when I started to try to leave, hit some high-tension wires, and, well, next thing I knew I was in a tube.” Xyzo looks down at me, and then down at the flimsy wetsuit she’s wearing that’s been stapled together to conform to her body.
“So, what were you doing exactly?” I say.
“We’re given a sector of space to patrol, and we just make sure things remain orderly in that sector.”
