THREE
MINNIE
Dr. Trout leftme to clean up the mess from our experiments. He assured me I’d be safe with the unconscious alien. The purple alien male’s binds were made from metal and intended to keep him to the cot. I nodded in response to Dr. Trout’s request and agreed to my task, eager for Dr. Trout to go to another room.
Once I was alone, my hands shook and the sight of the alien’s purple blood turned my stomach. We’d harmed a living creature. At the orders of the government we’d hurt him and the best explanation that Dr. Trout could give me was that if we didn’t do this, the aliens would get to us first.
This purple man-beast’s crash landing on earth Dr. Trout and the military interpreted akin to a threat. I didn’t know if I believed that. The alien had gone willingly with the soldiers and likely hardly understood what was going on given that he hadn’t put up much of a fight.
We’d led the poor beast into our torture chambers in the name of science until the pain had been too much for him. Dr. Trout again left me to clean up the mess of the injustice we’d carried out against the creature.
I sniffled and covered up my tears and then I heard rustling of cotton against metal and the purple-skinned alien awakened…
I gasped and jolted back away from him. He raised his head and then groaned before slamming it back down. I whimpered and then kept tidying my corner of the lab, hoping I could finish quickly and leave the room.
I tossed our scalpels and tools in the biohazard waste chute and got to work scrubbing the metal surfaces with industrial strength cleaner. After a few moments, I couldn’t bear it. I had to take a look at the alien’s face up close. I had to see the creature we’d tortured and look him in the eye. I’d been complicit, and I was prepared to accept the consequences of that, but I could at least offer a word of apology…
I set down my spray bottle and cloth and approached the table. I removed my mask and then my gloves, and stared at his shining green eyes, like peridots sunk into his head.
The alien looked at me as if heknewme, as if he really did understand. This was the first whiff of recognition I’d caught from the creature since seeing him for the first time. And for a creature, he was shockingly… humanoid.
His skin looked similar to mine, but as if it were painted purple. Of course, his skin wouldn’t rub off when I touched it. He was naturally and innately…purple.
I reached my bare hand out, ignoring my own trembling fear. I had to overcome it. I had to reach out and touch him to see if it was true that he really understood. Touch can convey twenty times more than a look after all.
I’d sutured him up where we’d cut wearing my nitrile gloves and working under the most sterile conditions, but I wanted to make contact with his bare skin to remind myself that this creature we were studying was very very real. I approached him tentatively and he only watched me without recoiling as I drew so close that I could feel warmth emanating from his skin.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, choking back my sadness at the inhumanity I’d participated in.
I made contact with the alien’s skin and felt his warm flesh beneath my finger tips for the first time. I recoiled even as he remained motionless. I’d expected him to feel different to my bare hands. Touching him felt so… natural. His skin was normal, a bit tougher than mine, but not too unusual like a reptile or a fish. He was smooth, relatively hairless and muscled. We knew from our studies that he was mammalian, yet still unlike any mammal that existed on earth.
I touched him again and apologized.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered again.
He raised his head as if he could understand. I gasped and stepped back.
The alien whispered, “For what are you sorry?”
I yelped and stepped back, crashing into a tray of tools and sealed hypodermic needles and then falling flat on my behind in the lab.
“Careful,” he said.
“You…you understand us!”
“Yes…”
I rose to my feet and folded my arms, cocking an eyebrow.
“How can you understand us?”
“I just do.”
“B-but we cut into you.”
“Yes. You did.”
“We hurt you and you didn’t utter out in pain once.”
