"They do now and the sooner we can all get over that fact, the faster we can come up with a plan." I look each woman in the eye, some of them giving me shaky nods. Others in our little herded group have started turning around to listen too. "Look, there's more of us than there are of them," I jerk my chin over at one of the gray guards. "Maybe we can take a hostage. Demand to be taken back home?"
"They don't speak any language I know," Alana says. "How will we communicate our demands?"
I shake my head. "I... I don't know! I'm open to other ideas, but we need to come up with something!"
Just then, a loud buzzer sounds and the ground begins to move. We all grab hold of each other while the floor of the dome seems to rotate slowly until our caged-off segment stops right where a gate on the outer edge opens with a metallic scrape and clang. Our gray guards advance on us, threatening with their sizzling electric sticks until, as a group, we're herded toward the now-open gate. This can't be good.
My companions and I are not-so-gently urged into a new room - a new dome - only this time, our sawdust-covered area is a pit, and all around us, high on a balcony, are other beings peering down. Now I know how those goats felt back at the livestock market.
Creatures of all sorts assess us from their lofty perches up on that balcony. Some have huge, bulbous heads, some have beaks, others have horns, and some with too many eyes to count - all of which are looking us up and down. Our group huddles together. It must be that natural instinct to believe the 'safety in numbers' rhetoric because I'm grasping onto the nearest women just as much as the rest of them. Our heads swivel this way and that, all of us craning our necks to see the horrific group up above. There's whimpering coming from within our huddle and out of the corner of my eye, I see someone faint.
"And if we could all settle down now for bidding to commence," comes a voice on a loudspeaker.
Bidding? Shit, shit, shit,shit!
"Are we being fucking auctioned off?!" I hear someone say from behind me. The incredulity in her voice might have been amusing because - duh - yes we are being fucking auctioned off. Auctioned off like cattle. What took you so long to get with the program?! Except, it's not amusing. Not at all. It's real.
Beside me, Gwen tugs on my arm. "Why was that voice speaking English?"
I have no idea. And I'm about to tell Gwen just that when Chastity gasps at my other side. "Where did you get that shot from?! That's-... I fucking hate the paparazzi!" she squeals, stomping her fluffy-slipper-covered foot into the sawdust beneath us.
Following her gaze up, up, up I see a large screen floating in mid-air above the pit. The image flickers a little but continues to bob gently up and down as it slowly rotates, making sure all the aliens above us can see the huge, hovering photograph of Chastity clearly drunk off her face, falling out of a nightclub with crimson lipstick smeared and her lovely red hair plastered to her sweaty skin.
"I don't think a bad photograph is a priority right now," someone hisses at her. "They're selling you off to the highest bidder!"
At that, Chastity shrieks in outrage and breaks away from our little herd, bending and hobbling as she removes one slipper, then the other. "Over my dead body!" she declares, hurling her slippers up at our bidding audience. One of them lands back in the pit. The other manages to whack a hulking, orange-scaled beast, who had been too engrossed in the pamphlet held in his clawed hand to see it coming. Chastity reaches for the slipper that landed in the sawdust.
"I don't think that's a good idea," I call out, making the redhead whirl around.
"Do you have a better one?!"
"Lot number EF1255671. A human female of 27 years-" the loudspeaker announces.
"I'm 24!" Chastity protests up into the air.
"2.8 zikrons in height and of good breeding health."
"I don't like the sound of that," Tessa murmurs, moving closer and casting her wide-eyed gaze around as if an escape route was about to open up any minute now.
Chastity throws her slipper again. This time, it's caught by a green tentacled individual who proceeds to lick it and then leer down at her. He makes a chirping noise and raises a paddle with odd squiggly characters displayed on it.
"I don't think that was a good idea, Chastity!" I say, moving forward to grab her and bring her back into the fold of our huddle.
"They want tobreed me. Did you hear that?!" she looks at us all, the color drained from her face. "What else can I do? Maybe if I misbehave enough, no one will buy me?"
"I think Tentacles McGee already made a bid," I tell her.
"Besides," Alana cuts in, putting a hand on the redhead’s arm, "we're being treated like livestock here. What happens to livestock that doesn't sell?"
Chastity's brows knit together. "I don’t know,” she splutters, “I don’t know anything about farms. They get treated well and taken back home?" she says with so much forced hope in her voice, it hurts to hear it. Looking around us, she watches as we all slowly shake our heads.
"They get taken out back and shot in the head."
Chapter 3
SERENA
One by one, we're bid on. Some of the bidders, I don't see. I only heard their odd noises from the shadows and the auctioneer's approval of their bid. Occasionally, there were numbers spoken in English, along with a metric I didn’t recognize. When it comes to my turn, the screen floating high above us rotates to show the picture I use on social media to drum up business for my cam work; my chestnut hair nicely tousled to one side, makeup artfully done and wearing virginal white lingerie and fluffy angel wings strapped to my back to complete the look. It was one of my personas - the one where a lot of my clients liked to think I was some dumb innocent girl that they manage to corrupt. Like they, and they alone had managed to talk me into doing things for them in front of the camera. There was a sinister edge to it really, when you think about it.
