Page 19 of There’s an Alien Down My Chimney

There were two humans backing up the tentacle alien with his soft body, but they were even more terrified of the Dragnell than their boss. The three of them slunk away without coming into the interrogation room, so the Dragnell was left alone in that small room behind the glass wall. His bright silvery-blue eyes flashed up from his contemplation of the door, through which his allies had just left, meeting mine straight through the glass.

I stiffened, meeting that cold glare head-on. My tail wanted to lash behind my back, but all I managed was a painful, feeble twitch as they’d used some kind of plastic ties to fasten it to the chair leg. At least the trembling human that had done the job had been too scared to try and touch the tip, maybe he hadn’t known it was an attached knife that he should have removed.

The Dragnell’s eyes flicked to Stella, his head tilted, a malicious grin splitting his maw wide open. Snarling back instinctively, I tried to shift my body to move in front of my girl, and then he smirked as if he’d won.

He pushed Stella’s bag off the table in front of him carelessly, only the glass preventing us from hearing it thud to the floor. He wasn’t interested in what she had on her, but he was quick and sure when he pulled open mine. His nose moved as he sniffed at the contents. He held up a tin, studying it curiously before he popped open the lid. I knew what was in it, and when he inhaled, dark powder swirled up, straight into his nostrils.

The angry growl he let out, followed by mad rubbing at his sensitive nose was funny. It wasn’t so funny when he pulled back his arm and hurled the tin of precious cocoa across the small space, powder exploding everywhere. I growled, my chest rumbling, not the drink, that was supposed to be my link to Stella when I had to leave her.

Stella jumped in her chair, startled by my sudden aggression, “What’s going on?” Her eyes darted over the window, searching, but not locking onto the Dragnell’s angry face. She couldn’t see through the glass for some reason… I tilted my head, trying to figure out how that could be, it was a shimmery kind of glass, more mirror-like than a typical window. Was it too reflective for her eyes?

“The Dragnell just tossed all my cocoa on the floor…” I told her, shrugging and jiggling my chained-up hands. “I’ll just have to wring his fat neck when he gets through the door.” I’d timed those words just right, the Dragnell slammed through the metal door to our interrogation room with a growl, covered in a fine dusting of brown powder. His tan fur had now lost all its sheen, making him look drab and ugly. I snorted a laugh, covering up my pain at seeing something precious to me destroyed, “Nice look on you, buddy.”

The male growled, his fangs on display, glittering white in the fluorescent overhead lights, but he didn’t respond to my taunt. “You are telling me why you are here, spy!” he demanded, slamming his clawed fists down on the table in front of me. Stella was completely dismissed, his eyes skimmed right over her.

“I’m telling you, I’m not a spy, I just want to go home,” I said to him, shrugging my shoulders. “If you’d just let me go to my ship, I’ll be out of your hair in no time, promise.” Of course, the Dragnell didn’t respond to that either, he just glared at me, his body as tight as a bow. He twitched his mobile ears but it was clear to me that he didn’t understand a word I said.

“Hey Stella, can you tell this numbskull what I just said? I don’t think his translator works for my language…” I said to her. Wiggling my still bladed-tail against the leg of the chair, I tried to figure out if I could get enough of the tip out to curl it back and slice through the ties. All the while, smiling pleasantly like I had no clue what was going on.

Stella eyed the Dragnell apprehensively, but she wasn’t nearly as scared of the big alien as his own underlings seemed to be. My brave, brave female. “Hey, he’s been telling you, he just wants to go home. We only came here to get his ship back, it was an accident, he didn’t mean to land on Earth.”

The Dragnell swung his eyes from me to my female and I forced down the urge to growl at him. Instead, I pasted on a stupid grin, trying to make it seem like I wasn’t a threat. I tended to throw people off with my ability to go from serious and angry to vapid and funny, and I hoped that worked in this setting too. Vapid and funny always threw people off, it was my best barroom brawl fix.

He didn’t say anything for a while, just kept staring at me, the darker spots around his eyes clenching dramatically into a deep frown. No, this was definitely not working exactly the way I hoped it would. “Where are you from, spy?” he demanded, then his eyes flicked to Stella as if he expected her to answer.

“Oh, here and there,” I said pleasantly and I mentally prepared myself for the reality that we’d be here a while. Things would start to get unpleasant soon enough when the Dragnell realized I wasn’t cooperating.

*

Stella

I had no experience when it came to interrogations, but I was pretty sure this one was going south fast. I understood that with Ru being from the future, he had to be extra careful with what he said. What if he spoke the truth about where he came from and it sparked this guy’s species to look them up to start a war? He could change the entire way things were supposed to go. A chill shot down my spine, what if my choice was going to mess up the future?

No, I couldn’t think like that. Some things we should be worried about, like what knowledge we stirred up and left behind. But my life? I didn’t think I could live with the regret if I didn’t follow through on this, I had to do this. Even Pike knew, his goodbye had been telling.

This scary wolf-looking alien wasn’t letting up though, and he was getting more and more furious by the minute. Each non-answer I translated for Ru seemed to make him want to howl, literally. It gave me an idea because unlike Ru, I wasn’t tied down, my hands were cuffed but I could freely move.

The creature was huge, and he’d taken my gun from me like it was nothing, bending the barrel even. I still felt a burn of embarrassed rage at being such a soft target. If I hadn’t gotten disarmed, would Ru have stood a chance against this giant? No point thinking about what if’s. So I focused on my probably ill-advised plan. My eyes zeroed in on the alien-looking gun that hung from the belt cinched around the alien, Rovoar’s hips. That should level the playing field.

I repeated yet another silly answer Ru supplied with a smirk, his body lazily draped against the table, cuffed hands relaxed. I nudged my foot against his ankle to signal that something was about to happen, and then I drew on all my fourth-grade acting skills and faked fainting. I was pretty sure it was a terrible performance but just collapsing forward onto the table seemed to do the trick.

There was a stunned silence, then Ru made an awful howling sound that shot straight through my heart. I hoped it was an act and that he had much better acting skills than me, but just to be sure I rubbed my foot along his ankle beneath the table to reassure him. I couldn’t tell what our interrogator was doing with my eyes closed, but I had my face turned towards the side of the table I hoped he’d walk around. Opening them just a crack, looking through my lashes, I waited anxiously, holding my breath until I was starting to go light in the head.

There, I heard his footsteps and an annoyed snort, and I saw the brush of his fur against the table top as he circled around. “You better not be faking this, human,” he growled at me, “You are my only way to communicate with this asshole.” He sounded thoroughly put out, but he was reaching for my neck, I could feel the heat of his hand radiate toward me.

Opening my eyes fully, I hoped to God that he was built like a man. Folding my cuffed hands together like I was about to hit a volleyball, I aimed for the loincloth-covered bits between his legs and hit him as hard as I could. The squishy bits I hit felt pretty much like I expected and his response was as well.

He howled, doubling over, and sinking to his knees. I lunged for the alien-looking gun on his hip, but he twisted at the last moment, his hound-like face twisted into a furious snarl. I stumbled out of range, afraid for his claws, but I knew I had to get that gun quickly before he recovered.

With one hand cupped around his privates, and his massive, hairy chest heaving like bellows, he still looked like a terrifying opponent. Ducking under his swatting arm, I reached out, and my cuffed hands brushed across the grip of the weapon. “Treacherous female!” he roared, twisting his body at the hips. I felt the air swish as his clawed hand came down towards my back.

With a wild burst of desperate energy, I pushed off with my legs. Hands outstretched as far as I could, I collided with the monstrous wolf, my shoulder ramming into his side. My fingers closed around the weapon, my momentum helped pull it free, and then I braced myself for a bad fall. I heard another roar, this one dual-toned sub-harmonics, and knew that Ru was warning me.

Pain sliced across my back, straight through my thick winter clothing, lines of fire drawing across the skin between my shoulder blades. I landed hard on my elbows and belly, sprawled out prone on the floor next to the table. In this vulnerable position, I had no time to moan about the pain in my back, survival was foremost on my mind.

I rolled to my back, bracing my feet against the nearby table leg, and aimed the strange gun between my bound hands, ready to shoot our alien interrogator in the chest. Roavor stood upright, no longer clutching his family jewels, facing Ru who stood in the ruins of what was left of his chair. His long, barbed tail sliced through the air and hit the wolf-man in the shoulder, burrowing into the thick pelt and drawing blood. “Don’t touch my girl, asshole!” he roared, leaping onto the bigger opponent with just his bare hands.

Now, I couldn’t shoot without risking hitting Ru, they were grappling too closely for me to be confident of my aim with this unfamiliar weapon. Ru was a giant compared to me, even compared to Pike who was a big guy, but this wolf-creature was a head taller, and even Ru’s horns didn’t make up for the difference.