Xixan & Nikki: A Scifi romance

Xixan & Nikki By C. Y. Croc Perinqual Galaxy Aliens Series Book 1 Copyright © 2020 by C. Y. Croc All events, places, businesses and characters in this publication are clearly fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead will be purely coincidence. They are all a product of the author’s imagination. Glossary of terms Cooch – Vagina Credos - Money Cyc – Month Doon -Day Hackles – Raised backbone weapons Hinc – Hour Hitches – Raised skin bumps that express emotion Mambas - Breasts Mid – Minute Milic – Mile Nip - Child Node - Second Quisha – Soft cake Spars – Raised arm bone weapons Taja - Penis Wid – Week Yana – year 1NikkiIt’s the fifth anniversary to the exact day since I lost them both – my whole world snuffed out in an instant. My neighbours, the Clarks, an elderly couple who live just under a kilometre away insisted that I go around to their house for supper this evening so that I’m not on my own. They are lovely people, but I would have preferred to spend the time alone, lost in my memories. If only I hadn’t been sick. If only I’d been more insistent for Brad to leave little Jackson with me. Then I’d still have them both here with me and we’d be spending the evening in our little log cabin around the wood burner - our little family - all alive, safe and well. I swallow down the lump in my throat and hold my eyes tightly shut to stop the unshed tears from falling. I refuse to cry tonight. Tonight I want only happy memories. I look up to the Northern lights to see if I can spot the stars that I named after them. Where are they? Is heaven up there somewhere too? A few light snowflakes find their way into my jacket and drift down the front of my neck. I shiver and wrap my scarf tighter around me.  A mid-day flurry ensured the snow is already halfway up my calves as I trudge along to the Clark’s place. I’ve already decided that after an hour I’ll use the excuse of another predicted snowfall so that I can leave them early. The evening seems unnaturally quiet and darker. Even the snow has lost its usual luminous glow from the disappearing sun and rising moon.  I watch my steamy breath vaporise in the last of the daylight from my lumbering walking efforts. The weight of my rifle under my left arm is making it ache so I switch it over to the other side, tucking it under my right arm, then I continue along the track with my ears on high alert. Although bear attacks are rare around these parts, I don’t want to get caught unaware. My rifle is my new companion, it goes everywhere with me and it pains me to think that in the last twelve months, my 338 Winchester Magnum has become my new sleeping partner on Brad’s side of the bed. My heart breaks again for the thousandth time. I hear a branch crack nearby and the sound resonates off the trees surrounding me. I tear off my gloves with my teeth, spitting them onto the floor and grab my rifle, pulling it into the right position on my shoulder just how Brad taught me, while doing a three-hundred and sixty-degree spin. Up ahead of me three short dark figures step out from behind a huge tree, but they are still submerged in the shadows and I can’t quite make them out. Are they lost children? Other than the Clarks and me, the nearest houses are miles away. I shiver. Something feels off. I lift my head up from the sight of my rifle and squint. “Hey, kids, are you lost? Where are your parents?” A blue-white light blinds me and I raise my arm to shield my eyes. “It’s okay, I won’t hurt you.” I want to lower the gun because I don’t want to scare the children but my instincts tell me to hold it where it is. “Can you take the light out of my eyes please?” My voice is betraying my fear. The light lowers and that’s when I get a good look at them for the first time. It’s not the matted black fur that covers the majority of their four-foot high, two-foot wide bodies or their blood-red glowing eyes that make me suck in a breath and hold it. It’s the abominable way they eyeball me. I’m frozen in terror as they walk towards me. I hear an echo of a gunshot, but I have no recollection of pulling my trigger. Then for a moment everything goes black before I start screaming. I don’t know how long I’ve been screaming but I can’t stop. My throat is getting hoarse. I’m in total blackness. Am I dead? My skin is buzzing with a trillion tiny icy pinpricks as my whole body is gripped with fear. I’m lying flat and I try to sit up. But as I lift my head a few inches it’s met by a hard surface. I instinctively lift my arms to reach out into the blackness, only for them to also be stopped a foot into their investigation. Something cold and hard in encasing me. I run my hands over my entrapment and realise with panic that I’m cocooned in a cylinder casket. My pulse is threatening to tear out of my neck and I’m instantly bathed in sweat as fear terrorises every cell in my body. I continue to scream and bang on the interior wall of my casketed cocoon. “Help! Help! Someone please, just let me out!” Then, I’m instantly blinded by light. I cover up my eyes from the sudden change of extreme blackness to harsh clinical brightness. “Are you okay?” It’s a soft female voice with a European accent. I sit up and blink a couple of times until my focus readjusts. Then I see a crown of blonde curly hair. “Who-who are you and where am I?” “I am Katarina. I do not know where we are. But the lid was not shut on my encasement. Your screams, I think they woke me.” The woman in front of me has big blue eyes that look as scared as I feel. We look from each other to study the room that we are in. It appears to be some type of storage bay. There are another nine containers like the one I have just emerged from, all on high tables, one of them open which must have been where Katarina came out of. They are elongated cylinders, shiny yet dull. The surface of them resembles solid mercury. I turn back to Katarina and grab her hand. “Thank you. I thought I was going to suffocate in there. Katarina nods and begins to shiver, that’s when I notice she is clad only in her nightwear. A flimsy two-piece spaghetti string slip and a tiny pair of shorts with fluffy slippers. I’m still wearing my outdoor clothes so I unzip my jacket and hand it to her. “Here, put this on.” She takes it hesitantly. “Are you sure?” I look down at my legs stretched out in front of me in my thick ski-pants and dense snow boots and nod. “Yeah, I’m sure.” She can’t get it on quick enough. I notice that the room temperature is pretty warm so I’m guessing she’s in shock. Heck, I’m in shock. One minute I’m walking through the forest and the next minute I’m in a casket. I climb out and then turn around to inspect the subject of my incarceration. It looks like metal but to the touch, it almost has an organic feel. I pull my hand away quickly and turn to Katarina. She still has the look of a deer caught in headlights as she watches me, her arms drawn around herself. Her voice quivers, “Where do you think we are?” I chew on my bottom lip as I once again run my eyes around the room for another inspection. “I think we might have been kidnapped – maybe for trafficking.” I remember my Winchester rifle and look back inside my casket. Nothing. I frantically search all around the table on which my casket sits, then scan the rest of the floor when I can’t find it. “Crap!” “What-what is it?” “My rifle. I had it with me when they…took me. It’s gone. They must have it.” Katarina begins to cry. “I’m so frightened.” I take her in my arms and hug her. “Shhh. It’s okay. We are going to get through this Katarina.” In my mind, nothing could be worse than losing my child and husband. She looks up to me through her tears. “What is your name?” “I’m Nikki.” I rub my hand up and down her back to console her. “Where were you when you were taken, Katarina? You certainly aren’t dressed for Alaska.” Katarina pulls away and furrows her brow. “Alaska? Do you mean the very cold place bordering Canada?” Now I furrow my brow. “Yes, that’s where we are.” Katarina shakes her head. “Nein – no. We are in Deutschland. Germany. One minute I was taking the rubbish out to the bin, the next I am here.” I hold her at arm’s length. “But that can’t be right Katarina. I was walking to my neighbour’s house and I live in Barrow, the Northernest part of Alaska for Christ's sake.” I look around at the other cylinder caskets. My heart quickens from its already rapid beat. I tilt my head towards the other caskets.  “Help me try and take the lids off the rest of these Katarina!” We approach a different cylinder casket and wrench at the lid, but it's sealed tight. I run my fingers around the one I’m stood in front of but there is no rim, no edge, no indication that the casket has two parts. We try seven more with no luck. But on the eighth I feel a slight groove. I look around to Katarina. “Over here, this one!” I dig my fingernails in and feel it pull open a little more. Katarina joins me at my side and between us we price it open, millimetre by millimetre. I gasp. There is another woman inside. Her afro hair is like a halo around her slumbering face. Seeing her lying there unmoving brings back a rush of memories. The last time I was stood at an open casket was five years ago. Instinctively, I reach out and check for a pulse, noticing how shaky my hand is as I do so. Relief washes over my face as I turn to Katarina and nod. Katarina leans forward closer to the woman’s face, her curly hair dangling down; almost tickling the sleeping woman’s face as she gently shakes her. “Hello, are you okay?” The woman’s eyes begin to flutter and she licks her lips. Then, she shoots her eyes open and jolts upright. “Where am I? Who are you?” She’s British. I furrow my brow with concern. “Try not to panic. We’ve all been kidnapped.” “What the f**k!” She swings her legs over the side and we step back to give her room. Then, she jumps out of the casket. She looks about frantically. “Where the hell are we?” Katarina shrugs, “We don’t know. I woke up first to Nikki’s screams. Luckily, they hadn’t completely closed the lid on that thing.” Katarina juts her jaw in the direction of my casket. “So I was able to open it and free her.” I take over the explanation. “We tried the other caskets to see if there was anyone else inside and yours was the only one that we could open.” The woman nods as I talk and paces in between the caskets studying them before checking the perimeter of the room. “There’s no bloody door!” She cries out over her shoulder. “How the f**k did we get in here?” she joins us in the centre of the room again. I need to know where she was kidnapped from. “What was the last thing you remember…er…” I hold my hand out in a request for her name. “Samantha.” “… and where were you?” Her eyes look down and move from side to side as she recalls. “I’d just finished work and was walking towards my car.” “Where?” She furrows her brow, “Birmingham.” Katarina turns to me with wide eyes, “Is that in England?” I shrug. The woman screws up her face. “Yes, it’s in England. What do you mean by that? You’re acting like we’ve crossed the channel already. Are we in France?” I shake my head. “I was taken from Alaska and Katarina was taken from Germany.” Samantha shakes her head in disbelief. “That makes no sense. How could they travel that distance in such a short amount of time? I feel like I’ve only been asleep a couple of hours.” I shake my head, “I don’t know.” Katarina attempts to lift the corners of her mouth to smile. “So your name is Samantha?” “Yeah, Samantha, but I prefer to be called Sam.” Katarina puts her hand on her chest and then points to me. “I am Katarina and she is Nikki.” Sam nods and squeezes out a small smile from her full lips. “I wished we were meeting for the first time in better circumstances.” Her face sets with determination. “We need a plan.” I cross my arms and tilt my head. “What type of plan?” “Weapons, ambush… I don’t know, but something to jump the kidnappers when they come in here to get us.” Katarina’s hair swishes as she looks from left to right at the room. “But where will they come in from? There are no doors.” Sam holds her hands up to her forehead in desperation. “s**t! There’s got to be something we can do.” Then, we hear a whooshing noise. We all turn to see a rectangle doorway appear in a wall. “Too late,” whispers Sam. Despite my thermal clothing, I feel my whole body turn cold when out captors walk into the room. I hear a scream from beside me and recognise the tone belonging to the voice of Katarina. Four short matted fur-covered monsters march into the room.  Their stench hits my nostrils before the horror of their features registers on my eyes. But when I finally comprehend what I’m looking at I almost faint and I don’t know how my jelly legs keep me standing upright. They have sort of rodent shaped furless faces with red piercing eyes. But I recognise a look of shock in the soulless crimson depths of them when they see us free of our caskets. The one in front of the others makes ugly sounds out of his mouth which I guess must be his way of talking because the other three rodent men take something out of their belts at his command. Sam steps forward fearless. “What the hell are you?” But they are the only words she’s able to mutter because the leading rodent man lifts a tiny black ball to us and a burst of blue-white light shoots out in an arc and envelopes us all. It’s just like the light that blinded me in the forest. Only this time, instead of blackness I am awake and frozen. Only my eyes are able to move and they are frantic in their search for Katarina and Sam. I spot them in my peripheral vision. Like me they are also motionless, locked in an invisible force field. Three rodent men approach us with gun-shaped objects in their hands. My heart is beating so fast now that I can actually hear the blood rushing through my veins as it pulses close to my eardrums. One of them holds the gun object behind my neck and fires. A surging pain shoots into my skull and down the side of my body. I fight the vomit wanting to rise from my gut and expel from my body, then watch in horror as the other rodent men also fire their guns into Katarina and Sam’s necks. But unlike me, neither of them remains conscious after that. I watch helplessly through my blurred vision of pain as the lids to the other caskets are opened to reveal more women. The ugly rat-man fire the gun-shaped objects into the necks of all of the women. I fight through the agony but it finally gets the better of me and I think I pass out.