Homicidal Aliens and Other Disappointments by Brian Yansky

Author:Brian Yansky [Yansky, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6711-5
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2013-08-17T04:00:00+00:00

A shiver runs through my body as I look for him. I see myself in a grave. For a moment it feels like I’ve walked into the future again. It’s set. It will happen. But then I remember how I could put Lauren to sleep even after I saw her waking the camp. I changed the future.

I can change the future.

The Hunter, hunters, appear. I was fearing one, but now I see a dozen. A dozen dealers of death — my death. Sandpaper throat. Wobbly legs. It takes all my will to face them.

Think, I think. It’s always a bad sign when you have to tell yourself to think, when you have to hope that the word will actually remind you to do something you should already be doing.

I look at the many hunters, and I realize that something is wrong — I mean, besides the obvious wrong place/wrong time. He’s smiling — they’re smiling — in exactly the same way. In fact, they look exactly the same.

My terrified little brain finally kicks into gear, and I start forcing the hunters to fade away until I come to the real one, which doesn’t fade but glows stronger in the darkness.

You see right through me, don’t you? You see the real me. None of my wives have been able to see the real me. I blame it on the modern Empire.

I will say this for this Hunter: he has a good time — I mean, in a homicidal alien maniac kind of way.

“I don’t want any trouble,” I say. “Let us go, and I won’t kill you.”

Trash talk. Well, polite trash talk with a definite wishful component.

I can’t do that, so I guess you’ll just have to go ahead and kill me, product.

Still smiling. He’s so confident in his strength and my weakness he doesn’t even bother to create a strong shield. I’m an ant to him. He will squash me when he’s done playing with me.

“I’d rather not,” I say. This is actually true. I don’t want to kill him even in the very unlikely event that I could. “Come on, let us go. Just this once. It will make the whole hunting experience more fun for you.”

He snaps his fingers, and a document of some kind appears in his hand. How, I don’t know. The mind can’t make something appear from nothing. Magic. I make a mental note not to tell Catlin about this.

I don’t think our contract has a provision where I let you go. He looks it over in a dramatic, overacted kind of way. So maybe he is a hundred times stronger than me, but he’s no Johnny Depp when it comes to acting. No, nothing in here about predator letting prey go. Sorry, afraid you have to die. He tosses the document in the air, and it disappears.

I frantically look for a weakness in him. Anything. Anything. Nothing.

I do have a weakness, he mindspeaks. I have a weakness for games. Here’s a clue. I have one great passion.

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