Penumbra by Jamie Fessenden

Author:Jamie Fessenden [Fessenden, Jamie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gay romance
ISBN: 978-1-64108-426-0
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2022-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

ONCE I’D been left on my own, I quickly discovered I had nothing to do. I curled up under the blanket, and even though I thought it would be impossible to sleep with all the chaos going on in my head—worry about Cody, terror at the idea of the Karazhen building biological weapons that would work on humans as well as the Alzhen, my mind being blown by the fact that I was in outer space, wondering what an alien looked like naked, wondering if I was going to return to Earth and find out everyone was fifty years older because of relativity—I must have eventually dozed off. The dreams I had were bizarre and frightening, with a dash of eroticism thrown in.

Frankly, I might have been better off if the first alien I’d met hadn’t been male and good-looking.

I awoke to find the room dimly lit, but as I sat up, the light increased. A moment later the door dilated and one of the aliens in suits entered, carrying a covered tray. I think it was female, judging from the shape of the chest, and when it spoke, it sounded like a woman.

“Ahrrr… yoo… huhngahree?”

I pondered that a moment and then replied, “Yes, thank you. I’m starving.”

She bowed slightly and waved her hand at the floor. A portion near the bed slid up to form a sort of table. The Alzhen woman placed the tray on this, bowed again, and then left.

I scooted forward on the bed to lift the cover off the tray. What it revealed was… presumably food. It was hard to tell. Some kind of blue-green mush in a bowl, with what looked like crackers stacked beside it. There was also a cup full of yellow liquid that looked disconcertingly like urine. Not just Gatorade-yellow, but a more muted piss-yellow, and kind of cloudy, with a disturbing froth on the top. It was a testament to how thirsty I was that I dared lift the cup to my nose and sniff it. Fortunately the odor wasn’t unappealing. Kind of citrusy. I sipped it and actually found it very refreshing.

Thank God.

I downed most of it but left a little in the cup to wash down the “food.” I tentatively nibbled one of the crackers and discovered that it tasted pretty much like… a cracker. Kind of an odd aftertaste, sort of like peas, but not bad. I ate one and then followed it up with a dab of the mush on the tip of my finger. This was the consistency of buttercream frosting and kind of sweet. But again, it tasted more like some kind of vegetable than a dessert. Not bad. I discovered I was hungry enough to eat the mush and all the crackers without paying attention to what it looked like. Then I downed the rest of my drink-that-wasn’t-urine. Despite the fact that I hadn’t been given large portions of anything, I was thoroughly sated.

I was just placing the cover back over the empty dish when the door opened again and Dalsing entered.

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