Alien Romance: Interview with an Alien (Football Paranormal Invasion Abduction Alpha Sci-fi Romance) (Fantasy First New Adult Contact Science Fiction Mystery Sports Alien Short Stories) (56 page)

*****

              When they got to the house, Colton stiffened. Not just because he was saying goodbye to Tanya, but because something felt off. The two-story brick house looked the same as the others in the suburbs.

              “Wait,” Colton said, grabbing Tanya’s arm.

              “Why?” Tanya asked, pulling her arm away.

              Colton put his fingers to his lips to shush her. She obeyed, but her eyebrows were knitted together in confusion.

              When Colton drew nearer he heard whistling, and the door was ajar.

              “Does your dad whistle?” Colton asked, realizing it was a stupid question.

              “What? Not really. Did you open that?”

              “No. It was open.”

              “Oh no. Something’s wrong.”

              Colton looked around, grabbed Tanya’s hand and followed the sound of whistling up a staircase. When they got to an office, the door was ajar, and the whistling was louder.

              “That’s not my dad,” Tanya said.

              “Stay here.”

              “No.”

              Tanya stormed ahead, and flung the door open.

              “Shit!” Colton said, zooming in front of Tanya.

              She was screaming and clawing to get in front on him.

              “Baby, don’t look, please.”

              “No, no, no, no. Daddy!”

              She was crying into Colton’s chest. Colton rubbed her back and noticed an open window. Isolde was gone, but Colton could hear the whistling fading away. He should chase him, but Tanya needed him.

              Her father was slumped over his desk. In his blood on the wall it read “Isolde 1 Colton 0.”

              “Colton, kill him. You have to kill him.”

              Colton’s eyes scanned the room, and he saw an envelope on the desk in Tanya’s dad’s hand. Colton walked over and grabbed it and led Tanya out of the room.

              “Is that from him?” Tanya said, sniffling.

              “Yeah.”

              Colton opened it, and read aloud.

              “Dearest Colton, Please pardon that I had to dine—” he paused and looked at Tanya before continuing.

              “It’s okay. I want to hear.”

              Colton cleared this throat and continued. “I had to dine and run. The best thing for dinner is dessert. I planned on your girlfriend, but sadly you intervened. I do like after-dinner games though. Since you like this “soccer” so much, I say we meet at the field. Bring your girlfriend if you like. I give you my word that it will just be me. Oh, I lied, forgive me! I will be bringing Nico and Ryan as my dates. See you soon. I’m already there.”

              “Fuck! Let’s go!”

              Colton had no time to think. He grabbed Tanya and ran towards the school. They zoomed past cars as Colton leaped over the buildings on campus and skidded to a stop on the field.  Nico and Ryan were in one goal in their pajamas. Isolde was standing in the other goal.

              “Oh, you came!” Isolde said, clapping his pale fingers together with mocking glee.

              “Let them go. This is between us,” Colton said, pushing Tanya behind him.

              “Oh no, I make the rules. It’s a twist on soccer, you see. Well, I stretched the rules. I will give you two choices. One, if I get a ball past them, I get to kill them, and you and Tanya go free or—you get a ball pass me and your friends, including Tanya, go free, and you die. Or something like that,” Isolde said, baring yellow-black fangs.

              “I’ll play you. And no ‘or something’! And I get to kill you if I score. Are you alone?” Colton asked, scanning the field.

              “Yes, as promised, and fine, I won’t change the rules.” Isolde said, shrugging his shoulders.

              Colton took a deep breath as he lifted Tanya and ran, putting her on the other side of the field before turning to face Isolde.  She was yelling protestations, but he ignored her, running over to face Isolde. He did not want her so close that she could watch him die.

              Isolde picked up a ball on his foot and juggled it, before kicking it to Colton. Colton caught it on his chest, and let it roll down onto the grass.

              “Ready my—” Isolde stopped, sniffing the air. Colton could not smell anything, but he heard something. It sounded like a running stream. Colton whipped his head around to see what Isolde was staring at. When Colton’s eyes zoomed into focus he saw it. Ryan, Nico, and Tanya were all bleeding from their arms, and holding shards of rocks.

              “Now babe!” Tanya yelled as Isolde raced towards them.

              Isolde froze, as Colton kicked the ball into the net. When Isolde turned to face him, Colton slapped his hands together, and shot a ball of fire at Isolde. Isolde writhed in pain, and slowly parts of his body begin to break apart to lumps of ash.

              Colton rushed over to Tanya, Nico, and Ryan. The wounds seemed minimal.

              “What the hell were you guys thinking?” Colton said, hugging Tanya tight to him.

              “We saved you! How about a thank you! There I was playing video games with Nico, having a bit of tea, and we get snatched in our knickers!” Ryan yelled, soothing his wound.

              “Can your blood heal us? This is starting to sting,” Nico said, wincing.

              “Um, no. That’s not a thing. Why would you think that?” Colton asked.

              “TV,” Nico and Ryan said in unison.             

              Colton shook his head.

              “If you have one drop of my blood in your system, you will turn,” Colton said, kissing the tip of Tanya’s head.

              Nico’s eyes widened with excitement.

              “I volunteer,” Nico said.

              “Not me. Fuck vampires,” Ryan said, walking away, “It’s been fun guys, but we have practice in the morning.”

              “I can’t do that to you Nico. I will be in touch, but if after the school year you want to, we’ll talk,” Colton said.

              Nico looked defeated, but he walked off with Ryan.

              “Are you leaving then?” asked Tanya.

              “I—I want to help you plan the funeral for your father. I’m so sorry.”

              Tears brimmed around Tanya’s eyes, but she hugged him.

              “I don’t blame you, Colton, and thank you. What about after that?”

              “You think I should stay and get a
college degree
? What would I do with it?”

              “Hang it in our house so that our kids can see where mom and dad met for hundreds and hundreds of years.”

              Colton stared at her.

              “Do you mean—?”

              She nodded, tears falling down her face.

              “I want eternity with you, Colton.”

              He bit his wrist, and offered it to her. She kissed the wound, drinking his blood. And he smiled, knowing that they would have each other forever.

THE END

Another bonus story is on the next page.

Bonus Story 17 of 24

Tatiana Hebert didn’t usually hate Mondays. She knew a lot of people who did, but not her.  In fact, she loved Mondays. She saw it as do over day. If she had a problem that she couldn’t solve at work the previous week, or she had an extremely crappy Saturday when nothing just seemed to go right, no matter what she did, she always had Monday. 

The first thing that tipped her off that her Monday was going to be on the tail end of ‘What-the-hell’, was the rain.

No, not just rain, she woke up to what sounded like a monsoon taking place outside. She always looked happy while waking up on Mondays but today she was not ready to take in what was happening. She tossed and turned with anger, all her preparations for Monday was going to waste.

Tatiana’s heart dropped. “Nooo.” She groaned, pulling the pillow over her head. She couldn’t sleep; she was used to waking up early on Mondays. She knew something like this could happen, the problem was, she was not prepared for it.

On Saturday morning, bright and early, Tatiana had risen at 6am. Before leaving the house, she’d checked, and then re-checked the five-day forecast, to be sure that she would get a few good days out of her new hairdo, before it went south. Then she’d happily left the house before 7:30, so she’d be one of the first clients in line, and hummed her way to the hairdresser to get a new hairstyle that she’d seen pictured in a magazine and lusted after for several weeks.

She always wanted to look good every Monday because it was her favorite day. She was ready to rock the week with her new hairstyle.

Tatiana would often say that she had the sort of hair that if she looked out the window during a rainy day, glanced at a picture of, or even thought about rain, her curls would go limp. She couldn’t believe everything was going to be spoiled because of the damn rain.

The weather forecast had called for sunshine and blue skies, not for three or five, but seven days in a row, so she’d happily gone to the hairdresser. She’d wanted this hairstyle so badly. The weather looked cool until Monday.

“What a total waste.” She said to herself as she curled up in bed. She never anticipated this and she decided never to trust the weather channels. Sometimes they were all wrong.

Now it was raining so hard that if asked, she would swear to anyone that she’d seen a sailor in a rowboat floating past her front yard. It was then that she had a gut wrenching feeling that something was going to happen to ruin not her day, but her entire week. This made her angry, she wanted the entire week to be good at least to work well with her new look. She didn’t want to think about it, she wanted to pretend that everything was going to fine the entire week.

The second thing that told Tatiana that her day was going to be one for the books was when she realized that an 8 foot section of the 4 foot tall hedges in front of the house had been cut down to 2 feet. She was not ready to take in a second disappointment, this was all wrong and she had to fix it. She didn’t think twice, she knew no one else would do that but only one stubborn person.

“Holy crap! Aw man, Mr. Rosenblatt!” she screamed as she put her palm on her face. She didn’t have to be an investigator to know who was behind it.

As soon as Tatiana saw the hatchet job on the hedge she knew it was her neighbor, Saul Rosenblatt.

It had to be.

Tatiana sighed. She recalled a time when the Rosenblatt’s and her parents had been best friends. They used to have dinner at each other’s homes every other week. Tatiana’s mother and Mrs. Rosenblatt would go shopping or out to lunch, and her father and Mr. Rosenblatt would go fishing, watch television and go to sporting events together.

They were like family. Everything they did, they did together. There was no single day that you would find both families apart, they were so close and wouldn’t do anything without the other family. They became inseparable.

Mr. Rosenblatt would help her father with repairs to the car, and her Dad would make sure the plants in the Rosenblatt’s yard were always well groomed. When Tatiana’s father cut their lawn he’d always cut the Rosenblatt’s as well. Tatiana even remembered a time when her mother’s car had broken down, and Mr. Rosenblatt had lent her mother his car for a week, saying that Mrs. Rosenblatt could drop him off and pick him on the way to and from work. They were as close as family. Many people thought her dad and Mr. Rosenblatt were brothers who married sisters. They looked happy together.

One day all of that changed. One heart wrenching summer when 9 year old Tatiana lost her parents, her mother to cancer, and her father to the heartache of losing his wife, as well as her neighbors whom she was closer to than her biological aunts and uncles, Mrs. Rosenblatt to divorce, and Mr. Rosenblatt to a bitter feud. This was traumatizing to Tatiana, she was used to a bigger family and now she was left all alone with no one, only Mr Rosenblatt who was bitter and had become unfriendly.

Tatiana remembered asking her brother, Ken, what happened between the two men, and Ken had told her that their father and Mr. Rosenblatt had a huge argument. He didn’t know what it was about; all he knew was that they hadn’t spoken a word to each other since.

Ken saw them argue outside, he could tell that it was not a small feud; Mr. Rosenblatt was throwing his hands in the air while screaming. He could tell that something happened between those two friends; he didn’t know why and didn’t bother asking because his father never wanted to talk about it.

The previous year, Tatiana’s father decided to move to New Jersey to help his younger sister. Her husband had fallen ill, and Tatiana’s father was going to stay there with his sister for as long as she needed him.

Her father wanted to keep himself busy to not think about her mother. The death of her mother had taken a toll on him and he was depressed, even though he tried to pretend to be strong. When he heard the news that his sister’s husband was sick, he decided to help her take care of him without thinking twice. He knew what his sister was going through and wanted to be there.

Two months before her father’s move to Jersey, Mr. Rosenblatt had two 5 foot potted lilac plants delivered to their house as a gift. He instructed the delivery men to place one plant on each side of the front door. They were beautiful plants, lush and green with lovely purple fragrant flowers. Tatiana’s father was surprised, but very pleased. He had to grudgingly admit that the plants were very nice. Three days after the plants arrived, they noticed that whenever her father walked by the plants, he’d immediately go into a fit of sneezing. It took a few more days before her father recalled that when he and Tatiana’s mother, first purchased their home, there were several bushes like the one Mr. Rosenblatt had given them. He also remembered that he had to cut them down because he was allergic.

              Tatiana and her father couldn’t move the plants themselves because they seemed to weigh a ton, so they had to wait until her brother came home for a visit or hire someone to move it for them, and until then her father had to use the back door. It was tiring to use the back door, but there was nothing they could do about it.

              Tatiana listened to her father grumble about, “That no good bastard, and his sorry-assed plants.” He kept on complaining while he still used the back door as he waited for his son to arrive.

Tatiana’s father, being the sweet man that he was, waited a few weeks, and then he ordered a twelve foot statue of the Virgin Mary, COD, to be delivered to Mr. Rosenblatt. Making sure that it was being delivered the morning he was to leave for Jersey, so he could enjoy the look of horror on Mr. Rosenblatt’s face when the delivery people told him that he was there with a three thousand dollar COD delivery.

During the exchange, a stunned Tatiana stood next to her father’s truck, observing an equally stunned Saul Rosenblatt. They could see that he refused to sign for the present.

Ken Sr., grinned, wagging his brows at his daughter, saying, “Now, that’s a going away present. Yes, that’s the present he deserves for making me sneeze this entire time.” Her father said with a smile.

“Do you think he’ll know you are the one who sent him the gift?” Ken asked.

“I don’t give a damn what he thinks, all I wanted was for him to see the present and now that he has seen it, it makes me happy and content.” He continued smiling

“It’s surely a nice revenge present.” Tatiana finally said as they drove away.