Awaken: A Sci-Fi Alien Romance
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Authors: Juno Wells
AWAKEN
JUNO WELLS
Table of Contents
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This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.
Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over.
In Josie's family, 'pulling a Josie' meant becoming a major screw up. Yep. She was the idiot who dropped out of law school to clean other people's houses.
Still, Josie doesn't believe herself a failure. She lives a life of simplicity and sameness with her cat.
Then Torgan shows up, his skin a luminescent silver, a being out of this world.
He seeks a purpose on Earth. He seeks a guide.
But what he wants most of all is to make Josie his.
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"Why did you come to Earth," Josie asked him the next day. Leaning against the apartment balcony's rails, they watched the cars and people below in the darkening evening light. He remained quiet for some time. Then he stood straight, moving closer. Josie's breathing and heart rate quickened at his proximity. He had the face and body of a man who featured regularly in her explicit fantasies. Her brain said he was alien. Her body said he was a man.
"What is a life without purpose, human?"
She licked her bottom lip. "Hollow?"
"Useless." Low and smooth, his voice carried a sensuality in contrast to his words. "Unfit for existence."
"That's harsh."
"Yes, but it is true. More so for a being like me. I and many of my kind once served as agents for another's purpose. They imprisoned me when I no longer valued their abhorrent ideals, and slaughtered the rest of my kind when they formed a reprisal."
Josie raised a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide. "That's horrible."
"Time innumerable passed until I acquired freedom from stasis. I awoke to nothingness. My kind and our rulers who used us to conquer and destroy planets were gone." His stare held a captivating intensity, a mixture of deep pain and anger from which Josie could not look away. "I came to Earth, human, because when my rulers tasked me to destroy it, I condemned myself to prison and my brothers and sisters to death instead. I came to Earth to find purpose in the consequence of my sacrifice."
OUT OF ORDER
.
USE STIARS
.
One peeling strip of tape held the misspelled sign to the closed elevator doors. By tomorrow, the sign would be facedown on the floor with a footprint stomped on its back. By tomorrow, the elevator would still not be fixed. The security guard lounging in one of the lobby chairs with a newspaper draped across his knees shrugged.
Josie shook her head.
Incompetence at its finest
, she thought. Somehow, her feet carried her up the five flights of stairs to her apartment. Each step reminded Josie of her poor choice of shoes and why, no matter how cute ballet flats looked with an outfit, sneakers were preferable. After all, house cleaning was not a job that required cute. It demanded being on her feet for hours, selling her body and time to clients like a whore but with less pay. Josie yearned for a loving massage, but she lived alone. Who would give her one? Not Sir Glauber, for sure. As soon as Josie opened her apartment door, he approached her with an accusatory look on his orange, furry face.
Oh,
fuck
. She forgot to feed him before she left for work.
"Sorry, Sir."
He marched off to his empty bowl, his tail held high. He sat and regarded her, his gaze arrogantly expectant. As Josie scoured the cupboards and the fridge for cat food, she wondered if Sir Glauber was human in a past life. Perhaps he was a king or somebody accustomed to servants. She was the human, the master in this relationship, yet Josie often felt like the slave.
The slave who ran out of food to feed her master.
Josie momentarily considered ignoring Sir Glauber's starvation in favour of her bed but her heart and Sir Glauber's glare dissuaded her. Keys and debit card in hand, Josie left the apartment with her last vestiges of energy. Outside, winter warned her of its impending arrival as she headed toward the nearby convenience store. Many of the once green tree leaves were burgundy but mostly camouflaged in the dark shadows of the night. The breeze curled around her body, lifted her hair, and pressed against the exposed parts of her skin. She shivered, pushing her hands into her hoodie's pockets to protect them.
Of all the seasons, Josie disliked winter the most. Something about the cold inspired a special kind of misery and unfriendliness in people. She favoured the spring weather and its symbolism. Not as chilly as winter, yet not as scorching as summer. New life. New hope. If she were to ever get married, she'd want a spring wedding. If she were to ever have a baby, she'd want it born in the spring.
But life didn't let a person pick and choose their fate. Even if it did, Josie would wallow in uncertainty. Years later, she still wondered if dropping out of school in favour of her passion for art or dumping that cheating bastard, Greg, to protect her self-respect were all good choices.
"Five twenty five," said the convenience store clerk, his voice as devoid of emotion as his store was of customers. Josie resisted the urge to squawk at the high cost for two measly cans of cat food, paid, and went on her way.
Her footsteps echoed louder on her journey home, the lights barely illuminating the darker areas. The gang signs in graffiti on the walls and the distant wailing of a police siren reminded Josie of her neighbourhood's less-than-savoury status. Though she'd lived in the area incident-free for nearly two years, Josie regretted leaving the safety of her apartment so late at night. How would she protect herself if the need arose? Her body ached and the only item fit to defend her was a bag of canned cat food.
The things I do for love of a damn cat
, she thought.
THUMP!
Josie's heart lifted and her body shook involuntarily. She spun around and her mouth opened on a soft, gasp-scream mix.
Something tall and silver…in the shape of a man.
A silver man. Standing there, facing her.
The light of the street lamp just behind him—it—glistened on its reflective skin. It was taller than an average man, its shoulders broad and powerful. Perhaps Josie would have catalogued more, but her common sense returned along with her mobility. She ran.
She did not get far. A steel-like grip encircled her arm and hauled her backwards. The pitch of Josie's scream echoed in the quiet of the night. She fought against the hold, twisting and tugging, the cans of cat food rattling against each other noisily in the plastic bag. The silver creature shook her, shocking her into stillness and Josie stared up into its face. Its skin a mirror, it reflected the depth of terror in her widened brown eyes.
"Please don't hurt me!" she begged, her body shaking. Even its eyes were silver too. It regarded her silently, its features stoic. What was this? "Please…please…"
Tears slid down Josie's cheeks and after a short moment, the creature let her go. She did not wait and she did not ask why. Given a chance to run, Josie took it and did not look back.
Something woke her and Josie didn't know what until she heard it: Sir Glauber's hissing with an occasional growl thrown in. She peeled the magazine from her face and sat up. Yawning, she rubbed the sleep from her eyes as her un-caffeinated brain struggled to make sense of why she slept on the living room floor and Sir Glauber's uncharacteristic vocalization.
Also, why was her apartment door on the ground? And why was the silver man standing against the wall that separated her living room from the kitchen?
Josie's heart slowed then powered into overdrive. Scrambling to her feet, she let out an expletive when she banged her leg against the edge of her coffee table. Her heart racing, her leg smarting, she scanned the room for a weapon. The best she could do was her TV remote.
She held the TV remote high, ready to chuck it at the silver man's head if push came to shove.
"How the hell did you get in here?"
To Josie, Sir Glauber's following hiss and growl seemed to underscore her question.
"If you don't leave right now, I'm calling the cops!" Josie glared at it, breathing fast. Panic and fear made her body tremble, worse yet when she remembered her mobile phone was in her bag and her bag was in her bedroom and getting to her bedroom meant getting closer to…
it
. Silver man.
But it didn't matter. As long as she got to her phone, everything would work itself out. She would place an emergency call as quickly as possible and tell them…a weird, mirror-like being occupied her apartment. OK. Maybe 'an intruder' would be better and less likely misconstrued as a prank call.
Josie raised her hand higher to chuck the remote when the silver man lifted its hands, palms facing her. For some reason, she did as it asked, her hand paused mid-air. There were five fingers on each of its hands and Josie was uncertain whether this fact made the situation stranger. Her eyes noted the human traits and her brain wanted to believe it was human, but some part Josie knew silver man was not a native of Earth.
"What do you want?" she demanded, but as always, it remained mute. It turned one hand over so its palm faced the ceiling and Josie's lips parted slightly as her apartment door became animate, rising from the floor to reattach itself to its hinges.
The sound of her heart beat loud and strong in her ears as she and the silver man stared at each other. The remote slipped from her hands and Josie's feet moved on their own accord. She ran past him into her bedroom, diving for her mobile phone.
"What's your emergency?" asked the emergency operator.
"There's an intruder in my apartment!"
"Please describe the intruder, ma'am."
"It—he's silver!" Breathing fast, she fought to find the appropriate words. Her body tense, her skin too hot, her hands clammy, she paced the room. "He's almost seven feet tall, I think. And he's…he's…"
Sir Glauber growled louder and Josie rushed out of her bedroom to see if he was in danger. The silver man occupied her living room, holding the magazine that was stuck to her face when she awoke. She remembered the headline of the magazine. She'd stared at the cover image too often to count.
RYAN FLINT - #1 Hottest Hunk of the Year!
The cover image featured Ryan Flint, famous movie star and Josie's celebrity crush. Resplendent in a fitted, charcoal suit, Ryan's sharp, grey eyes, dark hair and firm lips were the sexy filling of many of Josie's night dreams and sexual fantasies.
"Ma'am?" prompted the operator. "Please describe the intruder."
"He's…uh…he's…"
The silver man pressed a palm to the cover of the magazine. The transformation began at his head. Smooth, bald silver became thick, dark hair. Purely silver eyes attained a white sclera. Silver skin changed into tanned human flesh. Sir Glauber stopped growling. Josie stopped breathing. Then she was breathing too fast.
Ryan Flint stood naked in her living room. No. Someone—some
thing
that looked exactly like Ryan Flint stood naked in her living room.
"Ma'am, are you OK? Are you hurt? Ma'am!"
Josie's mobile phone clattered to the floor. Her body followed soon after.