Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 46078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
“This is a salad,” she says.
“You’re not going to cook it?”
“No.”
“So you do like raw food.”
“Sure,” she smirks. “Just not raw meat.”
I’ve never seen anybody eat a bowl of hard and leafy plants so aggressively. She is clearly hungry, and the pitiful vegetable cannot help to provide her with the protein she needs to keep insisting that she actually owns me.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like some meat?”
“Very. After you’ve sworn off meat as long as I have, eating a steak is like taking a high-powered washer to your insides. Ask me how I know. Ask me about the ham sandwich of 3034.”
“I think I might not.”
She gives me another one of her little smirks. “Good call.”
3
Ava
It does not take long to arrive at the asteroid where I live, a decent sized rock with just enough gravity to keep things on the surface and not much more. It is easy to see where land has been cultivated, and where it is still wild. Forest covers much of the surface, but my ancestral family home is a little red farmhouse perched in the middle of several fields, and it is next to that structure we land.
I find myself embarrassed yet again at the simplicity and condition of the things I own. Generations of my family built the house and farm, but it has been falling into slow disrepair because I am just one woman and there are three days’ worth of tasks to be done every day.
The only thing to distract from the dilapidation is the fact that Growlers are everywhere. The farm has been completely overrun. I thought I had more time when I set up the perimeter defenses. They should have been good for at least seventy-two hours, and I’ve only been gone seven.
Growlers are highly sentient alien beasts partway between rats, pigs, and the person who tells you to tie your shoelaces when you’re not wearing shoes with laces. They are obnoxious to a fault, with an unerring instinct for destruction. Their native homeworld is unknown. They spread easily, pregnant females stowing away on ships and sneaking out on new worlds to spawn litters of baby Grumbles, which are cute at first, but inevitably grow up to be big, bitey Growlers.
They have grown so bold they don’t even bother to scatter when Azlan’s ship lands out the front of my house. They just flow around it, their patchy furred bodies partially clad in scraps of what used to be my clothes. They took the fabric off scarecrows, and if I’m not very much fucking mistaken, out of my house.
A large Growler scampers by with a pair of my late mother’s lacy pink underwear on its head. In addition to having laid waste to the most sacred domestic stores of my house, they have grown bold enough to attack Azlan’s ship as well, their big, long incisors taking casual bites at the hull, making little ‘ting ting’ sounds that can be heard even on the interior.
“Those are some very large Growlers,” Azlan says, glancing at his monitors.
“They’ve been growing husky on my crops,” I say bitterly.
My crops have been dug up and routed, much of them laying on the ground wilting, with a careless bite taken here and there.
I want to cry, but I know that crying makes you look like a girl, and there’s nothing men hate more than a crying girl, at least according to my grandmother. So I stiffen my various lips and I do my best to appear stoic.
“Come inside,” I say, remembering my hospitality. I should offer him some lemonade. At least the kitchen will be clean and tidy. I’d be absolutely mortified if I brought him into a dirty house.
Azlan follows me, a perplexed expression on his large leonine face.
Inside is no better. Nowhere is safe.
“MAROW!”
Left to defend the homestead by himself, my cat comes springing down from the top of the stairs. A big ginger tomcat, Buttface is a force of nature. He has a Growler tail in his mouth, and a screaming Growler is following him, holding a knife in its ratty little hand. It is up on its clawed back feet, bouncing down the stairs, a little Grumbler head sticking out of its pouch.
“You no take tail! You no take tail!”
It is screaming at Buttface in a high-pitched wail. Growlers have a limited ability to speak. That’s what made them such appealing pets for early human settlers. Growlers were sold as the perfect companion, smart enough to interact with in an allegedly unchallenging way, and could be somewhat useful with their opposable thumbs and prehensile tails. Then, of course, early settlers got tired of their pets, abandoned them to the wilds, and now feral Growlers are an infestation risk almost everywhere humans live.
“Buttface!” I scream his name, as if it matters when you do that to a cat. He’s not listening to me. He’s going to be feasting on Growler tail for hours.