Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 101280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
“Good—because I have no interest in any Pure One female who isn’t a La-ti-zal,” the alien declared. “Only a La-ti-zal will be a fitting gift for the Dark Emperor of Tangella Alpha-Prime—it is specifically what he wants. No other female will do.”
“Excuse me,” I said, finally finding my voice. “I don’t know what you guys are talking about but I’m not a Lati—whatever it is. “I’m just a graduate student at USF getting my PhD in Sociology.”
How did I speak so calmly? Well, I thought I was dreaming, of course. Because there was no way the three-foot-tall blue worms and the alien guy with glowing yellow eyes and curving, two-inch-long toenails were real, right?
Wrong, but I didn’t know that back then.
“Pay her no attention, my Lord,” the head blue worm—whose skin was slightly darker blue than the others—said quickly. “Most La-ti-zals do not exhibit any of their powers until after they leave Earth’s atmosphere—this is why they do not know they are special until we take them.”
“Well…if you’re certain,” the alien guy said, frowning. “I’m paying a very high price here—I expect to get excellence for what you’re charging.”
“Really,” I said, sitting up and trying to cover myself with my arms. “I’m nothing special! I mean, I don’t even know how I got here. I was just searching my cousin Rylee’s apartment to see if I could figure out where she went and there was this loud trumpet music coming from the bathroom mirror and then I was sucked in and… here I am.” I shrugged, indicating my confusion.
“Ah yes—Ry-lee,” twittered the head worm. “Yes, I do believe we had a La-ti-zal female of that name not long ago.”
“You saw my cousin?” I demanded, staring at him. “I mean, did you suck her through the bathroom mirror too?”
“As a matter of fact, we did—the large, shiny surfaces you humans have installed all over your domiciles do make for remarkably easy egress points,” the worm said, nodding his wormy head. He had bulging eyes on long stalks that bobbed up and down when he nodded.
“But…but what happened to her? She’s my cousin!” I exclaimed. “The whole family’s been worried sick. The police have no leads at all.”
“She was purchased by a pair of Denarins who wished her to sever their bond, I believe,” the worm told me.
“So you sold her?” I demanded.
The worm nodded again.
“Indeed—that is our business model. We extract human Pure Ones from Earth and sell them to males from around the galaxy who wish to purchase rare and exotic females,” he twittered. He looked up at the alien guy, who was watching me through narrowed yellow eyes. “As you can see, My Lord Gumpas, this female is related to another female who was also a La-ti-zal. Very often the powers can pass from one female to another in the same manner as one might catch a virus. So now it is doubly certain this female is indeed a La-ti-zal.”
“Well…all right.” The alien guy whose name was apparently “Gumpas” nodded reluctantly. “I’ll take her.”
And that was how I ended up flying halfway across the galaxy with Gumpas, who was a horrible excuse for a person. He liked to tell people and prospective clients that he was Eloim—one of the Twelve Peoples of the galaxy—but in actuality, he had very little Eloim blood and was a strange mixture of several other species, which explained his bat ears and beak, not to mention the horrible long, sharp toenails.
Gumpas was determined to make my “La-ti-zal powers” manifest in some way because he wanted to give me as a gift to the Emperor of a planet on the far edge of the galaxy. Or maybe it was some other galaxy—I don’t know. I only know I was desperate to get away from him. But no matter what he did to me, I couldn’t manifest some strange mystical power because I didn’t have one!
That didn’t stop Gumpas from trying to make me manifest, though. He did all kinds of tests on me trying to find out if I was a “Knower” or a “Healer” or an “Opener” and a whole bunch of other things. When none of the tests worked, he resorted to shocking me with a gadget that was supposed to force my power to manifest. This resulted in nothing but me screaming at him to leave me alone until he gagged me with a musty-smelling scarf he dug out of one of the many metal boxes scattered around the hold of his ship.
Finally, around O’nagga Nine, Gumpas gave up on me. He had some business to conduct there and he took me with him. When he flew away, he simply left me there.
“I suppose I’ll have to find some other gift for the Emperor of Tangella-Alpha Prime,” he sniffed as he looked down his beaky nose at me. “For I cannot give him a defective Pure One who is not a La-ti-zal!”