A Savage Life

“So Josh, quite the informality to use of your given name,” Readoldd remarks at my nickname. “Why do you not prefer Joshua?”

“I actually call myself Josh because unless you’re a businessman or a judge, there’s no need to use my full name.” I tell him.

“Oh, intriguing.” he replies with wide eyes.

“What if I called you Red?” I ask the alien.

Readoldd looks at me, his head cocked to the side, and spoke, “Please use my formal name, Readoldd. Is this a normal custom on Earth?”

“Yes,” I tell him. “But it is up to the person to decide if they want a nickname or not.”

“Do I have a nickname?” Damien asks, popping over my shoulder suddenly, making me cringe.

“No,” I bark at him. “Your name is Damien!”

“You seem to have a tense relationship with your companion, Josh. Why is that?” Readoldd asked me curiously.

I blink at him like he’s insane for a few moments, trying to rack up an answer I don’t even have myself before I finally stumble out, “He’s no companion of mine. He’s just the annoyance I found and hope to get rid of.”

Readoldd assesses what I say before he asks, “Then would you prefer it if I terminate him?”

And I just about cough out my own soul. Kill him! Whoever said anything about killing? I’m sure I didn’t even remotely bring up the subject? Did I? Swiftly, before the alien could confuse my absence of words with consent, I tell him, “On Earth, we don’t just kill people we don’t like. We dump them in a separate town.” And yes, I’ve done the matter many, many times.

It bothers you the first few people, but then it desensitizes you to it because would you really want to waste twenty minutes of your time helping some drunk who’s only directions to his house is slurred cursing and the loudest belch to shake the Earth ever, or the drunk whose only reaction to your help is drunkenly slobbering all over your new upholstered seats while slurping the words to a song you’re unable to recognize because of the amount of booze they’ve drunk? Or maybe that “pregnant” woman I tried to help on the side of the road before I met Lana. She was very beautiful, young, groping her stomach with painful, almost exaggerated, facial expressions. To my young brain, she was obviously in labor, and as a good Samaritan whose fluttering heart was obviously crushed, I allowed her into my car. She sat in my front seat and did all the groaning and moaning of a woman in excruciating pain, and I was about ready to call her an ambulance, for fear of her delivering a baby in the harsh conditions of the Alaskan fall... until her “pregnant” self pulled a gun on me and tried to have me carjacked. So where do I take her? I drop her off at the police academy for K-9 units. Yeah, I don’t take too lightly to annoyances like that. Later that night, after trying to rob me, she pulled the same trick on a taxi driver, who also happened to be a retired Marines sergeant, and I wonder if she learned her lesson when she got out of jail because God help her biological kids.

Now Damien was a different subject. Somewhere along this road, I lost my sanity and allowed a nuisance like him to follow me around. I would take the lady faking the pregnancy labor to carjack unsuspecting people any day. Scratch that, I think I prefer the drunks, at least they didn’t pull a gun on me. And back then, I didn’t have to worry about some freak of nature trying to disembowel me like an injured duck. Or a four year old. Or now an alien with no comprehension of Earth’s ways whatsoever.

“Do you fail to comprehend the place we are traversing to is full of aliens?” Readoldd questioned curiously.

“Aliens,” my jaw drops. “This place of refuge you told me about is full of aliens?”

“Why would it not be?” the alien blinked monotonely at me.

“Gee, I don’t know, because I don’t know what you are capable of already, nevertheless others!" I sneer.

Before Readoldd could reply back, Damien gets the nerve to do what he’s been doing to whole trip- scream his little heart out about his name. And now, he’s screaming about the possibility of him being an alien. He runs off in a random direction, trips over a boulder the size of a large statue, and then lays on the ground without a lick of common sense.

“Please,” I beg Readoldd, grabbing Sasha as she almost speeds off after Damien. “Take him off my hands. I’ll let you eat my whole arm if you do.”

“But I am a herbivorous insectivore.” he replies back emotionlessly, although his facial expressions were a bit perturbed.

Great. Just when I always dreamed about being eaten alive by ravenous aliens that abducted me for a midnight snack, I meet one that eats grass and bugs. You don’t suppose the brontosauruses we encounter will eat flesh, do ya? Or some dimensioner who only eats plastic and rocks? I wonder if the human race has swapped from being omnivorous to as picky as a koala bear. I guess I’ll know soon enough with Damien, because I know that my stomach is growling.

Readoldd turns around to give Damien what has to be a look of study before he pulls out some weird, circular, white device that glew and made no sound before Readoldd turns to me does the same thing to me and says, “This is the remainder of your precious monument, Mount Rushmore. Do please enjoy this view while I aide your traveling partner and try to calculate how many miles we are from our appointed destination.”

I look at the stone ahead of me as Readoldd does his thing with Damien-which is tossing the man upside-down, shaking him like an almost empty bottle of ketchup, and then hurdling his way towards me.

“Did you enjoy the view,” the alien asks me. “Because this is one of the last few standing monuments of Nouth America.” I nod my head yes.

Redoldd bends down to acknowledge Sasha, and a vine uncoils from under his jacket and rubs the hair on Sasha’s head, who reprociates the act with a smile. I must say, it was pretty cute when you try to ignore the fact that your alien accomplish has a vine for an extra limb. He stands back up and places Damien in several vines from under his shirt and stares at the man for a few minutes before stating, “He should be fine in a few hours.”

“A few hours!” I gasp.

“Yes,” Readoldd replies. “Exactly three point two-five-nine hours.”

“How?”

“Nerve spores.”

We share a look for a while before he says, “I must make a prognosis of you too.”

I comply as once again he gets out his little device, scans me, and then says not a word as he puts it away, grabs Damien and deposits him in front of me and says, “You carry him. I shall carry the little girl.”

And once again, Joshua Darren Asbury is Damien’s pack mule! I should invest in Damien repaying the favor sometime soon, when I’m not so unconscious a grown man has to “feed me like a baby bird” to ensure my survival. Reluctantly, I shove him onto my shoulders, agitating my ankle’s pain (Which I’ve been in so much shock, awe, and a feeling of the world ascending beyond a state of logic to even care for), and limp after the nimble alien.