He Punched a Starship, But Is Afraid to Hold My Hand

§01

Waking up in a cage is a new low, even for me.

The last thing I remember is dodging a rogue burrito truck on Fifth Avenue.

Now, the air smells like lavender-scented sanitizer and a peculiar, metallic tang I can only identify as despair.

I’m pretty sure the giant, octopus-like creature meticulously polishing the glass front of my cage just gave me a reassuring, multi-toothed smile.

So, yeah.

Tuesday’s off to a weird start.

The Cephaloid Clerk, a name I’ve bestowed upon him, seems genuinely pleased with my condition.

"A prime specimen!" he gurgles, his voice like bubbles rising through thick mud. "Excellent vitals. Humans are immensely popular, you see, but so tragically fragile. The melancholy gets them."

He taps a soft, boneless tentacle gently on the glass, a gesture probably meant to be comforting.

"But you… you have a spark. A certain resilience in your bio-signature. You'll be a prized acquisition."

I just lie back on the ridiculously plush pillow provided, feigning sleep.

Prized acquisition?

It has a better ring to it than ‘unemployed millennial with a crippling avocado toast addiction.’ This, I can work with.

For three days, I’m the star attraction in a cosmic sideshow.

A parade of bizarre alien life forms press their faces—or what passes for faces—against my enclosure.

They coo and point, their various appendages twitching with what I assume is excitement.

I’m less a prisoner, more a critically endangered panda in an intergalactic zoo.

And then, on the fourth day, he appears.

He’s not just big.

He’s a gravitational anomaly.

An eight-foot-tall monolith of muscle, poured into dark, tactical armor that seems to be in a constant state of protest.

His face is a mystery, obscured by a permanent-looking iron mask that’s seamlessly fused to the lower half of his features, leaving only a pair of crystalline blue eyes visible.

And those eyes are fixed on me.

They’re wet, glistening with an unnerving, predatory intensity, like a wolf that’s finally found the one sheep it’s been dreaming of.

He stands there for hours, a silent, armored sentinel, his sheer size blocking out the ambient light and casting a long, intimidating shadow over my cage.

Of all the cosmic horrors in this intergalactic pet store, please, universe, don’t let me be adopted by *that* one.

The universe, it seems, is a comedian with a very dark sense of humor.

"Sold!" the Cephaloid Clerk gurgles, the final price blinking on a console. "To the esteemed Lord Commander Griffin Rhodes, for a sum that could purchase a small moon!"

A massive, gauntleted hand, each finger thicker than my arm, reaches for the latch on my cage.

My breath catches in my throat.

I’m going home with the beast.

§02

The journey to his villa is a silent, stomach-churning exercise in terror.

He places my containment pod in the back of a vehicle that looks less like a car and more like a small, perpetually angry tank.

He handles the pod with a surreal gentleness, his movements slow and deliberate, as if he’s transporting a Fabergé egg filled with nitroglycerin.

I just huddle in the corner, trying to will myself into non-existence.

The villa isn’t a house.

It’s a fortress.

A stark, imposing structure of obsidian metal and reinforced glass that looms against the alien sky, looking like it was designed by a very depressed, very wealthy Bond villain.

This is it.

The monster’s lair.

The abattoir.

He carries me inside, and the silence is absolute, heavy enough to feel.

No growling, no clanking chains, just the faint, almost subliminal hum of some advanced climate control system.

He sets my pod down in the center of a vast, minimalist living space and swings the door open.

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