Human Pet Prison (Possessive Aliens #7) - Loki Renard Page 0,1

mean we are not having a conversation. Her eyes blaze almost as intensely as mine, though they are a rich human brown in color and have none of the bright fire of a scythkin. I admire this captive. I may even be falling in…

WEEOOOO! WEEOOOO! CONTAINMENT BREACH! LEVEL ONE PROTOCOLS INITIATED!

An alarm sounds somewhere in the distance, and I am forced to drag my eyes away from her perfect form. This human has become an obsession. Kept in my most secure cell for her own protection, she is like a jewel only I am allowed to lay eyes upon. There is something romantic about her solitary captivity, and the desperation it creates in her. She has me, only me. That is by design. This woman has proven herself an agile and efficient corrupter of others. Even some scythkin have fallen under her spell. That is why I keep her to myself; or at least, that is a rationale for doing so which spares me the real reason: she is mine. All mine. Forever. She just doesn’t know it yet.

“I have to go.”

Those are the first four words I have spoken to her this session. She likes words. Humans always do. They can construct entire realities out of the little mouth noises and their scribbled counterparts. Voice is the key to human control, and that is why I use it sparingly. I want her to crave my words as much as she craves my touch.

“Be good, pet,” I tell her.

The whimper she makes as she is cast into bound darkness is almost pathetic enough for me to take pity on her.

Almost.

I leave her where she is, bound and wanting. I want that desperation to sink inside her. I want her to remember how it feels to be held on the very verge of release and not be given it. I want her to feel loneliness, so that she can be saved from it when she is with me.

This may seem cruel to a casual observer, but the woman I have in my custody is not innocent. She may be the most guilty of all the prisoners here in my facility.

The siren is louder now that I am out of her presence. The realities of the rest of my world come flooding in. The others. Before she came here, they were all I thought about. Now sometimes I forget their very existence.

“Warden!”

My broodkin, Tusk, is attempting to subdue a prisoner who has somehow managed to wedge themselves halfway out of their cell. Only a head is sticking out of a wall, which has phase shifted to make the organism more or less one with the ship. They are trying to free themselves, which is causing the wall to melt in and out of existence around the improbability field they are generating with sheer willpower.

It’s quite a mess.

“What are you doing, Ham?” I ask the question while leaning against the part of the wall which remains solidly real. I should probably be irritated at him for drawing me away from my human when we were in the middle of something so delightful, but it will not do any harm to her for her to wait.

The prisoners all have numerical designations, but I choose simple words to as to remember them more easily. This one is round and faintly pink, so, I call him Ham. It’s a human word. They’re very popular these days. There’s even a scythkin named John who I spoke to recently. My name is also of human origin. It means “to guard” and as that is what I do, I feel as though it is appropriate.

“Look what he’s done,” Tusk complains. “The bloody wall is never going to be the same again.”

“It’s a prisoner’s right to try to escape,” I remind him. “It is our responsibility to ensure that they cannot. This is the game which has been played since the beginning of time, or at least, the beginning of a concept of justice which was not limited to hitting others with rocks.”

Tusk is not at all mollified by my comments. He is trying to push Ham back through the wall, which is not going to work because Ham is not physically moving through the wall. He is understanding that there is no wall, and therefore he can pass through it. Unfortunately, the wall is asserting itself in return with a surprising amount of self belief for an inanimate object.

“Ham, get back in your cell,” I sigh, folding my arms