blowjob, it wasn’t like the aliens didn’t know how to find me. Or they could simply alter reality so I came right to them. I wondered why they didn’t already, but maybe their powers had limits. Or maybe they liked to do things the old-fashioned way.
The car parked at the slaughterhouse and then they snatched me off the backseat. The last time I had come here as a man in his prime with a loving wife and two great kids. This time I came here as a slutty secretary with only her sugar daddy for support. Who knew how I would leave?
I recognized the hallway from the last time. It was a challenge just to keep my feet in my shoes with how fast the cop dragged me along. One opened the door to Room 5 in time to let the other shove me to the floor.
“Have fun, whore,” the one who had shoved me growled. They both laughed as they closed the door.
I muttered a curse under my breath. I got to my feet and then brushed myself. There was a mirror at the back of the room allowing me to pat down my hair. As I did, something began to happen: my roots were turning dark, until they were black. The ends were still platinum, but they were dry and frizzy.
I leaned closer to the mirror and then gasped. Crow’s feet were setting in around my eyes and lines around the corners of my lips. The makeup on my face seemed to double while my skin turned an unnatural orange. The skin on my neck loosened into a gross turkey wattle. My breasts sagged ponderously. My hips spread. My waist thickened to let a roll of flab hang over my skirt. My expensive blouse and skirt changed into a cheap pink tube top and imitation leather skirt. My nylons ran in numerous places. The shoes that cost Mr. Teeko a thousand dollars turned to ones that probably cost ten from a thrift store. An imitation feather boa surrounded my shoulders; I whipped it across my neck to hide some of the sagging.
They had made me into an old, used-up whore. Maybe it was what I would have looked like twenty years from then, long after Mr. Teeko had kicked me to the curb. From the look of my clothes, I was probably a prostitute—and not one who earned a lot.
As if all that weren’t enough, my teeth started to fall out, leaving only a few crooked yellow ones among blackened stumps. I began to shiver while at the same time my skin felt as if ants were crawling over it. My arms had numerous tiny holes and bruises. From a stint at a rehab clinic, I could recognize the signs of drug abuse. An injected drug, probably heroin.
I toddled over to one of the chairs in the room. I hugged myself on the chair, trying to keep it together. Was this what it had come down to? They would give me the DTs in the hope I would finally break?
“You don’t look well, Miss Fontaine,” a cultured voice said. I turned to see Lynn Fong standing in the doorway. The differences were that she wore a labcoat over her gray suit and the eyes behind the glasses had turned silver. From a pocket of her labcoat she took a syringe with something brownish in it. “Perhaps you would like a ‘fix?’”
“In exchange for what?” I asked, my voice as raspy as someone with severe bronchitis. In my case it was probably from thirty years of smoking.
“Nothing.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You used to be a psychologist, didn’t you?” the woman asked while looking down at my folder. “Yes. Perhaps that helps to explain it.”
“Explain what?”
“Why you’re so resistant to the reprogramming. We have conquered two hundred worlds and never has anyone managed to hold out as long as you have.”
“Guess I’m just lucky.”
The woman sat down at the desk in the room. She set the heroin needle between us. I resisted the urge to lick my lips at the thought of that heroin shooting up through my arm, sating my need to get high. I wasn’t a drug addict. I had never done more than smoke a joint or two in high school and