" Tori stared at him a long time. So many emotions were running through her she didn't know how to begin to comprehend them. She knew Estilo had protected she and Russell; and he had, in a major way, helped them with their mission. "
Her blue tongue ran languidly over her lips; savouring his fear. The air sang electric with testosterone and adrenaline. No matter how often she experienced it, a humans primal fear was nothing which could be imitated by any other being. Estilio kept his steely eye contact with her, his arm rigid as he pointed the gun at her face.
“I never thought it to come to this Tori. You know that. Especially like this. With you like that.”
“I know, Estilo. Its the only reason you’re not dead right now.”
“Just let her go and we can talk about it.”
“It a bit late for negotiations.”
Her tail lashed out and knocked the firearm from his hands. Estilo shrieked in pain as his wrist bones shattered. Russell seeped over to the prone body, pinning Estilos lashing limbs with his glutenous mass; sedating him with his presence.
The quivering bipod crouched low on the ground,bearing its teeth at her, its hot breath billowing noxious fumes.
Tori pulled her vidscreen out and flashed an ID it at the creature. “Earth is out of bounds for all interplanetary forms. Your council will be receiving a notice about your activities and you will be tried under your own laws on your return to your society.”
The creature whined, scuttling about its temporary forcefield prison.
The darkened alleyways shadows flickered in time with the flashing lights of the strip clubs entrance. A raucous laugh erupted from within and the smell of stale beer and urine intermingled with the smells of fear. Toris tail writhed and rippled as she indulged her senses. Coldly, she regarded the cowered being. “ I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes..err foot pads when it comes to facing that lot.”
She pressed a sequence of codes into her vid confirming co-ordinates to the prison camp on one of Jupiters moons. “They’ll also get a bill from us for your little holiday. Bon voyage!” The image of the scaly bipod shimmered momentarily and then disappeared.
There was a low muffled moan from the ground as Estilos face pressed further into the cobblestones.
“Russell get up off Estilio. Go and make yourself useful”
Liquid purple goo slithered off the crumpled figure and began transforming into its human shape. Pulling his immaculate cuffs into shape and smoothing his perfect hair, Russell stepped over Estilio. “I’ll start on the reports and tidy up the admin on this case.”
“Thanks, Russell. See you back at base.” Tori inclined her head towards the ground and held out her scaly hand helping Estilo up. “I’ll take you to the hospital.”
Estilio clambered backwards “But you , He . Russell, what the hell is going on?”
Calmly, Tori took his other hand and began leading him towards his squad car. “Your wrist, its broken. Pain tends to play alot of tricks on the stressed mind.” Her opal eyes swirled as she connected with his eyes.
Estilio shook his head and stared at her. “We’ve been partners for how many years? You’re a lizard!”
Toris voice lowered an octave. “Thats no way to talk to your trusted partner. You’re confused.” With a practiced flick of her tail, her transformation guise activated and she immediately took the familiar shape of a police officer.
Dazed Estilio allowed himself to be bundled into the squad car; staring at the evaporating blood smeared pavement.
Toris vid ticked and she winced as her commanders voice cracked like static.
“Tori, you’ll be transferred to an other unit tonight. We can’t run the risk of his memories being triggered by something you do or say. Its for his protection.”
The cracckling continued as Tori pretended to communicate with the caller.
She flicked the call off and she looked briefly looked over at the sleeping Estilio, lamented under her breath, “Its a shame, I liked him.”
Estilios head lolled over towards her as his eyes flickered open. “Who was that?”
She shrugged. “Dunno, its was all static so we must be in some sort of communication dead zone. I’ll radio into headquarters and let them know whats happening.”
“Tori?”
“You’re fine Estilio, You had an accident while we were arresting some drunks down at the Crown and Feather. I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“Cheers. Must have blacked out. What happened? Did we get them?”
A dimpled smile betrayed the emotion she felt for him. “Yeah. We got em. The world is a safer place now thanks to us.”
“You goof ball. It was just a few drunks. Just another night.”
Tori smiled again and focused on the road. He was right. It was just another night on the job as one of Earths Liaison Officers in the Intergalactic Security.
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Prompt - use a random paragraph from a book you've not read.
The opening paragraph is from one of my husbands Eric Lustbader books “ Angel Eyes.” found on page 303 - picked at random. Despite the front cover promising that the book is a mesmerising thriller, I’ve never made it past page 4 of a Lustbader book and have no idea what this one is even about. I am sure Lustbader would have a fit if he know what I had done to his characters.
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Written for Write Anythings Friday Fiction and for Mad Utopias Friday Flash.
A little ambitious as WAs FF is to be a first draft with no editing - and MAs FF is meant to be a polished piece.... so my compromise is that I write is out and go back and fix obvious spelling, gramatical and functional language errors.. and leave it at that....(praying that my story is good enough that it will bear the critics eye.)
16 comments:
I found this week's prompt to to be a bit of a challenge but you seemed to knock it out of the park.
It's hard to find a balance between the two memes. I've done the same thing, fixing major spelling and language errors, while trying to stay true to the "no editing" rule.
I'm not really a sci-fi person, so found this quite hard to get into, I had to read the beginning a few times to understand it. But I think that says more about me than the writing, because by the end you've left me wanting it to carry on; I think there’s more of a story there – for instance, how many times has Tori shown her real self to him and he ‘forgotten’?
I think we should have posted the next part of the novels too, just to show how much of a tangent we went off on :-)
ooooo- I generally don't like Science Fiction but I actually quite liked this!! It reminded me quite a bit of 'Men in Black' and I could see your scenes being acted out and on a movie screen. I have to agree with 'newtowritingGirl' in that we should have posted the original rest of the story too just to see how much we'd changed it! Then maybe we could email them to the writers!! Thanks for posting :)
thank you so much for the flattery - to think that this has come from a larger story I have written! Nope - this one downloaded itself as I wrote it just using that prompt. It certainly sets its self up as a series and able to carry on - and as you said - how many times had Tori been forced to reveal her true self and this one was the final straw?
cheers!!
Hey Annie!
Good story! Solid. You should really let your imagination go wild and hammer your ideas into the readers minds, if this is your chosen genre. I think you've a solid grasp on SF and combined with your emotional strengths this is a genre you can rip open.
Your blog is a bit hard to read. I use Readability so it's not such a problem for me but non-geeks might suffer trying to read white text off a grey and white background. I'm sure it'd be easy to fix that.
True story, my mom had a bit of an incident reading this over my shoulder. NOTHING MAJOR!!! She just got a little dizzy. She loved the story too, by the way.
I hope you don't think I'm trying to change your site.
Really looking forward to what you'll do next!
Oh, by the way, I use Firefox so it could be something about that that made my mom fall over. She's fine, it's no big deal seriously!
Apparently she loves this comment screen. "ice cream on old lobster" - I don't even have that as a reference.
I really wasn't expecting the shape changing. Good work!
Here's mine.
http://johnpender.net/2010/02/fiction-friday-141/
LOL. He'll probably be impressed!
Good visualization. I could see everything in my minds eye.
Fun read! It would make a fantastic larger piece.
Like several others who have commented, I too tend not to read or right sci-fi. Having said that I found your piece a thouroughly good read which left me wanting to know more about Earths Liaison Officers
There's some compelling description here and an interesting story, although I did get confused, possibly because I haven't read the work that precedes it.
Enjoyed your story! I hope she doesn't off her partner, or even leave him. They seem to make a great team.
This had a "Men in Black" feel to it, which is one of my all-time favorite movies, so kudos! :-)
Great fun! Poor old Estilio - still, he's probably happier not knowing his partner is an alien...
Interesting! I quite enjoyed it.
The prompt reminded me of a writing activity a group I was in did once - take a page / scene from a random book you haven't read and rewrite it in a completely different genre.
I was given a young adults sci-fi fantasy book and a scene where a lead character dies. I turned it into a vaudevillian musical. :-)
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