Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 69936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
My relief was short-lived, as Daddy stepped back, blocking it partly. Was he onto me?
He retracted his tail once again. Where the fuck was he pulling it back to?
“I’m not from your planet,” he explained.
Strangely enough, that was about the only thing that sounded reasonable at that point, which only made me think that Roger had gotten me to watch one too many of his UFO enthusiasts’ TikToks.
“I’m from a place very far away,” he went on, his expression serious as ever. “I crashed here the night we met, and I began noticing the signs of your community’s imprisonment nearly immediately.”
Wait. Daddy was telling me he was really an alien? That was impossible. Although…made slightly more possible with basically everything I was looking at now.
“I’ve seen this before,” he went on. “On other planets. I don’t know the term in your language, but it’s—” He opened his mouth wide and released an ear-piercing shrill sound. I had to cover my ears because of how intense it was.
It reminded me of the morning after I met him, when it had seemed like his shout had thrown me against the wall…and he’d caught me so fast.
As he finished his scream, I lowered my hands.
“Sorry, I should have been more mindful of your vulnerable ears,” he said in the sweetest damn way. I had to keep in mind that killers could be good at charming their victims.
Obviously, part of me was still clinging to the hope that there was some perfectly logical reason why this story he was telling about being an alien from another planet had to be a delusion. Maybe he’d sedated me with a hallucinogenic? That must be it, yes. Charles Manson too used drugs to make people hallucinate. Maybe it’d even made me misremember what had happened before I passed out? Drugs do bizarre things to people.
Despite my spiraling, I had to focus—I had to get to that doorway, and having a minute to think allowed me more clarity. In the podcasts I’d listened to, victims sometimes could escape killers by luring them into a false sense of confidence, then leverage the upper hand. Evidently, Daddy was delusional. I could use that against him.
“On that planet,” he went on, “the technology used chips in the native species’ brains to control them, which is what I was expecting to find in your case, but—”
“I’m sorry,” I interjected. “I shouldn’t have fought you. I know you’re only trying to help me.”
I’m no actor, something Dr. Geebley, my high school drama teacher, told me plenty of times when I had those five lines in A Christmas Carol freshman year. But Daddy’s expression relaxed, like maybe he bought it. My desperation to survive must’ve inspired in me something Oscar-worthy.
“Yes, Twink. I am,” he said, wide-eyed and serious, stepping closer.
I was shaking, and I had to stop that or he was going to realize this was all an act. But of course, trying to stop shaking is like trying to stop a boner. And it wasn’t helping that he was close enough to touch me again.
“Because of the way technology has taken over your planet,” he continued, “I didn’t know how to get you alone and ensure we wouldn’t be monitored by whoever had seized control of your mind.”
“So, you’re so worried about someone seizing control of my mind that you seized my body?” I shouldn’t have made the sarcastic barb, but given the circumstances, I was mostly operating off adrenaline.
“Yes, exactly,” he answered, clueless, which was for the best.
“Let me get this straight: You’re saying my phone is controlling my mind and everyone else’s, and you’re an alien who’s come to Earth and who wants to protect me from…my phone?”
The only reason I was able to say any of it seriously was because, while the logic was ridiculous, the situation was…well, also ridiculous, but scary as fuck.
“That’s exactly what I’ve been doing.” He stepped even closer, until he was inches from me. I had to resist the urge to slide farther from him.
“It’s a lot to process right now.” I considered how I could get him to give me some space so I could make a run. “Could I have a glass of water?”
His brows tugged together, as though he sensed something was off, but then he said, “Of course. I’m sorry. I infused some into you after rendering you unconscious, but maybe it wasn’t enough.”
He walked around the table, to a panel on the opposite side of the room from the doorway. This was it! My chance to escape! And if it didn’t work, I was really fucked.
I slid off the table, which was taller than expected, and between the surprise and the lingering effects of whatever he’d used to knock me out, it wasn’t as easy as sprinting out, but I headed through the doorway, which rounded a corner before I hit another wall.