It was a normal Wednesday night, and I was going to sleep. I was so tired that I didn't even bother to take off my clothes. I did manage to drag myself to the bathroom to brush my teeth though. I examined myself in the mirror as I went through my nightly cleanliness routine. The same brown-haired, brown-eyed, uninteresting face stared back at me as always. I finished brushing my teeth and went to bed. Before I went to sleep though, a huge light flooded into my window from outside.
''Urg what is this light? Is it the neighbor again?'' I pondered to myself as I stepped out of bed.
When I walked to the window to shout at the neighbors, I got blinded by the light and passed out.
*********************************
I woke up feeling cold metal under me. I was almost to scared to open my eyes. Why was there suddenly metal? What the hell had happened? I reluctantly opened my eyes and saw three figures. The first one was orange, tall, skinny, and mostly humanoid. It had three eyes and one antenna on it’s head though, along with a complete lack of hair. The second one was blue, small, and fat. This one had one eye and five antennas, as well as a complete lack of hair again. The third one looked like a human even right down to its blonde hair, but he had crab claws instead of arms.
''Oh he’s awake.'' the orange one said.
''It’s so ugly.'' the blue one muttered disgustedly.
''Says the fat guy.'' I countered. I guess the pure terror was kicking me right into ‘asshole’ mode.
''I’ll have you know that where I come from, I’m considered to be quite in shape!'' the blue one sputtered angrily.
''What planet are you from? Planet Fatass?'' I retorted again with a smug look on my face.
''Oh! You're little bi-”
''Xigon, knock it off! Xih, tighten the straps.'' The human with claws ordered in a very level-headed way.
''Yes Zarr!'' the other two beings obeyed at the same time. The orange one, Xih I guessed, tightened some metal straps around my legs and arms. The blue one, Xigon apparently, eyed me with hatred while the other being worked. The human-ish one, Zarr, looked at me with a smugly.
''So, this must be... some kind of abduction, right?'' I asked. My level of panic was so high that I had come full-circle and was thinking rationally. “Why abduct me?”
''Right now its not your business, but it will be soon.'' Zarr said, still refusing to drop the smug expression.
''You're not going to probe me, are you?'' I asked, a little bit of my panic seeping into my voice.
Zarr's smug grin grew to a full-out smile. ''Not unless you want us to.”
''No... no thank you.'' I quipped.
''Good. Xih, Xigon, let's go. Our 'guest' need some rest.'' Zarr ordered. The other aliens lined up and walked out with him.
''Yes Zarr!'' They shouted as they followed Zarr. They walked out of a big, circular, metal door which slid shut behind them. Now I was all alone.
****************************
I laid there for an immeasurable amount of time. I had no idea when they would come back or how long I’d been there. In fact, the only notable thing that had happened the entire time was a huge wave of... motion that passed through the room. I knew no other way to describe it. All I knew was that there was a huge sense of everything moving at once, even though nothing changed positions. Other than that though, above all else, even the panic, this place...
Was boring! I had sat here and done nothing for what felt like ages! In a fit of desire to actually do something, I flailed around on the table. Curiously, my metal bindings seemed to move with my flailing. Out of curiosity, I began struggling against my bindings. Not only were the flexible, but they were breaking. A wave of excitement washed over me, I could get free! I focused on my right arm first, applied all my strength into pulling against my bond and...
*snap* The metal broke away! Upon closer inspection of the bond, it appeared to be made of... aluminum. Thin, pliable, aluminum. I had no idea why they would make bonds out of that, but it didn’t matter. I snapped the rest of my bonds and prepared to slide off of the table when I heard voices.
“Alright, we are to begin testing procedure one. Try not to kill this one in the process again, Xigon.” Zarr’s voice resonated into my chamber.
“No promises with this one... Planet Fatass...” my least favorite alien replied. In a last, desperate action to remain un-probed, I threw myself back down on the table and pretended to be asleep for all I was worth. I heard the door slide open and prayed that they didn’t bother to look at my bindings. Sure enough, I heard all three of them approach the table.
“Surprise motherfuckers!” I cried as I opened my eyes and jumped up on the table. I delivered a quick kick to the nearest face, which happened to be Xih’s.
''Ahhh you BITCH!’’ Xih yelled, but I didn’t exactly care. In the same moment, I leapt from the table and kicked Xigon in the groin.
''Ahh my four balls!’’ Xigon groaned. I wasn’t sure if I should feel inferior due to ball count, or wonder why he had shouted the number out loud. In any case, I moved again and I was now standing in front of Zarr. He looked surprised.
''How?’’ he asked, but I didn’t answer him. I just punched him in the face and he fell to the ground clutching his nose. Now that all three of them were on the floor I quickly made a run for it. I knew they wouldn’t stay down too long, so I dashed out of the door and into a long, cylindrical hall. Sure enough, before I had even gotten very far, a huge siren started sounding off and blue lights began flashing everywhere.
*Subject Escaped* *Subject Escaped* A metallic voice shouted along with the siren.
“Oh crap!” I shouted as soon as the alarm started sounding. From somewhere nearby, a stampede-like sound began to echo down the halls. There were more beings, lots of them by the sound of it, coming to get me. I began sprinting down the halls, desperate to not get caught. I turned countless times, quickly losing myself in the maze of halls. I didn’t run into any of my pursuers for a long time, but eventually, my luck ran out.
“There he is!” A deep, gravelly voice shouted. I didn’t bother to turn and look, I just took off in the opposite direction that the voice had come from. The hall I ran down led to one last curve, then...
Nothing. It was a dead end. I began to lose hope. There was no way out! What had I even been planning in the first place? How had I wanted to get off this ship or whatever it was? I had been doomed from the start. Then, I noticed something. Along the right wall, there were many circular holes in the wall. I immediately decided to jump in one. Even if it led to some sort of trash incinerator, it would be better than alien probing and dissection. I landed in something I couldn’t even hope to identify. In the front of whatever I was in, there were tons of screens and buttons. Which my feet had hit in my jump. I lifted my foot to see a compressed, huge green button.
“Uhhh... what does this button do?”
*psssshhhh* A hissing sound emanated from all around me.
*Heading to Planet Equein* A metallic female voice stated... well, metallically.
''Planet WHAT!?’’ I yelled as a floating sensation took hold over me. I got a small sense of vertigo as the pod presumably took off towards its destination. After only a short feeling flight, things began to get bumpy. Through the window I saw that the pod was on fire. It was then I knew that I was in a planet’s atmosphere. Before the pod crash landed I got a tingly feeling on my back, not that it was my immediate concern.
“OH MY GO--”
*BOOM*
*************************************
For the longest time, sat in the pod, still as a statue. A small part of me wondered if I was even still alive. I was pretty sure I was. I didn't feel dead, anyway. Upon impact, airbags of some sort had deployed all around me. So, despite the massive impact, I was actually pretty unharmed.
"Alright... I should get out of this thing..." I whispered to myself.
*Request Acknowledged* The metallic voice stated. The part of the pod that I assumed was the top seperated from the rest of the ship. I was greeted by a rush of cold air as the pod opened, and for a moment worried the air would be poisonous or something.
"Do not move from thine position!" someone shouted from in front of me. It was dark, I couldn't see who it was because my eyes hadn't adjusted yet.
"What? Who's there?" I began to pull myself out of the pod.
"We ordered thou to not move!" the voice, a female voice, shouted. A bolt of dark blue energy whizzed by my head and hit the seat of the pod.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Uhh... Let's just calm down here! No need for the shooting and stuff!" my eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness. What I saw next, convinced me I was dead, or had hit my head really hard in the impact.
There was a big, dark blue horse with a horn and wings that had just shot a laser at me with her horn standing about twenty feet from the pod.
I would have passed out, but suddenly the dark horse began talking. It shocked me back to reality... or whatever this was.
“Who and what are you?” the horse questioned. She looked like she might shoot another beam at me any moment.
I slowly climbed out of the pod and raised my hands non-threateningly. The horse allowed me to approach her a bit, and I stopped about five feet away from her. She came up to about chest level on me. “My name is Ryan, and I’m a human.” I answered while I looked around at the area I had crashed into. There were lots of trees and flowers. It kinda looked like a jungle.
“A human? We have never heard or seen any of your species before.” The horse stated as she slowly began to circle me.
“Well I’ve never seen something like you before.” I countered while looking curiously at the horse. She had black coat and a dark blue, flowy mane that resembled the night sky above us. She also had wings, a horn, and a tattoo on her butt that looked like a moon in the night sky. Well, she had wings, so wasn’t that a pegasus? She had a horn too though, which would make her a unicorn... “Are you a pegacorn or something?’’
The horse almost seemed insulted. “No, We are an alicorn.”
“An alicorn? Sounds weird.”
She only got angrier as I continued talking. “We’ll have thee know that alicorns are the most powerful beings in the world!”
“Are you bragging? ‘Cause that sounded like bragging.”
“No we are not bragging, we just state the facts.” she seemed arguably calmer now.
“So where are we?”
“We are in a jungle that is located in Zebrica.”
“Am I supposed to know what any of that means? Other than jungle?”
“No.”
“Hm... Well, have you learned whatever you said you wanted to know?”
“Yes, We have determined that thou art not a threat.”
“Oh, good! Could you take me out of this jungle then? I dunno how safe it is out here.”
“No.”
“WHAT!? Why?”
“We just came here to check if thou was a danger, now thou art not our problem.”
“But you can’t just leave me here!”
“We can and we will.” she stated nonchalantly right before she disappeared in a flash of light.
“What a BITCH!’’ I shouted before laying on the ground. "I-its s-so c-cold.’’ I finally noticed. The temperature hadn’t been at the front of my mind while I was falling from orbit and being shot at by magic horses. I decided to just sleep, seeing as there wasn’t much else I could do. It took a while, but I managed to fall into an uneasy sleep.
***************************
*Beep beep beep*
“Ooooooooh, I’m so so cold right now!” I groaned as I began to wake up. “Isn’t the jungle supposed to be warm? What’s that beeping noise?” after looking around for a few seconds, I realized the beeping was coming from the escape pod. I ignored it and shoved my hands in my pockets to keep them warm. I suddenly realized I still had my iPhone and my headphones. “Huh... I don’t remember having those here, but I’m not complaining.”
I got to my feet and felt a strange sensation on my back, right where there had been tingling while I was approaching the planet. “Hm... What could that be?” I wondered to myself. I began to take my shirt off and hoped my back wasn’t broken in some way. As soon as my shirt was gone, I felt something move on my back. I panicked for a brief moment as I imagined some sort of alien parasite on my back. I turned my head to try and get a look at whatever nightmarish thing had attached itself to me. What I actually saw was far more surprising.
Two, large, bright orange wings had been pressed against my back by my shirt.
“I GOT WINGS!?” I shouted. There was no denying what I was seeing. I had grown wings. Something was off about them though, they didn’t look exactly normal. Then I realized what was off. The feathers looked like small flames. The wings were made of fire!
I, in all my vast wisdom, decided to touch the wings to see if they were really there... and on fire. Luckily, the wings didn’t actually burn like fire. In fact, my hand didn’t even feel warmer. It just felt like normal feathers to me. I was freaking out. How did I get this? Why did the feathers look like fire? And the biggest question: Could I fly?
My thoughts were interrupted by my stomach complaining. I suddenly realized that I was very hungry. “I should look for some food...” I said to myself as I walked a random direction.
I had walked for a bit when I finally discovered a bush with orange berries.
“Hm I wonder if I can eat these berries? I am from another planet and I likely should not eat something from another planet.”
“Shut up brain, stomach is hungry.”
I did what my stomach wanted and took a berry and ate it. A few seconds later, I understood why it was a bad idea.
“AAAAAAAHHHHH! IT’S SO HOT!” I yelled as I started running around in panic. Luckily I had the sense to hold on to my shirt. While running, I saw a river and dunked my head into it without thinking, accidentally dunking my shirt as well in the process. After a few moments, I came back up for air. “Ahhhh... cold water...” I sighed in relief. My dunk was interrupted by a small growl from somewhere nearby. I looked in the direction I heard the sound come from, and there was a freaking tiger under a tree next to the river. I nearly freaked out and ran away screaming, but something wasn’t quite right with it.
Other than the fact that it was under a tree.
It didn’t move towards me, it only growled. For the second time that day, I applied my infinite wisdom and decided to approach the tiger. “Nice tiger...” I mumbled soothingly as I left the river bank and walked to the tiger.
The tiger growled at me, likely thinking I was going to hurt it... or because it thought I was food, but I decided to assume the former.
“Woah take it easy. I’m not going to hurt you, I want to help you.” I assured it gently. To my surprise, the tiger almost seemed to understand my words. It stopped growling, but still stared at me warily. I decided to have my mental breakdown over the english understanding tiger and talking horse later, right now the tiger needed help.
I kneeled down next to the tiger and saw that it had large gashes and cuts all along its sides. I gasped a little.
“Let me see the wounds so I can help you ok?” I asked as I reached towards the tiger. It held still and allowed me to get a closer look at its wounds. The scratches didn’t stop on its sides, they appeared to go all the way down to its belly. Which meant that somehow, were I to really help her, I’d have to get the tree off of her. I turned my attention to the tree for a moment.
It wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t exactly small either. Obviously the tiger wasn’t strong enough to move it alone... but maybe if we worked together... It had seemed to understand me earlier, so maybe I could get it to work with me to save it.
“Alright, listen up. I need you to try as hard as you can to stand up, ok? We’re going to get this tree off of you.” after a quick nod, the tiger immediately began struggling against the weight of the tree. I braced my shoulder and threw my weight against it as well. Through our combined strength, we managed to just barely roll the tree off of the tiger.
We panted exhaustedly together for a few seconds. I quickly reminded myself that I still had work to do to help the tiger.
“Alright, roll over so I can see how injured your belly is, ok?”
The tiger nodded and rolled over onto its belly. When it did, I quickly checked to see what gender tiger I was dealing with. I was a bit surprised to see that it was a female. I had imagined she was a male for some reason. I focused on her injuries again. She had some scars and a deep wound on the sides of her belly, but nothing in the center of her stomach.
I knew that I didn’t have enough knowledge to actually disinfect or help heal the cuts, so I decided to just stop as much of the bleeding as I could. “Ok I’m going to use my shirt to stop the bleeding. It’s still wet from the river, so it might be a little cold.” I warned.
The tiger nodded as I struggled to rip my shirt into strips. After a few tries, I sighed and realized I couldn’t do it.
“Could you slice this for me? You know, since you have claws?”
Right after I finished my sentence, the tiger took a weak swing at my shirt. She couldn’t slice the whole thing since she was so weak, but the slices she made allowed me to rip it the rest of the way and form a few strips of cloth. I tied the strips around her, covering all the wounds and scratches I could. She hissed a bit as the cool cloth contacted her fur, but other than that she was good.
I began to wonder why she was so scratched up in the first place. The cuts she had kind of reminded me of tiger victims I had seen while watching the Discovery Channel. I could only assume she had been fighting.
“So you were in a fight huh?” I asked tentatively, not quite sure if I was right. She nodded. “Was it against other tigers?” I continued. She nodded again. “Were they... friends of yours?” instead of giving me another nod, she hung her head sadly. “So... you’re all alone then, huh?” she nodded again.
I began to think again. She was alone, hurt, and she didn’t seem to hate me... I figured it was worth it to risk asking her to accompany me.
“What do you say that you become my partner then? I’m all alone out here too you know.” she seemed to be... smiling at me after I asked. “I’ll assume that’s a yes then. Great! Now, what to call you... Oh! I know, what about Snowflake?” the tiger tilted her head and seemed to not understand the name. “Heh, it’s a reference to something back where I’m from. So what do you say? Does Snowflake sound good?” she eventually nodded and licked my face. After a brief moment of panic in which I wondered if she was tasting me, I began to laugh. “Hahahaha! Stop, that tickles!”
I laughed for a little while, until a strange sound caught my attention. I stood up, dusted the earth off of my knees, and started to walk in the direction I heard the sound come from. Snowflake tried to stand and follow me, but she couldn’t seem to manage it just yet.
“It’s alright Snowflake, stay here.” I ordered gently. She nodded and I turned back in the direction of the noise. After a very short walk, I reached the outskirts of a clearing. I hid behind a bush on the very edge of the clearing and peered in to see if the source of the noise was in it.
I was right. In the clearing, there was another horse. This one was much smaller than the other one, and it only had wings, no horn. Its coat was tan and its mane was black. Unlike the other horse, this one had clothing on. An adventurer’s jacket and a little hat that I associated with jungle explorers back on Earth. A pith helmet, I believe. There was one detail about the horse that stood out above all else...
It was out cold.
