You Can't Choose Love (9 page)

Ashton’s eyes close
tightly. Her tears soon blend with the flood of water from a rusty shower head.
Her naked body is caressed by the streams of hot water. She tries to clear her
thoughts and mind but keeps thinking of Bobby’s muscular thighs and firm ass
thrusting over and over again. She couldn’t help but imagine that it was her he
was pounding into. Ashton rubs her fingertips over her nipples as she thinks of
him. She imagines what he’d feel like inside her.  Her emotions teeter
from arousal to anger.  She forces herself to stop. The shower shuts off.
Ashton grabs a towel.

She steps out onto the
cold tiled floor and walks over to the foggy mirror. She wipes the condensation
from the mirror about where her eyes are and stares at herself.

“You are pathetic,
Ashton Alexander,” she says to herself, before touching the steamed mirror and
adding a teardrop below her right eye. She wipes the whole mirror with her hand
and firmly wraps her towel around her body. She knows her dad’s asleep and
heads downstairs to the den.

Wet and covered in a
large white towel, Ashton sits on a wooden chair in the family’s makeshift
den/library. Ashton has lived with her dad and sister in this large 1950’s
ranch style house in the middle of 20 acres of land ever since she can
remember. She barely remembers her mom, who died a few years after Faith was
born. Her dads never awake this late, and she was too upset to care if he woke
up to see her in this state. She’s gone from crying and upset to angry. She
would love to tell anyone who’d listen. Her thoughts keep returning to Bobby.

“Men are pigs! No,
that’s degrading to pigs,” Ashton reasons to herself. The alcohol is still in
her system. She wants to rant, and there is no one around to rant to. Normally
she’d vent to Faith, but even she was getting it on; although that’s not a huge
surprise.  Men are pigs, after all, and those pigs tend to fall head over
heels for Faith. She has them wrapped around her finger.

Ashton
looks around the room as she feels sorry for herself and sees an old HAM radio
hidden under piles of books. She and her dad used to use it and pretend to talk
to Alien life forms when she was younger. He’d always seem to pull it out when
Ashton was having a bad day. Ashton pushes off some old Louis L’Amour western
books that her dad likes to read to reveal a wood covered HAM radio. She
reaches around the back of it and flicks on the power. A yellow light from the
display slowly makes the room glow as it gets brighter. Static and frequency
sounds echo throughout the den. Ashton turns the number dial to listen for
voices, or anything recognizable. It was mostly static. She reaches for the
microphone.

“Hello. Hello,
Universe. Anyone out there? Anyone available for a loving, lonely girl?” Ashton
pouts, feeling sorry for herself. Just more static.

“There has to be
someone out there…some prince charming to sweep me off my feet…someone who’ll
appreciate every inch of me.” Ashton keeps turning the dial as she talks. High
pitched space-like sounds start to come from the radio. “I’m a great catch. I’m
good with animals. I like to read. I make a wicked King Ranch casserole. I have
a lot of love to give.”

BUMP…BUMP…BEEP! Ashton
is startled but realizes her phone had a text message on it.  She gets up
and walks over to her phone. She doesn’t notice that the radio frequencies are
getting a rhythm. She looks at her phone message.

“Sorry for Bobby being
such an AHOLE. I saw that he was making out with his Ex. Thanks for stealing
the truck, you jerk. No worries, I’ll get a ride with Teddy. Well, another ride
with Teddy, if you know what I mean.”

Ashton rolls her eyes
and slams down her phone. She angrily burst out of the house covered only in
her tightly wrapped towel. A worn screen door slams shut behind her. She jumps
off a warped porch and runs toward a large grass field. With each step she runs
harder and harder, trying to subdue her stinging emotions.  She’s tired of
being alone. She’s tired of Faith flaunting a new guy each week in front of
her.  She’s tired of not being good enough. The corn fields get closer and
closer. She runs till the house becomes just a few lights in the distance. She
stops just before the cornfields. Her sides begin to hurt, and she coughs to
breathe. The last time she’s run this far, this fast, was when she broke up
with her first boyfriend when she turned 13. 

Ashton falls to her
knees crying. She screams into her hands, then collapses to the ground. The
towel unravels and she finds herself lying nude under millions of stars in the
dark purple sky. Blades of grass billow around her like ocean waves as the wind
blows its cold breath. She sniffles and starts to take in the beauty and
magnitude of the night sky above.

“How am I still
alone?” she whispers to herself. She looks at all the stars and planets above.
“Surely I’m worthy of someone, something.”

 Cold wind whips
by, giving Ashton chills. Then everything stops. No wind. No sound. Not even a
cricket. An eerie silence engulfs the field. Ashton sits up; her breasts
exposed and hair still wet. The white towel sits beneath her. A whirring sound
can be heard. Invisible electricity fills the air. Three lights zoom by in the
night sky. Ashton gasps. Another three lights zig zag and move in the opposite
direction before disappearing.

“Oh crap, oh crap!”
Ashton yells as she grabs her towel and starts to run bare naked back to the
house.  She makes it two yards before an invisible force grabs her and
lifts her up. A beam of light comes from the night and wraps around her
body.  Her naked form is suspended in midair. She feels like she’s
swimming in place as she tries to wiggle free.  The light gets brighter; a
burning sensation fills her. She screams. The light devours her. All goes
black.

Blurry shapes and lights
are all Ashton can make out for the first thirty minutes of waking up. She
hears unearthly sounds and feels many random sensations as a liquid moves over
her nude body. No matter how hard she tries, she can’t move her body or hands.
Ashton normally would be terrified. After all, she’s had a fear of small spaces
since she was a child. At the moment, though, she has no fear. She feels like
laughing but doesn’t know why. The liquid moves and dances and changes forms
and colors. Ashton is fascinated and wonders if this is what taking mushrooms
would be like. She’s never done any drugs before. Ashton feels a tickling
sensation, and the liquid turns purple as Ashton starts to giggle from the
touch.  The liquid rolls off of her and absorbs into the floor which is
covered with soft color changing gels throughout.

 Her body starts
to tingle as blood seems to flow back throughout her limbs. Ashton can finally
move her fingers. Her giggles subside, and her emotions return to normal. She’s
afraid. “Where am I?” she wonders. She sits up to look around at her alien
environment. The room is dark and metallic in form. The air is humid. There is
no furniture, but there are shapes that extrude from the walls that resemble
chairs and tables. Bright mini-lights are scattered throughout the room. 
Beams of light shoot through slits in the wall.

Ashton notices a glass
of liquid on a table extrusion nearby with a single flower. Next to the flower
is her towel. She reaches for the towel. She quickly wraps her body.

“Hello? Hello?!”
Ashton yells. “What’s going on? How did I get here?”

There’s no answer, but
Ashton keeps trying. “I don’t know if this is real, or a dream or what, but you
have to let me go!” Ashton walks to the edges of the room and explores the
walls. They are solid and cold to the touch. Symbols and odd shapes adorn the
walls: Almost like an alien language.  As she walks, the floor changes
colors. It seems to change color based on her mood. Curiosity one color,
frustration another. Ashton starts to pace.  She realizes she’s in some
type of cage or prison.

“You can’t keep me
here! You’re going to get in big trouble!!”

“Drink,” a two-toned
voice says from beyond the walls. Ashton looks over at the glass.

 “You want me to
drink?” Ashton questions. A white light glows under the drink.

“Drink,” A deep, low
and high voice harmonizes the word. 

“This is like a bad
after school special. Besides, aren’t you doing this backwards? You already
knocked me out, and now you want to slip something into my drink.”

There’s no reply.
Ashton looks around the room. She examines the glass and sniffs it.

“I’ll make a deal with
you; whoever you are. You want me to drink. I want to know what’s going on.”

She places the drink
down and steps away from it.

“For every question you
answer, I’ll take a step toward the glass. If you’ve answered all my questions
by the time I get to the glass, I’ll take a drink.”

Silence fills the
room.

“What’cha think? We
have a deal?”

“Yes,” says a
harmonizing, almost electronic voice.

Ashton positions
herself almost 4 steps away from the glass. She looks at her bare feet and
looks over at the glass, imagining how many steps to get there.

“Okay, good. This is
like something I’ve seen in the movies or read about. Are you from this
planet?”

“No,” says the alien
voice. A laser light quickly projects images on the ground, on the walls and on
Ashton. The laser images depict a blue and green earth that gets smaller and
smaller, until star maps and 3D planets show a line that leads to a distant
planet many solar systems away. Ashton’s impressed and mesmerized by the visual
display. She glides her fingers over the lights.

“Wow, I knew there was
something else out there. No one’s ever going to believe me.” Ashton takes a
step toward the drinking glass and ponders her next question “Why did you
choose me?”

“You called for us,”
says the alien voice distorting and reversing. The sounds of the ham radio
playback along with Ashton’s earlier messages.  A graphical display of
sound waves dance on the floor. They get smaller and shorter depending on the
words and the voice level.

“Someone heard me. You
heard me,” Ashton says to herself and brushes back a tear. She takes another
step forward.

“Why are you here? What do you do with us when
you abduct us? Or whatever this is?”

“We examine. We watch.
We learn. We want to know more about your kind.”

“What’s in the drink?
Is it poison? Are you going to hurt me?”

“We will not harm you.
The drink is a gesture of good will.” Ashton steps toward the drink. She sighs.

“Goodwill, huh?” She
reasons to herself that if they wanted to harm her, they would have by now. She
grabs the glass and takes a sip. She’s surprised. It’s the same drink she had
at the lake. A perfect recreation of her favorite alcoholic drink.

“Uh, how did you know?
Why did you choose this for me?”

“We’ve been watching
you. We’ve been learning. It’s what you like, yes?”

“Yes.” Ashton takes
another sip.

“Can we ask you
questions?”

“Uh, sure? You have a
captive audience,” Ashton says, humoring herself.

“Why do you cry?”

“Wow, going straight
for the Oprah questions first,” teases Ashton, as she readjusts her towel,
wishing she had actual clothes on.

“I do not understand.”

“Never mind. It’s a TV
show. Uh. I guess I cry because I’m lonely.” Ashton sits at an extrusion of the
wall that almost resembles a chair.

Graphical text in
different languages project on the floor and the walls. The text soon turns to
the word lonely. Other words form nearby, “no friends, no company, without
love, solitary.” The words are then overlayed with moving images of Faith and
Ashton hanging out as seen from an extreme overhead view. More moving images
follow. From another extreme overhead view appears on the wall Ashton
interacting with and taking care of her horses. 

“I do not understand.”
Questions the alien captor. “Alone, solitary?”

“No, I have friends,
family, and I love my animals probably more than most people. But it’s…”
Ashton’s at a loss for words. “I guess I crave a soul mate,” The floor below
Ashton slightly turns red. Images start to form on the walls. Paintings of
famous couples flash on the wall. First Romeo and Juliet, followed by Cleopatra
and Mark Anthony. Then, other statutes and paintings of couples through time in
passionate embraces. Other words form on the walls: Lust, love, romance, sex…
Images of kissing and bodies wrapped in sexual embraces follow. Ashton finds
herself aroused. The floors turn pink.

“What is lust?”
questions the voice beyond the walls.

“Uh, well… “Ashton’s
freckled face turns red with embarrassment. The floors turn green.”

“Are you embarrassed
by the question?”

“Well, it’s just
something we humans don’t talk about. It’s something you feel. You crave. You
desire. You want with every part of your body. You feel like you’d die if you
couldn’t have…”

“I apologize, you must
go now,” says a voice beyond the walls. 

“Wait, what? I uh.
What’s going on? This is it? This??”

“We … I can’t complete
the study.”

“Hey, we just started.
We can’t stop. We are having a dialogue. Don’t just drop me back off. I want to
see you. Who are you?”

“I apologize. You must
go now,” repeats the voice.

Ashton quickly stands
and hurls her drinking glass at the wall. “Show yourself to me!” She demands.

 The room
rumbles. Lights flicker. The floor turns a silvery liquid and starts to wrap
around Ashton’s legs. The room goes dim. Sounds of steam hiss as an entryway
slides open from the walls. Clouds of steam flow into the room. Beyond the
clouds stands a tall, stoic figure, almost human in appearance. The figure
walks slowly into the room. Its skin fluctuates between silver and reflective
to various shades of colors.  Its eyes are like miniature mirrors. Its
head is rough and jocular with short hair. Despite its reflective surface, its
form shows muscles and torso more pronounced than anything Ashton’s ever seen.
It seems naked, very naked, and from what Ashton can see, it’s a male figure -
a very well-endowed male figure. 

“Oh wow,” whispers
Ashton. The liquid wrapped around her turns pink.

“I’m showing myself,” speaks
the humanoid figure in a deep tone. As it steps up and towers over Ashton’s
five-foot-four frame, her reflection can be seen on his built chest and torso.

“Um, yes. Yes, you
are.” Ashton can’t help but stare up and down his body and his large man- hood.
She tries to compose herself. “You aren’t what I was expecting…almost like a
silver Mr. Universe.”

The creature looks
away. His form turns slightly green.

“That’s not a bad
thing,” she explains. “You’re amazing looking,” Ashton defends as she sees his
color change.

“What’s your name?
Mine is Ashton if you don’t already know.”

Orion is what it
sounds like he says, though she thinks his name is not pronounceable in a human
language.

“Why did you all of a
sudden say I had to go? What happened?”

His color turns a
reddish tint. He looks over at the walls and a faint word appears. “Lust.”

“I don’t understand,”
says Ashton, trying to look into his eyes.

“I can’t be
subjective. I lust you,” says the overpowering figure looking down at
her.  

Ashton’s heart starts
to pound out of her chest. This whole experience is surreal. She didn’t know
what this thing was that was in front of her, but she desired it, possibly the
same way it desired her. The liquid from the floor vining around her legs started
to shimmer in rose-like shades. She unwraps her towel and drops it to the
ground. Her bare chest exposed, her nipples hardened, and her breath shallow
with excitement.

 The color liquid
from the ground explodes and wraps around her legs and body. It lifts her to
eye level with Orion. He grabs her and pulls her to him with giant firm hands.
His silver lips devour hers. She reaches and feels his solid chest. It’s warm
to the touch.  She moans with excitement. He reaches around her backside
with an unyielding grip and lifts Ashton even higher so he can suck on her
breasts. Her nipples harden even more as his silvery tongue rolls back and
forth with a passion Ashton’s never felt. The alien liquid, now a boiling red,
wraps inside Ashton’s thighs and starts to vibrate. The liquid molds between
her legs, hardening and softening, moving in circular vibrating motions. Ashton
starts to moan louder and louder. “Yes, yes! Oh!!” Her back arches. She reaches
down and feels his huge shaft. Smooth and muscular, she strokes him but becomes
too distracted by her own pleasure. Her moans echo throughout the room. 
Right as Ashton is about to orgasm, Orion lifts her and places her on his
manhood. She screams in pain and ecstasy.  Her body shakes with
excitement, her body pressed against his. He thrusts again slowly, but with
force. Each thrust a mini orgasm following the last.

  Eventually,
both succumb to the pleasure and lay on the white glowing ground. Ashton’s head
lays on Orion’s chest. Her fingers move down his reflective firm body,
exploring in a soft way.

“That was amazing,”
says Ashton.

“Out of this world,”
says Orion seriously.

“Was that a joke? Oh
my god, you just made a joke,” Ashton laughs.

Orion holds her tight.
Her body is almost like a doll in comparison to his muscular build and length.
He glides his large hand as gently as he can through her hair. He wasn’t
supposed to connect with her. He couldn’t resist her. It’s something that would
typically be forbidden and frowned upon among his kind. He’s been watching her
for some time from afar, but seeing her in person changed everything.

He could relate to
her. Even though they lived light years apart, their worries, concerns and loneliness
bonded them past several solar systems. In his world, he was average, uninteresting
and he felt that way about most of the opposite sex. But in this world, he was
a novelty, and in some way, so was Ashton. Beyond the novelty of it, making
love to her was beyond anything he’d ever expected. She was soft, so
vulnerable, yet so passionate. She falls asleep in his arms on the floor of the
alien chamber. He knows she can’t stay there. It wouldn’t be safe.