72 - Missing Time

Asenath retrieved a candle. Then she looked up. The others traced her gaze into the darkness above. There were no clouds. No moon. Just a hundred points of light.

"Dagon's Hollow is a dark sky country," she said. "The street lamps and lights are all covered, less lightspill. So that people can see the stars, the planets, and the dark between them. Some people study that big blackness more than others. I call this story...

MISSING TIME

"Venus," Amber Grayson muttered, staring up at the bright point that most would mistake for a star. She was south of the town, down past the mouth of Dagon's Hollow's namesake cave. Walking through the stubble of an empty field. Since she was old enough, she had learned the stars and constellations, all the planets that could be seen with a naked eye. It was good country for stargazers.

Yet more than anything, she watched the space between them. For anything that might be moving out there.

It made sense, at least to Amber. If aliens were going to visit, it would be the space in between stars that gave them away. The subtle warp of light from gravitational lensing effects, or warp drives, or however they managed to cover the impossible distance from where they had evolved to here.

She checked her watch. 1137. Thirteen more minutes, then she'd have to pack it in.

Sometimes, when she stood there, neck craned upwards, Amber felt dizzy. The stars just spinning around above. There was a strange sensation of weightlessness that could come over her at such times. As if her heels left the ground. Just now she felt it, heart hammering, eyes losing focus for a moment as she gave herself over to the sensation of being transported.

Her heels touched the ground. Amber, off balance, landed on her ass. She gave a little cry of pain; it felt almost like she'd sat right on a dried cornstalk. With a hissed curse, she rolled to her feet and stood up on shaky legs, ass aching.

She checked her watch. 0137. Shit. Time to go home.

Amber pulled off her jeans with aching tiredness. She moved to pull off her panties, but found she wasn't wearing any. With a click, she detached the shower attachment. Aimed a soft, cold spray at her aching asshole. Blood trailed down her legs, fading out into a milky pink whiteness, before that washed out too. The cold water numbed her aching asshole.

"Damn, landed hard," she said, as she toweled off and tumbled into bed. Three hours sleep, and then her shift.

Her sleep was not dreamless. She saw them, just as she'd somehow always imagined them. Huge, swollen heads, hairless, denoting massive intelligence. Slim, androgynous bodies. Not mammalian, but something that triggered the uncanny valley effect. Something that had evolved on a planet close enough to Earth that parallel traits had developed. Amber couldn't move in the dream, even though she knew it was a dream. Could feel the long, slim, boneless thing that groped against her asshole. Groped and pushed.

Her ass opened easily. A strangely familiar, comforting sensation as is slid deeper inside of her. All of Amber's attention centered on that ring of muscle as it pushed deeper and deeper, spreading her wider and wider. Her pussy quivered, but they didn't touch it.

Why her asshole? She wondered. How deep are they going to probe?

The thought, strange, overpowering, not her own, broke in. A map of her body's systems, her nervous system, her guts. Incomplete, fuzzy in some areas, others highlighted.

The alarm blared. Amanda moaned, rolled out of bed. Half-awake, she dressed for her shift at the Out of This World Diner. Clean panties, clean jeans, clean socks. B-cup bra. Brown T-shirt showing a green-headed alien dressed as a frycook. Apron with exactly seven pieces of flair. Scrunchy for her straw-colored hair, sneakers, wallet, keys, watch, and she was out the door.

The mile walk helped wake her up some. The black coffee helped more. Morning shifts were busy; Dagon's Hollow still had its farmers and early risers that needed eggs and toast, coffee and grits. Amanda could relate to that.

Then home for a couple hours' sleep. And out again to watch the skies.

She checked her watch. 1114. Forty-six more minutes.

Sometimes, when she was tired, she thought she saw things move in the black. Then she blinked her eyes and they weren't there. Sleep deprivation hallucinations. That's what it was. The kind that...

Amanda blinked, flat on her back. Her asshole burned something awful. There was a weird, metallic taste in her mouth.

She checked her watch. 0415.

"God damn, where did the time go?" she muttered as she rose painfully to her feet.

She could barely walk. Her body felt wrong, too heavy. Something oozed out of her ass and down the inside of one pants leg, warm and semi-liquid. She swallowed the nasty taste in her mouth, not wanting to hurl if she tried to spit.

In the house, she chucked out of her pants. No blood, no shit, just a weird grey ooze.

"Something from the field?" she muttered. "Probably some of that nasty chemical fertilizer stuff..."

In the shower, cold water hit her aching asshole and she gasped. Her legs gave out and she slid to the floor. It wasn't just the rawness of her asshole, it was a kind of sensitivity she had never known. Before she knew what she was doing, Amber pressed the shower attachment right against her asshole.

Her ass swallowed in. Amber panted hard, head swimming dizzily as she felt the cold water rinse out her guts, water dripping out the side as her asshole engulfed the attachment, the handle slowly slipping inside.

Snatches of dream hit her, as hard as memory. Two of the greys holding her aloft, their long tentacles swarming inside of her, stretching her aching butthole to something beyond what she thought was her limit. The twin cocks coiling in her guts, alien fluids filling her to capacity and beyond, until she could taste the metallic goo in her throat. Unable to move, eyes rolling back. cascades of inexpressible sensations rolling over her as they mapped out her brain from her ass.

A bright light shone through the bathroom window.

The attachment hit the floor of the shower.

Amber Grayson didn't show up for her shift that morning.

The wellness check by the local police found her door unlocked, shower still running. Her keys and watch were there. The last note in her skywatching diary was three days old.

"Who knows when, or if, she might be seen again? Or whether she will remember anything of the time she lost?" Asenath said. "What did they find that they didn't have in their own world?"

Asenath looked down at the candle. It's small light reflected in her eyes. She blew it out, and her face went dark.