Free Alien Mine by Marie Dry Page B

her shaking hand in front of her face and blinked furiously. All her fingers were still attached. She blinked again. No blood.
     
    Her legs had turned to the consistency of cooked berries, and she sank down on the cold cave floor, the sound of those snapping teeth still echoing around her. "You miserable, rotten...You could've bitten off my fingers." Glaring at him, she lifted her foot to kick him but stopped herself. What had she ever done wrong to deserve this? "You ever do that again and I will kick you, tied up or not."
     
    He cocked his head. "I warrior. Woman no hurt." His face might be expressionless, but his voice could fill books with its disgust.
     
    "I don't need your permission. And if I kicked you, it'll hurt." Feeling at about the same emotional stage as a five-year-old she walked toward the kitchen area then turned back to the irritating alien again. "When you can promise me decent behavior, I will feed you."
     
    For the next two days, he sat without moving against the wall, his hands tied above him. Natalie worried about his arms going numb, but was too scared to untie him. If she had any sense, she'd kill him and bury his body where no one would ever find it. But she couldn't make herself do it.
     
    She tried talking to him every once and awhile, but it was as difficult as hauling in snow to melt for water. "Do you really kill babies on your planet?" Such a thing was still unthinkable to her and she hoped she'd misunderstood.
     
    "Weak babies." He growled it, with no inflection in his voice that she could interpret as reluctance or disgust.
     
    "And women. Do you kill women, too?" Would he consider a woman suffering from asthma too weak to be allowed to live?
     
    "Weak," he said again.
     
    "Why?" She turned her back to hide her reaction, putting the bread she'd just prepared in the oven.
     
    He remained silent for a time and she had the impression he was searching for the right words. "No breed," he said finally.
     
    She bunched her hair and twisted it until it pressed against her scalp. "No, no, I don't want to hear this. I can't talk to you anymore." The implication of his words was just too terrible to contemplate.
     
    Rushing to the storeroom, she sank down on one of the boxes and clutched her roiling stomach as she rocked back and forth. Her mother had died from an asthma attack.
     
    If he ever got loose--
     

    ***
     

    For the following three days, Natalie started the long, back-breaking preparations for winter under his ever watchful gaze, which included canning the last of the vegetables. Having her every move observed with relentless menace put her constantly on edge. She would drop things and bump into the kitchen table. The number of bruises on her arms and legs steadily grew.
     
    The fact that he hadn't eaten or drunk so much as a crumb since he'd woken from his coma made her feel like the worst kind of torturer. Every time she came out of the bathroom, or woke up, she expected him to be gone or waiting for her with his sword in hand. At night, she would wake up screaming from nightmares, dreaming he'd cut off her head at the first sign of an asthma attack, only to find him watching her through the sheer plastic door of her tent, his gaze unblinking and hot.
     
    By the morning of the third day, her nerves frayed, she was jumping at her own shadow. The only thing he would stare at besides her was the TC. Luckily, he seemed to like the news, which was the only program she could receive until next week. Like her father would say, it was nothing but government propaganda and depressing nonsense.
     
    Making jam to use during winter and to sell in town come spring, she lifted the pot of glistening red berries from the stove. She'd been carefully nursing berry-producing shrubs in the greenhouse for the last two years and couldn't help smiling at the delicious results of her hard work as the fruity sweet fragrance filled her nose. So different from the almost medicinal smell of her pine