Cryptogee Shorts: 1000 Word Stories - The Journey

There she is, in the queue, saving my space. How incredibly lucky am I to be with her. Those white jeans are more second skin as opposed to skin tight. Her body resembles one of those Insta models I used to covet, basically the type of girl who doesn’t usually give me the time of day.

Yet here she is, for some reason head over heels in love with me.

Oh that smile . . .

“Hi babe! Where have you been? I’ve been in this shitty queue for ages!”

I have to be careful, I could go from love to obsession in the blink of an eye, every word she speaks is like a perfectly constructed symphony going off in my ears. Ha! The looks I’m getting, jealous from males, curious from females, both thinking the same thing; what’s he got? Is he rich? Funny? Huge dick?

Ha! Wouldn’t you like to know?

So would I to be fair.

“Hi Suze, yeah I’ve been stuck in shitty traffic so thanks for being there with me in spirit.”

The embrace around my neck, the smell of her perfume, the kiss, the inevitable erection as she whispers in my ear.

“Do you even want to go in? I could think of some fun alternatives.”

“Tempting as that is baby, we’re meeting the guys and I really don’t want to blow Roy off again.”

“That’s what she said!”

Even that snorting laughter is like a sweet melody to my ears.

“Oi! That’s my line.”

“Nah, I checked with the patent office and they said it was public domain.”

God I love her.

It’s later, we’re inside the club. It’s okay. All I want to do is go home and have sex, the drugs are definitely working now, and they are telling me that right about now is the perfect time to have sex.

Ah, here she comes back from the toilet.

“Hi baby, miss me?”

“Hmm, my erection definitely missed you.”

“I missed him too! Come, I want to show the both of you something.”

Awesome, she’s leading me somewhere to have sex right here and now! Oh Suze, you bring out the best in me, I feel like a fucking porn star stud when I’m with you.

Will my willingness for us to stay together turn into ugly desperation, and then later cloying jealousy, which you eventually won’t be able to stand?

“Where are we going?”

“Just shush and follow.”

I love these little couple games we play, I pretend I don’t know what’s going on, and then boom! She surprises me with sex. Maybe we’ll do it overlooking the dancefloor, I’ve kind of always wanted to do that.

I hate making love standing up though, I always find I have to concentrate too hard to really enjoy it . . . though I bet it’s different with Suze though. Everything’s different with her.

Cool, I didn’t notice these stairs before.

“Okay Pete, here we are, but before we go through this door I need to know if you love me.”

Woah! The L-word, we’ve both used it in the throes of passion but never when we were just sober,so-to-speak, something that hadn’t escaped my notice. Now here she is wanting me to just say it, which if I don’t in the next tenth of a second there will be a noticeable pause and, of course I do love her.

“Yes! Of course I love you. I just didn’t want to scare you off.”

Deep kiss, hmmmmm, those lips, that smell.

“It’s me who’s worried about scaring you off baby, once we go through this door there’s no turning back, you’ll know everything about me.”

I just – wait? Is she breaking up with me? Here? Now? No, she can’t be, this doesn’t feel like a breakup.

“Okay, you’re kinda freaking me out now, can you just tell me what’s going on?”

“I’ll show you, let’s go.”

What could possibly be behind that door that could explain everything about her? This actually does feel like a breakup now, though the words coming out of her mouth don’t quite match the feeling. Is this what discombobulated means? I’ve always wanted to use that word in a sentence.

“What the ACTUAL FUCK?!”

“It’s okay baby, calm down we - ”

“Calm down?! Calm down?! We’re in, we’re in space! How is this happening?”

“We are actually in a quasi-temporal, fully suspended pre-Lucasian bubble, this is the view of earth from my ship. Well I say my ship, I don’t actually own it, nobody does, it’s a sentient being actually.”

“But how? How are you?”

“Doing this? I’m not, it’s the ship. Anyway, as you’ve probably gathered by now, I’m not from earth.
I’ve never once revealed myself to anyone. I mean I wouldn’t, it’s kind of, no in fact it’s exactly like breaking the rules.

With you it’s different though, I’m genuinely in love with you and I’m due to be leaving soon and I want you to come with me, so I had to show you all of this, come clean. Nothing beats a live demo when it comes to the ‘I’m an alien’ speech.

I know this is a lot to take in, if you say yes then we can go right now, we can traverse the stars together, no one even has to know you’re gone, we can leave a copy of you in your place, it won’t even know it’s a copy, it will be like you’ve never left. If you say no, you stay here and I can wipe all memories of this, of me, from your mind. Well, I won’t, the ship will.”

“I don’t want to forget you.”

“Well then I guess the memories could be edited to cut out this. I take it from that answer you don’t want to come?”

“A life among the stars with my alien girlfriend? Sounds great but”

“But you can’t imagine leaving your family and friends forever?”

“Something like that.”

“We can always visit.”

Anyway that was five years ago, and every night I relive it, trying to work out if it really happened, or whether I’m even real or not, maybe I’m the copy and the ship didn’t edit my memories properly.

Whatever the reasons are, I can remember all of this vividly and it’s why I’m in this institution, or at least that’s what they call it, I call it an asylum.

Cryptogee