just liked to build on a grandiose scale. About a million years ago when he was a little kid, he’d gone on a field trip to the state capital. Everything there was built on the scale of giants, so he thought the same thing might be going on here. Although, a slave sale didn’t seem the type of thing to warrant an imposing structure. But then again, he didn’t know how alien minds worked. For all he knew, they could defecate in public and eat in private. They were aliens for Christ’s sake, so they probably did really strange alien stuff.
And then he realized that just because he’d been stripped, bent, and fondled to ejaculation in front of an audience didn’t mean they weren’t buying him to eat him.
“Oh, shit.” Every muscle in his body tensed as he kept on following the hand or whatever it was that held the other end of his leash. Tyler tried squinting, blinking, and even looking out the corner of his eye, but he still didn’t see anything but the leash. It was obvious something was holding it because the far end stayed in relatively the same position. Using his keen powers of observation, he noticed the hand of the thing seemed to be rather high. If it was built roughly like Tyler, he was being led by something about ten feet tall. But then again, maybe not. Maybe the invisible thing had hands on the top of its head. Or it didn’t have hands at all. Again, trying to understand the motives or even bodily shapes of aliens was a total waste of his time. Which made him wonder, what was a good use of his time?
Finding a way to escape. That was what he should be doing. Tyler considered the hallway. If there were doors they were as invisible as the thing that led him. Spending his energy fighting at the moment served no purpose because if he got away, he only had one place to run, and that was straight ahead, which was the direction they wanted him to go. And then he remembered that he was wearing a collar with a lot of blinking lights. What was that show he’d seen with the collars that blew the guy’s head off when he went out of bounds? Dang. Tyler couldn’t remember, but the special effects had been kind of crappy so it was probably an old movie. Still, he would be wise to be cautious. If his collar blew, he wouldn’t be able to appreciate the visual of his head popping off his body. All things considered, Tyler wanted to keep his head right where it was. If he was going to be eaten by some kind of horrible beast, he’d wait until he was in the creature’s kitchen to fight his way to freedom.
For some reason he thought of all the lobsters he’d eaten over the years. He’d tossed them into pots of boiling water without a second thought. Perhaps this was karmic payback for that. Some ferocious beast would toss him in a pot and then eat him covered in butter, or whatever the alien’s equivalent of dipping sauce was. Although at that point it wouldn’t really matter because he’d be dead. It would be worse to be eaten alive. The thought of traveling down the gullet of some massive beast made his heart beat so fast he was afraid he would have a heart attack and die right here.
“Where are you taking me?” It was probably a waste of time to talk to the invisible thing, but Tyler thought it was worth a shot.
“To your new master.”
“Master?”
“Owner.” The voice was as disembodied as the hands. It seemed to kind of come from in front of him, but then again, Tyler was so amped up the voice could be coming from inside his head and he wouldn’t realize it.
“What does this owner want me for?”
“Who can say?”
“You?”
“Not I.”
Tyler struggled to find more probing questions. “What do they usually do with my kind?”
“You are one of the first.”
“First as in what?” It could be height, color of his skin, his hair, his eyes—who the hell knew?
“First from the planet Earth.”
“What about from the other places? What happens to those…guys?” He wasn’t sure what