“…little to do with infinity and jelly donuts.” (Additional 2)

Chapter 1 can be found here and Chapter 2 can be found here…

Chapter 3

Jesse had spent the past thirty-five minutes crawling through the extensive ductwork, getting completely dirty and utterly lost. Of course, not knowing where your destination is to begin with may retract from the idea of being lost, and considering he was looking for a way out of a spaceship that was at the moment actually in space, being lost was a better alternative to slipping out of one of the ship’s outer vents and floating helplessly in space for the minute and a half it took the pressure of space to cause his head to explode.

He was lost, but he was far from done. He had climbed up, he had slid down, he had turned right exclusively for a while before he realized what he was doing, then began alternating between left and right, with occasionally just a straight ahead to keep things interesting.

Interestingly enough, when he finally paused because of the large, hairy creature he had come across who was also taking up residence in the duct, he was only about fifty feet from where his two companions now were. Unfortunately, the two were sitting only about thirty-five feet from the point where Jesse first entered the vent. If he could get a few feet past the creature he would be able to see his friends almost directly beneath him, eating, laughing, and talking to two of the alien women.

“What was that?” Nick asked, looking up at the complicated mess of ductwork and wiring on the ceiling. After a brief and fairly unsettling internal dispute over what to choose, Nick had filled his plate and joined Brian at a small table. Sherras and Angea, as the girls introduced themselves, joined the men and they all enjoyed the food, conversation, and company.

“I didn’t hear anything,” replied Brian, finishing off another plate of tiny cheese sandwiches.

“Probably a bakawak,” replied Sherras, looking up also.

“A whatsit?” remarked Brian.

“The bakawaks are underground omnivorous creatures that we put in our ventilation system to keep it free from large debris. Quite a wonderful creature, it’ll eat just about anything and its defecation actually purifies the air and smells like vanilla.” Angea smiled brightly.

“Interesting…” responded Nick.

“So,” asked Brian, now looking up, “is it really dangerous?”

“Only when provoked generally. Like if it felt it was being attacked. Or when it’s hungry it can be quite aggressive.” Angea joined the rest of the group and looked up.

“So the last place you wanna be is cooped up with that thing when it’s hungry, eh?”

“Or worse yet, aggravate it with food.”

“Hey wanna candy bar??” Jesse waved a Baby Ruth around in order to get the attention of the large creature which, to his every effort, had not moved so that he could continue his journey.

Initially, he thought maybe he could just crawl around it but it seemed to spread out so as to take up the entire width of the vent. He couldn’t figure out which end was its head and which was not. It looked like a big lump of long hair, and he could see where there were legs, but just could not determine which way they seem to be pointing. He had pushed on the creature for a few minutes to see if it would move or at the very least, turn a little, but it seemed to weigh more than he did. It was then that he remembered he had the spare candy bar in his pocket.

“What’dya think furball?” he said, looking for any sign of a head. “You hungry?”

He sighed and sat back. This was getting him nowhere in his effort to save himself and his friends from the clutches of the blood sucking alien vampires. It called for drastic action.

“Hey asshole, wake up!” he poked the creature vigorously with the Baby Ruth.

It was then that he found the head. It was the part closest to him that at that moment revealed a mouth full of tiny pointed teeth.

“Okay, now I know you heard that,” said Nick, looking up again. This time he could actually see movement in the vents.

“Could be I did, could be I didn’t,” replied Brian and Nick gave him an odd look.

“Sounds like the bakawak found something it liked,” said Sherras.

“Something big it liked, apparently,” replied Angea.

Nick continued looking up for a moment as the others continued their conversation. Eventually, he looked back down and joined them. They found their lives, though separated by millions of miles, social and gender discrepancies, and a disturbing difference in eating habits, were not entirely dissimilar. There was even one socialistic ritual that was apparently practiced all over the Universe.

“We’ll be right back,” said Sherras, standing and running a hand through her long curly blonde hair, “we need to freshen up.”

Angea stood also and the two disappeared around a corner, giggling slightly.

“My friend,” said Brian, as he lifted a glass of purplish liquid in toast, “who would have thought when we decided to take a long walk on a deserted beach without telling a soul where we were going that things would turn out so interestingly.”

“Yeah,” replied Nick, eating what he hoped were potato chips, “go figure, huh?”

They drank their colored drinks and discussed life and love and potato chips.

“Hey where’s Jesse?” asked Nick eventually.

“I dunno,” Brian looked around for a moment. “Maybe he’s off talking to some hot short chick.” He looked around some more. “Plenty of ‘em around, ya know.”

“I noticed,” replied Nick, eating what he hoped were grapes.

“So what do you think of our new friends?”

Nick looked off in the direction the girls disappeared. “Well…very cute, short, sweet, and from a different planet. What I’ve always wanted in a girl.”

Brian smiled. “What can I say? We’re lucky alright!”

In the rather spacious restroom there was a lot of hustle and bustle of petite ladies running in and out, never worrying about waiting in line with the forty-five stalls of bidets. Among the scores of petite beauties Sherras and Angea stood in front of two of the man mirrors adorning the walls.

“Well, Sherras,” said Angea, as she chose a lipstick from the dispenser, “what do you think?”

Sherras smiled a moment. “Tall, cute, sweet, and from another planet. Perfect, I’d say.” She pressed a button and began to receive a quick manicure from the bathroom robots.

“Perfect indeed,” replied Angea, pressings another button and getting a quick facial. “Tall and strong enough to fulfill all of our needs…”

“…to work hard to get us what we desire…” added Sherras.

“They’ll be just perfect workers!”

“In the slave pits!” They both exclaimed as the others in the bathroom began to giggle, almost maniacally, many exposing their front teeth which were fairly long and quite, quite sharp.

Brian and Nick turned in the direction of the giggling.

“And just listen how happy they are,” Brian said as Nick nodded in agreement. “What a nice change of pace to find women who are so cheerful and carefree. They seem so eager to make us happy; I’ll bet they’ll wait on us hand and foot!”

Nick laughed. “Lucky, my man. Just plain lucky!”

…Just another Chapter….please post thoughts and suggestions! Thanks…