Ribbons & Hair - [A Dread Fantasy story]

in #sfandf-fiction5 years ago (edited)

Ribbons & Hair - [A Dread Fantasy story] - or, an example of what goes on in my mind, while I sleep :)




I had been at the hotel for some days and I still found the recently created signs in our language disturbing. I had not understood what the threat is, for I had found the Ar-Aminusaans to be a kindly specie, with no evidence of hostility or fear of the strange - for as I found them odd in appearance, I am certain my form and limbs had been strange to them. They were odd in their flowing form, but quite more graceful than Abstract Ballet dancers, I thought.

I had explored their gardens and it had occupied me while I waited for their leaders to invite me for our first negotiations. Their idea of a garden included rocks and what looked to me like ruined parts of buildings that sometimes extend out to the surrounding land; perhaps a few reaching to the city. I had grown less fearful of the host specie as locals joined me on my walks and asked their neighbourly but somewhat alien questions in their soft and almost childish voices. I was by now daring enough to follow a decorative ruined building beyond the edge of the garden.

Suddenly locals who had calmly been walking and talking to each other cried out in alarm, “Run, run, the Executioner. Run, the Executioner.”

I do not know why I panicked. Perhaps after all our instincts are not as colligated by our scientific logic as I’d thought them to be. I ran with the people, but not following them, rather, trying to return to the hotel, struggling over low rocky walls for running alongside them at a crouch, aiming in general for the safety of the parts of the ruin that lie in the garden.

I saw movement and hid behind a pillar, but the Ar-Aminusaan saw me and gestured with flailing ribbons and hair as it called, “Come this way alien, quick, follow me.” Running a few metres behind it, I saw it arrive at an opening in the rubble, with a pipe in the center. It called, “Come, it is only twice your height in length and we will be inside my home.”

I slid down the pipe, but landed safely, without a jar, though my hands tingled. As I looked around in curiosity, trying to understand why I felt the space did not or could not be a space of domicile, perhaps because it lacked in the bright colours the Ar-Aminusaan love, I felt the tingle in my hands spread to my arms and soon all the way to my feet. I found it difficult to move.

The stranger calmly stood watching me and I felt a sudden suspicion - almost a certainty. “You are the Executioner?”

“Executioner? Is that the word given to you? A mis-translation my friend, I am no executioner, I am a healer - a Surgeon.”

“What interest would a surgeon have in me? I am alien, plus I have no need of surgery.”

It approached me and then gently raising my arm, it felt all along, from wrist to shoulder, pressing and noting shapes of bones and muscles under the skin. It did not touch my fingers and from the way it avoided them, I had the feeling it considered them mishapen, ugly because of the very distant resemblance to their own ribbons and hair - which flowed from their body like beautiful seaweeds, slowly rippling with changing colours, like some kind of chameleon or octopus camouflage as tiny cells alter in hypnotic alternate fields. At least they did not become grainy in appearance as the octopus can.

By now I was finding it nearly impossible to speak and was forced to stand swaying as I listened to it inform me of what it plans.

“Our people suffer with you, for the nature of your world has been unkind, limiting you to two limbs for manipulating matter and for sensing the world around you, whereas ours has provided us with hundreds, from the finest and thinnest strand, to wider, stronger strips for the times strength is needed - and all are many times more sensitive than yours, even to the sensing of scents and colours.

It has been decided we must help you by rectifying the errors of your evolution. We provided you with warnings so that the choice to meet me would be yours. You came and, as a Surgeon, I have studied your body and limbs. As a goodwill gesture we have decided to alter your upper limbs, as a gift from us, even should no agreements of Friendship be reached at our negotiations. If a Friendship agreement is sealed, then we will gladly help you with your lower limbs, so that your people have evidence that we love and are a caring people, which establishes, we are good Friends to have - is it not?”

I could not speak and the bastard did not make me unconscious; I was forced to watch, thankfully without pain, as it removed the bones and then tore at the muscles, ligaments, nerves and blood vessels, forming, shaping and plaiting until my two arms became a variety of ribbons and hairs.

When feeling and locomotion returned and I could speak, I shouted at it, “You fucking SJW!” it being the worst swear word I knew, but then bit my tongue as I suddenly recalled I am still at its mercy. I informed it that I must return to my ship, to show them how I have been altered. Of course, because it felt what it did is an improvement, it expected my people to rejoice and plead to also be treated, so I was assisted to my lander and I was able to ask the ship to take control of the lander and return me to them. I did not trust my ribbons and hairs with my safety.

“Captain, they did not even try to imagine what I would want. They felt they are what we would wish to emulate and tricking me, changed me without my consent. Look at them,” I waved my ‘arms’, “they can never be changed back to normal arms. What am I going to do?”

Captain asked and was informed that not only is there no way to change me back to the way I was, but that, even if they could, they cannot do something so inhumane, so cruel.

We fucking bombed and lasered the shit out of them, leaving their entire planet looking like their stupid ‘decorational’ garden ruins. And I sat at the screen watching as my ribbons and hairs waved, rhythmically altering shapes, textures and colours as my emotions returned from rage to grief at the loss of my future as a normal human being.




Αλέξανδρος Ζήνον Ευσταθίου
(Alexander Zenon Eustace)

5th October, 2018

  • posted on Steemit: 6th October, 2018



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