Alien

Backing up files and found a short story word file on a USB, which was apparently last altered 2006.

Here, have a party:


She hated the establishment. She tried not to think about the way the room was shaped; it wasn't really a room and she couldn't really think. If she had to come to realise that physics applied differently merely because she was in a different solar system, she'd scream - and they never liked that. She'd managed to express that humans scream and clap and jump when happy, scream and shift and throw their arms when angry, and they'd tried to ask her a question about that, but she couldn't understand. So far she just knew how to say 'human', 'Them', 'not' and 'see', as well as the names of two who studied her - though she sometimes confused them with other Them. She would have expressed that she could distinguish between them slightly and that she did realise that they did all have different names - except she didn't know how to say that.

They watched her as though she'd explode, and she hated them. When she cried, they were still wary, thinking she was trying to attack. When she set fire to more materials they had brought her, and coughed because of the fumes, they thought she was dying. When she was pressing together the ashes and sobbing because she didn't know how to make a real pencil and real graphite and she couldn't fucking draw the things she was starting to forget, they wondered if touching ash caused the hu-mans pain (they had discovered tears from pain when the red thing had been coming out of her two weeks ago. She refused to think of all that had happened then.) When she used her ash to draw, they left her alone, but the pictures made her cry because she didn't have paper. She used the ash to mark each day, and they seemed to understand that well enough. She began to wonder if they'd ever understand that earth days were two hours shorter, and with each mark she became more and more out of touch with her loved ones. When she farted it was a disease, when she scrubbed under her arms, they held her down half-naked and examined the glands. When she sang - and she did it a lot - they did not admire her voice as she was used to on Earth, but made notes. She asked them once, 'oh, Them, to make?' when they made notes, and they looked at her. She didn't know what that meant.

She was glad they were homonoid because at least that way, they were slightly understandable, yet occasionally she wished they would raise their eyebrows at her or smile. She missed her commander's smile. She wanted to shock Them, swear at them and make them back away, but if she transgressed upon one of their customs, it was that she was the hu-man, and if she did something wrong, they never knew. She was so sick of it one day, and she wanted to shock them, and she stroked herself off more furiously and desperately than she'd ever done, sobbing and glaring at them as she went. She did it because she was angry and she wanted them to look away for once. She didn't do it because she missed the feeling. She didn't close her eyes at the end and think of her lover's body arching underneath her.

They took notes.