Dominant Species Volume Three -- Acquired Traits by David Coy

will
tell you something about the aliens.”
    She took
a deep breath through her nose and studied the hideous thing in front of her.
She wasn’t in the least bit shy about her anatomy and had shown it to men
enough times to know how. But doing so now, as some ghastly trade with a freak
she couldn’t fathom gave her nausea. She’d rather have shown her naked body to
her ninety-year-old uncle Petros—gladly.
    “Why are
you so interested in my body all of a sudden?”
    No
answer.
    But a
reason was growing deep inside her. She couldn’t define it exactly, but it was
there sure enough. Rachel could feel it as something evil. She wanted to vomit
it up and spit it out at him. She wanted to strangle him where he lay.
    She stood
up and unzipped her suit from the neck down to her crotch. Staring straight
ahead, she pulled one then the other arm free of the sleeves and worked her
torso out of the top part. Then she slipped her hands inside at the waist and
squirmed her full hips first to the right then the left and let the suit fall
to her ankles. She reached behind and unclipped her bra, removed it and dropped
it in the chair behind her. Her panties were next. Unceremoniously, she ran her
thumbs along the inside and worked them down over her hips and down to her
ankles.
    She stood
there naked, staring straight ahead. She could feel her heart beating in her
chest, not out of excitement, but out of anger and humiliation.
    He just
stared. His eyes going from her head to her knees and back again. She could
almost feel them like an unbearable, ashen touch.
    “Seen
enough?” she asked, not looking at him.
    “Yes,” he
said finally.
    “Good,”
she replied curtly.
    She had
her clothes back on in no time.
    She sat
back down and crossed her legs tight. Jacob went back to staring straight up,
the same self-satisfied, barely visible smile on his thin and crusty lips.
    “Well?
Now it’s your turn,” she said matter-of-factly.
    “The
aliens . . .” he started.
    “Yes?”
    “The
aliens came to earth in the year 2006. Perhaps sooner. I don’t know.”
    “2006?”
    “Yes. They
came and took many people. Kidnapped them.”
    “Then
what? How did you get here?”
    “They
must have brought me here.”
    “How did
you stay alive for so long? Did it have something to do with the parasite
attached to you?”
    “Yes.
They told me it could . . . could keep . . . keep me alive for a very long
time.”
    “Umm . .
.”
    “That’s
all I know.”
    “Really?”
    He stared
straight up. Rachel pursed her lips.
    “I feel
like I’ve been cheated here, Jacob,” she said. “I feel like you’re holding back
on me.”
    “I’ve . .
. told you everything I know,” he said gently.
    “Have
you? What about the laboratory? What about that?”
    “What
laboratory?”
    “You
know, the one with all the really neat medical implements. Like the one that
scared the shit out of you the other day. No idea what any of that is, huh?”
    “I don’t
remember,” he said kindly and closed his eyes.
    “I see,”
she said.
    She was
beginning to sound to herself like some incompetent Grand Inquisitor, and the
feeling didn’t sit well. She could have sat there and ground away at him with
questions for the next hour and was certain she wouldn’t have learned anything.
He was doing a good job of hiding it, whatever it was. On a conscious level,
she couldn’t understand why he’d want to hide a goddamned thing from her, but
her intuition told her he was doing just that, and it was something very
important—and threatening.
    “Okay.
You think about it, and I’ll check back with you later,” she said, plainly
irritated. “Have a nice nap.”
    She got
up and left. The feeling of his eyes still on her, like the touch of sticky bug
secretions, made her want to wash herself, over and over.
    She went
to her space and started to organize her things. She was going back into the
structure again that morning to explore the antechambers adjacent to the lab.
On