Ensnared Bride by Yamila Abraham

Chapter 1
     

    “By my clock you should have 36 cores done,” Ducra said to Monica in perfect English.   The alien overseer dumped the slave’s pile of pink luminescent saccus nut cores off the metal plate she ’d piled them on.
    Monica continued struggling to remove the core she was working on without rupturing it (a ruptured core was a tr ’sark zap).   She didn’t know how many were on the plate.   Each one she fell short of her quota was a zap.
    “…thirty-three, thirty-four…”   Ducra put the last core back on the plate.   “Thirty-five.”   The alien’s pale yellow eyes narrowed at her.
    She gave a final gentle tug on her nut and the core popped free.   Monica ’s chest heaved with rapid breaths.   Her thundering heart felt like it was going to erupt from her chest.  
    Ducra took the final core and placed it in her collection bag.   “Thirty-six.”
    Oh thank God!  
    Fortunately Ducra wasn ’t one of Monica’s crueler masters, who would shock her anyway just for fun.   The red and purple hued alien seemed to see doling punishments as just another chore.
    “Empty your waste bucket before you go to sleep,” Ducra said.   She placed Monica’s paper-wrapped food ration on her workstation and filled her metal pitcher with water.   “Keep the stink down.   We have visitors coming.”
    “Yes, serat , ” Monica said with her head bowed.   She waited for the alien to move on to the slave next to her before snatching the bundle.  
    Monica gobbled what she assumed to be a clump of soggy ground beef.   She downed the liter of tepid water with loud gulps.   Once her thirst and hunger pains had been seen to she gathered the bucket she defecated in.  
    The other two women in her small work area didn ’t earn any shocks.   Monica let her tightened shoulder muscles slacken when she heard Ducra exit the room.  
    She brought her bucket to the sewer hole across the concrete floor.   Another slave, Emory, came beside her to dump hers also.
    “Visitors, huh?”   The bony blond woman in her fifties tipped her bucket into the hole.   The stench that repelled upwards no longer bothered Monica.   “Maybe it’s the Alliance?”
    “Why do you get your hopes up?” Monica said.
    She took her empty bucket back to her station.   The cot behind her work stool was only half the length of her 5 ’ 6” body.   She had to curl her knees to her stomach in order to fit.  
    Nine days without a zap.   Monica drew a deep breath of air into her slender frame.   Keep it going.   You may never have to feel that pain ever again.   The pitiful hope didn ’t raise her spirits, but at least it kept her from sinking any lower.
    She imagined herself swimming in an Olympic-sized pool until she drifted to sleep.  
    Hours later high-pitched alien voices worked their way into her dream.   She squinted in a state of half-wakefulness trying to make sense of the noise.   Then something touched her hand.
    Monica jolted awake.   Hovering over her cot were two tall pale green aliens with grotesquely long faces and glistening black eyes.   Panic seized her at once, but then her morning amnesia faded.   She remembered that she lived in a world where weird aliens were plausible.  
    The beings, clad in long gray gowns with long arms jutting from draping sleeves, spoke to each other in high-pitched noises that seemed to echo from inside their own mouths.  
    Monica stared at them, huddled against the wall.   They ’d pushed aside her work table to get to her.   These must have been the visitors Ducra mentioned.  
    “Let me taste your skin.”
    Monica ’s eyes widened.   The alien switched seamlessly to English.  
    “Don’t!”   A sick thud of horror hit the bottom of her stomach.  
    The bald alien scowled.   “It won’t hurt.”   Its gangly arm lowered to clutch her wrist.   An impossibly long tongue fell out of its mouth.   The tip moistened her palm and then withdrew.   It let her go to