It is good food, and I need it. I didn’t eat much before I left on my mission. I get nervous that things will go wrong. It turned out this time those nerves were absolutely correct. Things have gone very fucking wrong.
Manik has once again disappeared into the rear of the cave and is hard at work. He intends to dress me immediately, which I appreciate. I wonder what kind of seamster he is. Is that the word for a male seamstress? My implant seems to think so.
Nothing is going to plan. I have gone from hoping to make an insane amount of money to hoping I can survive. Funny how life likes to throw that kind of curveball. Just as you think you’re about to get ahead, bam, you’re abducted by a murderous and potentially psychotic alien who is probably using the skin from his previous victims to fashion you a cute outfit.
If I have learned one thing in my relatively advanced years, it is that you have to be adaptable. There’s no point holding onto the past or obsessing over what could have been. You’ve got to face forward and deal with the here and now, knowing full well that in the end, everything is a bit meaningless. I’m sure smarter philosophers have said that more eloquently, but I think that’s probably the key to a happy existence, or at least a tolerable one.
I check out the cave from where I’m sitting, and aside from the bone artwork, which is frankly distracting, he does have a great deal of technology here. Some of it he probably brought with him; other things bear the stamp of elite bounty hunting organizations. It’s fair to assume they were donated against the previous owners’ wills. The thing about Manik is that every time someone has tried to catch him, all they’ve actually succeeded in doing is making him even harder to catch.
Manik
She’s cute. She’s cute and she likes my soup. I like the way her cheeks go rosier in hues when she’s happy or warmed by soup. I’ve decided I don’t like how she looks when she’s afraid, and that is strange because I usually absolutely adore the look of fear in the eyes of my enemy.
But she came to convert me to money. I cannot forget that. She’s not a friend. But she's also not an enemy. She’s going to be my good little pet human, and I am going to take the very best of care of her.
I’m already thinking about what else to feed her. She will probably tire of pumpkin soon enough. I have plenty of rations, but she should be fed fresh food so she keeps a shiny coat and happy disposition. Nutrition is about more than ingredients. It is about love.
The solitude has been getting to me over the last few months. Sometimes, as a fugitive, you can feel very alone in the universe. I have no allies left. No family and certainly no friends. This human sitting naked in my cave will have to be all those things — and perhaps even a lover besides. I am not certain that her soft-boned body is capable of taking the kind of ravaging I inflict when I mate.
My memories turn toward her nudity. At first, she was not very appealing when I undressed her, but that is because she was burned and frozen across a significant portion of her fleshy form. Once healed beneath the restoration ray (a device that reads DNA and reconstructs what should be on a body rather than what is, or rather, isn't there,) she was quite pleasing. Very soft. Very squishy. I didn’t squish her too much out of fear of hurting her, but my gentle probes of various locations revealed a pliable body.