E.P. Rains

The nape of his neck. She had kissed the small space between his head and shoulders thousands of times. She knew the little mole under the downy tuft of his hair that she kept asking him to get checked out. She had memorized the way the skin would crease slightly when he looked up at something. She loved the uneven tan that he would get in the summer when his hair grew longer than usual.

There is a certain kind of intimacy that comes with seeing the parts of someone that they can’t see without a mirror. Their face, the curve of their spine, where their thigh meets their knee. Lips, teeth, nails run across the softest spots.

“You have something on the back of your neck, ” she said.

He sat on the edge of the bed in his underwear, taking off his socks one at a time.

“Oh, can you get it?” He leaned back into her warmth. The silk of her nightgown brushed the back of his forearm.

She leaned in, eyes narrowed. The swipe of shimmering red was not from her makeup bag. She preferred deep maroon, the color of dried blood. Her heart pounded in her ears. He hadn’t even been acting strangely. He always came home after work, never smelled of someone else’s perfume, didn’t miss the opportunity to make love to her. His soul still seemed familiar to her.

Suspended in the moment as she wiped the lipstick from his neck, she thought of the last time she saw her mother.

You will regret marrying a human. Their lives are so short, so temporal, that they do not have the time to comprehend what they’re doing is wrong. Humans do not have the context to perceive the ripples that flow from their decisions into time immortal.

She had told her mother to get out of her boudoir after that monologue. She didn’t listen. She never did when it came to matters of the heart. A four-year exploratory probe had turned into a twelve year deluge of nonsense and emotion. She felt so stupid, trivial.

She settled back on her knees, “Are you seeing someone else?”

“Seeing someone?” He repeated her question, a classic diversion technique he utilized when they argued. “No, why would you ask something like that?”

They had been together long enough that she knew all his tells. He stalled for time, he broke out in a stress rash, he would scrub at the side of his face with his knuckles. He did all three. Her husband fidgeted as he sat before her, like a naughty schoolchild caught cheating on a test.

“You’re lying to me.” The calm floated just above her anger like a plane flying over a hurricane.

“I’m not.”

“Then why the fuck is there sparkly red lipstick smeared on the back of your neck?”

He swallowed hard, “I don’t know, maybe it’s yours?”

She placed a hand on either of his shoulders, almost lovingly. Her form shifted, slightly as if in and out of focus. He squinted at her, not yet frightened.

Their first date had been a whirlwind. She was young, by her species’ standards, and naive. She wasn’t slated to be sent to Earth. Her mother wanted her to stay on the ship where she would be safe and coddled. Lord Nerys disagreed, wanting his special pet to run the wildness out of her system on some tertiary galaxy planet before he wed her. Lord Nerys encouraged her to find out what made humans special compared to their animal counterparts. Why had they won the race? He wanted a full report in his chambers as soon as she made it back.

The crew landed the ship expertly, touching down in a rural nowheresville. The fleet of officers descended on the town, selecting and snatching their identities from among the local population.

She had stolen the body of a girl called Darla. Darla didn’t even scream when she climbed through her bedroom window. Darla just gaped, blinking widely as she sucked in her last breath. She chose Darla specifically because she was young and buxom. A cursory search told her which features would be most beneficial for her time on this planet. Leafing through an old magazine in Darla’s room, she decided to call herself Grace, after Grace Kelly. A human woman whose body she would have loved to have.

The officers separated and went further into civilization. Grace, as she was now known, absorbed everything she could about being a successful woman. How to make people like her. How to be smart but not arrogant, how to be sexy but not overzealous, how to make everyone feel at ease when she spoke. Within a few days she had settled into her skin and begun searching for test subjects. Grace didn’t have to try hard to gain attention for the humans around her. They were drawn to her, and she enjoyed their company.

She met William at a bar on a Thursday night. She was there to find a man to turn over for dissection, but William charmed her. He pretended to bump into her, offered to buy her a drink, asked her questions about herself. She couldn’t believe that she was smitten by a human man, a more feeble species than her own.

Within a month she had “moved in” with William, against her superior commander’s wishes. They began a domestic romance full of laughter and passion. She had never felt so alive. She didn’t even feel the need to strip off her skin when she was alone to feel her extra legs and arms unfurl. As Grace she was beautiful and interesting, she was loved and desired.

The day William proposed she removed her tracking device and flushed it down the toilet. She hoped they would follow it all the way to the Atlantic. The next day her mother showed up when William left for work. Two months later Grace and William were married on his family’s vineyard and their nuptials were featured in the New York Times.

“Mr. and Mrs. William Dale tie the knot in an intimate and elegant ceremony at the Dale Family Winery. William, son of Gordon and Elizabeth Dale, is a trust fund manager. Grace, his bride, is a freelance researcher.”

She had scrapbooked that little article, finding it hilarious that they had published the bit about her being a researcher. She left the house for a few hours each day to study humans and find beautiful things to shoplift or beautiful specimens to dissect.

“Grace,” William winced, “you’re hurting me.”

She realized she was digging her perfectly lacquered manicure into his skin.

“Hurting you? You’re cheating on me, William. What the fuck?”

He looked away from her startlingly beautiful face as though he was averting his eyes from the sun.

He sighed as though confessing his sins were a chore for him, “Yes.”

“Who?” She hissed.

“My assistant, Natalie. Before you start, it doesn’t mean anything. Grace, baby, I’m sorry.”

“Natalie,” she turned the name over in her mouth, running it past her fangs.

She had met this Natalie once. At the company Christmas party the year before. The tall, slim brunette was unremarkable. By all human standards she was average aside from her round ass.

“Grace, honey,” William reached towards her, “I know you’re mad…”

“You do not know the depths of my rage, human,” she growled.

Darla’s skin was beginning to stretch tightly around her body. Small tears were beginning around her ribs.

“How could you do this to me?”

“I felt lonely,” he sagged, “we’ve been married for twelve years and you won’t tell me about your family or where you’re from. You refuse to talk about having kids even though the clock is absolutely ticking. You go out for hours during the day and don’t tell me what you’re up to. I am lonely. Natalie was there for me. She gets me.”

“I have given you everything! I gave up everything to be with you!”

She had given up her home planet, her people, her family. She gave up her culture to become the perfect wife for him. She left behind her identity to become Grace, a human woman.

“If this is going to work then you have to talk about things with me,” William reached for her face. “We can make this work.”

“Work? I refuse to be a mechanic on a machine that I did not break. I did not let someone else hold me, touch me, whisper sweet nothings in my ears. I did not let someone else feel the inside parts of me. I wasn’t the one who stepped outside of this marriage.” She reeled back, her shoulder skin splitting. “Your excuses are not good enough, William. You have betrayed me.”

Two of her long, spindly legs shook free from their bindings. William jerked back in fear, staring as her skin sloughed off her frame, revealing her true form.

“You want to know more about me, William?”

His eyes bulged at the sight of her six pale arms ripping Darla’s body to shreds. The pile of flayed meat dropped to the sheets.

“I am Agra-una, crown princess of the Jukowi. Your species doesn’t even know that my planet exists.”

Agra-una reared up on her two strong, cricket like back legs. She cocked her head to the side as she peered down at her husband.

“I was sent here to see why your kind evolved faster than other species. Why you were so special. Do you want to know the conclusion of my studies?”

She grabbed his head in two of her hands, lifting his body up from the bed. She seethed with rage. His blue eyes shimmered with tears. Once she would have found that touching.

“Grace,” he choked, “please.”

“I have concluded that your kind, your species, your human race only exists because of cruelty. You dominate the environment and the animals, people you hate, or think are beneath you. Tonight I learned that you will even dominate and manipulate those you claim to love. It isn’t survival of the fittest, it is survival of the cunning.”

Agra-una gripped the side of his mouth, prying it open forcefully. As she looked down at his uvula, he let out a pitiful screech.

“Surprise, William, your species just met its match.”

Agra-una lowered her mouth to his and removed William from his skin. He tasted red.

Holding the shell of her husband in her hands, she slowly lowered herself inside of him. She pulled the soft, slippery arms over hers and adjusted the torso to fit. Her body molded to his height, and she looked out of where his eyes should have been. She reached a hand up and rubbed the nape of his neck.

Agra-una tidied up the flat, throwing Darla out with the Friday rubbish and slipped William’s best outfit on. She needed a drink.