literature

Othello - Chapter 1

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One.

            Four.

            Three.

            Six.

            It is so boring here.

            I have waited patiently for them to do something, while every day they do nothing.  They simply walk by in their plain little suits and look official.

            I think I am going mad.

            “Let me out of here!”  It is the first thing I have said to them in months.  The two walking past me look at me with mildly displeased surprise.  “Let me out of here!” I repeat, adding some banging on the plastic panel that separates me from them, causing them to jump.

            Silent as ever, and they walk on.  I sigh and collapse in a corner of the white, plastic prison.

            “You feel like a wild animal.”  I glance up, and I look at the female standing there; she is most definitely not a regular.

            Is this what they call psychology?

            “You feel trapped.”  She starts slowly circling my cage.  “You feel.... angry, I think.”

            “Very good, Aubrey.”  A man, in a lab coat and black slacks and carrying a clipboard, walks up to the female.  She is smooth skinned and wearing a long black skirt.  Her black work shirt is buttoned up to the very top.  Her face is angular and she has high cheekbones, and her chin is as broad as a male's.  Her eyes are narrowed and her eyebrows are thick.  She looks quite brutish for a female.  It seems the coats passing by agree, rolling their eyes and giving her clinically disgusted looks.

            “Of course.”  What an arrogant female!

            “What else, human?” I finally speak again, noting the unsurprised look the female has adopted.  “What else do you think you see?”

            “I see a short gray humanoid with big black eyes,” she drawls, eyes shining.

            “Come on, human,” I sneer, standing up and banging again on the wall she’s closest to.  The male is the only one who flinches.  “Tell me what you see, really.  Inquiring minds want to know.”

            “.....I see you’re tired.  You feel sick.  You can’t move around.”  She sneers right back, “You feel like a big dog in a little play pen.”

            “That is all I am to these things,” I growl.

            “A big dog?” the female questions, voice unsurprised and steady.

            “So why don’t you put a collar on me?” I growl at the male.  “Come in here some time and try to put a collar on me.  Unless you are afraid I might bite?”

            “You should let him out,” the female says.  “If you aren’t going to perform experiments on him, you should let him go.  He’s going to go insane.”

            “We can’t perform on it,” the male says.  “That would be-”

            “Inhumane.  It would be inhumane to perform their little experiments on me.  So they will keep me locked up, and they will keep me a secret from the outside world.  But I am not human.  So come on!  Dissect me.”  I am playing with fire, but it is too good to deny.  One human performing psychological exams and another refusing to perform physical ones – it is enough to drive someone crazy.

            “....It’s his wish, Dr. Navauski," the female tells the doctor.  I cannot tell if she is on my side or against me.

            “But...” he starts, confused and nervous.

            “You humans!  You think this is humane?!  Locking me up and walking by and not talking but always staring?  I think it is a bit torturous!”

            “I suggest you take care of this one’s attitude, if you don’t want to have a dead alien on your hands.”

            “Maybe I want to be dead.”  The male - Navauski - and the female look at me.  “Would you want to live in this plastic hell?”  The female – I refuse to acknowledge her name – stares hard at me, measuring me, weighing me.  I’m on the scale.  I wonder if I weigh more or less than the feather.

            “Aubrey,” Navauski starts, and I assume he wants to take her out of here.

            “Dr. Navauski.  Let me in there.”

            She looks at me.  She has black eyes.

            “Let me take over this project.”

            “....I have to clarify with the-”  The female cuts Navauski off with a wave and walks over to a red button – why always red? – and pushes it.  With a small beep of acknowledgement, one wall slides up into the ceiling, and I shift, otherwise not moving.  She walks right onto the semi-levitated platform, and gets uncomfortably close.  I look over her to the opening and calculate a way out that doesn’t involve her looming over me.

            “Close the door, Doctor.”  The doctor is too unnerved to do anything but agree, and pushes the button again.  The wall is back.

            “What is it?” I ask, bemused.  She does not seem to enjoy my brashness anymore, and looks about to strangle me.  Stars above, I hope she does.

            “Listen up, alien.  Starting now, you’re going to give me no snappy retorts, and your not going to back talk me at all," she growls, and grabs me with cold hands and shoves me into the wall behind me.  “You are going to be a good little boy.”

            “How would you know that I am male?” I ask, partially aggravated, partially curious.  She smirks.  My voice has not indicated male nor female, and the added training from learning the inane English language has only added to the fact.

            “How do I know what you’re feeling?”

            “You don’t know what I’m feeling.”

            “I think I do.”  She raises a hand threateningly, and despite myself, I recoil back into my corner.  Her smirk transforms into something a little more wild.  “You are frightened!  Tired and alone and frightened!”

            “I am not frightened,” I mutter, and put my head down.  “I am not frightened.  I am not frightened.  There is no need to be frightened of such simpletons.  We are far more advanced than you are.  If I desired, I could escape easily.”

            “Research shows that you can’t," the female drawls easily, "You’ve tried all of your fancy little tricks, but none of them work.  Are you sure that we aren’t equally as-”

            “We are not equal!” I shriek, looking up at her, glaring.  “We cannot – can never be equal to pitiful things!  You are closer related to an ape than to us!”

            “Perhaps we’re both related to the same ape,” she murmurs.

            “We have never set foot upon this planet before!” I cry, covering my head with my arms, ducking down, “And we never will again!  Not after this!”  She kneels down, I can feel the heat from her blood radiate off her.  Her hands gently touch my shoulders.  So rough.  So unlike this race’s female population.

            “Shh,” she murmurs.  “You must cooperate.  I’m going to try and get you out, but I can’t if you don’t cooperate.”

            “Cooperate!” I exclaim, “Cooperate!”  She draws back quickly as I glare up at her.  I feel such contempt, such raw hatred for her that I can hardly breath.  “How can I cooperate when no one cooperates with me!  How can I cooperate with people who look upon me as a thing?  How can I cooperate with people who keep me around simply to wait until I die, so they can dissect me, and not feel guilty about it?”  I can feel my body cool; my mind starts to reel, and I jump up.  “They don’t let me go!  They don’t need to know any more about us than we need to know about them!”

            “But, you know so much,” the doctor begins, speaking for the first time in fifteen minutes.  I turn on him, and start to pound on the wall between us.  He takes a step back.  I think I might be looking rather mad.

            “We know nothing!  Your pathetic abducted brethren are not our burden, nor are they our experiments!”

            “Then who would be-” Navauski stops in the middle of his question, and I do not know why.

            “Most of them are imagining things… making it up,” I whisper hoarsely, sinking down into a sitting position.  I think the weighing is over.  “Most of them are pretending it.  Some of them are caught.  Some of them are caught.  Some of them...”

            “Caught?”  I put my head in my hands, ignoring the female's voice.  “Caught?”

            “Yes, caught, caught!  They are caught!”

            “Aubrey, I believe now would be a good time to end our session,” the doctor says in an official and conditioned manner.  The female, to my unnoticeable surprise, agrees and exits the cage.  I do not move.  I think I weigh more than the feather.  Maybe the crocodile will eat me up.

            “Alien, I’ll come back tomorrow,” she says, in a voice that seems to mean something entirely different.  I make no move to acknowledge her.  I really would rather her not come back at all.  She will do nothing good for me.

            I know she will not return.  The coats are not pleased with her, and she does not seem to follow orders very well at all.

            But she treated me as if I were actually a living organism, which is something I must give her credit for.  I almost wish she would come back.

            I should have cooperated.
------------------------------------------------------

            I wake up with my throat on fire.  I can hear a distant rasping noise, like someone – I am breathing quickly, unevenly.  There is a strange scent in the air, and I crawl to my knees, looking around.  It is suffocating in here.  The glass is slightly fogged.  There is no one around.  I try to stand, but my legs cannot hold me and I fall onto my side, breathing harshly.  I can hear the air rattle in my throat, and I can feel it rattle in my bones.

            So this is what it comes down to.  In an effort to remain stoic and to keep their hands clean, they gas me like I am in some... some camp.  The kind that I read about before I was caught.  Every sound is muffled, distanced, but I can hear the quiet hiss of the air entering my prison.  I’m going to die like a rat.  Rats can demolish a building in less than seven years.

            I reach up and use all of my forced strength to pound weakly against the glass.  My throat aches.  I can’t see.  I hit the glass again.  I rasp and whine and I sound like a big dog.

            A big dog in a tiny little gas chamber.

            Gas chambers were used in World War II to kill the minorities that Hitler did not care for.  There is no hint towards salvation in these useless facts and figures but I swear I will cling to them until the gas rips them from my very mind.

            There is a sound, vague and unsatisfying, from outside.  I look up, but I cannot see.

            There is pounding on the glass.  I hit back, weakly.  My hand cannot stay against the glass, and it slides down, limp.

            There is a sound, a slick sound, and then I feel hands.  The owner of such hands is hacking, and then I thank stars above when fresh, unpolluted oxygen reaches me.  I breath deep, but I can still feel the gas swirling around in my head – it is eating away at my mind.

            “Humane, my ass,” I hear her rasping voice, and look up wearily.  I’m leaning against her.  She is much taller than me.  “C’mon.  I’ll get you out of here.”  Our species is much shorter in comparison with humans.  Our voices are lighter too.  I feel dizzy, the vertigo knocking me around.  “I didn’t know.  If I had known, I would’ve come earlier.  I would’ve.”

            “I really am just a big dog,” I hiss hoarsely, grabbing her black work shirt, just like the one she wore two days ago.  She is wearing black jeans, and they chafe against my skin.  My head aches.  I try to quicken my pace, to keep up with her, but my legs are bending and she has to lift me up into her arms so I don’t fall.  Her dark hair is in a bun, and for the first time I realize that she’s got a strong face, and her smooth skin is starting to grow hair.  “You’re male.”

            “I would hope so,” the newly discovered male mutters, pushing past some doctors who look rather distressed.  I don’t really understand why they look distressed, but now at least I know why they had those unsatisfied looks on their faces two days ago.  It wasn’t for her ugliness, it was for him breaking social confines.

            “What’s happening?” I hiss again.  My voice vibrates through me and I realize that I’m very hungry, tired, and my skin tingles.  I know that feeling my skin is the only way I know it’s still there, but I wish I didn’t.

            “I’m getting you out of here.”

            “It’s hard to breath.  Is it hard for you?  I know we breathe the same gas...”

            “You’ll be okay.”  I whimper.  I don’t like the idea of not being okay now, not being okay like I was a few hours ago.  Why did I even wake up?  Why couldn’t I have just slept through death and then this wouldn’t have happened...  “Don’t you dare fall asleep!” his voice is shrill.  I open my eyes.

            “But I’m tired?”  That was not supposed to be a question!  There are no questions here – I’m dying, I can feel it in my bones – Death speaks to me now.

            “Stay awake.  Just stay awake for a little while longer.”  He reaches out with a hand and knocks a coat down.  It’s hard to breath again.  The coat was on a hanger.  There aren’t any more people around.  “Oh, shit.”  He stumbles, but quickly bends his head and buries his nose in his collar, like a pseudo gas mask.  “Just a little longer... A little farther...”

            “Please don’t let me die.  I was lying.  I don’t want to die and be cut open and be dissected and-”

            “You won’t be.  Don’t panic.  I won’t let you die here.”  He’s stumbling more.  His eyes are lidded and his head is lolling slightly.  “God.”

            I start to rasp again, and suddenly understand everything.  They’re gassing the whole complex, with us locked inside this labyrinth of empty halls and sterilized death.

            “We’re dying, stars, we’re dying.”  I can feel my blood thicken and now everything is warped, blurred.

            “We’re almost to the exit.”

            “I can’t... it hurts to breathe, and we’re dying stars...”

            “Don’t talk.  We’re there.”  He puts me down, and I sink into the corner, covering my head with my arms.  I’m not sure, but I think I’m sobbing.  I would be sure if only I had the ability for tears.  There are a few muted sounds, and then bright light sweeps around us, before we’re plunged into darkness.  “We’re dying stars, oh we’re dying...”

            “No we aren’t.”  He picks me back up and staggers through from the slightly humid, poisonous air of the complex to the crisp, cleaner air of the actual Earth.  I gag and hack as a breeze blows dust into my mouth, but he’s already moving us away and to a large black that looks deeply foreboding.  I weakly jerk back, but I can’t keep away from the door, which he’s running to.  He quickly opens the door and shoves me in, apologizing hastily before slamming the door and running to the driver’s side.

            I can’t breathe again, but I think this is more psychological than physical.  I hack and choke, and the alarms go off.

            The alarms in my head ring along with the ones on the grounds, and I gag, weakly grabbing at his arm.

            “Hold on, hold on!” he mumbles, pulling on his seatbelt, “You’ll be okay.  Here.”  He rolls down the window, and I lean against the door weakly, looking at him while my breathing evens out.  Fresh air.  “Okay, hold on, will you?  Jeez, what would happen if you splattered all over my windshield?”  He leans over and buckles a belt over me, and then turns on the car.  It rumbles and I shiver; I do not like this basic technology.

            “Don’t let me die,” I whisper, and stars above, do I ever feel pathetic.

            “I’m not gonna.”  The male’s voice is surprisingly calm despite the ringing around us, the shouting, and it isn’t until I see him grabbing a plastic, green egg that I realize the gas must be very combustible.

            “They really should be more careful with those open gas leaks,” I hear him mutter, before pulling the pin from the egg and throwing it out the car window, into the door we just exited.  Fair aim.  Good arm.  We take off towards the gates.

            The explosion comes just as we reach the chain link fence.  It propels us forward and amidst the screams of the coats we slam into the metal.  And then we’re through.

            “What’s your name, anyways?” the male asks me, almost casually, as he speeds down the empty dirt road, flames leaping behind us in a jig.

            “It’s beyond your vocabulary.”  I’m not trying to be arrogant, and I suppose he sees that.  The poison still in my brain won’t let me be anything but honest at the moment.

            “Fine.  What can I call you?”  There is some moment of hesitation, where I realize that giving myself a new name could very well mean I’m never leaving this rock, but the male has been pleasant enough, and perhaps it would be in my best interest to stay.  Because I don’t feel very well at all.

            “I particularly like the name Othello.”  My voice sounds much weaker than before.  Perhaps I should sleep.

            “Don’t go to sleep,” he mutters.

            “I need it.  I don’t feel well.”

            “I’m gonna get you help.  You need to stay awake, though.  The gas made you weak. If you sleep, you’ll fall into a coma.  Do you want to do that?”

            “No...  No, but I must sleep.  I don’t... don’t feel well... well at all...”

            “Stay awake.”  His voice is very firm and I struggle to keep my eyes open, looking at him.  His edges are fuzzy.  I can’t see straight, and my head aches.  I can still feel my skin.  I can still feel the poison.

            “Stars above, why won’t you let me sleep?!” I cry, because I really do need it, and if I don’t, my body cannot recover.  I must go into my head and demand – politely, I need to be polite – that the gas leaves so I can clean up and save whatever it hasn’t already destroyed

            “I’ll let you sleep in a little while.  I just need to get you help, but they can’t help if you’re in a coma!”

            I want answers.  I want to know who they are, what that gas was, why I’m aching so badly, but I know he cannot... will not answer my questions.  I can’t feel much right now, except that constant electrical tingle, but even that is muted, and I rasp, “I’m going to die.”

            He very nearly kills the machine as he fully depresses the gas, and glances at me worriedly.  “Stop sounding so sure about it!” he growls.

            “But I am...  Don’t let me die.”  Did I say that out loud?  Oh, dear.  I don’t think my brain and I are on speaking terms.

            “I’m not going to!  Goddamn it, why didn’t I come sooner?!”  A tingle runs down my foot.  I can’t see him very well at all.

            “It’s not your fault,” I whisper.  “It’s not... my head... please get there soon...”

            Wherever “there” was.

            My shoulder twitches and I know that it will not be long now, stars above don’t – it was never meant to be.

            What was never meant to be?

            Why was I even sent here in the first place?

            Why didn’t I just stay away from them?

            Why, why, why?

            “Oh God don’t sleep,” he cries, and grabs me roughly, but I can’t feel it.  I  stare at the stars above.  “Don’t you dare sleep!  We’re almost there!  Please, please, please don’t Othello, come on, stay with me.”

            Othello.  What a stupid name.

            “Othello!”  He’s calling me that now – that’s my name, I realize.  I’ve given myself a new name.

            Oh, what trouble he’s having, watching the road and watching me.  I wish I could watch myself.  No, I don’t.  I must be so pathetic looking.  So weak.  I can’t breathe evenly.

            “We’re almost there, please!”

            “I...”  I wish I could do what you wanted.

“Caught... some...”  A sudden, last burst from my brain and I suddenly understand something I heard from my comrades before I was caught.  I suddenly know.  Stars above just let me get this out. They are caught, and you’re on their radars, and you need to help me so I may help you-

            “Who catches them?” he whispers faintly, to himself.  I can’t see.  Are my eyes closed?

            “Can’t... they... they don’t...  T-They w-want you...”  The car jerks, but then speeds up, and I can’t really tell but I think he’s shaking me.

            “Look at me, damn you!  Who?

            “............the.......the...”

            Goodnight.
"Original science-fiction is often written with a strong knowledge of general sciences and often had logical approach for the technology in the story."

Um. Yeah, okay, sure. *pushes science to the side* We'll just pretend I know something about what I'm talking about. I do, of course, but just in case you have any disbeliefs...


I adore the characters introduced to the world in this story. Othello is, by far, the most demanding of all my characters - he's such a diva. Anyways, the story's plot is, basically:

Man saves Alien from Government. Alien reveals Plot On Man's Life. Alien is crazy. People die.


I think Othello picked his name for specific reasons, but he hasn't told me them yet.


I want reviews, damn it! Serious reviews, too! Tell me what you like - tell me if you like Othello. (He needs the reassurance.) Tell me what you think of the story as it is, and the writing style - there's a method to most everything I do in this story, for once in my life.



THIS IS ORIGINAL. ALL CHARACTERS ARE (C) ME.
© 2005 - 2024 devilishkurumi
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Crow-Sensei's avatar
Spiffy. Nice, precise writing style- it would be stark and boring if there wasn't so much action. It's interesting how human Othello is. Off to see the next chapter!