Stories from the Savvy Simmer
Pinups' Place: Emily Doll
Chapter Three: Secrets Spill Out
He woke with a start while she was still watching him. "Whoa! What...what are you doing? Em? Why are you staring at me like that?" But the moment he asked, her eyes told him all he needed to know. "You were abducted," he said. It wasn't a question.
"You're an alien," she accused. That wasn't a question, either.
"You were abducted?" Now the questions came spilling forth, even if this one already sounded like a broken record.
"Did you have a hand in it?" Emily shouted suddenly. "Did you? Who put you up to this, Norman?!" Now the questions came out like rapid fire, with claws. "Was it that green one with the fly eyes? He tried to say something to me, I--"
"I didn't put anyone up to anything," he protested, holding his hands out, palms up. He stood and tried to reach for her hand, but Emily pulled away. She turned around to pace the bedroom like a caged animal, and all Norman could do was watch helplessly. He sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed they shared - probably not for too much longer.
"Why would They abduct you?" he asked quietly. "What did They say?"
The way he said 'They' made Emily pause...but she had bigger, more pressing questions. "Never mind what and why!" She exploded. "I have some 'whys' of my own, Norman! Like, why the hell didn't you tell me that you're an alien, for God's sake?! What the hell are you doing here? What do you want with me? God, what am I doing here..." She stopped pacing and pressed her hands to the sides of her head, closing her eyes. When she spoke again, he could hear a little catch in her voice.
"You don't know what it was like, Norman," she moaned, trying to hold back tears. He responded with silence, and she paused again. "You...do know what it was like," she said then, slowly. "You do know, because you're one of them! I bet your name isn't even Norman McSims!" Now that she thought about it, the moniker made Emily laugh with derision. "'Norman McSims.' That's an alias if I ever heard one. It's seriously like naming yourself 'John Everyman.' I don't know why I didn't see it."
"How could you have seen it?" Norman asked quietly. He hadn't moved from his spot on the bed, and when Emily asked herself, she really didn't understand why she hadn't left yet. Just packed her bags and walked out. The little Doll was in way over her head, and she was not trying to play with intergalactic fire.
"I don't know," she burst out suddenly, before she could stop herself, "because you have a pretty damn good disguise there, don't you? What's your real name? What do you really look like?" For a second, she thought she might be sick. "You don't have like...tentacles and shit, right?"
"I'm an alien, Em. Not an octopus." Norman rolled his blue eyes and Emily wondered what color they really were. "I don't have tentacles and shit."
Emily responded with a stony glare, crossing her arms over her chest. She'd said all she needed to say until he started answering some damn questions.
He sighed again, running his ordinary looking fingers through his ordinary looking hair. "I can't tell you my real name," he said.
"Why not?" she demanded, just as he knew she would. "Why do you have to hide it from me?"
"It's a cultural thing," he tried to explain. "We don't utter our given names aloud. I'm referred to by a serial number."
"A serial number," she repeated blankly. "So what, the others call you like...Six-Two-Two-Four or something? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
She could see a flash of very human anger crossing his freckled human face. "I don't come up into your house talking about your customs being stupid. I don't say anything about that weird hand-grasping thing people like to do. I don't say anything about the funny clothes everyone wears here. And don't even get me going on the way humans relieve themselves. It's ridiculous."
Emily still found that all she could do was stare. "Your house? Is this really your house? Do aliens live in nice two-story houses in space, Alien Two-Four-Three-Nine?"
"Okay, first of all," he interjected, holding up one finger. "I'm not called Alien Two-Four-Three-Nine. Check your language, because that's extremely rude. I'm known on Interstellar Pod Oh-Four-Eight as Glorb Five-Five-One."
"Your name is Glorb?"
"No. It's a sort of rank. Look, I can't be explaining all this to you. The less you know, the better."
"Well, I know a lot more now than I knew a day ago! They beamed me the fuck up, Scotty, okay? So you better start talking. What do you really look like?"
Norm was silent for a long minute.
"What color is your skin for real?" Emily tried again.
"Blue," he answered softly. "My skin is blue."
"And what?" she pressed, clearly unwilling to let it go. "Do you have a tail or something? Do you have an extra set of eyes?"
"I look mostly like you do. Not that different. Two arms, two hands, two legs, two eyes. Just like you. A mouth, a nose, two ears. Just like you. I don't have any weird appendages. I doubt you saw anybody with weird appendages, depending on where you were taken and which pod picked you up."
Now it was Emily's turn to sigh. She just wasn't sure what to say anymore.
"Why did They pick you up?" Norman asked again.
"How should I know? I'm the one asking you why."
"This isn't a good sign," said Norman, more to himself than to Emily.
They were both quiet for a few long moments, and then Emily said, "Let me see your face. Your real face."
Norm only paused for a minute. He understood now that if he hesitated any longer, Emily would be ready to walk out that door. And he didn't think he was ready to let her go yet.
So, he lifted a hand and prepared to peel off his face.
Emily would have screamed if she hadn't seen some truly eye-popping things just a few hours before. Still, her mouth was wide open as she watched the man she thought she loved peel off his face and step out of his own pale, freckled Irish skin like a serpent. A toned, tall, masculine blue figure stepped out of Norman's flesh. His body parts weren't very different from a human's, but his dark blue skin set him apart. Pointed ears and glittering black eyes would ensure he stuck out, as well. This blue alien was actually a lot more toned than the Norman Emily knew; he looked like he might be able to crush her if they embraced. And he wasn't wearing clothes she was familiar with anymore; the alien wore a strange sort of white suit that lit up and appeared almost robotic. She couldn't help but notice that it was also pretty form-fitting. Actually, his true face didn't shock her as much as she worried it would. Sure, it was unsettling that his skin was blue, but the shape of his face was rather nice. He had sharp cheekbones and a strong chin. Somehow she'd worried that he wouldn't be a humanoid alien.
"What are you called?" she asked softly.
"What?" He frowned.
"I mean, like...what's your race? What are you called?"
"We're called Moondancers, but most people know us as the Blue Man Group."
"...Are you kidding me?"
Norman laughed and rolled his eyes; Emily noticed that their solid blackness, without the separation of an iris or pupil, was broken up with rivulets of silvery-white. "Yes. Moondancers. Blue Man Group. Come on, am I losing you? I wasn't serious, that's some crazy shit."
He'd meant am I losing your sense of humor, but the gravity of the actual words settled heavily upon them both, causing the pair to lapse into an odd silence.
"What are you doing here?" Emily asked yet again. He seemed to always avoid answering her there.
"Spending time with you," he answered, in such a simple way that she didn't really know if she was flattered or furious.
"That's your mission?" she asked dubiously. "That's what you're supposed to be doing here, Glorb Something? Spending time with a hapless human girl?"
"Please call me Norman," he responded patiently. "I'm still Norman. I'm supposed to be blending in. My mission is in human studies. I found you...particularly interesting."
Emily pursed her lips. Once again, she really didn't know what to say. She didn't want to be some alien's experiment, and more than that, she couldn't understand why an alien race would be attracted to her, of all people. "Because I keep my head down and mind my own business?" she asked. "I guess that's a very human thing to do."
Norman shook his head, and she frowned at his pointed ears. "Because I love you," he said bluntly, and it hit her like a ton of bricks. "You help me understand Abbott and Costello movies. You're the only person I know who can beat me at video games. Your laugh is contagious, and I like when your eyes leak. I know your face crumples up and you think it makes you look ugly, but I think after your eyes start leaking, you open up more. It takes you awhile, but it's worth it when you do. I haven't enjoyed time with another human like this before, and I've been on this planet for awhile."
"How long?"
"Does it matter? Do you need all the answers right now?" Norm sounded a little snappish, but he was hurt that she didn't reply to his admission. "I just laid the cards out on the table and you can't even acknowledge it? We live together, Emily. You can move out tonight if that's what you want, but I don't want you to leave. It's not like I wanted to keep this from you. Who knows what They'll do when They find out..."
"Uh, what? They abducted me. They weren't exactly cloak-and-dagger about it." Emily crossed her arms.
"No, I mean when They find out I'm feeding you information!" He sounded very distressed all of a sudden. For some reason it tugged at Emily's heartstrings, but she resisted her urge to go to him. He'd lied to her. He'd kept things from her. That wasn't okay in any universe. Was he even being truthful about things now? How could she be sure? With a jolt, she realized she couldn't.
"They...sound like a pretty dangerous group," she finally conceded weakly.
"They can be," he affirmed quietly. She could see his skin slowly turning a paler shade of blue. He was nervous, possibly even scared. "What did They do to you?"
"I...don't know," she admitted slowly. "I was totally knocked out during some of it."
"Maybe they didn't do anything." But Norm didn't sound convinced. It worried Emily, and despite her misgivings, her anger, her mistrust, she rose from the bed and went to him, took his hands in her own and realized that he had five fingers and five toes, just as she did.
"I can run a series of tests," he began, "and we can..." He stopped, though, when she crossed the length of the room and reached for his hands. He marveled as she placed her own small hand palm up against his, raising them both to eye level and studying them in silence. "I love you, Emily," he said again. He wasn't trying to pressure her or talk her into saying it, but she shocked him when she mumbled, "I know, you said that. I love you, too." And he could feel both of his hearts plummeting when she said, "But I don't know you, Norman. I don't know who you are. I call you by a name that isn't real."
"You do know me," he assured her. "You do. We spend every day together when I'm not at work. I like my job, but I love to spend time with you. I've been here long enough to acclimate into human culture pretty decently. You didn't guess until They took you, did you?" He plowed on before she could attack him with that again. "I wanted to tell you but wasn't allowed. Now that you know, we could both be in danger. To tell you more would only endanger you further."
"I don't care," said Emily stubbornly. "If I'm going to love the real you, I need to see the real you. Not the mask you hide behind."
Norman wasn't sure what else to say, so he just kissed her...and to his immense surprise and quiet delight, the human girl he loved didn't pull away. Instead, she began to undress, and when he embraced her, he made sure to be careful.
When they pulled apart from one another, Emily found that she could stare into those strange, glittering black eyes without flinching, because she could see the truth in them. Even if he hadn't been totally up front about it all, he did love her - and she had fallen in love with him, too. She didn't feel right about walking out the door and leaving him to deal with Them all by himself. Whoever the hell They were. So, with both of their five-fingered hands intertwined, she led him to the bed they shared and didn't give a damn if They were watching.
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