Mistaken, p.1
Mistaken, page 1
Copyright © 2020 Pixie Unger & E Brown
Pixie Unger Publication, Saskatoon, SK, Canada
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1-9991729-5-4
Mistaken
The author respectfully acknowledges that this book was written in Treaty 6 territory, traditional lands of First Nations and Métis people.
Brief Warning -
Before you get too far into this book, dear reader, I want to give you a heads up. There is a lot of unhappy history referenced in this story. The protagonist is a survivor of human trafficking that followed a breakdown in civil society. The dystopian world complete with space invaders has zero basis in reality. The part about trying to figure out your life and make a family after a sexual assault hits a lot closer to home. This was originally written as a sort of catharsis against all the messiness that was going on in my head.
It feels really weird to publish that; I never expected this one to be available to a wider audience.
While the leading lady’s history is discussed obliquely rather than in detail, my darling proofreader and editor had to stop and walk away a couple of times when the subject matter got hard. Even after that, my editor and patreon readers encouraged me to release this work in kindle book form.
This isn’t a light hearted romance with fun sex scenes. In fact, there are no traditional sex scenes at all and if that is what you are after, this is not the book for you
I started writing this story in 2018 and so much has happened since then, both to me personally, and to the world as a whole.
Dedication
This is the part where I thank my editor, Sarina “Wolfie” Irwin and my proofreader Jennifer T and Kenzie Rzonca for all their help.
I want to thank LilyLee, Sonaea, Ciggie and Maeve from my patreon page for being so supportive.
Chapter 1
When they came, it was an invasion. They don’t like to hear us say that. Get caught complaining and you could go missing in the night. They like to say they saved us from climate change or the 0.1% or whatever bullshit lets them sleep at night. It’s all lies. It was a fucking invasion. They killed thousands, millions. The rest they raped, tortured and locked away in refugee camps. I was part of a camp of survivors kept penned in a field behind what had been a high school. They lived in the building. We were fed and watered like cattle. And, in the fullness of time, some of us gave birth to little grey babies.
But, they weren’t little grey men. Seven feet or taller, a bulldog like overbite, short black fur rather than hair grew like a mane on their head, neck and the tops of their shoulders, and every single one that I saw had some sort of mark on their left upper arm in red. They would push up their sleeves to flash their marks at each other. They looked like the hordes of orcs from some fucked up video game. We ended up calling them just that, Orcs. All hypermasculinity, toxic bullshit.
The baby was born in the mud, his mother screaming and cursing. Once the afterbirth was delivered, she shakily got to her feet and left him there. Crying to himself, alone to freeze or starve. Unwanted.
And, god damn it, I was a hormonal mess at the wrong part of my cycle and I couldn’t let that go. Diapers were impossible, but we had rags. If you turned up in a food line asking for baby formula, it was provided. The little guy ended up wrapped to my body under my clothes to keep him warm and to hide that I was harboring one of their babies. His naked skin against mine. His little mouth looking for somewhere to suck. After a couple of days, my body got the hint and I didn’t have to ask for formula any more.
He wasn’t the only grey child in the place.
Max started walking early. He was crawling by summer when it was too hot to carry him all the time. I asked for baby clothes in the food line and was given something that said 2T to fit him. He was six months old, his tusks already coming in. By a year, he could have passed for a five year old in height. He was able to toddle around on his own now, which was good, I couldn’t really carry him any more.
He called me momma, like the human children called their parents. I couldn’t let him play with them, he was too big and too uncoordinated. He didn’t understand that he could hurt them. I would lead him away from the camp and play with him near the fence. There were a few other grey boys who joined us. All boys, no little grey daughters.
That should have been a clue why they were really here.
Someone had made a rag ball for them to toss around, those little babies who played like a herd of charging rhinoceros. Us “mothers” would sit by and watch.
That was a joke. Some were too old to be the biological mother of the child in their care. There was a gay couple who had adopted three little boys. Then there were others who just looked haunted. Who flinched when their children roared. Those ones I could believe had birthed their sons. One or two who refused to blame their children for the things the fathers had done.
We got by, eventually moving closer together to support each other.
That was what got us noticed.
Max was about two and a half when a bunch of old orcs came to see us and our little grey sons. They were scarred, huge and vicious looking. Generals or warlords or something. They were terrifying and the children could sense our fear.
One of the old ones bent and pulled Max away from me and laughed when my son bit him hard enough to draw blood.
He nodded to the others and they started to pull the children away from us. Max was my son. He had known no other family. I had no other family left. I fought. They took him anyway.
Two days later, I was pulled out of the food line and brought into the school. There was a crowd of big, scarred orcs, one old guy and Max.
“Momma!’ he shrieked and tried to run to me. The leader caught him easily. Max tried to squirm away screaming, “No!’
“It’s going to be ok, Max,” I lied. “It’s going to be ok.”
With a huge accent that was barely understandable around the tusks, the leader said, “He doesn’t speak our language.”
I gritted my teeth, “Babies aren’t born knowing how to speak. They learn from listening to others. Max learned to speak by listening to me.”
“He doesn’t know how to eat our food.”
I didn’t bother to repeat myself.
“He is your son?” it was said with contempt.
I closed my eyes, “If you want him to see his mother dead, then I am the one you will need to kill.”
There was a ripple of anger at that. “Why would we want that?”
“It pairs well with what I know of you people. You kill me. You absorb him into your army. He grows up and forgets I ever existed.”
“It is your race that uses child soldiers not ours. The boy needs a father. You can barely care for him now. He is not going to get any smaller.”
I swallowed. He was right, but that didn’t mean I wanted to give up my son. There were tears in my eyes as I nodded.
“Then it’s settled.” He gestured to the group of orcs in the room, “pick one.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Pick one to be the boy’s father,” the leader said as though that were an explanation.
“How am I supposed to judge who will be a good father just by looking at them?”
He just kept watching me. I shook my head and sat on the floor. Max climbed into my lap. “Have they been taking care of you, sweetie?”
He nodded and hugged me tight enough to choke me a little while pressing his body tight enough to mine that I had to struggle to not tip over. “One of them is going to … keep taking care of you. Can you tell me who the nice one is?”
The orcs in the room snorted with disbelief and laughter.
Max pointed to one with a shaved head and extensive tattoos. One done in their style in red on his shoulder, but a bunch more that had clearly been added since he got to earth.
“That one?” I asked. “Are you sure?”
He nodded before hiding his face into my neck.
“OK.” I looked up in the vague direction of the leader. “That one, I guess.”
He said something. They looked surprised, but the one Max had indicated came over and scooped him up easily.
“MOMMA!” he screamed and tried to reach for me.
I hung my head and wept. It was the second time in three days that my son was being taken from me.
Then the warrior bent down and grabbed my arm in his other hand. He pulled me upright and led me away.
“What? What are you doing?”
“The boy is going to need a family,” the leader said like it was obvious. “It is an odd move letting your child choose your mate, but you are an odd people.”
I was being dragged down the hallway. The orc in question was holding my upper arm in one hand and a screaming, fighting Max in the other. He walked briskly down the hall as I struggled to keep up. “Please slow down,” I begged.
I was ignored.
“You can let go of my arm. You have my son, I’m not going to leave without him.”
Nothing.
“Can you even understand what I’m saying?”
He stopped outside one of the shower rooms attached to the gym. He let go of my arm and opened the door. Then he walked in, Max still in his arms. I hesitated, but only for an instant. I could hear my son calling for me.
The shower room was deserted. The orc set down Max and turned on a shower. After checking the temperature, he caught Max, pushed the boy into my arms and both of us into the shower. Then he left. We were fully d
It had been a very long time since I had access to hot water and soap. So long that Max had never seen it. I was delighted. He was terrified. I scrubbed myself first, telling him how nice it was. I even soaped up my hair, what there was of it. Everyone got a haircut every spring. Or more specifically, they stripped us and sheared us like sheep, running clippers over every inch of us then sending us to be treated for lice. It was effective, it just wasn’t pleasant. Eventually, I was able to lure the little guy in with me with the promise of milk. It ended up that he liked the soap bubbles.
When we were both clean, I turned off the water and came out of the stall. Our clothes were gone. In place of my prison-like jumpsuit and Max’s nappy was a clean set of clothes. Underwear, a sweat shirt and pants. Some coarse towels and a fresh cloth diaper for Max. Keeping him clean in the camp had been a challenge. In the summer, it was easier to just let him run around bare. This was a large square of fabric and a diaper pin. I had gotten quite good at folding them in the last year. I was surprised that there wasn’t a more high tech option provided. Max squirmed and wanted to play. I wanted him to hold still long enough for me to get him into the origami fold diaper I was trying to keep hold of.
Suddenly the orc was back. He caught Max and pinned him to the floor. Then, with a shocking amount of efficiency, he got Max into the diaper I had folded like he had been trained to it. I fought not to giggle at the idea of a bunch of orc warriors learning diaper folds in basic training. Max stopped squirming and went back to crying. The orc stood up and grabbed me again. As he dragged me off, Max toddled along crying and wanting me to pick him up.
“I don’t understand. If you are supposed to be his father, why are you hurting him like this?”
He didn’t say anything to that, but his whole body tensed and his grip on my arm tightened enough to make me scream and my legs buckle under me.
Now he stopped and looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time. He let go of my arm and I shrieked again as blood flow returned to my fingers. I collapsed on the floor and sat there holding my baby. We were both sobbing. My “mate” was staring at me in disbelief. One of the other orcs in the hallway muttered something. Someone laughed. Tattoos’ ears darked and his eyes narrowed dangerously.
Chapter 2
I squeezed my eyes shut and hunched over Max, trying to shield him with my body in case the giant kicked us. Nothing happened. After a moment a woman, a human woman, came over and knelt next to me.
“Are you ok?”
I didn’t even know how to begin to answer that.
“Come on, let’s get you up. I’m Doctor Brown. You were on your way to see me anyway.”
It didn’t make any sense, but I started to giggle. I don’t know if I was just so stressed that I was having some sort of break down or what, but the idea of being treated by Doc Brown in the middle of an alien invasion was ridiculous. All I needed was someone to rant about a bolt of lighting to hit all the science fiction clichés. Max stared at me in horror. Tattoos looked confused, but I couldn’t stop.
Dr. Brown just ignored it and tried to help me up. When she touched my arm, I yelped and the giggling stopped. She let go of my arm and pushed up my sleeve. A fairly respectable bruise was already starting to form. It would have been Instagram worthy, back in the day. Dr. Brown glared up at the unnamed tattooed guy. Then she looked at me, “Kari? Can you stand?”
I nodded. Pushing myself to my feet wasn’t the best feeling, but once I was upright instead of carrying the weight on my arms it was fine. Mostly fine. Max came over and took my hand. He was a tall kid, it was easy to forget that he was only two. He was still just a baby, really. This shouldn’t be happening to him.
The doc did a full physical on Max first. It included having him drink from a cup and eat with a spoon. She asked if he was speaking yet.
“Only a few words. He knows Momma, eat, ball, no. That sort of thing. He can point to his nose or elbow or whatever if I ask, but he can’t say the words yet.”
She made a note of this. “You are still breastfeeding?”
I blushed and nodded. “He’s big but he isn’t that old yet and he gets too hungry between meals for me not to.”
She nodded and wrote that down too. Then she looked up at me and said,”You are going to need a physical too.”
I swallowed. “I’m fine.”
She turned her head and didn’t look at me when she said, “I’m sorry. I wish you had the option of refusing. They insist and if I don’t do it, they send in one of their doctors.”
I felt a little ill about that.
“Christopher,” here she indicated an orc in a set of white surgical scrubs waiting with Tattoos near the door, “will need to observe. Max can wait out here with … um… his father.”
I closed my eyes and fought not to cry, “I don’t want him out of my sight.”
Dr. Brown nodded, “I can understand that, but it would be better if he wasn’t there for the internal exam.”
“Christopher gets to watch the internal exam?” I prayed that I had misunderstood that part. The doc nodded slowly, while still avoiding eye contact. “I don’t want that.”
“I know, but it has to be one of them.”
I looked at ‘Christopher’ who was watching me with a grim look of determination on his face. Then I looked at the doc. Her whole posture was screaming that she didn’t want to do this either. “What happens to you, if I say no?”
“I have to watch as they hold you down and someone with bigger hands and no care does it anyway.”
I blinked at that. Then I looked at Christopher’s hands. They were huge. I couldn’t bring myself to say yes, but I walked into the exam room anyway. Dr. Brown and Christopher followed me in and closed the door.
I started panicking a little as soon as the door clicked shut.
“Hey, it’s OK Kari. I know this is tough, it will be OK.” The doctor reached out towards me and that was it. I screamed and jerked back from her.
“No! I can’t do this! I changed my mind! Let me out of the room right now!”
Tattoos burst into the room and snarled, Christopher snorted a reply. Doctor Brown cleared her throat, “You can’t blame her. Even under the best circumstances sexual assault victims often don’t want men in the room for their exam. Hell, often women with no traumatic history will avoid having a male gynecologist.”
Christopher growled something that I couldn’t understand, but apparently the doctor could.
“Yes, I understand why this needs to happen, but you need to understand that having you involved is like raping her all over again.”
That made them both blink, then turn and glare at me. I was already shaking, but I flinched under their gaze.
