Chapter 60: Tiger by The Tail
The little green men that had me trapped in an apartment that was maybe 200 square feet were now starting to look nervous. They had come up with some grand plan in place, and it had blown up spectacularly right around the same time one of their coworkers managed to shoot himself in the head.
It might have had something to do with the fact that he tried to shoot me first, but I didn’t have a laser gun in my hand, so there was no way I made that shot. It was all on him.
I would make a comparison between the dead alien’s feet and clown feet, but I didn’t think it was appropriate. You must respect the dead and all that crap.
"Apparently, your plan A isn’t working out quite the way you wanted it to be," I said, looking over at the Thuzirusian, that had put in a lot of time and effort to lure me into his home. I was beginning to think that maybe it was me that was prone to being abducted and not the other way around. After all, everyone knew that if the circumstances changed but the outcome didn’t, you needed to look at the common denominator in it all.
Or maybe I was just special. Yeah, let’s go with that.
"Did you have a plan B that you wanted to go with, or are we all just winging it at this point in time?" I asked, noticing that my mouth was a bit dry from all the talking. This planet was more than a little hot and a little dry, but I didn’t feel comfortable drinking from the fermented fruit juice that he offered before. And now, it didn’t have a thing to do with getting drunk on a foreign planet.
Since my back was turned to one of the green men with guns, he decided to try his luck with killing me. Unfortunately, I didn’t know what he was thinking, so his blast bounced off me like the first one did. This left two of their men (and I use that term very loosely) dead and me still standing unscratched.
"Fine!" shouted the first Thuzirusian as he stood up from the table. I was hoping that he wasn’t going to walk over to the others because then there was really no way of being able to tell them apart.
On a completely different topic, I was loving the fact that, for the first time in my life, I was the tallest being in a room. Seriously, the second tallest only managed to reach my shoulders. And yes, I was going to leave my boots on for that comparison; thank you very much.
"We won’t bother to keep her alive, just kill her and be done with it! I’ll explain it to His Excellency," growled the first one as he grabbed one of the laser guns, blasters, from the being beside him and held it up to my head.
"Do you really think that that is going to change anything?" I asked cocking my head to look at him. "You can clearly see that two others have tried that move, and it didn’t work. Why do you think it will be different for you?"
"I figure if we all shoot at the same time, then we might overload your shields," said the little green man with a shrug. "It won’t hurt to try."
I will fully admit that I was a bit nervous at his statement. He did make a good point. If this were a typical energy shield, it would stand to reason that hitting it with a laser from multiple points with a high-intensity setting could overload the energy system, causing at least one of the beams to penetrate, thus killing me.
Was now a good time or a wrong time to wonder if my earrings were a typical energy shield or not?
However, given my particular circumstances, I didn’t think that I had much of a choice in being an active participant in this experiment. I closed my eyes as nine laser blasters fired on me at the same time, producing an extremely bright light that I could still see even with my eyes closed.
The light lasted a matter of seconds, and given that I was still standing, I took that as a good thing.
I opened my eyes and saw nine dead bodies on the floor while the last one was bleeding from a chunk taken out of his shoulder. He must have tried to jump out of the way as soon as he fired and managed to avoid a kill shot. Unfortunately for him, he was not able to avoid being injured.
"Do you know what the definition of insanity is?" I asked as I crouched down next to him. I studied the florescent green blood flowing quickly out of him and took note of how pale he was turning. I wondered if this shot was still a kill shot after all. I wanted to put my fingers in the liquid to check the viscosity of it, but I had also seen movies where the alien’s blood was acidic.
It might not be eating a hole through the floor right now, but I wasn’t going to test the theory on myself. After all, Earth seemed to be getting a lot of things, precisely when it came to the Thuzirusians, that I wasn’t going to take the chance.
"No guesses? Well, let me tell you then. The man that many consider the smartest human of all time once said that ’Insanity is trying the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.’ This is on you... or whichever one of you decided to grab the tiger by the tail with no idea how to let go."
I reached over to where my garrotte bracelet was resting against my wrist and unwound it in front of him. "I don’t know what your plans were, whether it was to sell me, steal my ship, or whatever it was that you conjured in your head, and frankly, I don’t care. But you crossed a line, and now you must pay for it."
Still looking the little green man in his eyes, I whipped the cord around the back of his neck to cross the two ends in the front. I pulled my arms apart, never wavering my gaze until his head was severed from his neck and rolled to the floor by my feet.
