Week 7 Finalist – 2nd Place Winner

TITLE: Galaxy Girls
AUTHOR: Edie Ramer
CATEGORY: Paranormal Romance

It was the best day of Phyrne’s life, even before landing on earth five days ago. She, her mother Liss, her aunt Ki and her cousin Deena strutted through the gleaming casino with the one thing that gave them freedom.

Money. Bundles of money. Their purses stuffed with money. Lovely, lovely money.

Phyrne wanted to laugh, dance and do cartwheels. But not yet. Later. When they left this place with too many people and too many sensations. Except for the plumes of acrid cigarette smoke, the casino was just like she’d seen on the monitors on Kergeron. But in person the constant noise and motion was more intense, the air sizzling with excitement. Music blaring, machines clinking, voices talking, colored lights blinking.

Avid eyes stared at the machines, but a few followed her and her family. She faced forward, careful not to catch anyone’s gaze, but in her peripheral she saw auras, flashes of colors tinted with the deep pinkish red of carnality.

She clamped down on her pheromones. The worst timing for her make-me-a-mom chemicals to fire up. She didn’t want men following her. She didn’t want men in her new life. She didn’t want men.

Fighting the urge to release stray scents that would make men crawl and dogs howl, she kept her gaze on the back of the nice hostess leading them out of the busy casino.

Out into the new life they would live as average earthlings.

She quivered with eagerness. They’d planned this moment for years. Since the vision Ki had ten earth years ago of the four of them of them walking through the casino with the one thing they needed on earth to survive.

Money.

Phyrne thought of the many times she’d wondered if her aunt’s vision had been an hallucination. Hard to believe this would come true while married to Argon and he was ramming her like she was the hill and he was the bulldozer. But here they were. Free.

Better yet, free and rich.

The casino hostess opened a door and ushered them into a corridor. The smile she gave them was strained, brown spiking her peach aura.

“Since you insisted on cash, we thought it would be safer for you to leave from the back.”

Her eyes darted away from theirs, and the brown spikes bled into the peach.

Phyrne shivered, her excitement turning to trepidation, though the bleeding aura could mean anything. The hostess could be thinking about a sick child or a lover who beat her. Or she could suffer from one of many health issues they’d seen on the monitors back in Kergeron.

Deena with her telepathic skills could find out, but her jaw was rigid, her thin face tense with the effort of blocking out the cacophony of thoughts.

Phyrne ached for Deena. The plethora of auras in the casino had distracted Phyrne, colors flashing and popping wherever she looked. How much worse to have hundreds of thoughts swarming into her brain like an army of buzzing blusts?

The hostess took the lead again, hurrying past a stairway, elevator and bathroom. No glitz here, the walls white and stark, the mud-colored carpet so smooth Phyrne’s feet slipped. Feeling like a clumsy udzo, she slapped her palm against the wall to keep from falling.

The others moved on, and she scurried to catch up. The hostess opened the back door, bidding them good day, speaking so fast her tongue tripped and she had to say it again. Phyrne didn’t need to read her thoughts to know she was thinking: Go. Get out. Hurry.

Maybe the hostess needed to pee. Kergeronians had elimination emergencies too. That came with the human body they shared with earth people, the genetic similarity confirmed by tests conducted in the previous century on a few earth specimens. Unwilling earth specimens.

Phyrne’s relatives chirped goodbye to the hostess and hurried out into the air that smelled like ocean mixed with car fumes. A black dumpster loomed on one side of the door and a sign on the other said Deliveries Only. Across the street was a huge concrete structure Phyrne identified as a parking building for cars. One lone van was parked by the curb, beige and nondescript.

The door behind Phyrne clanked shut. The earth sun slunk under a black cloud – on Kergeron they called it a death cloud. The sky dimmed, the air chilling Phyrne’s arms, bare from her elbows to her cold fingertips.

From the beige van, a bright blue aura pierced the gloom, jewel colored and so bright her breath caught. As she twisted to view it better, Liss stopped and Phyrne ran into her.

“Oomph.” She bounced back, her mouth open to ask what was going on when she saw two men stealing out from behind the dumpster. Blood red auras glowed around both men.

The small hairs on Phyrne’s arms and the back of her neck rose. The last time she’d seen an aura that color, she’d ended up in a room in Kergeron’s clinic, her body covered with bruises, one eye covered with a patch and an arm in a sling.

Liss stepped back, grabbing Phyrne’s forearm. “Let’s run. I feel the tall one’s anger. He wants to hurt us.”

The men pulled out guns.

“Too late to run.” Deena’s voice quavered. “We’ll have to do something else. I’ll take care of it.” She swallowed but stood tall and tossed her head.

No! Phyrne’s mind screamed out, cutting through Deena’s walls. Deena grimaced, lifting one hand to the side of her head.

“I’ll stop them.” Phyrne pushed past Deena. She was older and stronger than Deena, plus she possessed a powerful weapon. The ultimate weapon.

She was ovulating.

RACHELLE SAYS:

Edie, what a fun story idea — aliens landing in Las Vegas and Phyrne considering that the best day of her life! You had me hooked from the opening paragraph. I was totally into Phyrne, feeling her excitement and seeing the world through her eyes, and reveling in her naivete. I liked her right off the bat.

Lots of cute moments, too, that had me chuckling. Like, them having “…the one thing they needed on earth to survive…Money,” Phyrne thinking the hostess needed to pee, and the ending line, just to name a few.

Nice place to end the scene, too – I’d definitely read on see how Phyrne uses her ‘weapon.’  :-) Great job!

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