Exotic Vacation - Literary Yard

Exotic  Vacation - Literary Yard

Literary Yard has offered a home to one of my science fiction. I thank the editorial board of Literary Yard for choosing mine. Click the below link to read it in the Zine.

https://literaryyard.com/2020/04/09/exotic-vacation/

Exotic Vacation
By Ramprasath Rengasamy


I took deep breath.

I then approached the school ground where there was heavy crowd. The school was at the foot of Banjar hills. The passing clouds could only touch the waist of the hills and yet Banjar hills was not snow-capped. This was because it was well below the equator of the planet. No one at the foot of the hill could see even if a flying object landed at the top most tip of the hill. 

It was not that late at night. Moon light illuminated that area. Light works at the festival made it look like an oil painting. The stage shows were yet to begin. Karakattam – a traditional dance – was performed by a few country-side performers for the amusement of gatherers.

A cantilevered wheel, not huge in dimension, was seen amusing kids. There were mobile shops selling handmade sweets. The shops were flat wooden plank mounted on a support system that had wheels fitted to all four corners. There was a lantern on each one of them. These lanterns and their faint light made the sweets look healthy. I saw lot of flies around the food but the foods were properly covered by mesh food covers.

I walked through the shops and the people. I could neither smell the food nor the men. I have heard much about the men of Earth. Visiting earth was an exotic vacation for people of my kind. There were a few like me in South Asia. Some others of my kind have gone to Russia. We were told that men on Earth were very handsome. The planet was silicon based and the people were carbon based.

For some reasons, life forms in most other planets were not as good looking as those in Earth. That made the planet very special amongst planets that supported life.

Men, in this part of Earth looked dark and yet their skin glowed even in that faint moon light. I have seen them even before I started off to Earth. In our planet, only people of privileged social ranking could travel to other planets. They travelled to Earth, had fun and returned. Some even dared to rise hybrids in Earth but the babies born could not adapt and therefore didn’t survive for long. Those faulty infants were killed and buried in Earth itself.

In black market, we got memories stolen from them. From those memories, we learnt that there were men and women of varied complexion in Earth. I was particularly fond of men of dark complexion with strong shoulders and arms. I was instructed to come down to either South Africa or South Asia. I chose South Asia because, it was this geography where spices were in common use. I have heard about spices from Earth. There were not many healthy planets with silicon and carbon based spices. I wanted to see, what those spices did to those men.

What I liked the most about earthly humans was their ‘innocence’. For decades we were visiting them and yet, we are still ‘ghosts’ to them. We have never responded to their communications even though we watched them for decades. Most of earthly beings never cared about other planets or other lives. They spent their times having fun with women and drinks. I have always wondered how it worked for them. What happened to their curiosity? What happened to their logic? What happened to their pursuits?

It’s not like none in the planet knew about us. Some people have suspicions about us. Some of them have even seen us. I mean, not the real us but just shadows of us. But they are just suspicions. Suspicions are nothing. They are like wild imaginations or fantasies. We need not do much about it. They are good at confusing themselves with the handful of things they knew. So we never did anything about that.

Intentionally I was dressed in a saree with no blouse just to mingle with the crowd. I tried to pretend like a local woman. It is actually very easy. All I had to do was to wrap around myself with a 9 yard long cloth.

I even had jasmine flowers stuck in my hairs. I heard that jasmine flowers and their aroma pulled local men. In here, saree was considered a wonderful dress. I have heard that the local men were crazy about women’s abdominal curves. In no other part of this world, there was one such admiration in practice. The men stared at the women’s chest when women bent forward. It was amusing to me.

In the rest of this world, women wore less cloths and made their body abundantly visible. I learnt something from this. The more one hid, the more she was remembered in South Asia. The more one hid, the more she became a part in men’s fantasies. That was how it all worked in this part of Earth.

I ensured that I didn’t wear a bra as I didn’t have much time. I was supposed to depart the next day to where I came from. I had chosen a body that was stout, tall and yet dark. I wanted to be one of them. I have heard that local men go crazy on such body frame. Men stared at me. But the other women were seen with bras. The local women stood in groups. I lacked a group because I was not one of them. So I went to a corner from where I could watch the crowd. Behind me, it was thick bush that led to the forest.

Moments later, I realized a few dark men staring at me. Their line of sight were on my chest and my back. I wanted to understand how their brains interpreted my body, how it stimulated their hormones, how their other internal organs coordinated towards pushing them to the subsequent stages of copulation and so on.

I stood still pretending not noticed them staring at me. But now I could understand how they must have imagined about me in their minds. It was a strange feeling. Considering their ‘hide-more-to-impress-more’ stuff, I could imagine how exciting it should have been for earthly humans.

Of the three men, one approached me. He was tall, dark with wide shoulders. I could make out his fleshy thighs as his lungi – a sarong typically worn around the waist – waved in resonance with the flowing wind. I tried to imagine, how an earthly women must have perceived this revelation.

“Hi, I am Natraj. You can call me Natti”.

“I am Ganesh. You may call me Gans”

“I am Alok. You may call me Alok”

Gans and Alok shouted from where they stood.

“Hi” I said in common.

“Not of this town?” Natti asked.

“Yes. Just visiting”

“Where are you from?”

I was not supposed to share those details. I had clear instructions with me. If we were to continue to visit Earth, we were not supposed to reveal anything about our origin with anyone.

“I don’t remember”

That puzzled him. His brows furrowed. I didn’t care as long as he didn’t ask any more on that.

Natti held my right hand. His fist was gripping. He then walked into the bush. I didn’t resist. We walked into the forest. I turned back and saw Gans and Alok following us at a distance. Noise of the crowd slowly diminished.

Natti showed me a tiny pouch. In diminishing light, I could make out that it was a condom pouch. That elaborated his intentions. I felt relieved. I was not supposed to contract any earthly disease. If I contracted, I might not be able to leave the planet.

We reached to a point where I only heard birds chirping. He unveiled his sarong and spread it on the ground. I wondered if he was nude below his waist as it was dark. I wished there was at least a faint lantern. He tore open the pouch, took it out and wore it on his.

He then pulled me by my hand and my legs slipped hitting his feet. I thought he did it intentionally. I fell on the sarong on my back. He fell on me. It sounded as if he was in a hurry. I was in his tight grasp. Our lips touched. I had no instructions in this part.

“Are you virgin?” he shook his head a little up and asked.

I didn’t know what to say. I nodded my head in agreement.

He undid my saree and that revealed my upper body. He tried to hide his face in my neck, ankles and chest. He tried to touch every part of my body with his lips.  He kept pressing his mid-waist against me. All those sounded funny to me.

I ran my hands all over his body. I felt his skin. It felt the same as that of my exo-skeleton. I could make out his bones. He was brawny and heavy. His hands touched various parts of my exo-skeleton. They paid excessive attention on my breasts and butts. Moments later Gans and Alok also joined him. I felt disturbed with their coming into picture between me and Natti. Gans held my hands and Alok held my legs. I was not ready for this. I tried to resist hard. That was when one of them punched on my face. I lost my conscious.

I didn’t know how long I was unconscious. When I woke up, Alok was holding me in tight grasp. Natti had something in his hand which in faint light looked like a broken stick of wood. That stick was roughly 10 inches long. He shoved it inside my body. The perforation in my body suit was mere a provision intended to make it look like that of an earthly woman. It could not have allowed a ten inch long wooden stick unless they drilled one when I was unconscious. 

I heard faint sounds of a tear in my body. Moments later he took it out and fell on me.

He then vigorously shook my body and that part, I didn’t like. But since I was now involved, I had to carry on with it. In some time, he became motionless. I felt something strange on my skin beneath my exo-skeleton body.

It was not supposed to happen. My body was supposed to protect my skin. I pushed him away and rose up. The other two took back a step each. Natti stared at me and there was shock coupled with surprise in his eyes. I ran my hands on my body. After struggling a bit, I located the tear. 

Natti came near me and again tried to grasp me. I pushed him away with all my strength. It was a heavy push in my standards and it threw him away some ten fifteen feet. I saw the other two men standing and staring at me.

I saw Natti’s condom nearby. I held it in my hand. My quick examination revealed that the condom had a cut at the tip of its head.  I touched a gel-like thing in that tear in my exo-skeleton body. At the point where the gel-like thing touched my real skin, it felt like stone. The hardened part felt like a tiny piece of rock. That was how skins of people of my kind reacted to foreign bodies.

Shortly after, I began to feel sick. Whatever infiltrated in me, began to disrupt my internals. I abundantly felt, I became infected with something. With that infection, I was not supposed to return to my planet.

They three now approached me. I tried to run away into the woods. They came running behind me at a distance. I stripped off my exo-skeleton body and stood on top of that. I turned around looking for them.

“Where did she go?” Natti asked.

“No idea. But could not have gone far” Alok said.

They roamed here and there, looking for me. One of them took a cigarette box and they each took one. One match stick lit all of their cigarettes. In faint light, I saw all of them.

“Let us pick up a direction each and look for her. Whoever got her, should whistle” Natti announced.

“I am tired man. Need some rest” Alok said. His face looked exhausted.

“Rest on this rock for some time” Gans said pointing his finger at me.

“I have come to this spot many times but I have never seen this rock before” Alok said.

“My uncle used to say that rocks from the hill occasionally slip down” Natti explained.

Shortly after, I heard roar of a tiger. It must have startled them. They saw each other once and then ran back into the town.

A tiger jumped over me and sat comfortably spreading his limbs all over. At a distance, light from the festive ground was seen. It resembled much like my home in outer space.

@Thanks
Literary Yard Magazine