Chapter 7

"Bobby?"

"Mmmm..."

"Darling?"

"Huh?" I blinked at the morning sun pouring through the bedroom windows.

"Why is my ass full of cum?" Shelly asked, and that woke me up pretty damn quick.

"Oh, uh..." I licked my lips and slowly turned my head to face the music.

"I must have been pretty drunk, huh?"

"Yeah, a little bit," I agreed. "How do you feel?"

"A little queasy," Shelly admitted, making a face as she played with her butt. "How many times did we do it?"

"Twice." I cleared my throat and rolled over. "I mean, the second time was kind of an accident."

"It was?" She actually smiled.

"I woke up and, um..." I shrugged. "You were sorta moving your, uh ... butt and my dick was hard, so..."

"I bet!" My fiancé giggled. "Well, I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later."

"I guess so," I replied, relieved that she didn't want to cut my balls off. "You were pretty wasted last night."

"Was I?" Shelly frowned. "I shouldn't drink like that. Thank you for taking care of me, Bobby. I hope you don't think I'm an idiot or something."

"What? No!" I protested. "Mostly you just giggled a lot and we went to bed and, um ... We sort of ... fucked."

"Twice!" She rolled her bright blue eyes and laughed, but only for a second. "Oh! I think I'm going to be sick."

Shelly covered her mouth, practically running to the bathroom. I could hear her throwing up and I did feel bad about lying to her. She'd been totally passed out, both times, and I'd taken advantage of her. At least she wasn't mad at me. Thank God for small favors, right? Maybe she'd let me fuck her all the time. Now that we'd done it, I couldn't really imagine Shelly refusing. I wondered if she'd be willing to suck my cock as well. I'd blown her hundreds of times, or at least many dozens, but I had yet to know the joy of getting a blowjob myself.

"Here..." I handed her a glass of water as Shelly picked herself up from the floor. "Do you want some aspirin or anything?"

"No," she replied, rinsing out her mouth. "I think I need some crackers."

"Crackers?"

"A big box," she said. "And, um ... A hamburger."

"What?" I smiled at her. "I can make you some breakfast. How about pancakes?"

"With peanut butter," she continued, ignoring my suggestion completely. "Don't just stand there! Go!"

"Uh..." I hadn't expected her to yell like that.

"Sorry," she sighed. "I'm just a little sick. Crackers, hamburger, and peanut butter. Okay?"

"Sure," I agreed. "I'll be right back."

I wasn't going to find a hamburger at six o'clock on a Tuesday morning, but the corner grocery store sold frozen patties and buns. Not knowing the peanut butter situation at home, I grabbed a jar of Skippy, the creamy kind, and a box of Saltines. Shelly must have had a real bad hangover, I thought.

"Hurry up!" she said. "Cook faster!"

"It's cooking as fast as it can," I told her, frying up a hamburger on the stove. I glanced at the clock and I really needed to get ready for work, but I didn't need Shelly to melt down on me either.

"Oh, that smells so gross!" She ran to the bathroom.

"Try eating some crackers," I suggested, but she probably couldn't hear me. The poor girl was busy puking.

"I feel lot better now," Shelly said, smiling weakly as she walked into the kitchen.

"Breakfast is served," I told her, holding her hamburger on a plate. "I didn't know if you wanted ketchup or anything."

"I'm not hungry," she said, turning on her heels and walking towards the bedroom. "Are you coming or not?"

"Uh..." I wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but I followed her anyway.

"I want to sixty-nine," she decided. "Take off your clothes."

"You do?" I blinked at her. She'd never sucked my cock, not once, as I was lamenting earlier. "I'm going to be late for work though."

"Don't worry about it," she sighed, getting comfortable on the bed. "I hope you have a lot of sperm in those sexy balls of yours."

"Yeah," I said, unbuckling my belt. "Me too."

I didn't know how I'd explain this to my boss, but that was a problem for later. Just then I was undressing in record time, watching Shelly stroke her already swollen cock. She squeezed a dollop of clear precum from the tip, smiling at me as I climbed onto the bed. Wow! Sixty-nine ... I'd never tried that before, but it sounded like fun.

"Wait," Shelly said, blocking me with her hands. "You smell bad."

"I do?"

"Take a shower first."

"Okay," I agreed, thinking I probably did stink a little bit. I mean, I hadn't taken shower yet and we'd had a lot of sex the night before.

"Where's my hamburger?" she asked, before I even had a chance to turn around.

"Uh ... In the kitchen?"

"You didn't bring it with you?" Shelly burst into tears. "How can you be so selfish all the time? I hate you!"

"What?"

"I'm sorry," she said quickly, pulling me into a hug and kissing my face. "I didn't mean that. It's just my hormones. I can't help it, Bobby."

"Well, I'd better go to work," I decided, because my girlfriend was really starting to freak me out.

"Okay. yeah," she agreed. "That would be good. Just, um ... Go to work. I'll be fine."

"Are you sure?" I asked, feeling concerned as well as confused. "Maybe you should see a doctor or something."

"Heh!" Shelly managed to laugh. "That would be pretty funny."

"It would?"

"You go," she insisted. "I'll be better by the time you get home. I'll cook you something special for dinner, okay?"

A few hours later, just as I was about to take an important conference call, my phone rang.

"Mom?" I frowned. She never called me at work. "What's wrong? Are you okay"

"Me?" she snapped. "What's wrong with you, Robert?"

"Uh..."

"Poor Shelly is here all by herself and you're off playing golf?"

"Golf?" I almost laughed. "Wait. Where are you?"

"I'm with Shelly," she said, as if that explained it. "She's been crying all morning."

"Crying?" I really frowned at that. "Why? What happened? Is she okay?"

"She's not okay, she's pregnant!" Mom told me. "She needs you ... Hold on ... Oh, and pick up some vinegar on the way home."

"Vinegar?" I looked at the phone, but she'd already hung up on me.

Whatever was wrong with Shelly, I knew she wasn't pregnant, but watching her drink a glass of vinegar almost convinced me otherwise.

"That's good vinegar," she decided, licking her lips and smiling. "Thank you."

"What's going on?" I asked, glancing at my mom. "Could we have a little privacy?"

"Hmph!" she snorted, giving me the evil eye. Mom softened when she looked at Shelly, however, giving my girlfriend a kiss on the cheek and whispering words of encouragement. She didn't know Shelly had boy parts.

"It's my body," Shelly explained once we were alone in the bedroom. "I'm changing and my hormones are sort of going crazy."

"Changing?" I narrowed my eyes.

"For the baby," she explained. "I'm pregnant."

"Right." I cleared my throat. "You're a transsexual, remember? A shemale? A chick with a dick?"

"Actually, um..." Shelly made face. "I'm Karnasian."

"You're a flower?" I tried not to smile. My fiancé was going crazy with our wedding just four days away and I thought maybe I should humor her, you know?

"Not carnation," she said with a roll of her eyes. "Karnasian, as in I'm from the planet Karnas Prime. It's the capital of the Karn System."

"Ahhh..." I nodded. "Emerson, Lake, and Palmer."

"What? I'm serious, Bobby!"

"You're just under a lot of stress," I decided, putting my arm around her shoulders and kissing her hair. "I understand, believe me. You've been so busy with the wedding and..."

"Does this look like stress to you?" Shelly asked, lifting the skirt she wore.

"What happened to your, uh ... balls?"

"My body stopped making male hormones," she said, both of us looking down at the very small scrotum hanging beneath a much smaller penis than I remembered.

"But..."

"I'm pumping out female hormones by the gallon now. That's why I'm so moody."

"The gallon?" I grinned stupidly.

"Figure of speech," she sighed. "My testes are being ingested by my ovary, pretty soon I won't have any at all."

"That's kinda crazy," I said slowly, thinking it was a lot crazy. "You can't get pregnant through your butt."

"I can," she told me. "Once your sperm is absorbed into my blood stream ... never mind. Not everyone in the galaxy reproduces like humans do."

"You need a doctor."

"I'll see one next week," she said. "That's the other thing I have to tell you."

"What other thing?"

"We have to leave this planet."

"Okay." I stood up, smiling. "I'll, uh ... be right back."

"Where are you going?"

"You need help, Shelly."

"No, I just need vinegar and ... Does your mom have any relatives she can stay with?"

"What?"

"We could bring her with us, but it I'm not sure she'd like it."

"We're not going anywhere," I told her. "We're getting married on Saturday and you'll feel a lot better, I promise."

"Bobby..."

"Why don't you just lie down for a little bit."

"You don't understand," she sighed, falling onto the pillow and shaking her head.

That was probably the understatement of the year, I thought.

I decided it would be better just to lie to my mom. She thought Shelly was a girl, a pregnant one, and that seemed like a good excuse. The hard part was getting her to stop nursing my girlfriend and go home.

"She needs me, Robert," Mom insisted. "I'm not going anywhere."

That was the extent of our conversation and I retreated into the kitchen, wondering how hard it would be to get a doctor to make a house call. Probably next to impossible since my last name wasn't Trump. Shelly wouldn't agree to visit a hospital either, I knew that. Why did I have to end up with a psycho shemale girlfriend? That's what I wanted to know.

"At least you're normal," I sighed, opening a can of tuna for Mr. Tibbs, the gray Siamese cat that had moved in with Shelly.

"You should listen to her," he said, and that's the last thing I remember for awhile.

"Really?" Mom said. "And you've been living here all this time?"

"Only five years," Shelly said. "I've really fallen in love with this place. I hate to leave, but ... Oh! Look who's awake."

"Robert," my mother clucked her tongue. "You gave me such a scare!"

"Sorry," I said, wincing as I sat up. I rubbed the back of my head and found a bruised knot that instantly began to throb painfully.

"Why didn't you tell me your girlfriend is an alien?"

"Huh?" I blinked at her.

"He didn't really know," Shelly said. "I didn't want to scare him."

"Well, you should have told him," Mom said, patting Shelly's knee. "It would have saved him from a headache."

"I'm sorry," my girlfriend sighed, moving to the sofa where I was laying. She stroked my hair and kissed my forehead. "Do you want some aspirin?"

"I'm dreaming, right?" I stared into her brilliant blue eyes. "Your cat ... He doesn't talk, does he?"

"He's not a cat," she told me. "Mr. Tibbs is my computer."

"He almost gave me a heart attack," Mom said.

"I'm just going to lie here for awhile," I decided. "Wake me up when it's over."

"It'll be too late then," Shelly said. "We need to drive your mom to Syracuse."

"I'm going to stay with your Aunt Ellen," she explained. "It'll be safer there."

"What?"

"They're going to destroy the city," Mom told me. "Good riddance, I say."

"You're gonna do what?" I looked at Shelly.

"Not me!" she said. "I almost wished they wouldn't, but there's nothing I can do about it."

Okay, so Shelly was certifiable and her balls were shrinking. My mother was just crazy enough to believe my girlfriend. And the cat just sat on the carpet and stared at me. This was not good.

"Just..." I waved my hand in the air. "Start at the beginning."

"Okay, um ... I'm working on what you would call my doctoral thesis," Shelly said. "I'm like a Ph.D. candidate, except we do it different where I come from. Never mind. I'm a social xenopologist, I study alien cultures and try and figure out what they're doing and why they do it, stuff like that."

"Like anthropology?"

"Exactly, except without the anthro since I'm not human and you aren't Karnasian," she agreed. "Anyway, so I got a research grant to come to Earth and study your people and it was supposed to be for seven years, but you know how the Empire is, always in a hurry."

"Empire?"

"Yeah, see, we're all part of the Empire and this Saturday the Earth is going to be assimilated," Shelly explained. "It'll be over quickly, it usually takes less than a day, but the rebuilding will take decades probably. I'm not involved with that stuff at all."

"You mean this empire is going to invade the Earth?"

"Kinda," she said, shrugging. "It won't be like in the movies. There won't be a fight or anything, it'll just sort of happen."

"Tell him about the cities," Mom said.

"They're going to destroy some cities," Shelly told me, looking regrettable. "It's not pleasant, but I suppose it's necessary."

"What cities?"

"Uh, I don't know for sure, but I know New York will get hit," she said. "The thirty largest cities you can think of, probably. Maybe a few more or less. Like I said, they don't tell me anything. I'm just a college girl."

"And you don't care?" I blinked at her.

"It happens to everyone," Shelly said. "It happened on Karnas, but like a thousand years ago. We still remember it, you know, like we have a holiday and mourn all the people who died."

"That sounds really crazy," I said. "You can't blow up a bunch of cities for no good reason!"

"There's all kinds of good reasons," she retorted. "I know it's probably hard to believe, but Earth is going to be so much happier. A hundred years from now..."

"Who cares about a hundred years from now?" I said. "There's ten million people living here!"

"Well..." Shelly shrugged. "You asked."

"We have to warn someone," I decided, except who would ever believe me? I didn't even believe me!

"Go ahead," she said. "It won't make any difference."

"We can fight them."

"No," she sighed. "You can't. The Empire has done it this way thousands of times over thousands of years, and to civilizations a lot more advanced than yours."

"But..." I didn't like her self-confidence very much, I can tell you that.

"We're going to take your mom to her sister's and then we'll get on a shuttle to the Cepheus and arrange transport home."

"What's a Cepheus?" I asked, selecting that question out of many simply because it was most easily expressed.

"It's a spaceship," she said. "A big one, too. Like if you put New York in orbit with all the buildings and everything? It's pretty amazing, really. The Duchess lives there."

"There's a duchess?" I rolled my eyes. "This is insane."

"I know it's hard," she said, dripping sympathy. "I should have told you sooner, Darling, but ... I love you. I always thought we'd have more time, you know?"

"And you just want a pet human to take home from your little vacation?" I laughed, crazily. "I blew up Earth and all I got was this stupid human!"

"I'm afraid you may have overestimated his resilience," the cat said, and I shook my finger at him.

"And you ... you ... you ... you'd better stop that!" I told him. "No talking cats allowed!"

"You may be right, Mr. Tibbs," Shelly said with a sigh, "but he's the father of my child."

"You should have used a condom, dear," Mom told me, and that was just perfect!

"Ohhhh..." I blinked my eyes and felt better than I had earlier.

"I gave you some of my Valium," Mom said. "How do you feel?"

"Stoned," I decided. "You drugged me?"

"I've been drugging you since you were six, Robert."

"Really?"

"I used to put Ritalin in your oatmeal."

"Oh." I nodded. That almost made sense, but it didn't explain the aliens. "Where's Shelly?"

"She's sleeping, the poor thing." Mom drew a heavy sigh. "After all she's going through and you just have to make it worse."

"Me?"

"She loves you, Robert. She's pregnant with your baby."

"Mom," I said with a smile. "She's a transsexual. I wasn't going to tell you, but..."

"She has a penis," my mother nodded. "I know all about it."

"You do?"

"I always thought you were a little light in the loafers." She gave me a motherly smile. "I just wanted you to be happy."

"Oh." I had to think about that. "I'm not gay."

"Of course you're not," she replied, "and you'll make a wonderful father."

"Uh..." I gave up. My girlfriend was a beautiful blonde alien coed with a penis and I'd knocked her up through her butt. Great. That makes perfect sense. Thanks Mom.

I couldn't say that to her, of course, and I chided myself for taking advantage of Shelly the way I had. Why hadn't I just jerked off on her tits or something?

"You should know that I've changed my mind, Robert."

"About what?"

"Going to your Aunt Ellen's," Mom said. "I think you're going to need me and I've been waiting for a grandchild for so long."

"You want to leave Earth?"

"I want to be with you," she explained. "I like Shelly a lot, you know that, and I'm sure her family will be curious about yours. I think I should meet them, don't you?"

"Yeah." I cleared my throat. "Okay. So we're all going to Shelly's house for Sunday dinner."

"You don't have to be sarcastic, Robert."

"Sorry."

"A little gratitude wouldn't be out of the question either," she told me. "I'm going to miss my TV shows."

"Well, maybe they have soap operas in space," I said, kind of teasing her, but Mom could be stubborn as a mule.

"It won't be the same," she sighed.

With Shelly and my mother against me, not to mention Mr. Tibbs, I didn't stand a chance. Their madness was contagious despite my wealth of common sense and practical nature. Like all good accountants, I believed in facts and figures, in the simple truth of numbers, and I was an excellent accountant, believe me. The proof, however, was staring me in the face.

"I'll have a vagina soon," Shelly told me. "Another week or two and I'll be female."

Her balls were gone, not merely shriveled up, but gone without even a hint of loose skin to prove they'd been there at all. Her penis took a bit longer, I guess, but my girlfriend assured me that it would make a perfect little clitoris. I didn't really want to imagine that, the process, I mean. It seemed kind of gross to me, but Shelly was pretty excited about it.

"We'll be able to make love every night," she told me. "I can't wait to feel you inside me."

"Yeah, me too," I agreed, glancing at my mother.

"You'll love it," she said. "I remember when I was pregnant with Robert, I couldn't get enough sex."

"Mom!" I blinked at her.

"Oh, just plug your ears," she told me. "I might be old, but I'm still a woman."

"I just wish it didn't take so long," Shelly sighed. "At least I'm feeling better. They say the first day is always the worst."

"Really? I was sick for month," Mom said. "Nothing could settle my stomach."

"It's my testicles," Shelly explained. "Now that they're finally gone, I should be fine."

"I understand completely." My mother nodded in agreement. "Once Robert's father left, I felt so much better."

The two women laughed happily at Mom's joke, but I remembered how sad she'd been at the time. She'd never forgiven my dad for cheating on her and I guess I hadn't either. I'd never answered his letters or anything like that. Sometimes he'd call, like on my birthday, but even now I refused to talk to him. Suddenly, the idea of leaving Earth forever made me wish I'd been closer to him, just a little.

"Where are you going?" Mom asked.

"I need to make a phone call," I said, giving Shelly a kiss on the cheek. "Be right back."

"Who are you going to call?" she wondered, perhaps thinking I was going to try and warn the President or someone.

"My dad."

"What?" Mom stared at me, but it really wasn't any of her business anyway.

"Robert?"

"Yeah. It's me."

"You sound, uh ... good," my father decided. "How are you?"

"I'm okay," I said. "How are you?"

"Better now," he replied, chuckling. "It's good to hear your voice. What have you been doing?"

"I'm an accountant."

"Okay."

We didn't say anything for half a minute. The silence was perfect, not a hiss or crackle to remind us that we were thousands of miles apart. Separated by more than that, really. I couldn't think of anything to say. At least, nothing I wouldn't say to any other stranger.

"I'm getting married."

"Is that right?" he said. "What's her name?"

"Shelly."

"Is she pretty?"

"She's pregnant."

"Okay." He thought about that for a moment. "Do you love her?"

"I think so," I decided. "Yeah, I love her a lot."

"Well then, you have to take care of her, son."

"Look, uh ... I'd better go."

"I love you," he said. "I never meant to hurt you, Robert."

"I know."

"You should come out here sometime," he suggested. "Bring your wife."

"Los Angeles?" I frowned, cupping the phone to my chest. "Shelly? Are they gonna blow up Los Angeles?"

"Probably," she replied, peeking around the doorway. "It's pretty big. Why?"

"Hey, uh ... Dad?" I took a deep breath. "Get out of LA this weekend, alright?"

"What do you mean?"

"Just go someplace else. Get out of the city, please?"

"Are you okay?"

"Not really," I sighed. "I gotta go."

I hung up the phone, wondering what the point of all that might have been. I didn't even know the man and I'd probably never see him again, even if Shelly turned out to be crazy and we all lived forever.