Human Decency

By Isabella Donn

The creature blinked at her with large, pleading eyes as startlingly green as a freshly cut meadow, the sclera glimmering with the same shade. They almost appeared to glow. Ignoring its stare, Ella grabbed the creature’s wrist tightly between forefinger and thumb. It was difficult to find an opening for the needle around the sleek, heavy black scales crowding its body, shining like a thick horde of beetles before fading to what looked to be skin above its neck. Squinting, she was vaguely pleased to find the chink in its armor and jabbed the syringe into the soft crook of its elbow like she’d done with so many others.

Collect samples, analyze the special components of their species, and that was it. Ella never knew what happened when she was done with them. After a while, she had stopped wondering.

The pay was good. She needed to eat. She couldn’t call her job boring.

It whimpered as Ella gruffly withdrew the needle, allowing its arm to drop back on the table. She refastened its restraints, not that it resisted with the paralyzing solution the guys had injected it with earlier to force its collection of muscles to relax.

In hindsight, she never truly thought she’d end up here—examining aliens, seeing what made them tick, what made them valuable. A fierce interest in biology had certainly taken her a long way. Graduating top of any class had her approached by several government officials, and she soon found herself barreling through space, visiting other planets for the advancement of humankind.

“Hey, Eleanor, you done prepping that one yet?”

Groaning in exasperation, she rolled her eyes, syringe in hand. “Arthur, I told you to call me Ella,” she snapped, cocking her hip at an angle.

The surgeon let out a huff, cheeks puffing. “Right, sorry. I’ve got better things to do than memorize nicknames.” He turned away, slick rubber gloves snapping over his hands. “I haven’t got all day. The team will be wanting quick results with this one. It looks way too, you know…” His voice lowered, as he looked back over his shoulder.

She understood his apprehension.

It looked too damn human.

Two arms, two legs, right number of toes and fingers. No multitude of squishy, gelatinous tentacles, or even a severe lack of limbs. One mouth, one nose, and two eyeballs, smack dab where they were supposed to be.

She couldn’t stand the look it was currently giving her.

That was too human as well.

It never blinked, and, she realized with a small jolt, liquid pools were beginning to form in its eyes, unabashedly drizzling out the corners of its sockets. Pursing her lips, Ella shrugged off the tingle running down her spine, shooting down her fingers. Determined not to drop the needle, she held the tube up for inspection.

Shit.

Red. Dark, shiny red, as crimson as the shade of her latest lipstick.

Well, that doesn’t mean anything. It could just be a coincidence.

But no. Dripping the sample onto a slide, eyeing the specimen as a computer scooped out irrefutable facts, Ella was forced to come to the sickening conclusion.

It was a half-breed. Part human, part—she squinted at the fine blue print crammed on the screen of her pad—part Piscus, whatever that was. So many aliens, all different, all evolving, it was hard to keep track.

And boy did this one take the cake.

No, glancing at the stats, it wasn’t an it. It was a he.

Swallowing shock, she tried to move, attempting to bend towards her newest subject.

“Hey, um, do you…” it was a slim chance, but it was worth a shot, “can you understand me? Do you have a name?”

A beat.

Nothing but another tear escaped from dulled, hazy eyes.

Oh, right, the paralysis drug.

It wouldn’t wear off until… Her brow scrunched. Truth be told, she never even knew if it did wear off. A niggling sensation at the back of her mind pried open a door she had left firmly shut for the last three years of her life.

Light spilled around fragmental cracks. But they were widening.

The fact was, she never saw their bodies. Only suspicious piles of metal crates, the word Fragile stamped on the side.

Ella felt herself stumble.

Looking back, she knew she should have fought harder, knew she should’ve kicked their asses until the cows came home, knew she should’ve… but didn’t.

Ella told them the facts. They only nodded, rolling him into the tent.

She would never be able to scrub the sight of his eyes from her mind. They were too fractured, pupils blown to the size of small, black marbles.

She didn’t know why she let him go.

Because he wasn’t human. He was a thing, like they all are. Like they said they were.

“They don’t feel like we do. They’re not us. They’re empty.”

The words echoed in her mind, taunting her, snickering. She never questioned her team, her employers. Why would she? Jobs were hard to come by in a crumbling economy, a dying planet.

Earth needed upgrades. Ella was part of that mission, an ongoing practice that had been in existence long before she first entered the world.

So why was she here?

Her stomach plummeted, the wind whipping casually at her face, slapping her cheeks. Her toes gripped the edge, curling over stone. The roar of the waves drowned out the rapid pounding of her heart.

Because he wasn’t the last. He was the first.

Because twenty years of lying to herself had gotten her nowhere.

Because she was tired.

Because, maybe this way, she’d be able to finally erase their screams, their pleas, their frightened, bulging eyes from her brain.

She never knew if she was right.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Isabella Donn is a Canadian High school student slogging through her final year, and she is both equally apprehensive and relieved to do so. She hopes to eventually major in Linguistics, keep writing creatively, and continue her studies in music through vocals and the violin. Writing is an inexplicable enjoyment, and she wishes to toil through many more poems, short stories, and novels in the years to come.