All the Things I've Lost
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About this ebook
I am not from this world. I don't know where I was from originally. When our pod landed, I was the only one to survive, and my memory was damaged.
That day, I lost the man I think I must have loved.
I don't age, and I'm far too strong compared to these humans around me, but even so, I fear their finding out the truth about me. I try to protect the ones I can, but I am weak when it comes to saving them — or even just not hurting them by my ignorance and strength.
And now for the first time in decades, I've met a man like myself from another world — the world where we both hatched. I wonder what he can tell me about myself . . . and what I dare ask without giving away the fact that I remember nothing?
Length: ~34,000
Science fiction gay romance
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All the Things I've Lost - Hollis Shiloh
Chapter one
Anonymous Hero Saves Woman
Yesterday afternoon, an anonymous hero rescued a mother trapped after a car crash at a busy intersection near the Lucky Grill. The man, whose identity and whereabouts are unknown, lifted the end of car that had trapped Laura Bishop, 34, and moved it away before setting it down. Bishop, a mother of two, is currently in stable condition at Cheshire Hospital. Authorities arrived on the scene shortly after the rescue, but the man was gone before anyone got his name or address.
I wish I could thank him,
said Kevin Bishop, 36, Laura's husband and father of two. He saved her life.
I turned off my little radio, hiding the tiny smile on my lips. It was nice to be recognized — even as an anonymous hero.
It wasn't the first time I'd helped out in an emergency, and it wouldn't be the last. If my special abilities kept me from having a completely normal life, at least I could get something good out of them.
The rescue workers might have gotten to Laura in time. Then again, they might not have. What was I supposed to do, stand back and watch? Maybe film it on my cell phone?
Of course not. Being different made me responsible, I figured.
Or maybe I'd just been indoctrinated by the comic books that had been my first introduction to American society.
I've been here for over eighty years, and I haven't aged a day. I've had to move because of it. Of course, that's not the only reason I had to move.
I can't read.
That's why comic books were such a big thing for me. It was the mid-1950s, and when I stumbled out of the wrecked pod, bleeding and in pain, I found a medium that showed me how the world worked.
Of course, the world didn't really work the way it did in comic books, filled with square-jawed men, women with big bosoms, clean streets, and flying men who saved the day.
But I didn't fit. And I was the closest thing the world had to that flying man, or any of the other heroes I saw in those books. But never read about. Oh, I've tried to learn. I've gone to adult literacy classes. Tutors. ESL programs. Watched all the learning programs I could find.
Probably worked harder at it than any human ever has. But none of it has ever stuck.
I don't know what I am, if not human.
I look the same. I generally feel the same, as close as I can tell.
I'm just very, very strong and fast.
And I came from the sky, in a pod that crashed.
I survived. The others didn't.
I remember their poor faces, after the crash. They looked so young to me, even though we all looked much the same.
My looks have never changed. I appear to be a strong muscular male human in my mid to late twenties. I have dark hair and strong muscles. But I don't look as strong as I actually am. Lifting that car was easy for me. I could've lifted it the whole way, flung it halfway down the street. Maybe further.
I never test my strength like that anymore. I don't dare. I know enough about humans now, and the world has changed so much, that I don't think there's really anywhere private left on the earth to test my abilities to the limits. And back when there was, I was too frightened to try. I just wanted to hide, to be safe. To survive on this alien world that has since become my home.
Eventually, I found my place in society. I work odd jobs and construction — anything where they're not too particular about reading and writing and can generally pay me in cash.
Comic books were my friends at first, till I learned the language and could speak to people. Even today they hold a special place in my heart. I've kept most of the ones I read.
They're not pristine, like a collection; they're my library.
Nowadays, there's television, and I like that much better. I can understand what's going on without having to try to decipher that motionless code.
Do you know what's the worst thing about letters? They are never the same. They are different sizes, different shapes, different fonts. I am supposed to recognize every single one in all its variations, fit them together, and make the sounds of words.
Sometimes I envy the children that everyone else seems to despise, the ones who walk around without looking where they're going, texting their friends. Because they can make the symbols say what they want, understand at a glance, even make up new languages with them. I once almost read a single word.
Anyway, enough complaints; I get along well enough. The thing that's more difficult than not being able to read is how lonely I get.
In the fifties, as I found my place, I already knew where my feelings lay. My attraction was not to the women in the comic books, with their impressive bosoms, or the women in real life, who held much more mystery and a gentle, tender fierceness. The ones who could be all expressive eyes and soft skin one year could next year, or the year after that, become a mother who would kill anyone that hurt her child. It impressed me, but it didn't stir me.
It still doesn't.
Even back then, I knew it was men for me. And I found out quickly enough how society treated men who weren't attracted to women. It seemed I was alien in even more and more dangerous ways.
It was many years before I found out I was not the only one. It wasn't the alien in me, but the gay man. There were — are — men like me.
I had to be careful.
I still do.
After a while, I stopped trying.
I stopped trying to meet men.
Humans are so breakable. Their bodies are soft tissue and flesh and breakable bones. Passion is so intense; I have never been able to sleep with a human safely.
The one time I tried—
I let that thought fall away, a dark shadow of teeth and bones, mocking me.
The sound of his tears. I'll never forget that.
I remember how he cried. Like his whole world was broken. And it was.
I held him. I was sorry. But it didn't bring him back.
I buried him out in the desert.
We didn't even get to the serious things, the things he was going to teach me about men together.
We were kissing, and I accidentally pushed him into the wall too hard.
It was sexy when he did it.
It was deadly when I did it.
I held him till the end. I promised myself it wouldn't happen again.
It hasn't.
I look at sexy pictures when I can, and I take care of my needs by myself. That's all.
There are no men for me, even now when it's safer for human men to love one another.
It'll never be safe for me.
I can't even kiss without killing.
Hello,
said my neighbor Aiden, and I was startled from my thoughts.
He watched me with that lazy expression, eyes hooded, a half smile on his face, hip tilted as he leaned in his doorway. Just watching me walk, move, exist.
He's gay, of course.
Not that we can do anything about that.
He's handsome enough, I suppose, if a bit thin and blond for my tastes. Better than nothing, if it were safe.
It's not.
So I pretend not to understand the looks he gives me, even though they make me itchy inside and hot. He doesn't have to be my type to turn me on, apparently.
My type looks a lot like me. I'm not sure what that says about me.
Sometimes when I lie awake at night — I need less sleep than humans do — I try to remember the time before the crash. It comes back to me in feelings, impressions, vague memories. Like a hint of taste or smell rather than something you can eat or see. The memories are dear to me, but frustrating.
One is of hatching. I remember clawing my way from a large thing, and I am wet and exhausted, and I hear for the first time. Not the roaring of blood in my ears, or the pulse of the egg sac, but a cheering. I made it. I am one of . . . whoever we are.
I also remember flashes of other things, but the most important is the boy. The man. The whoever-we-were. We were something together, to one another.
I remember the way he smiled at me, his dark hair and dark eyes, his firm chest. He looked much like me. Whenever I see a man like him on the street, my heart clenches a little.
I try not to notice, not to feel. It still happens.
His face, from the pod . . .
I remember that the most.
I remember the way he looked when he died, how the life went out of him, and his hand went slack in mine. There were tear marks on his face from the pain. I wiped them off before I staggered away.
I knew I had to leave, but my mind was a fog. I couldn't remember why.
A few minutes later the pod exploded into a fireball. There was nothing left, and my memory told me little.
I was left all on my own on this alien world, this place I needed to fit in to survive.
And I have, the best I can. I can't imagine living anywhere else, to be honest. I love the sidewalks and the grass, the shouting and singing and the way the people grow up so fast. Their fierce love of life, and how they can believe things all their life with desperate conviction. Or sometimes change their minds and fiercely believe the opposite, but believe no matter what. Even the ones who choose to believe nothing seem to do so with a tenacity that I find wondrous.
I know my alienness when I see the way they are; I'm not like that. I am a quiet man — or whatever I am. Despite my bursts of anonymous heroics — rushing into a burning building to save a child, or helping in a car accident, or leaving