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A Girl has Limits

The saloon on Kyet-II was not so different than the one back on Homeworld. Sure, the variety of aliens on any given night was a colorful blur, but they wanted the same things species wanted in any bar in the galaxy, an intoxicating drink and a female. The bartender, Jaed, took care of the first, and Auri the second, as long as the client was paying.

Jaed kept a room neat in the back just for her, and Auri split her take to pay for the cleaning, the rent, and his referrals. Not like he was her pimp though. She’d always been independent; made her way here alone to Kyet-II, and she could leave just as easy. Jaed got it, knew he didn’t own her.

Auri had seen a lot of strange things in bars as she’d hopped across the galaxy. A lot of strange rituals in a lot of strange, seedy back rooms, a lot of strange faces, green and blue, horned and scaled, and she’d seen a lot of strange anatomy. Some she’d even had to reject and then give back the money. “Sorry, pal, I don’t think that’ll fit. What is that anyway, a nose?”

But she’d never seen anything as strange as the alien who’d just walked into the saloon and stepped right to the bar. He flipped a few galactic credits on the counter, ordered a drink, and looked around with two eyes. Definitely the ugliest alien Auri had seen yet. Bilateral, he stood on two legs, waved two arms with ten fingers, talked through a slit in his face, and appeared to use the same hole to eat, drink, and breathe.

Auri was pretty open-minded, but no way she’d go in the back room alone with that thing.

 

Meta-story: First in a daily flash fiction contest with a word limit of 300.  Required words were right, flip, and nose.

I wrote a similar story a while back, An Open Mind.