Beyond the Quartet - In Love with a Lizard

May 2068. Paddy O'Rilley is the guest star of a podcast about her latest book - one that touches on the topic of living together with an alien reptilian and what it entails.

“Welcome back to Eromance Bookcast! I hope you didn’t tune out during our short break, sponsored by our friends at HungOn – the pride of the pride! Ads and your subs support the program and everyone working on it, so a thousand thank you if you didn’t change tab! Now, let’s not have our guest wait longer for the second round of questions! Ain’t it right, Paddy?”

“Huh…”

A small studio in a clean room, with a huge window open on two technicians operating switches and cameras. One colorful pink table at the center, equally colorful mugs filled to the brim with steaming hot tea placed around it. The walls were pinkish too, almost purple depending on how the light graced them. Pictures of hearts, rainbow flags and provocative calendars were hanging on the plaster, submerged by tons of stickers of every hue and shape. Sitting at the table, in front of camera and microphones, there were two figures. The first, the host of the show, wore a paper bag on their head, with a giant red heart drawn on it. Their voice was slightly altered by a hidden modulator, making it just weird enough to feel unrecognizable but not enough to fall into the uncanny valley. Their baggy patchwork clothes completed that bizarre picture, making it almost impossible to understand whether they were a man, a woman, a robot or something else entirely. They could have been a mutant too, but the shape of their head bag fit into a sort of humanoid frame – it wasn’t large enough to accommodate for a shark head, for example, but maybe a feline or even a shoiga could fit it. Dr. Hugs was their pseudonym, one that was well known online but had no real-life face attached to it. Now, Paddy O’Rilley, with her usual red braid, freckles and inquisitive eyes, was sitting in front of them. Her fit was more traditional, a standard-issue green t-shirt with a cartoon version of Chocolat printed onto it, while the real Chocolat was resting on her shoulder wearing her usual oversized ribbon. Paddy’s hands rested on the table, tapping on it with a broken rhythm, all while her eyes wandered around the small studio, never stopping on a single point for more than a dozen seconds. Something jingled around her right leg, with a metallic sound. It was her combo keychain, consisting of a BlindSeraphim enamel pin (a cute Chai with angel wings), a lucky charm in the shape of a wolf paw and a large coin with an intricate tribal design etched on it. Her fingers closed around it, held each of those small trinkets against her palm, almost to the point of scratching it. Streams. Radio shows. Talk shows. Documentaries. Interviews. The media circus laid bare in all its hypocrisy, just because she happened to be part of the stardom again – against her better judgment.

“I must say, Paddy, that I was… confused by your latest book.”

The altered voice of Dr. Hugs returned her to the present moment, causing her eyes to move back to the host.

“You know, after that literal banger of ‘Haemos did me better’, I wasn’t expecting you to write again. Especially, well, because what more can you write about being pounded by haemopha…?”

Paddy rolled her eyes, didn’t even let them finish their sentence.

“Hematophages.”

“…hematophages, yes. But, to get back to the point, I was totally unprepared for your second coming – and with an alien-sized side dish to boot!”

Dr. Hugs snapped their gloved fingers, causing a picture to appear on a vertical display in front of the cameras. A picture showed up from nowhere, sporting two black silhouettes hugging on a rose-tinted background. One of the two silhouettes, the smaller one, had a long braid arcing around it. The other was more massive, with bulging arms and what looked like a reptilian’s face. The title, in stylized white characters, read ‘In love with a lizard’. Paddy bit her lip, grasped her charms tighter, gazed around the studio one more time, averting her attention from that cover that sported her name in huge block letters. That title. That title had caused her more than a sleepless night, lost in the arms of her Xadre, listening to his raspy voice consoling her, as their breaths synchronized, as her worries melted in his scaly hug.

“Stop sulking, Diddi, the title’s fine. I don’t mind it, really. I asked Brandon too, Talissa, Bura and even that cheapskate J.J.. All’s fine, nobody’s offended. They trust you, Diddi. They read your book too and were very supportive.”

“But… but lizard… is a degrading racial slur!”

“It is, but that’s exactly the point, innit?”

Yes, that was exactly the point. Lizard. A common word, one that, until 2011, didn’t have any weird connotation. However, after first contact, things changed. Lizard. For a shoiga, that was the equivalent of dropping an N-word bomb. Some shoigas reappropriated the term and used it to refer to each other in a friendly manner, but it was still a word one wouldn’t utter in public among them – if they didn’t happen to be part of their number, that is. That made Paddy doubt her resolve until the end, even after having sent the final, revised, proofread draft to her publisher. Then, Xadre kissed her and let his tongue do the talk. The rest of the night was a blur of moans, touches and soft caresses her body could hardly forget.

“‘In love with a lizard’. I must say, Paddy, that the title was kind of a flashbang. The internet reaction was priceless – to hell with politically correct, right? That was refreshing. Calling a lizard a lizard was a good move to get attention on your latest stunt.”

Paddy nodded, took in a deep breath. It wasn’t the time to be shy. She survived worse, during her first media tour. She had to discuss with people who just wanted to know how it felt to have an intercourse with a phage. She had her name slandered in all the languages of the world, plus a couple alien ones. She was banged by BlindSeraphim live on screen, in front of some thousand viewers too. Stage fright was dead and buried. So, she had to own it, to smash through her shell and pull out her good ol’ ‘crush-it-all’ O’Rilley mentality.

Except, this time

she couldn’t.

Something made her wait. She felt like that wasn’t the right time to say anything. Yet, her hand

Her hand kept holding the keychain, pushing it even more violently against her palm. Dr. Hugs, though, didn’t seem to care or notice. Instead, they simply snapped their fingers again, letting the virtual book open up.

“But the content… oh, gal, Paddy. That wasn’t what I guess anyone was expecting from you. Sure, there’s sex, a lot of it. Very, very spicy too – that part about being, huh, serviced by your scaly partner in the woods after jogging together was as steamy as it can get. Lizard tongues surely are something, aren’t them?”

“Shoiga.”

“What?”

“Shoiga tongues.”

Dr. Hugs fell silent for a long second, before tilting their head, shrugging.

“What’s the problem? You called them ‘lizards’ in the title.”

“And nowhere else in the book.”

“Yes, but then why…”

“Because they gave me permission to do that.”

That last sentence came out almost like a growl, her teeth locked in a violent grin. A breath. Another breath. Her muscles relaxed, her grimace dissipated, replaced by a tired smile.

“But it’s fine. You couldn’t know. You won’t make the same mistake again, I guess?”

Dr. Hugs stared at her from behind their head bag, falling into a short, uncomfortable silence. Until the showperson in them reawakened, forcing them to act, to save the show from going down the drain because of an awkward interaction. They waved their hand, let out a sigh.

“Point taken. Good, then… as I said, there’s a lot of human-on-shoiga and shoiga-on-human action, but the part about your daily routine…”

“…let me guess, it was boring.”

“Boring? No, not boring. But, let’s say… ordinary. Very ordinary. Too much, even.”

Dr. Hugs scrolled through the virtual pages, pointed their finger at the passages moving fast in front of their shielded eyes. A synthetic voice started reading the page, giving life to those lines written words, manifesting them in the small studio, letting them echo around. Paddy listened without saying anything, focused on the sounds, on the letters that composed her work. It was a simple segment, one about Xadre and she cooking some pasta together and joking about some stuff that happened the day before. Nothing groundbreaking. Nothing worth of attention. Still, a portrait of their life together, an atom out of the six months they had shared under the same roof. It was the same flat that Paddy used to live in alone, now graced with the presence of another soul, one that made that cold place warmer and worth coming back every night. After seconds that felt like minutes that felt like hours, Dr. Hugs snapped their fingers again. The synthetic voice faded out, letting the host take control of the conversation once more.

“I let that segment play to add more context for our viewers. See, this li—shoiga in the book works an ordinary job as a farmer in a vineyard. He wakes up early every morning and does a lot of very ordinary things – eating breakfast with you, chatting with you, kissing you before taking his pick up and going out, having lunch with his colleagues, waiting for you every evening to cook with you – just like in the passage – and so on. It’s almost like…”

“Like a human.”

“Exactly.”

Paddy nodded, tapped her finger on Chocolat’s tiny head, caressed it.

“Or, rather… ‘just’like a human. This is what you really mean, Doctor.”

Dr. Hugs snapped the fingers of both of their hands, clapped their palms.

“Yes, yes! Now, whenever my audience thinks about shoigas, they have this romanticized, almost film-like idea of the dangerous gangster, the underworld criminal, the forceful bodyguard, the merciless, lustful monster that ravages human virgins against their will. There’s an expectation for them to be, you know, a pure, unadulterated chaotic force of nature. Novels like Snake Eyes, Wuthering Scales and Raperaptor have become best sellers because of this – selling the, well, the fantasy of having to deal with, you know, a horrifying alien monster that stops at nothing to have his way with a human woman. A relentless evil that envies humans and is scornful against society. The shoiga in your book, instead, breaks all these canons. He’s a… decent guy, law abiding even. He respects you as his girlfriend and even seem to care for your opinion, doing house chores with you too. Heck, you were the one jumping on him and initiating most of the sex scenes – almost as if you were the ravenous beast, instead of him! This was… surprising, and not in a… good way. “

Dr. Hugs stared at their guest from the safety of their head bag, shook their head lightly.

“With all due respect, Paddy, he doesn’t feel alien or, huh, realistic enough. If you switched him with an average Joe, your book would feel the same for all the sections that do not involve, huh, anatomical or cultural differences.”

Paddy grinned, rested her elbows on the table.

“Xadre is a hardworking guy, like all of his colleagues. He’s a very thoughtful boyfriend – our life together has been a blessing. And, contrary to some of his friends, he kept his distance from organized crime. His best shoiga pal fell right into it, but he’s now out of it and, guess what? He’s also living a decent life as a farmer in the same vineyard… and has a human girlfriend too. Is this somehow… disturbing?”

“No, not disturbing. Only, well, unusual. From the title of the book and your—uh—reputation, we would have expected a different… taste in fact of partners. Maybe, even, you know, a bit of fiction to spice things up. But no, you presented your boyfriend through words that sound too kind, and you say he’s a clean, caring, law-abiding foreign citizen…”

“Not foreign. He’s Irish, like me, like us. He got his citizenship approved in February. I helped him get it.”

“Irish, okay. But, still… your book make it look like this is… normal. Expected, even.”

The passages of the novel turned again and again, over and over, moving through black and white illustration of tangling silhouettes, recounts of daily life before and after going to bed together. Paddy’s eyes browsed the quickly moving lines, grasped words and fragments out of them. She relished for a moment in the feeling of Xadre’s warm hug, the same he gave her that morning, as she lay naked in his arms, still breathing deeply as she slowly adjusted her braid. His words were etched in her memory, came back to her with the strength of a cannon strike.

“You’re an idiot, Diddi.”

“But you like this idiot.”

“Yeah, I do.”

He had underlined his words with a twist of his tongue, licking her skin from her neck down her breasts. Her heartbeat accelerated again, while she basked in that feeling, rubbing her cheek against his pecs, never having enough of his warmth, of his caring voice.

“Diddi… why do you keep fighting, even if you get hurt?”

“Because otherwise… you would get hurt.”

Xadre had snickered at that remark, pinched her nose with two fingers.

“My little Don Kishokte, ramming the dams head first.”

“Don Quixote. Windmills.”

His fingers pinched the nose harder, turned it left and right.

“See? You can’t stop yourself from correcting me, like an annoying know-it-all. Every time I say haemophage…”

“Hematoph...”

Xadre licked her skin again, shutting her words half way, causing a soft moan to escape her lips, her body to arch a little, all while rubbing his snout against her nape.

“You’re brave, Diddi. I can’t stand watching you chewed live on stream again, just because you wrote of us as a boring happy couple instead of going the easy route. I told ya, write I’m a ravenous murdering beast that forces you to bend to his will and has you at his mercy! That’s where the big bucks are! Violence! Stereotypes! But no, you ain’t listen. So, yeah, now this sucks and ya gotta pay the price.”

That price was being asked over and over about it, with doubt, disbelief. Even now, in that studio, during the Eromance Bookcast, she was being questioned by a masked person who was visibly annoyed by what she wrote in her book and was starting to get impatient.

“…from your words, Paddy, it sounds like you struck gold. This Xadre is one of the good ones, and I’m happy for you, but…”

“One of the good ones?”

Paddy almost slammed her palm against the table, forcing herself to grasp her charms more instead. The wolf paw caressed her fingertips, filled her with the necessary calm. The etched coin transferred some of the attitude of its maker to her. The enamel pin reminded her that she wasn’t alone. She let her feelings flow, slowly, showing off only a little annoyance, quenching the storm that was brewing behind her irises. Dr. Hugs crossed their arms, shrugged.

“Well, the statistics say it all, right? Not me, the numbers talk: so many shoigas are working for the mob or in organized crime. So many of them… unleash their unsavory appetites on humans. The newscasts are filled with similar reports, right? Even yesterday, a sixteen years old girl was…”

“Eighty-seven point three percent.”

A supernatural coldness embraced the room, seeped into it from every corner, froze the atmosphere, the words, the movements. Dr. Hugs froze too, listening to a voice that had no warmth. A icy, toneless voice that reported a figure, stated a fact with emotionless passion.

“…what?”

“It’s the percentage of shoigas enrolled in a state-sanctioned placement center who never get called or given a single job interview in the span of a year. Of the remaining twelve point seven percent, only around one tenth scores a position and never above entry level. If they complete their education on EXODUS, their titles aren’t recognized down here. They can’t attend normal human schools either, due to concerns from the other kids’ parents and different growth cycles – Xadre had to go to evening schools as an adult just to learn how to write and read English. Which means, the chances of a shoiga coming from EXODUS finding a honest job are smaller than those of a minor ROP spontaneously emerging in this studio right now.”

Paddy’s grimaced, snickered at the host.

“They aren’t evil, just desperate.”

Dr. Hugs, though, raised their hand, started to say something. Only to be shut down again.

“And, no, they can’t simply not come down here. EXODUS is a floating coffin, Doc. There’s no future for them, up there, and you should know it well. Shoigas are still treated like an inferior species by devsks, even if they shouldn’t be. That’s why they board those shuttles – better to be the last here than the first in that dying arkship.”

“…but…”

“No buts. This, if you don’t get it, was the message of my book: shoigas might be alien, might come from a different solar system, might have had to learn to coexist with us, but they can and do that, if given a chance! Xadre and the other vineyard workers are living proof of this! And, no, they aren’t just the good ones! The difference is that they were given a choice and were not forced to live in a ghetto with no hopes for the future. My boring, ordinary life with Xadre is just something that could… that showed that it can work out. No need for gangsters, non-consensual crap or weird fantasies. For these shoigas out there… what I have written in my book might be heaven. I wanted to let them know that it is possible. That they aren’t lost. That they can get a normal life, exactly like Xadre and I!”

Dr. Hugs rolled their head, massaged their forehead through the bag.

“…sure, provided they find a human woman crazy enough to jump on them.”

Paddy smirked, caressed Chocolat again, held her in her palm.

“How would I not jump on Xadre? Have you seen the beautiful red hue of his scales? That’s one of a kind, Doc! Redder than the healthiest hematophage! And, to answer one of your previous questions: yes, his tongue is the stuff dreams are made of.”

A spark travelled through all of her body at that mention, feelings she had to keep at bay right now, and yet feelings that made her stronger. She defeated Nirvana, she defeated her fall from grace. A masked streaming host was not even an appetizer, not even worth a second look.

That’s when she heard it, the noise of someone knocking on the glass. Her eyes turned around, meeting the ever-changing irises and straight brown hair of a tall-ish woman around her age, smiling like the idiot she was from the other side of the window. She was wearing her usual rusty peace locket, swinging over a comfortable long-sleeved top that left her belly exposed, where an angel wings tattoo triumphantly went down well into her jeans. Dr. Hugs squinted their eyes under the bag, frowned even. That unexpected guess looked almost like…

Paddy raised her thumb, snapped her fingers.

“My apologies Doc, but my agent is waiting for me, out there. I got another interview lined up in half an hour and asked her to pick me up.”

She stood up, grinning from ear to ear.

“I’d love to say it was a pleasure, Doc, but lies aren’t my forte. And, as a matter of fact, you should vet your ads better: HungOn Pride condoms are bottom of the barrel trash that caused many unplanned pregnancies and STD infections – there’s a trial going on right now because of that. Maybe, next time you should choose a sponsor that actually cares about healthy sex, since this is the topic of your show.”

In that precise moment, panic erupted. The technicians on the other side of the window sent an immediate extra ad break, before Dr. Hugs could even start replying. Paddy’s scathing last comment was lost in the ether, excised from the livestream before it could even be broadcast. Yet, satisfied by the bloodshed, she slowly walked out of the studio, humming a cheerful tune while petting her Chocolat. The woman that acted as Paddy’s agent ran towards her, hugged her, laughing out loudly, turning around in a dumb merry-go-round style. Watching that scene unfolding in front of their eyes, Dr. Hugs too found the strength to leave his seat, to tower on the two now unwelcome guests right in front of them.

“Okay, okay, one moment… what was that crap about?! We agreed to a promo shot for your bloody book and you carpet bomb my show like that?! Live? In front of all my viewers and sponsors?! You’ll get news from my lawyers real soon, O’Rilley, you get it?”

In response to that utterance, Paddy glared back. A glacial stare pierced through Dr. Hugs’s head bag, one that would have killed a person with its sheer intensity, right as an equally glacial voice emerged from the woman’s lips.

“Section five, comma seven. The host, that is you, accepts that the interview will not be scripted and that the guest, that is I, will have the faculty of answering freely, disregarding the promotional nature of the show. This includes the case where the host’s questions or statements are deemed ‘inappropriate’. Section six, comma three defines ‘inappropriate’ as ‘veering towards degrading topics, including but not limited to racial and/or sexist stereotypes’ – which is precisely what happened here, you’ll recognize. Oh, and there’s your lawyer’s signature on it. Have fun with that.”

Having delivered that line with the most robotic tone she could muster, Paddy stepped away from the studio, then exchanged a loud high five with her agent, without deigning her host of a single gaze. She turned, though, turned one more time towards them, letting a whisper slither through her lips.

“It’s a shame you’ve sold off your pride, Doc, just because you think you’re one of the good ones too. As if that would count for anything, until the hate is gone.”

Before Dr. Hugs could inasmuch as lift a finger, Paddy’s agent pulled her away, bringing her down the stairs, disappearing in the darkness of the dimly lit exit. And leaving behind an imposing figure, wearing a bag on their head, petrified like a stone statue – almost as if they met the mythological Medusa’s gaze.