At first, wandering through the pawn shop on her afternoon had seemed like a dumb idea. Then, she eased herself into it. There were no errands to do, she had the first free afternoon in months and had had enough caffeine in the morning that going home and taking a nap was impossible. The pawn shop was there, so she entered, no intending to buy anything, but just to look and pass time until her fiancé got off work.
Most of the stuff was junk forgotten from a previous era, rusted and old, but what the hipsters and older generation would call “rustic” and probably put out as table toppers in a wedding.
Then she found the endless glass cases of small knickknacks of silver and gold and everything in between. Most of it was plain, dull with age, and then she saw it, nestled between plain trinkets, calling to her like a beacon.
A ring of some kind, chunky instead of slim like the rest of them in the case, with a kind of stone she couldn’t name and even a metal she couldn’t name. From one angle, it looked like silver with a pearl stone, from another angle gold with onyx. She blinked several times and couldn’t stop looking at it.
In the end, she ended up taking it home. It wasn’t expensive, but it wasn’t entirely cheap either. She cleaned it when she got home, as gently as she could with a cheap purchase of jewelry cleaner, but it still didn’t stay one metal and one stone, it kept changing.
As she placed it on her right hand, the index finger, since that was the only finger it would fit on, it changed to the perfect ring she had shown her fiancé, but had been much too expensive. She wasn’t sure how she would explain that one, so she made the decision to take off the ring and place it in her jewelry box, an impulse buy and nothing more.
Only the ring wouldn’t come off.
She thought nothing of it and went about her afternoon and evening with her fiancé. He didn’t say anything about it either.
That night, as they slept, a bright light woke them, shining brightly into their apartment window. The window opened and a stereotypical alien, green skin and large eyes stepped out.
“Greetings Earth woman!” He said, his voice high pitched and whiny. “Thank you for accepting my gift and becoming my Killeap.”
For a moment, both she and her fiancé were stunned into silence. Did he say kill?!
“What does that mean?” She asked, forcing the words from her mouth. “Your—?”
The alien smiled, if that was possible with its thin mouth. “My Killeap. My wife in your language.”
Somehow, that wasn’t better.
“What the—?!” Her fiancé started from behind her, but the alien raised his hand and her fiancé fell silent.
“Come,” he said, extending his seven fingered hand toward her. “Leave this sad excuse for a human meat sack and be my Kill-Eap.”
Something about it all, the way the ring fit perfectly, the way it was the exact ring she had always wanted, spoke depths to her. She reached out and took his hand.
“What?!” Her fiancé shrieked in surprise. “This means war you little green—!”
In a swirl of lights, they were gone. Her ex fiancé’s words swallowed up in a loud but comforting hum.
