DAY 1

"I'm going to stick this up your rectum, okay?...Okay."

I opened my mouth to protest, but the little scientist lady was already lifting my tail, shoving some acid proof plastic thermometer up my rear.

I didn't know what country Vela Rols came from. Her facial features looked vaguely European, but her accent seemed almost Asian. It made communication difficult as hell. "I have a mouth, you know. You don't necessarily need to keep poking me in the poop chute."

Vela blinked like a frog in a hailstorm. The more the intern talked to me, the more I wondered if she were merely playing dumb in order to manipulate me into doing what she wanted.

She gave me that confused smile she always gives when I say something complicated. "I'm...sorry? Poop...chute?"

I groaned. "My butt. The point is, you can take my temperature in my mouth."

Another stupid grin. "Are you certain you want to do that? It has been...below. It may taste bad."

I sighed. Dumbass. "I didn't mean now. I meant next time."

Blink blink blink. She acted like the idea of future tense was too complicated. "It will be just one more minute and I have temperature, and you will not have to have it in your rectum again until next time, okay?"

I dropped my shoulder plates in frustration, but I doubted she'd understand.

She took the thermometer out, recording my temperature.

I could easily grab her by the lab coat and kill her, but I didn't want to be like them, like one of those things that killed my parents, so I did the human thing and endured the humiliation like a good zoo animal.

"I check your genitals for lumps now, yes?"

Instead of waiting for a reply, she pressed her gloved fingers to various places between my legs.

"Hey!" I said. "What?"

"We do not want you having cancers. We find, we cut out, yes?"

"No. Wait. That's not even how my body works! They lay eggs!" `They', not `we.' I still couldn't accept the idea of something horrible like that coming out of my own body.

"I check that too. I check every prostate you have."

After checking for lumps, Vela pried apart part of my shell and took a blood sample. My body is covered in sore spots from her previous injections.

"Hey, where did you get your medical degree from?" I asked. "Because you obviously can't seem to find my veins..."

She actually looked proud! "I have an Associates in veterinary science. I can find a vein on elephant and camel. Yours is like all the others. It is not difficult to find."

"Could have fooled me."

"I find your veins. I take samples. It is not my fault if you do not stay still."

"Are you going to check my blood pressure too? Because the way you did that was genius."

The woman misunderstood. "Yes. I think it was great idea too...but they did not think you at risk for...hypertension? I will inform them of your concerns."

She took her samples and data out of the room. I wish she'd stick them up her rectum and get her own temperature!

Sigh. People like that are my only company.

And now I'm alone again.

I picked up a steel mirror, took one look at my face, put it down.

Believing that I was looking through a window at someone else, that was how I coped.

They're windows to another world, I told myself.

That thing, that stranger, staring back at me, isn't me.

I looked away from the thing that mocked me with its copycat movements.

I lose track of time in my cell.

I lose track of me.

From this point onward, I am going to signpost this narrative with facts.

Factual Item One: Identity.

Everyone thinks that I died on Fiorina 161. They said my cryogenic pod smashed open and I drowned.

That's wrong.

An alien killed me. It broke the glass of my pod and laid an egg in me.

I was asleep when it happened, but then, when I felt its baby burst out of my chest, I came right awake and spoke to it.

I don't know why I knew how to speak to it in its language, but I did. I told it to show me its "hidden tongue," a secret organ that all their kind have in the backs of their mouths.

I made the alien connect its worms to my brain.

I made the alien put her consciousness into my dying body while I took hers.

I made her feel what it's like to die.

Folks used to call me Newt. My mom and dad called me Rebecca.

I don't know what you should call me now. Becky, I guess.

I don't have the same kind of body I used to have. People call me a Xenomorph because I look like a big black bug.

You know what I really am? Lonely.

Which brings us to:

Item Two: Location.

Right now, I live in a big metal drum, basically an animal cage in space.

I didn't know I was in space until a week after they moved me, when they at last got tired of me begging for a cell with a window.

The place is called the USM Auriga. They're stationed somewhere near Pluto. Nobody wants to tell me what we're doing out here, but I guess it's something important.

Honestly, no one wants to talk to me at all, except maybe Bruno and Claudia, and even they don't talk to me as much as I want them to. It's like going to the psychologist's office.

Item Three: Time.

It's Christmas. I know because they gave me a calendar, and I've been marking off the days. They gave me paper and scissors and tape, so I've decorated my room with snowflakes and little Christmas trees and pictures of Santa.

I have a little MP3 player with a channel set up for Christmas songs. Right now I'm listening to Chuck Berry's Run Run Rudolph. It makes me think of mom and dad and Christmas back at the colony.

Dear Santa, I write. I want my old body back.

I cross through it a second later. No, I don't want that. My old body is dead. I want to be a living breathing human being again.

I crumple the note and throw it away. Santa can't bring me what I want. If he could, he would have brought mommy and daddy back.

I decide to ask for something more realistic. My freedom, or maybe, if I can't get that, a stationary exercise bike, or a musical instrument. If he gave me a guitar, I'd really try to play it, and maybe one day I could, I don't know, be another Johnny Cash?

I scratch through that last part too. Okay, I don't care if I have a music career, I just want to learn how to play. I promise I won't drool and melt it like I did that Erector set.

I hear the wall panel sliding open. Since they already gave me my dinner an hour ago (meatloaf again) I know it's Bruno with more paperwork.

Item Four: I am subject to daily examinations.

Despite how many times I promised not to hurt him, he hides behind a bulletproof glass window, talking to me through an intercom. The man looks German. He's black haired with very angular facial features. With his black outfit and slicked down hair, he reminds me of that Dieter guy from all those Saturday Night Live sketches, but he's not nearly as entertaining or friendly.

Oh, we talk, but it's not like a real conversation. This is basically how each visit goes:

Bruno reads a bunch of questions off of a sheet. "...Newt (like he doesn't know my name already!). How are you doing today?"

It doesn't matter what I say. Today I told him that I'm lonely and Christmas isn't the same without a family.

He responds like a psychologist. "I'm sorry to hear that. Tell me, why isn't Christmas the same without a family?"

So I tell him. I talk a lot about myself in these sessions. When I asked for information about him in return, he's hesitant to give it. "I'd prefer if we talk about you," he will say, and other similar things.

I tell him about Hadley's Hope. You know, Planet LV 426, about my school friends, and Christmas time back at the base.

He takes notes and recordings, he asks if I've been pooping regularly.

There's a machine that he looks at, one that tells him about my blood, my heart rate, my brain. They have probes stuck in several parts of my body, but he still asks me if I can still poop and pee okay, if my stomach feels good, if I have an appetite, if I have sexual feelings or any other bodily issues that I need to report.

He then asks me who I am, if I still thought I used to be a girl named Rebecca Jorden.

I tell him I want to watch The Grinch.

I tell him I want a remote control for the TV.

"Maybe Santa can bring you that for Christmas," he says with a faint smirk.

I tell him no, and show him my Christmas list.

He tells me to put it in the security tray "So Santa can read it later."

It's that little cookie sheet-like thing they slide through the slot in the door at meal time. I do what he says and he takes it away.

"I would ask Santa to put me in a human body," I said. "But I don't think he can do that, can he?"

He asks me how old I thought I was.

I said I don't know, maybe eleven or twelve? But I feel much older than that. They had me on a base on earth for what felt like a year.

When he asks me about Ellen Ripley, I start crying.

Apparently not understanding how Xenomorphs behave when they're sad, he asks me if I have a cold, even though he's seen me crying before.

He asks me what happened on Fiorina 161, but he already knows. I wrote a book about it. He said to write out my anger, so I made the aliens super evil and scary. I wrote that the little girl died in the cryogenics tube because of an accident.

Sometimes I wish that was true.

At other times, I worry that I might just be an alien thinking she was once a girl, and it scares me.

Sometimes I have dreams when I make the claw thingy come out of my mouth and tear a hole in Bruno's skull. Then Ripley gets mad at me and comes after me with a gun. I wake up crying.

Back in reality, the wall slides closed again, and I am left alone for the rest of the day.

Someone thoughtfully puts The Grinch on the TV. I watch that and Tim Allen's Santa Clause. I draw pictures of my home in Hadley's Hope as I remember it.

Outside my cell, I think I hear screams and gunshots. Could it be real, or just a memory of my escape from LV 426?

Nothing happens. The program changes to Miracle on 34th Street.

I must have imagined those noises.

Just like how I imagine my dead brother Timmy standing in the cell with me.

He doesn't talk, he just stares and paces the floor.

I look away and he's gone.