Read Online Rock n Roll Babes from Outer Space by Linda Jaivin - Free Book Online

theycontinued towards the church. Maybe it hadn’t been a polite circle, Jake reflected, abashed. Maybe it was just a cautious one.
    Maybe, Jake considered, what he needed was religion. He briefly contemplated following this little vision of normality into the church.
    Nup. Couldn’t do it. He didn’t think he believed in God. That was all right, for God didn’t particularly believe in Jake, either.
    Jake did, however, require some sort of immediate salvation. He pressed the inside of his wrists to his temples. DOOF DOOF DOOF DOOF. It sounded like a fucken rave party in there. When a rock n roll lad starts hearing techno in his veins he
knows
it’s time to call it a night. Home, James, and the other one too, he instructed his feet.
    He lowered his hands, and a mark on the inside of his right wrist caught his eye. Blue, and about two and a half centimetres wide, it depicted a flying saucer streaking through space. Jake’s heart skipped a beat. Where’d that come from? What
had
he done last night? Agent Mulder. Of course. He’d been to the gig. The mark. It was just the stamp they applied to your wrist at the door. An image of a gorgeous green chick with antennae momentarily flitted into his head and then, just as abruptly, flitted out again. He must have been really off his face. Maybe he’d met a girl and she’d taken him home. Where else could he have been all this time?
    Where had he been all his life?
    Licking the tips of his fingers, Jake attempted to rub the ink off when he noticed a mark on the inside of his other wrist as well. Unlike the clean, elegantly described image of the flying saucer, this one was just a string of blurry letters. Jake rubbed at the saucer. It didn’t come off.It didn’t even streak. He rubbed harder. The skin chafed, the image remained. Sharp and clear. Licking the fingers of his right hand now, he wiped experimentally at the mark on his left wrist. The ink stained his fingers. That was definitely the stamp from the door. He looked from one wrist to the other. He hadn’t been so out of it that he’d gone and gotten a tattoo as well, had he? But wait, tattoos took some time to get to this stage. The scorpion on his right shoulder blade had been crusted over for a week before it finally came good.
    Jake was in no state, mental or physical, to make sense of any of this. He had to get home. Turning a bit too quickly, he nearly tripped over the grey furry legs of a bedraggled Planet Rescue bear slumped against the window of the shop.
    ‘Sorry,’ mumbled Jake, stepping away.
    ‘Give us a dollar?’ pleaded the bear. He’d obviously been on the street all night.
    Jake sighed. He fished in his pockets and came up with a two-dollar coin. That’s odd. He was sure he’d had more money than that. He looked at the coin. Considering what was needed to save the planet, it wasn’t much. Considering what else he had in his pocket, it was everything. Then again, he had just had what some people would call a life-transforming experience and he was feeling a little giddy. He farewelled the coin with his eyes, and extended his hand towards the donations tin. Before he could drop it through the slot, a paw swung over and scooped it up.
    ‘Thanks, mate,’ nodded the bear. ‘It’s actually for me. I need a beer bad.’
    Jake opened his mouth to say something and thought better of it. A girl with a blue crewcut, about a dozen facepiercings, and jeans that were more rip than fabric, padded by on bare feet, arm in tattooed arm with a thin boy in green dreads and a long tie-dyed skirt. ‘Do you believe in angels?’ the girl was asking. The boy shook his head. ‘Do you believe in fairies?’ He shook his head again. Jake shoved his hands back into his now empty pockets and loped around the corner.
    ‘Aliens?’ she persisted. ‘Do you believe in aliens?’
    Aliens. This rang a bell in Jake’s mind, but it was too cluttered and smoky in there for him to actually reach the door and let it