Dangerous Days of Daniel X

Chapter 49

I DON’T KNOW about you, but whenever I’m slimed and hog-tied in the stow-and-go seat well of a minivan, I tend to do a little soul-searching.

First of all, I was pretty angry with myself. I’d let Seth play me like an iPod Shuffle. I’d been sooo sure about how ninjalike and under the radar I was being, but now I realized Seth must have felt me the moment I set foot in LA. He was Number 6, after all!

What else? Oh, yeah. I was in paralyzing fear of losing my life. Lots of kidnap victims can say they don’t know what their captors will do to them, but I really, really didn’t know. I mean, were these pus-headed aliens going to slime me again, or was it something worse? I figured… worse.

Then they started playing their music, which was a sophisticated form of torture in itself. The List of Alien Outlaws never said these freaks were fanatics of early eighties bands. We’re talking Journey, Air Supply, Styx. And some group I’d never heard before called Yes that should have been called No. In my humble opinion, anyway.

The eardrum-walloping volume wouldn’t have been so bad if these intergalactic thugs didn’t have to sing along, like this was a karaoke van, banging their mallet-shaped heads back and forth and playing air guitar, air drums, air cymbals.

I just lay there in shock, gazing out the back window at the tops of telephone poles zipping by on our road trip to who-knew-where and who-knew-what.

I should have listened to my mother and father.

I should have listened to Dana.

I should have listened to Ergent Seth.

I’d been warned, hadn’t I?