Hello, my alien lovers!

Good news for progressivism with the by-election results in Vancouver.

Another reminder that I'm gay for democracy! I wish more people would vote. It's a strong tool for the working class and poor people to leverage against capitalism and authoritarian systems. It's not the only tool we have, not always the most effective, but we should never fail to use it.

I have 18 more chapters to draft before I can officially say I'm done with the first draft of Perilous Love Stars. Weekly serials are both insane and exhilarating. My plan is still to release the book in November. I'm hoping a novella in the LEU will follow in December, but that depends on when I finish the first draft for Perilous.

Welcome to Chapter 22 and to a new layer of alien chaos! This was a very fun chapter to craft because horny teenagers are a blast to write. I'm also thoroughly enjoying throwing more plot twists at poor Maple.

Hope you enjoy it, too!

lunus 🩷 (keeping it!!!!)

If you're new to the story, start with Chapter 1

If you missed the last chapter, Previously on Perilous Love Stars

The three strange teenagers with glowing skins let Maple scream her lungs out, every so often glancing at each other with some confusion.

When her brain accepted that she wasn’t in immediate danger, and that screaming wouldn’t achieve anything since the car was still on the side of the road in the middle of fucking nowhere, she stopped.

She caught her breath before asking, “Who are you?” Then, taking them in, she added, “And what are you wearing?”

The yellow teenager (Yellow) had found the hoodie they’d bought for Salvatore at the gas station the day before. It fit him like a dress. The other two teenagers had apparently raided the suitcase of funky socks, ignoring any of Salvatore’s other clothes. The blue one (Blue) was wearing makeshift shorts made of socks tied up together, and the red one (Red) was wearing one sock on each ear and nothing else. He was butt naked on the back seat, grinning at Maple with a devilish glint in his eyes.

“Hello, Boss,” he said in a flirty tone that made her turn back in panic.

“What is going on?” she mumbled to herself.

Clearly, this had something to do with Salvatore’s alien disease. It was the last thing she needed to deal with.

She remembered the first time Cruz burst into her office, announcing Marsha had gone on another bender and was MIA. The same day, an extra accidentally set on fire a part of the set, which fried Rita, one of Maurice’s precious lights. Everyone was tense and panicked, and all had turned to Maple to resolve the situation—which she’d done that day and countless times since. She decided to approach the teenagers as nothing more than another on-set situation, or she’d lose her calm.  

“Someone start explaining what’s going on, please, and quickly.” Maple found an angle that let her see the teenagers in the rearview mirror without Red’s personal anatomy being exposed to her. 

The glowing aliens consulted each other with silent looks before Blue cleared his throat, giving Maple an awkward smile. “Well, like, obviously, we’re each one part of Salvatore.”

Maple was sure nothing about the current situation was or should be “obvious,” especially to her. Salvatore hadn’t said a thing about potentially dividing himself into three younger teenagers with monochrome glowing skin—she’d fucking remember. Nothing about what she’d read and knew about aliens had ever prepared her to face such a phenomenon either.

Still processing everything,  she asked, “Are you all, like, 1/3 of him?”

Yellow nodded. “Yes. But not equally distributed.”

“That’s true,” chimed in Red. “My dick’s way bigger than theirs.”

“Lies!” roared Blue as Yellow put his head in his hands, sighing. 

What was worse than being stuck in a car with three alien teenagers with glowing skins? Having them argue about whose anatomy was the most impressive. 

“Let’s stay focused on the important stuff.” Maple closed her eyes, prompting her own mind to get its shit together. “Okay, alright. Context. Has this happened before?”

“Yes,” the three teenagers answered in unison. 

“Great. How do we fix it?” She paused,  wondering if that was insensitive to ask them. But what would she do with three alien teenagers? She couldn’t continue the road trip with them and certainly couldn’t bring them to Daphne’s.  “How do we bring Salvatore back?”

Blue shrugged. “We don’t know. We usually hang for a bit, then he’s back.”

“What do you mean you ‘don’t know’ and define ‘a bit?" What happened the last time you separated? How did you get back to being… him?”

“Lady,” Red interrupted with a predatory grin, “enough with the question. We don’t know. We’re here for a fun time, not a long time, if you know what I mean.”

Blue winked at her. “He’s right. Salvatore is good, but he’s only one, and he’s old. We’re three young studs.”

“Oh god,” she whispered, staring at her hands, wishing to be anywhere but in this tiny space with horny teenagers.

She recalled what she’d done that day on set when everything had seemingly gone to hell. She’d told Cruz to manage Loretta’s panic and Davenport to distract Maurice while Rita was being rolled out of the studios. She’d send Ermet to find Marsha who, thanks to Brooklyn, had been spotted eating a chocolate-avocado scone in a dark alley.

The only way out of her current mess was to do the same—tackle one problem at a time. The first order of business was to fix the car. Once that was resolved, she’d figure out her next step. 

“Any chance any of you know how to fix the alien tech that’s in the car? That would be more useful than sexually harassing me.”

Yellow timidly raised his hand. “I do.”

“Nerd,” muttered Red, rolling his eyes. 

Maple took note of the tension between the teens but didn’t comment on it. She left the car with Yellow and watched as he opened the hood and started messing around the car’s mechanics. None of the teenagers resembled Salvatore, but they looked related to each other. Blue and Yellow shared an almost identical nose, while Red and Yellow’s heads were shaped the same exact way.

“So…” she trailed off, unsure of how to approach a conversation with 1/3 of the man she may or may not have a gigantic crush on. “Do you have names or…”

Yellow stopped what he was doing to look at her. “Not really. I tried to discuss it with the guys, but they’re always too busy messing around to take me seriously.”

Yellow was the smallest of the three. His white hair was buzzed, and he’d somehow found a pair of glasses he now wore on the tip of his nose. It was hard to comprehend this creature was 1/3 of the alien superstar that’d been occupying most of Maple’s thoughts for the past two days. 

He opened the trunk of the car, taking a small oval glass container with metal edges filled with a fluorescent blue liquid.

A whiff of innocence poured out of him as he brought it back to the front of the car, triggering Maple’s defence instincts. She’d been a teenager once and still remembered how challenging and confusing the experience was. Yellow, Red, and Blue were nothing more than naive children, lost and excited to be thrown into an adult situation. Maple needed to protect them at all costs if she wanted Salvatore to come back. 

“How often does the… alien divide happen?” She was out of her depth and didn’t know what vocabulary to use. 

“At least once a year. Lately, though, it’s been happening more often.” Yellow closed down the hood. “Done,” he announced with a proud grin.

“What did you do?” She leaned in, inspecting the hood, trying to appear competent and in control. “What’s in there? What’s the alien tech?”

“Human fuel doesn’t work on alien tech. I just needed to activate the tank’s auto-clean filter and fill it up with alien fuel.”

“Alien fuel? What’s in it?”

“Mostly water,” he replied evasively. “We should be ready to go now.”

He walked away, leaving Maple with more questions and the uneasy feeling of being lied to. When he opened the backseat door, loud music and the raucous laughter of Blue and Red blasted out. Maple had to get the teens into a closed room so she could get some time and some peace and quiet to research how to bring back the star of her show.

They drove to the nearest motel. After Maple made them promise not to leave the car without her express permission, she made her way to the reception.

She was welcomed by a woman at the front desk. Her make-up was overdone, with pink and red shades that made her look like a 17th-century European courtesan. 

“Welcome, my dear,” the woman said in a low, sulfurous voice that clashed with the bright pastel tones of her dress and jewelry. “What can I do for you?”

“Two rooms, please.”

The woman pouted, glancing at her desktop. She chewed her gum loudly.  “I’m sorry, we only have one room available.”

Maple peered at her name tag. “Françoise,” she read, “are you sure?”

Françoise nodded. With all the makeup she had on, Maple could only ballpark her age to be between late twenties and early forties. 

“I’m afraid so, my dear.” Françoise grabbed a key card and slid it on the countertop. “One room is all I have.”

Something about the woman suddenly seemed very familiar to Maple. She couldn’t pinpoint what. “I’ll take it.”

As she leaned in closer to take the credit card handed to her, the front desk employee’s bubblegum perfume overpowered Maple’s nose.  “Thank you kindly, my dear.”

Weirded out by the interaction and annoyed that she didn’t know why, Maple took the key and got out. Everything felt off today. 

It took some maneuvering to get the rowdy teenagers inside the room and a lot of convincing to get them to stay inside the room. It was only after Maple promised them all the junk food they could eat that Red and Blue agreed to stay in and watch TV with Yellow. She wasn’t naive enough to believe she could get them to stay inside for long, but she just needed time to figure out her next move. If the price to pay was greasy junk food and bad reality TV, then so be it. 

She couldn’t lock the door from outside, which was an added stressor. She had to get the food and be back as soon as possible. Yellow would behave, but Red and Blue were wild cards. Maple knocked on the window, motioning the teenagers to close the curtains. Red was fighting Blue for the remote, and she could hear them arguing about where to watch porn. Yellow nodded and drew the curtains closed.

She crossed the parking lot on her way back to the reception. She wanted to ask Françoise where the nearest fast-food joint was. 

A shadow moving behind a grey van caught her attention. The person was kneeling on the ground, using the vehicle as cover. She moved closer, first out of curiosity, then out of necessity. What if this was the killer? Maybe he’d been waiting for Salvatore to be incapacitated to strike. With all of today’s events, Maple didn’t think of taking something to use as a weapon from the SUV. If this was the killer, her best chance would be to surprise him. 

Discreetly, she walked closer to the form kneeling on the ground. She noticed first the camera in his hands, then the tailored lavender suit he had on. By the time she’d reached him, she wasn’t scared anymore. She was furious.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she exclaimed when she was right behind him. 

The man flinched, losing his balance and falling on the concrete. He crawled back to his feet, staining his fancy suit in the process. He readjusted his thick, dark sunglasses before facing Maple. Even when he stood straight and puffed out his chest, he was still a few inches shorter than her. 

“Hello, Maple,” he said, his voice filled with as much disdain as he could conjure.

“Again,” Maple said, not skipping a beat. “What the fuck are you doing here, Peyter?”

Thursday, January 12^th 2XX9

Dear Diary,

Today marks the 79^th nonconsecutive day of Peyter’s insidious verbal harassment. As always, let me quote the poet himself, as he described my performance as an “irreparable flaw” to the “majestuous tapestry of emotions” he and the rest of the class were building on stage. I play the fucking domestic! I have no lines.

Rosalie keeps telling me to ignore him and focus on the breathing technique she taught me. It works, but ugh!!!! Unless they catch him in the act harassing me, Ms. Pantagrove says there’s nothing she can do. Peyter knows that. He’s sneaky and never says anything when adults are around. Cynthia calls him a “fils de frotteur!” but I don’t tell her all the awful stuff he says to me, or she’d kill him, and I don’t want one of my moms to go to jail because of a loser like Peyter.

Melrose asked me if I had a crush on anyone at school. How ridiculous. Boys suck! (Even the gays nowadays.) It’s a sad reality… “Melrose,” I told her. We were outside because she smokes those awful menthol cigarettes. “What I need is a man.” A man like the ones in B&B. They’re hot, strong, and they have their priorities straight. Maybe if I had a man like that, he’d defend me, and Peyter would finally shut up. 

Tomorrow, we’re running through his scene. I’m still playing the domestic, but I’m already planning to sabotage his entry by “forgetting” to pull the curtains and maybe faking passing out during his big monologue. We’ll see how I feel. I passed out three times this semester already, it doesn’t matter how good of an actress I am. I think people aren’t buying it anymore. But, honestly, I’d rather fake passing out than stand through another one of Peyter’s butchered interpretations of Tchekov’s words. Nobody has ever seen a worse Léonid Andréïevitch Gaïev.

He says his dream is to play in B&B, but there’s no way he’ll ever be good enough to be cast. I will, though. And when I do, he’ll finally see who’s best. (me!!!!)

Excerpt from Maple Defleuvier’s private diaries