Buildings touched the clouds, floating with a surreal kind of buoyancy. The streets twisted with sharp curves, jutting out low and high, left and right, here and there like a roller coaster promising chills and thrills. An everlasting chain of immortal trees, with their roots stretched out, freed from soil's sovereignty, dominated the sky's vast chambers. Bodies of water, carrying all forms of life from the seas and oceans, snaked around lost cities like murky aquamarine serpents.

     The aliens, the new world kings and queens, with their technological advantages and unorthodox mindsets, have transformed planet Earth into an abstract painting. Ever since the invasion, people would wake up to a world plunged in irrational mayhem.

     People woke up to a world where gravity was no longer stable and things would drift away into the void for no reason. People woke up to a world where order didn't hold meaning and chaos was the norm. People woke up to the ruins of an old world.

     After the invasion, the aliens had established a social ladder that was law, with humans ranked in the bottom rung.

     So as far as Gwenith was concerned, life was shit.

     Being human meant she had to exceed at the two following things: serving and manual labor, both of which she sucked at.

     Even though the world had ended, litter was still an issue that plagued the environment. As someone hired to reduce the amount of trash in a trashy wasteland, it was Gwenith's duty to follow where the river would take her and eliminate any unnecessary junk.

     She was basically a trash woman setting sail on the seas.

     Gwenith cast her rowing oar aside and knelled down. Her legs dug into the boards of the gondola she was traveling in. She leaned forward, stopping to soak in her watery reflection. Frizzy hair, hazel like almonds and cropped short to her shoulders, draped over her dark face.

     The new haircut suited her, complimented her prominent features - a pair of amber eyes and plump lips. She did it herself with a pocket knife. Her fingers grazed the river, smudging her reflection. Ripples disturbed the glassy surface.

     "Human." 

     A voice shook the air with a rumble. Gwenith recognized the voice. She turned around.

     Ghinti, her employer, approached her while in midair, a signature scowl marked on his face. His bluish skin glowed underneath the sun's spotlight and his broad pixie-like wings fanned out. His feet, clad in silver boots that blinded Gwenith's eyes with an overpowering amount of shine, hovered inches over the water.

     "Human, what do you think you're doing?"

     Checking myself out, sir, was what Gwenith wanted to blurt out. Instead, she offered a plastic smile and said, "I thought I found something over here, but it turned out to be nothing, sir." She never left out a 'sir' in any sentence addressed to Ghinti.

     Ghinti was the one who supplied her with monthly paychecks. She feasted on those paychecks.

     "If you're not busy, I have something to discuss with you."

     "Yes, sir?"

     "I am in search of a caretaker for my youngest son. You are one of humans that work under my name. With business flooding my schedule this year, it's become increasingly difficult to find a proper caretaker that can handle the boy." He pinned her down with a wide-eyed stare, expecting a response. When she didn't speak, he continued. "So I've given up on finding a proper caretaker. I'll settle for mediocre, as long as my son is being tended to while I'm busy. Among all the servants that I currently have, here you are."

     Gwenith's eyebrows skyrocketed. "Are you suggesting that I be a caretaker, sir?"

     "It's not like you're doing a good job with being a garbage lady as it is."

     "Sir, with all due respect, I have no experience with kids—"

     "Excellent, you're hired."

     And so, Gwenith's career as an alien babysitter began.

*~*~*

As far as she could recall, Gwenith's experience with children was shit. She often deemed the things she disliked as shit and this was one of them.

     Children carried audacity, the sort of audacity that vexed Gwenith just because. They were bold and boisterous, oblivious to what the dying world had to offer. She didn't even like children when she had been a child herself.

     When she arrived to her designated location, Ghinti provided her with a tour around his gorgeous living quarters. He and his family resided in a tower built upon glittering glass, something Gwenith would never have the privilege of owning.

     When the tour ended Ghinti handed Gwenith verbal instructions on how to perform her job. Before he could make his departure after supplying a list of tasks, he threw a sharp glare in her direction, his eyes shifting from a golden amber to an eerie red. She stiffened, an electric shock coursing down her spine.

     "If I find that you've done something wrong or my son is not satisfied with your work, you will cease to exist. I can easily dispose of you. You are human, I can and will replace you, even if it only adds to my already busy schedule." His lips pressed together in a line. "Understand?"

     "Yessir." Gwenith tried to mask on a straight face, despite the jittery nerves swirling in her stomach. Silence hovered over them like a storm cloud.

     Then, Ghinti left, leaving her alone with his youngest son.

     Sinjin hadn't uttered a word to Gwenith since her arrival. He wore a sullen face similar to his father's and tended to his own business, which meant occupying himself with games and coloring books.

     She didn't know what to do. He seemed capable of taking care of himself just fine.

     "You do your thing and I'll do mine. I'll remind you when it's time to eat," she said lamely, before taking the time to explore the tower more.

     After several hours of testing and savoring luxuries she could never afford with her low-waged income, Gwenith glided inside of the kitchen with a hoverboard she had acquired in the game room. Might as well borrow it while she was here, she would never get a chance to outside of the tower.

     She called Sinjin over while preparing his slug smoothie and cockroach salad. Sinjin flopped in his chair after flying in, his wings folding together. With a fork, he probed at a dead cockroach sandwiched in between layers of lettuce.

     "They're heated, right?" he asked, the first words he had spoken to Gwenith. He glanced over at her with a skeptic eye.

     "Yeah."

     That was the only conversation they shared.

*~*~*

According to Ghinti, Gwenith did a decent job taking care of Sinjin. Decent equaled adequate. She was eligible enough to continue watching over Sinjin on a weekly basis.

     Three months have passed since she was granted the title of an alien babysitter. By now, Gwenith was familiarized with her surroundings. Every weekend she would enter the tower, check on Sinjin on occasions, and do her own thing.

     Sinjin was still as mute as ever, never bothering to engage in conversations unless necessary. He was different from any other kid Gwenith knew. He never bothered her, let alone acknowledged her existence.

     Whatever, Gwenith didn't get paid to socialize with him.

     One day, on a rainy Saturday afternoon, Gwenith was aggressively watering a bed of geraniums and chrysanthemums in the front yard. The hose blasted away with maximum capacity. She was watering flowers in the middle of a storm, which was, to say the least, absurd, but she needed to fume outside of the tower. She needed an outlet for her rage.

     Gwenith had woken up to a stabbing pain in her neck after sleeping in a crooked position, missed breakfast, crashed into a flying lemur, gotten cussed out by the alien owner of said lemur, tripped over air, fell into a ditch (nearby construction workers had to lend out helping hands), and encountered a speeding space ship while crossing gravity-defying roads (which she was almost killed by).

     Right now, as the rain pelted her with an icy downpour and the hose slithered in her hands like a snake struggling to make its escape, she felt like shit.

     "What are you doing?" Sinjin's voice echoed behind her.

     Gwenith turned around. This was the first time he initiated a conversation with her. "Watering the flowers."

     He crossed his arms. "In the rain?"

     "Yeah."

     A pause. "Your hair looks weird."

     Gwenith's mangled mane was poofed up with heightened curls and insane frizz. "It does this when it's wet." An itch twitched her nose. With a dramatic heave, she let out a sneeze that rocked her back on her feet.

     "You humans are weird," Sinjin remarked. "You do things that you know will affect your health."

     If Gwenith wasn't burning with fury she would've dismissed his comment. She threw her hands up. "I'm sorry that my species is weird and yours is the definition of perfection."

     "Isn't that the way that it's supposed to be?" Sinjin asked, pure curiosity lacing the question, like he truly didn't comprehend.

     "No. And if you can't understand why, then you never will." With that, Gwenith stormed past him, her shoulder smacking his, and retreated back inside of the tower.

     A trail of puddles were left behind in her wake. Shivers racked her body. Goosebumps scattered across her skin. She was drenched to the bone and in desperate search for towels.

     After drying herself off in the bathroom, she lingered in front of the mirror, studying her disheveled state. Bags underlined her eyes, accompanying the fatigue that weighed in her facial features. She stalled the time by trying to tame the insane hairdo the rainwater gave her (only to fail since aliens don't own flat irons and blow dryers). She had snapped at Sinjin without thinking. She would be fired for sure. Either that, or 'cease to exist,' as Ghinti quoted.

     When she finally came out, Sinjin didn't speak to her.

*~*~*

Sinjin didn't rat her out.

     "You're not mad at me?" Gwenith inquired the next day.

     "No," was all he responded with. He switched his attention back to the coloring book sprawled out before him. A disarray of crayons and markers crowded his work station.

     Instead of leaving him be like she used to, Gwenith sat beside him. He didn't scoot away.

     She picked up a yellow crayon. "Can I join you?"

     "You're not a kid."

     "I don't have to be a kid to color. Is that a no?"

     Sinjin shrugged. "I don't care."

     Gwenith took that as a yes.

     She colored with Sinjin the entire day, tossing him compliments over his impeccable coloring skills every now and then. In return, he critiqued her on her sloppy techniques, emphasizing that she should stop coloring outside of the lines.

     She would color outside of the lines anyway.