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She woke up woozy and nauseous. Also, in darkness, which was weird, because short of blackout drapes pinned to the wall, it was impossible to get her bedroom this dark, day or night. Too many city lights. For that matter, it was quiet, which was impossible to accomplish no matter what you did. She'd tried a lot of ear plugs. She'd bought three different white noise machines, which some of her geekier friends informed her were more properly called pink noise machines.
Quiet and dark. Woozy and nauseous. No recollection of drinking last night. This did not seem good. Not good at all.
And naked.
Bad.
Very, very bad.
How do you get from leaving the Chinese restaurant with a bag of takeout to naked, nauseous and in the dark? She couldn't even remember making it home, assuming she was prepared to call her third floor walkup efficiency home.
She felt around her, and found a wall, another wall, a third wall. Found the edge of the hard surface she was lying on. Swung her legs down to the floor so she was sitting up in the corner. Felt up above her, until she was fairly confident she wouldn't hit her head if she stood up.
She would hit her head if she stood up.
Swung her legs out and found a fourth wall. This wasn't a room. This was a box with a bench.
Further investigation revealed no seam, no switch, no handle, no nothing.
Well, at least it wasn't coffin shaped. That would be the stuff of nightmares, right?
A little voice in the back of her head was screaming that this definitely was the stuff of nightmares, but she shushed it as firmly as she had always shushed that little voice. She considered briefly Dr. Foster's assertion that she needed to learn to feel her feelings if she was ever going to have truly rewarding intimate relationships. Dr. Foster had surely not contemplated this environment.
This was a place for suppressing emotion and figuring out what to do next. Assuming she could be sure she wasn't going to throw up once she figured out what that might be.
Was there enough oxygen in here to support doing anything at all? Maybe she should just try to be as still as possible? After a few minutes of pure terror while she contemplated whether there was enough oxygen in this sealed non-casket, she told herself firmly, hey, it's a comfortable temperature, dark and quiet. I've been trained for a wide array of impossible situations and several of them included being taken captive and having no means of escape. Might as well catch up on my sleep, right? And lay back down on the not particularly comfortable bench. Within a few minutes, or hours, because in this kind of dark, how would you know? Other than by counting heartbeats, which she did, for a while. But within a few minutes, she was again asleep.
The second time she woke up, she was hungry and thirsty, but no longer woozy and nauseous. It was still dark. It was a lot harder to get to sleep that time even after she'd gone over every square inch of the not-a-casket. Twice. Her sleep was much more fitful.
The third time she woke up, she was hungry, thirsty and really needed to take a leak. It was still dark. It was really hard to get to sleep, and she dreamed about those tiny lines she could now feel on the walls and the floor, but which no amount of poking, prying, hitting, rubbing or even licking could get to widen.
The fourth time she woke up, she was hungry, thirsty, needed to take a leak, would have been able to take a dump, and was completely unable to get back to sleep. After about forty-five minutes of waiting (she got past 3000 heartbeats), it was no longer quite so dark, and shortly after that, a door opened. A very short door, on the other side of which were quite a lot of legs. Someone, or possibly something, made a lot of noise which might have been words, but might also have been a car crash. After a brief pause, the noise was repeated (to the extent she could differentiate between one car crash and another), louder. She scuttled out the door, straightened up and squinted at several people who were very much not human. Industrial Light and Magic was good, but not this good, since this was Real Life and the only time she'd seen anything like this involved expensive CGI and typically not realtime. Much less real life.
Five legs? Really? Were they at least radially symmetric? She didn't think so, but she wasn't quite tall enough to be sure. And three more legs or arms or tentacles. She was pretty sure they were not naked, in fact, they seemed to be fully suited up, like an alien space suit made of saran wrap that did not crinkle or cling.
One of them shoved her. She did her best to cooperate by moving in the direction she was pushed. They walked (well, she walked; they moved on four of the five legs. What was the other one for?) a few meters along a hallway. They opened a door in the hallway after stopping her in much the same way they'd gotten her to walk, and then shoved her through the doorway.
It took her several minutes to figure out she was in whatever passed for the facilities here. Then she was briefly extremely grateful, if somewhat surprised by what these folks used for hygiene instead of toilet paper. Not that she was particularly attached to toilet paper. But still. That was a lot more shocking than a bidet. After several minutes of waiting, the door opened again, more car crash noises summoning her out of the loo, and back along the hallway to her not-a-casket. But before they opened the door, a massive, hundred car pileup was vocalized between a couple of her guards. Then they continued down the corridor to a panel which, predictably, was these folks version of a vending machine. Further audio of gratuitous, Hollywood-style smashup later, they decided what to order for her, handed her some packages and prodded her back down the hallway to her not-coffin-shaped vault.
Fortunately, they left the lights up. Unfortunately, she couldn't read their language any better than she could understand it spoken, which left her with a dilemma. She was hungry (having found water in the facilities, that was no longer an urgent need). But she had no way of knowing what the hell was in these packages. Although for that matter, she wasn't entirely certain if she could open them. Then again, do you really ever know what you're getting at a fast food joint? Even if you go to all the effort involved in getting the ingredients list? After that pet food scandal, she wasn't sure you could trust anything out of a package.
A few minutes examination suggested a couple of things she could try to open up the largest package. The first two didn't work, in the exact way she never was able to get the peanuts packets open the first couple times on airplanes, either. The third one (she used her teeth) did. A puff of steam came out, along with a decent smell. She risked a tiny taste. All right, if you're a fan of steamed potato without, well, anything. Not even salt. Damn. She gave it a few minutes to see if she was going to have a weird reaction. When nothing obvious happened, she ate the rest of it, which was no better for having cooled off.
The second package she opened was spicy, salty and sweet. She figured that was probably the condiment for the first package. Ah, well. It was probably every bit as bad for you as every other fast food sauce known to humanity. Looks like some things were even more universal than she'd suspected.
Why weren't details like this ever included in science fiction novels?
The third package smelled quite horrible, so she put it aside. The fourth package was apparently water.
Basic needs taken care of, she sat back in her corner and contemplated her still lit cell. Because it really and truly was a cell. She had no idea how she'd gotten into it (well, before her little walk to the loo and the vending machine), but she was quite certain she wasn't in Kansas any more. So to speak.
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Copyright Rebecca Allen, 2012.
Created: July 9, 2012 Updated: July 10, 2012