2 Penny
When I woke, I almost thought I’d lost my sight. It took a minute for my eyes to focus and by then I realized I hadn’t gone blind. The room was just sickeningly white.
I was in a small, square cell with slick walls. The entire ceiling was some kind of light, and it immediately gave me a headache. I rolled over on a hard floor and gasped with surprise when I realized I wasn’t alone.
A couple blinks and I recognized I’d just been startled by my own reflection.
Which was still completely naked and almost unrecognizable.
“Shit,” I hissed, covering myself with my hands and sliding into the farthest corner to get my bearings.
Cold, naked, confused, and helpless. I had never felt quite like that in my life. There weren’t even any seams in the walls to tell me there was a door to leave through. There was no cot to sleep on. Nothing. For all I knew, I was going to starve or suffocate in that box.
Then I heard a little whirring mechanism somewhere in the room and in the corner of my eye, I noticed a slit open in the wall. Through it came a silver tray with a few items vaguely resembling food stacked on top of it. When the slit closed, I crawled over to the tray to sort through my options.
My stomach hurt, it was so empty. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been unconscious or if I’d eaten anything in that time, but it felt like I’d been starving for ages and I was beyond dehydrated.
I found a densely packed bar of something brown that smelled vaguely like jerky or bacon grease. There was a plastic pouch like an IV bag full of clear liquid, too. Lastly, there was a bag of little green squares that I really wanted to be gummies, but who was I kidding?
I tore open the pouch first and gave it a taste. When I realized it was just water, I started to gulp down the whole thing. Then I took a nibble of the dense bar to find that it tasted exactly how it smelled. It was like a packed brick of lard and dried meat without seasoning.
It tasted like shit, but I was so hungry, I didn’t care. I knew I needed the protein and the calories. Finally, I tasted the little green squares and was pleasantly surprised to find that they were somewhat sweet and refreshing, making the meat bar a little more tolerable.
Once I finished as much food as I could stomach and the whole pouch of water, I scooted back into my corner again, waiting. It felt like hours had passed, but I had no way of telling time. The silence and the bright walls were going to drive me crazy.
“Fuck it,” I muttered to myself, standing.
I didn’t care that I was naked at that point.
I started pacing my cell just to stretch my legs and investigate the environment a little more.
I ran my hands along the walls searching for weaknesses.
Seams. Holes. Anything that would indicate that it opened up.
Then I studied the mirror. I wasn’t an idiot.
I knew that someone or something was watching me.
There was no other reason for a mirror in a cell like mine. Someone was on the other side of it.
My reflection looked thinner than I remembered.
My olive skin was paler, too, which was a result of working on the Nexus with no sunlight to penetrate all their windows, which were just live feeds of the outside anyways.
I used to have color in my skin. I was outdoorsy.
Adventurous. I had one small tattoo on my hip of a cross.
I wasn’t religious, but one of the old women that cared for me as a child was. I got it for her when she died.
The only other thing on my body that set me apart were the scars a few inches under my right breast. One where the bullet went in… another where they cut me open to save my life. A second entry scar sat lower on my abdomen, but that one went straight through… mostly.
I lightly ran my fingers over the raised flesh.
It seemed like a lifetime ago that I was living my life on Earth.
Now, hell if I knew where I was or how long I’d been gone.
I had dark circles under my eyes and the brown hue of my eyes themselves looked so dull.
Almost foggy. My hair was nearly the same shade of brown.
It was hanging down just far enough to cover my breasts, but I’d never had the thickest hair in the world.
It wasn’t doing as much as I would have liked.
Any bruising had turned yellow and faded, which meant it had been a little time since the freighter attack.
There were some scabs on my shins. A gash near my hairline that should have had stitches, but instead, it seemed to have been closed by some sort of clear glue.
When I touched it, it was smooth and a little numb.
Aggravated that I was being forced to stare at myself, I approached the mirror. I pressed my hands to the slick surface and peered into it, trying to see through the impenetrable reflection, but I got nothing.
“Hello?” I said. “Let me out of here.”
Stupid, I thought, shaking my head.
Of course they weren’t going to let me out.
Eventually, I found a way to vaguely tell time. If I had my Buddy, it would be easier, but I’d been stripped of everything, including that little portable aid.
Six meals. I counted six meals, all of them spaced out by hours. How many hours, I couldn’t tell. I was going crazy in that box. Once a day, a small hole would appear on the opposite side of the room and without anywhere else to deposit bodily waste, I used it as a toilet.
I hated it. It was humiliating, despite the deceiving solitude. It was dirty. I had nothing to clean up with.
The idea that I would never get out hadn’t escaped my thoughts.
Maybe it was some sick social experiment to see how long it would take for me to lose my mind without the ability to tell time or manage my hygiene.
Or maybe some alien race was out there staring back like it was some kind of zoo. Maybe I was in quarantine.
I eventually had my fingers buried in my hair and curled up in the corner trying to shield my eyes from the light that never went out. I heard the little slit in the door open and I heard the tray slide through, but I didn’t care. I was losing my appetite, especially for the bland meat bars.
When I didn’t touch the food, they seemed to notice, whoever they were.
Finally, a sound other than my food being deposited got my attention.
A mechanical whir echoed through the cell and the ceiling seemed to shift until it wasn’t a light but a big, glowing grate.
I stared up at it, feeling defeated, when water suddenly spilled down on me like cold rain.
I screamed, pressing myself to the wall. Not that it did any good.
I knew how to steady my breathing, slow my pulse, keep my voice level when everything around me was falling apart. But the scenarios I’d prepared for were Earthbound.
I knew I wasn’t on Earth anymore. I wasn’t even close.
So, when the water came on, my whole body locked tight with fear. Every muscle went rigid, every thought sharpened into something brittle and dangerous. Madness brushed at the edges of my mind and I hated how easily it found a foothold.
Soaked and shivering, I pressed my head to the wall and took deep, calming breaths, trying to get my rapid heartbeat under control.
One. Two. Three.
I counted them slowly, letting myself feel every ounce of air that passed through me.
Four. Five. Six.
The water was filling the room and an irrational voice in my head started to say they were trying to drown me. But why would they do that after going through the trouble of feeding me and keeping me alive?
Once I was finally able to get myself under control, I could start analyzing the situation.
The water smelled sterile. Not as if it was filled with chemicals, but it did have a scent to it like it wasn’t just water.
It was cleansing. I was embarrassed to see that the water coming off my body wasn’t clear.
But that meant it was bathing me. I quickly took the opportunity to start scrubbing myself with my hands.
I cleaned every inch of my body as fast as I could and then started combing my fingers through my hair when the water shut off.
It was better than nothing.
I watched as tiny seams at the bottoms of the walls opened up just enough to suck the water from the floor and out of the cell, leaving it mostly dry once more.
I was still soaked and now the air was chilly on my skin.
I hugged myself and started to shiver, but then the big mirror suddenly split down the middle and parted before me.
I backed up against the wall in anticipation of whatever might come through that door.
When a tall, lanky bipedal figure stepped into the small cell with me, my eyes rounded with shock.
It was human-like only in that it had four limbs, but its face was long and slim.
Too slim. Its arms and neck were equally lanky and thin.
It had eyes too large for its head and a scalp full of sharp, bony spikes.
I wanted to scream, but my throat was dry. Instead, I just stared, dumbfounded and hoping I’d finally just wake up in a hospital bed to people crying because I finally came out of my coma.
That didn’t happen.
The alien strode toward me, speaking words in short syllables and throaty sounds. I couldn’t understand a damn thing.
He… it… tossed something at me. A pile of fabric. It was rags, really, but anything I could put on my body was more than I had. I would have put on a potato sack at that point.
What I got was a loose, sleeveless, white dress to pull over myself.
The sensation of being covered calmed me more than I thought it would.
I immediately felt more at ease, despite the material being thin.
It reached just past my knees, and the neckline plunged a little low, but it was better than having my tits out.
My hair instantly dampened the fabric down my back, but I didn’t care.
Once I was situated, my captor said a few other aggressive things in his weird tone and grabbed my arm.
I tried to tug out of his grip before he slapped a pair of cuffs on me.
They were quick, like snap-on bracelets.
They locked in place, one on each wrist. I wondered what the hell my new jewelry was good for, but then the insides lit up blue and my wrists were pulled together like magnets.
They were stuck like that, uncomfortably tight and awkward as the alien tugged me out of the cell.
It was then that I realized just how weak I’d become in that little box on a very limited diet.
My legs felt wobbly and my eyes had trouble adjusting to the new light.
The hall we were walking down was dimly lit and narrow and along it were other cells.
Other windows into white boxes, all lit differently.
Each one held something different. Creatures of all shapes and sizes occupied the spaces.
Some didn’t even look like intelligent beings but more like ferocious animals, pacing like dogs in cages.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked, feeling that demon of anxiety clawing its way through my calm again.
My captor spoke, but of course I couldn’t understand.
He kept dragging me down the hall until we reached another room where two other figures, seemingly of the same species, stood waiting.
There was a silver table in the middle that looked like something medical and immediately I felt my spine stiffen up.
I tried to pull away, knowing very well that I was in no condition to fight off any of the three larger creatures in the room.
They exchanged words with each other before the guard who’d retrieved me practically threw me on the table.
I struggled as hard as my fatigued body could as he and another spike-headed alien held me down.
The third hovered over me with some sort of metal disk that scanned my neck with a visible blue laser.
“What are you doing? Get off me.”
The third alien left and returned once more with another silver device. It was small but curved just enough to fit against the front of my neck. As soon as it touched my skin, it expanded into a full-on collar that spanned the entire circumference of my throat.
“What the fuck!” I shouted.
Hands started to poke and prod at every inch of me. My legs. My stomach. My breasts. I was scanned again with another little device from my head to my toes, and all the while I was screaming for them to stop.
Finally, the skinny guards pulled me off the table and I was forcefully led once more into another room.
That time, it was lined with what looked like white pods.
I didn’t have time to truly take it all in before I was shoved into one of them.
It was barely large enough for me to extend my arms to either side.
I spun to face the guard, hands balled into frustrated fists, when he tossed something thin and metallic on the floor at my feet.
I had only a moment to look down and realize it was a knife, crude and dull by the looks of it.
I glanced back up at the guard for a split second before I bent to grab it.
Fuck it.
I picked it up with my cuffed hands and lunged only for the front of the pod to slide closed between us. I hit the barrier and screamed in anger.
He smiled. Or at least, it was something akin to a smile. His thin lips curled up, showing rows of teeth far too big for his small head. Then the magnets on my wrists disengaged and my hands fell to my sides. The cuffs remained, however, ready to snap back together at any second.
I took the tip of the knife and started prying at them, testing their durability. When they didn’t budge, I started on my collar, studying it with my fingers. The moment I tugged on it, a small jolt of electricity shocked my hands, warning me away.
I was a goddamn prisoner.
When the pod started to move, I braced myself, my heart beating out of my chest at the idea of what I might face when the door opened again.
Moments later, it did and light flooded my vision.
I shielded my eyes, hesitant to move until I could focus.
When I finally could make out my surroundings, I saw dirt ahead of me.
Dirt, rocks, and strange, black trees that made a thick, menacing forest ahead.
The sky was orange as if it was late in the afternoon, but I couldn’t see any sun.
There was a gentle breeze that blew the dust about and at first glance, I could have mistaken the place as Earth.
But I wasn’t in that much shock. I knew very well that wasn’t where I was and I knew even better that no one was coming to save me.