Chapter 4
Ani
The pain radiating from my ribs jolts me awake.
I don’t understand my surroundings and I definitely do not understand what the hell I am looking at in front of me, but I know it’s not normal.
I shut my eyes tight and scream as loud as my throat will let me, before taking a ragged breath and darting my eyes around again.
I’m in what looks like a slender glass pod with a soft red lining, held firmly in place. I try to claw at straps, but there aren’t any. What the fuck? I start to panic and flail my arms around before I notice the grayish, blob-like creatures peering at me from another room.
This is not real, I say in my head over and over again, even though the sharp throbbing in my side is an indication that it is every bit as real as the pain.
My scream is cut short by something painful in my throat. The pain is gone as soon as it starts and I realize that I can understand the language of the weird, disgusting gray blobs on the other side of my glass prison.
The figure in the middle moans. “Delicious.”
My stomach heaves and I barely keep myself from screaming again, suddenly even more frantic to try to figure out where I am.
I discover I can move my neck so I take in my surroundings properly this time. The room is brightly lit and not very big, and there are other similar looking pods in the room too, with what look to me like other women suspended much in the same way I am.
As much as I want to believe I went on a drug trip and somehow signed up for a sci-fi horror film, this is definitely not a set. No green screen or weird prop in place for the alien. This is fucking real.
I begin to sob and struggle again, energized by my added awareness of the situation.
The only other woman I can see not encased in one of the glass pods tries to placate me; grubby hands petting my shoulder, unfamiliar words whispered in my ears.
My sobs are clearly not going to do us many favors in this situation, but I can’t stop and I attempt to shove her away, irritated to be touched as my mind races.
“It’s just such a shame to be this close and not be able to pop down to the planet. I hear the resort on the island has any sort of low-tech distraction you could ever...” The thing to the left begins to make some more whiny comments as the middle one audibly smacks his filthy lips.
The disgusting alien never gets to finish his sentence.
A tone—what must pass for their alarm system—shrills loudly, accompanied by an undulating light rhythmically pulsing from previously unnoticed light fixtures set into the wall, and our captors jump, flesh wriggling, clearly startled, then immediately move in separate directions.
Two of them hurriedly head away from us and my eyes dart around the glass prison, looking for a way out.
My heart is thumping painfully inside my chest and I am sure everyone can hear it.
The ship shivers, somehow dislodging me from whatever stasis field I had been held in. I collapse to the floor—a mewling flesh bag of pain—with a heavy thud and a yelp of pain. It must be the reason why the last of the disgusting blobs turns to look.
“She will die if you don’t get her back in,” he gurgles loudly, gesturing toward the other woman and I don’t understand what he means until the woman tries to reach for me again.
I slap her hand off me and continue shrieking, the tears hot in my eyes from pain and fear.
“I’ll leave her to die!” he screams to the woman through pink, slime-flecked jowls and I realize he is referring to me.
I am the person being left to die.
The lights flicker once more and the metal of the ship groans loudly as something hits it again and I start to realize that I may be in far more trouble than I had initially assumed. I can hear what sounds like large objects ramming into something.
I want to open my mouth to ask the woman if this is hell and if she is real but before I have the time to react, the woman gets on her feet and whacks me across the face so hard that my ears start ringing.
She yells at me. “Get up!”
Fire is blazing in her alien, fully light-blue eyes, almost louder than the alarms blaring around us.
I acquiesce, my hands wrapped around my sides as I struggle to raise myself from the ground.
I want to ask her all of the questions muddled in my brain but she wordlessly pushes me backward so that I land in the small chamber that I had initially fallen out of before it closes with a soft thud, leaving me in shock.
My eyes widen with fear, my balled up fists banging at the clear glass in front of me.
Fuck! She only put me right back where I started.
The woman walks up to the glass and gently places her palm against it and suddenly I cannot move once more.
My heart skips a beat, painfully, and in the panic I cling to my strongest mask.
“You fucking…” the Bitch roars, my throat burning and tight, panic strangling out any possibility of further words.
She doesn’t even look at me. Instead, she turns to face our captors and they say something to her. I’m too panicked to understand, the rage trying to rise in me to displace it, but even the Bitch isn’t strong enough to help me.
My chest tightens, vision blurring as a panic attack threatens.
My arms start feeling like lead and the other woman’s bright blue-purple hair is the last thing I see before everything turns dark around me.