Chapter 4
There was something tickling my nose.
I sneezed, and my entire body twinged with pain.
I groaned. My abdomen hurt. My ribs hurt.
My shoulder hurt. There were so many small sharp daggers of pain I didn’t want to move.
I was on my side, curled up in a ball. I slowly extended my awareness out as I lifted my head, carefully opening my eyes as my crusty eyelashes peeled away from each other.
I was in a box.
What was up with these freaking reptaliens and confinement torture? First a pod and now a box. What happened to a good old fashioned cell with bars on it?
There was a straw underneath me. Two small tubes along one wall jutted into the small space. The ceiling was too short to sit up, nor could I stretch out to my full length.
Nope. This was a whole lotta nope.
I put my hands under me, trying to move my hips over so that I would be on my hands and knees, but pain wrapped around me as I tried to shift off the ground.
Right. I had been beaten.
I had been beaten badly.
So much of me hurt that I didn’t know how to start evaluating my condition other than it was bad, really bad.
I’d definitely been kicked in the head at least once.
It felt like there were several layers of scratchy wool wrapped around my brain, digging into cuts.
There weren’t any obvious breaks in my arms and legs, but I was covered in scabbed over lacerations like I had been dragged across the metal floor.
Breathing felt like shards of glass were gouging me.
I had to have broken ribs.
I definitely had internal bleeding.
I didn’t know the likelihood that I would survive without medical care, but the throbbing in my skull overwhelmed that thought.
I was royally fucked.
I slowly laid my head back down on the straw, the walls of the box swimming in front of my eyes as if I were drunk. I was not in any condition to try to get out of this box yet. A heavy weight settled over me, exhaustion mixed with fear and depression.
There was another thing wrong.
I was clammy, my body covered in a cold sweat. I shivered. Nausea washed over me in a wave, and I swallowed as saliva filled my mouth.
I was sick.
Maybe one of my cuts had gotten infected?
There wasn't anything I could do about it. I was in a crate, put there by aliens that had just beaten me to the point that trying to punch my way out like a superhero trapped in a coffin was not even close to an option.
I couldn't move. I couldn't get out.
Perhaps it was time to just rest.
I closed my eyes.
I opened my eyes again and dry heaved.
When the retching stopped, I took a shaking breath.
Had I just closed my eyes?
I didn't know. There was a dim light in the crate, and I looked around. Nothing had changed except directly under my hips was damp. I touched it, brought my hand back to my nose, and sniffed it.
I'd pissed myself.
I was in worse condition than I realized.
I shifted as much as I could through the agony, moving my hips off of the wet patch and onto a dryer spot.
I turned and inspected the small tubes hanging out from the wall.
They wouldn't have put me in a crate with a straw if they wanted me to just die.
Except maybe they did. Maybe the straw was there to help absorb the grossness of a decomposing body.
That didn't make any sense.
I focused in on the source of the dim light that allowed me to see. It was a small strip of light embedded into the top of the crate. They wouldn’t have bothered putting in a small light so that I could see around me if they were planning on just letting me die.
There was food and water in the tubes, a fact I found out by poking them with a finger. As soon as I began fondling them they began dripping their respective substances, water and what tasted like vitamin paste. When I stopped touching them they stopped.
They were treating me like a hamster.
I shifted enough to lift my head and wrap around my lips around one of the tubes. Cold water filled my mouth as I sucked, and I swallowed greedily, taking several gulps before the pounding ache in my head made me lower my face back down to the floor and close my eyes.
I don't know how many times I did that.
I was stuck in a cycle from hell.
The small light would turn on, and I would wake up, drink water, move a little bit, and lie back down. The light would turn off again, and I would fall back to sleep. When hunger overpowered my nausea, I would force down a mouthful of tasteless paste from the other tube.
The gruel weighed down my insides like cement, and filled my belly with sharp, painful gas, which only added to the pure misery of my solitary confinement.
I wanted to fight.
I wanted to kick and scream and bash at the walls of the crate, but moving even to get the sustenance I needed was too much.
It seemed like I was trapped in there forever, an endless haze of suffering.
I faded in and out of awakeness, lost in an endless stream of time.
Then something changed.
There was singing.
It drifted in the edges of my consciousness like a dream, teasing me back into awareness. The first thing I realized was that I was still alive, because I was still in pain. It was less pain, and that in itself was a huge relief.
I passed out again.
I awoke to a bright light engulfing my vision. My face was pressed against a soft, white towel. I blinked my eyes, my brain stuttering into gear as I absorbed the sight of the environment around me.
I was on top of a table, lying on my side.
I didn’t move, I just examined the room around me.
A flat panel was mounted on a wheeled table next to mine.
It was angled away from me, but I could still make out a display screen with a moving line and what looked like a bar chart.
The text on the screen was completely unfamiliar to me.
Wires dripped from the side of the screen.
As I followed them with my eyes, I realized they were attached to me.
Rage washed over me.
More alien bullshit.
I took a deep breath. Inhaling in the air, expanding down into the depths of my belly, my lower ribs, expanding, my back ribs filling out with oxygen as eventually my shoulders lifted, and my chest pushed out as far as I could.
I needed to center, to calm down, to check in with myself and make sure I was ready to launch forward with whatever I needed to do to escape these freaky fuckers.
I was out of the box.
It was the deepest breath I'd taken in such a long time.
And it didn't hurt.
I wasn't in any pain.
Nothing hurt.
In fact, something felt very good.
Something soft and warm and damp slid along my back, behind me where I couldn’t see without lifting my head.
My skin pebbled at the sensation, radiating a gentle pleasure of being caressed.
It was the first pleasant thing I'd felt in a while.
I didn't move. I just lay there as the touch lifted up and then sat down again on my shoulder, running gently over my shoulder, blade, and down the side of my ribs.
It continued over the curve of my hip, cupping carefully over the side of my glute before continuing down my leg.
Was someone washing me?
I lay there, enjoying that sensation of the stroking.
Whoever it was was behind me and out of sight.
I lay there, and a sense of relief washed over me with an undeniable sense of utter gratitude, juxtaposed against the rage. Whoever was there was touching me with a gentleness that I hadn’t felt from any of the reptaliens.
Someone has saved me.
Someone was taking care of me.
Tears began to slip down from my eyes.
Whatever was going on, this wasn't the rough and brutal handling of the reptaliens that had scooped me up off the beach.
This was something different. I didn't know how different yet, but as the gentle cleaning continued drifting down over my knee, around the back and down my calf, the emotions that I had bundled up inside of me since I was ripped from the only world I knew finally rose to the surface.
A sob escaped my lips before I could stop it.
The gentle stroking of the washcloth stopped.
I heard the sound of something shifting, and then I heard a very soft padding sound. I could feel the heat of the body from the person behind me as they stood and walked around to my front.
I lifted my head to look at them.
It was the male from the video screen.
He was so close to me.
I could see the tight lines of his muscles, accented by the form-fitting black trousers and tight tank top.
Calling it a tank top was a stretch, as I didn't know how else to describe it.
The fabric went up over his shoulders and down the sides of his pecs and abdomen.
His washboard stomach was on display. Heat clenched deep between my legs at the sight, catching me off guard.
His outfit clung to him like a second skin on a professional athlete and he towered over me, absolutely massive in size in comparison to me.
He made me feel positively petite.
My eyeline was level with his belt. He had a hip pouch off to one side that looked like it was made out of leather.
A braid hung off of the front of his belt.
It looked like it was made out of the same mane that cascaded down his back.
Underneath it swung a braided cord that was of similar links to paracord.
He had a tail, which I hadn't seen in the video at all, curled up so it didn't touch the ground, covered in the same luscious fur.
I wanted to touch it.
I pushed myself up to sitting as he rounded the table I was on, sparing another thought of gratitude to the fact that I could sit up.
I was lucky to be alive.
In the last period of time where all that existed was the hazy pain from my injuries, I knew that what I had suffered was severe enough to kill me.
I didn't know how much longer I would've held on.