Extended Prologue
Black flutters over warm light, separating my conscious mind from what exists around me. Confusion trickles in. It stirs the ache in my muscles, and the angst of having heavy eyelids threatens me with an unsettling spike of my heart rate, my fingers twitching a nervous dance over something slick.
Open… Come on, open.
With a deep breath, I get my eyes open and blink against the dense light raining dust. It’s hot. The penetrating heat is weighing on my spinning head, causing my neck to struggle to peel my sweaty face away from the firm fabric I’m lying on top of.
Straining to lift my head, my hair separates from my scalp, amplifying the tingle from being on the side of my head for too long. It radiates like an itch, blooming wider the farther I get my head up, pulsing and drilling, making the carousel of my mind run too fast.
I blink. And blink. And blink. Breathing heavier. Faster. Needing my sight. As it clears, I start taking in the sweaty bodies surrounding the living room we’re in. The torrid air sinks into me, exerting so much pressure it squeezes, slipping acid up the back of my tongue.
They’re all unconscious or stirring, lying in various positions in pairs on the stained carpet, like we had too much to drink and passed out wherever we were standing.
Except—I don’t know them.
I don’t know me.
I don’t know where I am.
Even the sensations at my fingertips feel so foreign, as if I’m taking my first congested breaths that run pain in tandem with puzzlement.
Barren inhales strip my nasal passage, my heart thumping harder and harder the more my mind spins to piece the puzzle together.
Think…
The twitch beneath me jerks my stinging eyes down, my stiff neck slowly rotating to face… the face.
A knot purges itself up my throat, manifesting immediate tears to slip down my cheeks.
I don’t know him either.
His hand tightening on my back kicks in my flight reflex, innately anchoring into his damp arms to push my weight up and flee.
It feels like large bubbles are passing through my heart, and the more I stay right here, lying on a stranger, the more my bones vibrate underneath my skin.
I shake, unable to blink as he flutters his dark eyes open, my knees working on their own accord around his hips to make a run for it.
A hoarse groan rumbles his chest against mine and his palm smooths up my back, but once his lashes stop batting and he focuses on my frozen face, his coarse brows are furrowing, and he pauses his adventurous touch.
Silence hangs like lead between us, our breaths catalyzing in a mutual attempt to figure each other out.
He’s electric. But him being beautifully designed with sharp contrast doesn’t fill the pit of being violently sick right now.
Finally gaining the courage, I get my knees to the floor on either side of his hips and push up off his arms, doing a quick scan over the groans and adjusting eyes from the others, before breaking his hands away from me and getting to my feet.
The box TV in the corner crackles, snapping my watery focus to the static rippling up and down the screen. I can’t place the quiet music coming from it. It’s poppy and upbeat, as if this is a happy place to be.
The old wood paneling says otherwise. So does the lack of furniture and the chipped blinds—and the panic radiating off every single lunging body that’s drenched in sweat from the nonexistent AC.
“What the fuck?!”
The gruff, masculine shout jars me into a jump, my disoriented state causing me to stumble over the man I woke up on.
He’s still keeping an eye on me from an upright position, as if I’m more troublesome than the two other men already bickering.
There’s not enough air. Them hollering and beating on doors and windows is taking up the reserved oxygen in this small mobile home, and the four other women whimpering and shouting and banging on the same locked knobs and painted glass is rushing a dreadful spin through my cracking head.
“What sick fucking shit is this?!” the woman with waist-length, black hair spits, her teeth baring and her fists beating into the wall.
An alarm blares from the TV, the suspenseful tone constricting my lungs and sending my back to the opposite wall from everyone else. Then, static shaking through high-pitched feedback pierces my ears, turning everyone’s edged attention to the orange font rippling on the little screen.
“Calm down and everyone will be fine,” an aged voice filters from the static. “Let me explain.”