The lack of jacket was probably the reason I wound up deathly ill a few days later. I walked for miles that day, in forty-degree weather. I was so emotionally numb I never felt the chill in the air. I thought a lot, mostly about my sister and mother in the house comforting each other. But I also thought about my grandfather, who would have been here at the drop of a hat to help me and take care of me. My grandmother who, though a wonderful woman, would never be the hero my grandfather used to be. I thought of my dad who never cared, the other grandparents who had dropped me even though they thought I was their granddaughter. Thoughts of how crappy my life had been up until now had come to mind, and the nagging voices of my mom and sister kept chiming in, telling me to "lose weight", "change clothes" or "put on make-up". And in the far reaches of my thought I thought about Psitharis, and I wondered if my experiences had somehow tainted the world I loved so dearly, that used to be my refuge. By the time I got home I was frozen from head to foot.
And by the time Monday came I could feel the first symptoms of illness raging in my body. And on Tuesday I was down for the count, left at home on my own with a bottle of NyQuil and a variety of medications, such as acetaminophen and diphenhydramine. Too weak to get out of bed but too stuffed up to consider sleep, I spent hours in bed staring up at the ceiling, waiting for the blessed release of a medication-induced respite. Every now and then I would crawl out of bed to go to the bathroom, and after a while the ceiling got to be too boring for me so I chugged another dose of NyQuil straight out of the bottle and moved into the living room so I could watch television as I convalesced. As Extreme Couponers played on the television I could feel myself getting unusually drowsy, even after taking a dose of medicine. Trying to focus on the lady who just purchased 175 cat treats for forty-five cents, I counted back to my last dose and realized my fatal error. It had only been two hours since I took my last dose. I wondered if one could die of a NyQuil overdose just as I lost consciousness.
It was dark. All symptoms of illness had left me, which was unfortunate because the air had an unpleasant tinge to it, enough to turn my stomach. As I looked around I could see steam tunnels all around me, and the air was hot and musty. There were corridors everywhere I looked, and from somewhere unseen I could hear the sound of people working. It reeked of sweat and the oil of grinding gears. I could see the catwalk under my feet, small perforations forming a pattern in the metal; through the small holes in the floor I could see people, countless people, heads bent down over massive pieces of machinery. Beaten down men were hunched over massive wheels, turning them with handles that protruded from the wheel itself. That wheel turned a large series of gears that extended above it. Down the line women sat hunched over old fashioned sewing machines, sewing what seemed to be endless streams of colorless fabric together. Walking along the aisles of wheels and sewing machines were huge, menacing thugs, each holding a small staff that emanated a blue tinge of electricity from the tip. Some sort of cattle prod, I surmised in my head. The whole scene was a terrorizing steampunk vision.
One of the women got a thread tangled in the fabric, seizing up her machine. Frantically she pulled at the thread, pulled at the fabric, trying to free them without ripping the material. Her desperate moves didn't save her though. Out of nowhere one of the thugs brought one of the cattle prods down on the poor woman with all the force he could muster, not only electrocuting her but also forcing her to her knees from the force of the blow. Dazed, the poor woman tried to stand but couldn't. "Stand up and get back to work!" the thug yelled behind her as he shocked her again. Regrettably that stirred the short-fused, thoughtless part of me to react.
"Stop it, asshole!" I screamed before I thought. I clapped my hand over my mouth, common sense finally catching up with my mouth, but too late. The man looked up and spotted me. At first he looked angry, then something akin to recognition hit his tiny pea brain and his frown turned into a huge, black-toothed smile. He resembled that guy in the park who had knocked Roland unconscious. As a matter of fact all the thugs could have been twins, they all looked exactly alike as they all focused their gazes upon me. The thug started toward the stairway that would lead directly to me.
I took off like a shot. Luckily before I ran smack into the wall the catwalk took a sharp left turn. The entire structure was shaking from the weight of my pursuer lumbering up the steps, but I had a good fifty yards' head start. If the other slave drivers were joining him in pursuit I couldn't see them. I just kept running, turning this corner, jumping over railings to get to another catwalk that wasn't connected to mine. Suddenly I was a parkour master, bounding up and across obstacles as if it were second nature. I managed to find a flight of steps that led up, not down, and I bolted up the staircase. It was fortunate my illness was left behind in the normal world; otherwise I'd have already been collapsed on the top stair in exhaustion. But in this world I had plenty of energy, and my fight or flight response was pointed firmly in the "flight" position.
Several steam pockets made it possible for me to get lost in the guts of the building. Still, I did not stop until I was sure I left the lumbering oaf far behind me. Certain I had given him the slip, I stopped to get a rest. And of course that's when yet another hand reached out from a huge steam cloud and grabbed me. But this time the hand wasn't huge and sweaty. It was a thin, bony hand, with long fingernails and a decidedly vice-like grip. There seemed to be some sort of moist sponge or pad in his hand, which he held firmly against my wrist. The hand was soon joined out of the haze by the arm, followed by a long, black coat and a body that was little more than skin and bone. And his head was almost as absurd-looking as the rest of him. Long black hair was slicked back into a greasy ponytail. His malicious grin was yellow and the teeth resembled fangs more than they resembled teeth. I tried to fight him; he was so frail looking I should be able to get away from him easily. So why couldn't I get away from him? A cold wave of nausea began to grip me as he held me in place.
"You will find that brute force is no match for a healthy dose of Cryoventia." He smiled lecherously looking down at the sponge he held over my wrist. Whatever was in that thing was working, and working quickly. My body was getting cold. It seemed as if every muscle was shutting down. I couldn't fight him. The thing he had in his hand must have had one hell of a powerful drug in it, because I was losing the battle to remain conscious. "You'll do quite nicely here in the Workhouse...once you wake up." The last thing I saw before darkness took me was that sinister smile, and the fat thug catching up just in time to witness my defeat.
I woke up in a prison of sorts. I was groggy, and the effects of being drugged hit me quickly. I sat up on my knees and vomited, the nausea just too overpowering to fight against. Once I had finished and my stomach was empty, I was able to stand up and, very unsteadily, take my first looks around my prison. It was very dark. I was obviously still underground, because there were no windows, and I could still smell mold in the air. There were torches outside my prison door, and the door was all bars so the light filtered in quite well. There was a bed in the far corner, but I had obviously been tossed in my cell because I woke up on the floor. My head hurt intensely, and the discovery of a large lump on the back of my head seemed to back up the theory of being carelessly tossed in. I went to the side of the small room that wasn't well lit and tried to look around. It was total darkness, but I knew there weren't any people or animals lurking in the corner waiting to pounce. Dizzy, I sat on the bed and tried to forget the throbbing in my head. It seemed like hours before anyone came to check on me, though it might have been only a few minutes.
"Hello dearie." A frail woman's voice woke me from the semi-conscious state I had fallen into while sitting and awaiting my fate. "I am here to check on you and to make sure you are well enough to take your orders." She stared momentarily at the mess I had made in the middle of the floor. She cackled. "Cryoventia never sits easy on anyone's stomach." She was being nice. Her kind demeanor did nothing to calm my frayed nerves.
"Sorry about that." I responded.
She laughed. "Do you know how many times I have cleaned filth from the floors of this prison? I've had men twice your size and four times your weight flood the damn place before. This is nothing." She placed a tray on the bed beside me. "Eat. It will be the last good meal you get for a very long time if you wind up working downstairs." On the tray were items I could not name, along with standard park fare like a hot dog and a funnel cake coated in powdered sugar. I stuck with the things I could identify. The drink was something I had never seen either, but being thirsty to the point of dehydration I decided to take my chances. It was the best thing I had ever tasted, and every sip gave me renewed energy and reduced the pain in my head.
"My own invention." It was obvious she was proud of the elixir she had given me. "Gets the workers ready for the hard road they have before them."
"Hard road?" I asked. "But I used to come here all the time. Nobody works in Psitharis. It's supposed to be a happy world."
The old lady laughed again. "Then you haven't been in these parts in quite a while, have you dearie? The Workhouse has been here quite a while; ever since she arrived."
It didn't take much to figure out who "she" was. "You mean the queen, don't you?" The old lady nodded. "I'm sorry." I said before I could think. The truth was, this place, this suffering, it was my fault. If I hadn't been forced to abandon Psitharis, a world of my own making, none of this would have happened. There would be no work; there would be no suffering. There would be no fat oafs torturing little old ladies and there would be no prisons or Cryoventia. There would be no queen.
The old lady shrugged off my apology. "What do you have to be sorry for? You did none of this. This is the queen's world. We are merely her humble servants." You could hear the tinge of sarcasm in her voice. The old lady stepped out of the cell, locking the door behind her. When she came back she held a mop and something that looked similar to a bucket, only there was no water in the bucket, just something that looked an awful lot like sand. She poured the contents of the bucket out onto the contents on the floor before mopping the floor completely clean. All evidence of my sudden illness miraculously disappeared. She put the mop in her now empty bucket and sat them both by the door. "Yes, that's also my invention." She smiled. "Got tired of cleaning the messes, didn't I? Rest up. They'll be here to assign you momentarily." She took both bucket and mop out of the room and waved one last goodbye before making her way up the stairwell out of the dungeons.
