Stolen

Chapter 1- Disgust at First Sight

Eve

It's been thirteen 'days,' I think. Wherever I am doesn't use a 24 hours cycle, but a 26-hour cycle. At first, I tried to use my knife to mark a wall in my cell to help me keep track. That didn't work. These walls, whatever they are made of, can't be scratched by anything that I have. I've never even seen this material before, the dullness of it almost absorbing the lights from outside my cell.

I'm on an alien ship, and that is all that I know, though in the beginning I was convinced that I had been kidnapped by drug lords and was hallucinating from whatever drugs they gave me. 

Hearing one of them come close, I sit there and stare, no longer feeling the need to shrink away in fear. The alien's eyes flick over me quickly, not caring about me.

Seeing the way they look at me as if I am an animal to them, makes me want to gut them with my fingernails. They must see me as nothing better than the animals across from me, some from Earth, some not. It makes sense, why they ignored the fits of anger and the screaming when I first woke up. I was just as loud as the chimps across from me.

At least I don't have to share a cell with any of the real animals. I run my gross hands through my dirty hair. I probably sound just like the aliens who abducted me when I think like that.

Banging against the walls, screaming for help, crying for their death, none of it helped. All it did was cause exhaustion, which when in a situation where I am getting a fraction of the food I need, that exhaustion will kill me. So I stopped. Hate had coursed through me when I realized that I had to change tactics, and had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't giving up, just doing what I needed to survive.

Using my brain as my strength falters, when my voice carries no weight, is the only thing that makes sense.

My anger won't keep me alive. My rage won't save me, and neither will my fear. Those are primitive emotions, and I am in a situation where I need to stay calm and be smart.

I think given the potential for anything to happen, I shouldn't complain as being seen as an animal amongst these other animals. I scoff, as I start to bite my fingernail and then stop when I notice how dirty they are, as the dried dirt crusts within the folds of the knuckles on my skin, dried blood still staining them pink. I look to the light grey wall beside me; blood smeared across it from when I had tried to claw my way out like a caged rat.

My hair is caked in mud from crawling around on my stomach in the jungles of Brazil when I was caught, but I can't look that primitive...right? I tried to wash as much dirt off of myself as I could, but I only get two bowls of water a day, and I can't be stupid with my water usage.

A positive of them seeing me like an animal is that they don't even realize that when they stole me, I had my computer in my bag. This is good. This could save me because I have my linguistics software on here.

In the beginning, I would scream at them and throw things against my cell, and they would yell at me. I assume they were telling me to shut up. This is good because my interpretation software can incorporate that into this language as well.

Listening to new languages rarely heard, and translating them to English was part of my job before I was taken. Each word I hear repeated, I try to find the context and enter it into my linguistics software.

I've concluded that they must speak some standard or universal language. There are several alien species that I've seen, and they all have different accents when they talk amongst themselves. I might not be able to understand them yet, but I can hear the differences in how they speak. The almost translucent alien that I see in the mornings, with its blue and grey eyes speaks with a soft hiss as if it needs to force the sounds out.