Deep End

Chapter five

I didn't wake up. What happened instead felt more like falling asleep, only backwards. The world, a fog of dreams and emotions that have no correlation to the bizarre scenes dancing somewhere in my brain, and then slowly some coherence in little bursts.

Eventually, my eyes were open and I was staring into black nothingness.

"Eric?" I whispered.

My eyes were aching, I'm not sure why, and so was my hip. My hip. Wasn't that where some kind of bullet thing had snagged into my bulky Arminese-looking pants? What had it been, a tranquilizer? Eric had shot me. He'd shot me.

The fear and anger and confusion pulsed beneath my sternum, and I groped around in the darkness, half surprised to feel my arms move freely. I was on some kind of gently vibrating floor, like a car or something, but way emptier. My knuckles came into contact with a wall. It was covered with velvet, like I was on the inside of a glove compartment. The ceiling brushed my fingers when I lifted them again, and my foot bumped into a far wall. Again, my heart skipped a beat as reality gave me another slap. This one stung.

I had been kidnapped. Kidnapped. And I was now - I had no idea where, going - also, not a clue where I was going with only my creepy ex who had somehow made it into my house and my fingerprint-accessible room and kidnapped me.

My heart hummed in my throat. "Eric?!" This time. I said it loudly, my panic evident. "ERIC!"

Lights pulled into my face as some kind of door opened in front of me. I grabbed at my face, burying it into the ground.

"Your awake, gorgeous," said a voice. Not Eric's voice.

Slowly, I squinted up through a curtain of hair that had covered my face. A man who didn't look unlike Eric had put his head into the door, if it could be called that. More like a swinging window.

I shrank back. "What do you want?"

"Oh, we're having that talk now?"

I didn't answer.

"Wait, let me get the doctor. They'll see if you can come out yet."

I bared my teeth but didn't move until he had gone away. Then I stood on all fours and crawled to the window. And collapsed back onto the floor.

Vertigo rushed through me, turning my vision into of diamonds, stars, and flies. A clean face hovered suddenly above me through the haze.

"You look fine." The hands that belonged to the unfamiliar face and voice poked at my neck, heartbeat, forehead.

I just tried to blink away the earthquake of a world, barely managing a mumbled, "gowayfro'e"

A cup was placed between my lips, tasting like ice and alcohol. "Here. This will help with the dizziness."

I drank it. I don't know why I drank it, but I did. Some part of my mind muttered that if I was finally going to die, better sooner than later anyway. Wanting to die has kind of been my strong point lately.

But I didn't die. Instead, the world slid into sudden focus, and I could see the woman in front of me, with chic red hair and professional-looking glasses. She was wearing a lab coat.

I wanted to ask who she was, where I was, what I'd just drunk, why I wasn't dead, but all that came out of my mouth was, "what did you do to me?"

So looked at me appraisingly, then tried and failed to smile. "Well, it wasn't me. But that syringe-bullet Eric hit you with..."

My mouth went dry.

"It basically turned you into a walking bomb."