Smile

Chapter One

'Smile, the world ain't that bad'

Mmmm...My head is killing me. That is the last time I let Chrisy pick the drinks.

I can feel the pounding in my head increase as I slowly open my eyes to a very bright room, where am I?

The first thing I see are white walls, silver cabinets and white tile floors. It's cold and there is a metallic taste to the air mixed with the lingering smell of bleach. I turn my head to see a curtain blocking off the other half of the room as I hear footsteps and voices headed towards me. I close my eyes and focus on the voices as the footsteps stop a few feet away from the curtain.

'I will only ask you one more time, Witch, can you do it,' a deep voice growls.

'And I'm telling you again, Dog, anything can be done with a little magic and a lot of incentive,' a scratchy voice rasped in reply.

Great...just great. I'm in a hospital but how the hell did i get here and more importantly how do I get out. I hear back in the day hospitals were where you went to be healed and then you got to leave and return to your loved ones but not anymore. After the supernatural takeover they became places to avoid as those who entered tended to disappear only to end up in the slave markets. Now a days if you got sick you went to your local healer and even then you didn't go alone and you took the little herb blends with caution and a prayer that they would work.

'How much incentive are we talking here? I have a client already lined up but he wont buy anything less than what he asks for. Hell he even picked her out himself if it wasn't for the law saying he has to have all the appropriate papers he'd be here instead of me,' the deep voice rumbled with impatience.

'Sixty,' rasped the old voice growing with greed, 'thousand. In advance fully. That's the standard rate like always. Fifteen each ear, and thirty for the tail, are you sure you just want those transformations? We can do more you know.'

'Like i said special customer with a special order. The others are just standard issue slaves but he wants a pet.'

Pet?...please don't be talking about me. Please anyone but me, I silently plead as I try to fight the tears leaking out of my tightly closed eyes as the faces of my friends flashed behind my eyes. Eli, with his overly agreeable attitude. Sam and Kristen, the mismatch nerd and stoner couple. Jason with his ever present flirting smile and innuendos. And lastly Chrisy, her quiet reserve until she got her mind on something then there was no stopping her. I would miss them all but her the most. We'd been friends forever, hell even or grandparents had been friends. But all that was gone now. I had to be strong in order to survive because wither I was special ordered or simply another in line all that was gone and I was a slave now. I wouldn't even be able to keep my name, that would be my masters to chose.

I was jerked from my dark thoughts as the curtain was ripped back to reveal a middle aged woman in a lab coat and a large man in a black suite behind her.

'Ah. Good morning glad you were awake to hear whats going on so I don't have to explain it, so annoying having to explain it to everyone who gets brought in,' the woman said as she breezed by to the silver cabinets and started grabbing bottles and herbs and lastly a syringe already filled with a clear liquid. She checked the fluid level in the syringe as she walked back over to my bedside and grabbed my left arm and quickly found the vain to inject into.

'D-do I g-get, a-hum,' I clear my throat to keep from stuttering on my nervous fear, 'Do I get to keep my tattoo?' I know it's not much but I just got it as a present for my birthday.' The tattoo in question was two fairies, one naughty in a black dress that showed cleavage and barely hit her thighs with her arm stretched out to her twin in a long white gown that while modest was still sexy for it. Below their entwined hands a Celtic knot work sun and above them a moon of twisted knot work.

'Answer me this and maybe you can keep it,' the man growled crossing his arms over his chest, 'Why did you get that tattoo? Your master used it as a way to identify you as who he wanted.'

I blush profusely as the tattoo sits below my navel with the fairies' feet next to my pelvic bones and their tattered and perfect wings spanning my waist, 'I was born in June and the sign for a Gemini is twins. I just combined that with my love of the old Celtic knot work and fairies.' The medicine must have been to knock me out because by the end of my explanation I could barely keep my eyes open and finally slid into the waiting darkness.

'You can keep it,' was the last thing I heard the old woman say before there was nothing but darkness and silence.