Fight it, Imogen.
I had to wake up.
My thoughts came more frantically now, jumbling together as they twisted and turned, falling over each other. Each one fought for my attention.
Where was I?
How did I get here? The man by my car. He stabbed me with a needle and then carried me to a vehicle. But from the motion of my body, I was no longer in a car but somewhere on water. That explained the seahorses.
My head throbbed. Pounded. Like someone with a heavy fist beat at the edges of my skull. My attempt at forcing the memories caused a massive headache to dominate my now weary brain.
I had to figure out where they’d taken me. If not a car, then a boat. It matched the gentle pattern of movements.
My thoughts paused for a minute, and I lost control of them, once again falling into the ocean’s swirl. The seahorses returned.
How did we breathe under water? How long could I live in my clam?
I studied nursing in college, meaning I lacked more than the most basic knowledge of aquatic animals.
Did clams even make pearls? Or did they come from oysters? What was the difference?
I tried to move my hand and find my legs, but I couldn’t raise it enough to do more than twitch a finger. The seahorses waved goodbye with their long tails and I might have groaned.
I couldn’t be a mermaid. They were mythical creatures. So what was I?
A nurse.
Right.
Yes. I remembered again. A nurse someone kidnapped from her work parking lot in North Carolina.
I tried to wiggle my toes since moving an arm had been too much, but they had tiny weights holding them firm. My eyelids wouldn’t open no matter how much I pleaded with them. I also couldn’t force myself awake by sheer will from yelling at myself in my head.
My brain didn’t care.
It just wanted a few more hours of sleep. I hadn’t had a vacation in years, so was a kidnapping and a long nap really the worst thing in the world?
Oh, my word. Working at the hospital had me questioning if getting kidnapped might be a good thing. I needed a new profession.
I groaned for sure that time and it echoed in my delicate head.
My clothing didn’t squish, but I also couldn’t move my toes, so I might not have been a superb judge on that front. With tremendous effort, I made a finger twitch.
Hell yes!
I celebrated by giving a little dance, but only in my head. Fingers were the first frontier, even if all my other parts were frozen. Next, my nose crinkled.
Fish. Gross. Where did the smell start and why had it ended in my nose?
I wiggled my fingers again because fuck it. If that’s all I could move, I’d move the hell out of them to show the other body parts how to get their shit together.
The warm thing flush with my body moved, forcing me along with it.
“Are you waking up?” a soft voice spoke much too close to me as if the man whispered right in my ear.
My eyes popped open, light smacked against them, and I slammed them closed.
If I’d had control of my body, I would have tensed every muscle. But I didn’t have control over anything besides my fingers—and apparently my eyelids—so I did nothing.
