1
Janet shivered and curled up under the blanket, bringing her knees to her chest and hoping against hope she’d fall asleep again before she truly woke up. She hated the damp morning air.
One hundred fish, ninety-nine fish, ninety-eight fish...
When her shivers resumed after the third fish, she gave up. It was unusually cold in her room, especially for the time of year.
She grumbled into her blanket. It was either stay and be cold or get up and change the thermostat in her room.Damn it.
With a resigned sigh, she braced herself to rush to the console.Three. Two. One.
Janet leapt up and smacked face-first into a wall.
“Ech,” she yelped as she backstepped and spread her arms out in confusion. “What the?” Her palms slapped against the wall. A cold wall. It didn’t feel like the stucco and wood of her family’s home. It was untextured. Hard. Unyielding.
Her stomach dropped.
This isn’t my room.
She twisted around and blinked, trying to adjust her eyes to the darkness. “Anyone there?” she whispered, her fingers sliding across the top of the rumpled bed she just got out of. “Hello?” She gulped, unsure whether or not she wanted to scream.
This wouldn’t be the first time she woke up in an unknown place and in an unknown bed, but it was the first time she’d done so alone. Usually, there was a man snoring next to her with a deluded certainty that he’d made her see the entire Trentian pantheon the night before.
Her confusion subtly digressed into concern.
I was with my family last night. We ate dinner...There was no way she could be in another man’s room. This wasn’t a one-night stand.
A soft shadow moved across the wall. Janet tensed. She didn’t realize it at first, thinking her eyes had finally adjusted to the darkness, but they hadn’t; instead, light crept so slowly around the room that it was like a gauzy curtain lifting.
A cabin.I’m in a spaceship cabin?
It had the trappings of advanced technology. The walls were clean and smooth—curved at the corners—and the light grey bedding and fabrics breathed like silk. Bigger than her own room, the space was divided into two parts.
She quietly stepped farther into it to look beyond the three stairs that led to the second half; there was a lounge and bar with an assortment of screens and consoles. All of the displays were powered off. Nothing gave off light in the room except for the dim strip that ran along the top of the walls. In the middle was a plain, but slightly curved sofa with a table before it and a similar chair across.
There was also empty glass enclosures embedded into the walls framing equally empty shelves.
No windows.
Janet hugged herself. She licked the dryness from her lips and sniffled. The room was all but empty. It was clean of clutter and any personal effects, but worst of all, it was cold withoutbeingcold.
“Hello?” she called out again, her voice a little higher this time.
Again, no response.
Anger began to take over as her initial confusion ebbed, pushing aside her fear. “What the hell?” She turned around and grabbed the blanket off the bed, draping it over her shoulders. “What the hell!” she yelled louder and rushed throughout the room in search of a weapon but found none. Even the drawers were empty.
“I’m going to kill you whoever you are. I am going to kill you!” Her scream rang through the space and echoed like hollow pipes in the empty cabin. “I’m the last person you should’ve taken.”
When there was still no answer, she proceeded to go about breaking whatever she could. There was nothing inside the cabin but furniture; even the drawers were empty. But that didn’t stop her from flinging them across the room. She tore at the upholstery, the bedding, and slammed her blanket-covered fist into the glass consoles.
The crack of glass was music to her ears.
She tried to lift the table in the center of the lounge but it remained bolted to the floor as she continued to yell out threats, “I’m not going to be easy. I’m going to kill you. I’m going to freaking kill you all!”
She found the lavatory and turned on all the faucets inside. The water overflowed and ran onto the floor, only to get sucked up into vents hidden along the corners of the room.
Her frustration grew while her energy waned.
