If I was being wheeled along on a gurney, I might have had an operation…
But on what?
I ran my hands over my body but felt nothing. No pain, no raised ridges where the stitches would be. I checked my head and it wasn’t shaved.
Then I noticed my nightgown.
Except, it wasn’t a nightgown.
“What the hell is this?” I said out loud.
It was a sheer silk negligee. It had a low-cut top and rode high up the thigh. It was sexy. Not quite the kind of gown they usually made patients wear in hospitals…
So maybe they ran out of the usual ones…
Ran out of gowns and were now resorting to sexy negligee?
Yeah…
Just the idea made me laugh.
I felt at my arms.
No wires pierced my skin. No beeping machines checked my heart rate.
There were no machines full stop.
But I did have something attached to my throat. It had a hard edge like a piece of plastic. I daren’t take it off in case I damaged it or hurt myself.
“Hello?” I said, testing my voice. “Hello, hello?”
My voice sounded normal and my throat didn’t hurt. What was the purpose of this thing? I decided to leave it on. It wasn’t doing any harm and removing it could only cause trouble.
I got a better look at the room. I noticed it was a little too clean to be a hospital. The surfaces were perfectly white without scuff mark or blemish.
I pushed myself up onto my feet and felt relieved they could take my weight. So long as I was upwardly mobile, I could get some help.
I moved for the door.
And immediately hit a snag.
There was no door.
I shook my head. I must be mistaken. Every room had a door. How else were you supposed to get inside it?
How had I gotten inside it?
“What the hell?” I said.
I had to be seeing things. You couldn’t crash in a deep ravine without a little temporary damage. My senses were playing tricks on me. That’s all.
I moved for the widest stretch of wall on the opposite side of the room to my bed and ran my hands over it, looking for the door’s edges. It’d just been well made, that’s all. A futuristic design where the door was perfectly flush with the wall. It saved on space, I told myself. Very clever.
I felt nothing with the palm of my hand. I clawed my fingers and gently ran them over the wall from one side to the other. My nails would catch on the seam and the door would be revealed.
And…
Nothing.
No edges, no handle.
Nothing.
But there was more than one blank surface where the door could be.
I moved to the other two big sections and ran my hands over them.
Again, I felt nothing.
The room had no door.
That was wrong. There had to be a door. I mean, I got inside here somehow, didn’t I? I didn’t just magically teleport inside it.
Teleport.
I was reminded of old episodes of Star Trek. They had spaceships and they could teleport people around.
So maybe the bright light wasn’t a figment of my imagination after all.
The beam of light in the minivan could move things around. It was a sort of magic too. Maybe that was how I got here?
I pushed the thought from my mind. There was no beam of light and I didn’t get there by magic. There would be a reasonable explanation for this.
I clicked my fingers.
The bathroom!
They sometimes made rooms share bathrooms in hospitals. I could enter the next room and use their door to get out. Maybe my room was for quarantine purposes or something.
The bathroom didn’t have a door, just an empty doorway.
Okay, so it was strange, but maybe that was for… I don’t know. Maybe it was easier for nurses to help patients in and out. I was struggling for plausible explanations.
I was getting worried.
The bathroom was basic. It consisted of a regular toilet, a sink, and a small shower. The shower had no curtain or door either. There were no towels, no soap, or toothbrushes, or toothpaste.
And there was definitely no door to an adjacent room.
This place wasn’t a hospital. I couldn’t fool myself into believing it was.
It was a prison.
And I was trapped.
“Hello?” I said out loud. “Is anybody there?”
I rapped on the wall with a knuckle to get someone—anyone’s—attention.
Someone had to be out there.
I hadn’t got there by accident. Someone put me in here.
“I think there’s been some mistake,” I said. “I don’t know what you want but I can get it for you. I’m a trained engineer. I can build whatever you need. Or fix things. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be in New York. I have a job there. And a life. If you let me go, I would very much appreciate it.”
It didn’t hurt to be civil to my captors. At least, not at first.
But there was no response.
“I know you’re out there,” I said firmly. “If you let me go, I won’t tell anybody. I won’t do anything. I’ll forget this whole thing ever happened.”
Yeah, right. I’d be having nightmares about this place for the rest of my life. It wasn’t much different from being buried alive. The only difference was I had a little more elbow room.
I was greeted once more with silence.
Was I just talking to myself? Was I imagining this whole place? I didn’t think so. Alice was the one with the imagination. I just built things.
“Please!” I cried. “Let me go! Please! I swear I won’t tell anyone anything!”
No one would believe me anyway.
The silence was deafening.
If I had a little noise, a little music in the background to keep myself distracted the way I did back home, things wouldn’t seem so bad. The TV, radio, podcasts, anything to drown out the silence.
I hummed an inane tune. No rhythm, no lyrics—for the moment, they’d completely fled my brain and I couldn’t think of a single one.
I paced up and down. At least I could do that much. I could still exercise and stay in
