It’s freezing cold. I’m lying on something hard. My eyes are open, but all I see is blackness. My mouth tastes raw. Bloody. I don’t move. I don’t know if I can move. And now I’m scared, every nerve ending flaring, setting my skin on fire. Images flash across my vision: a glinting red pill. Wrinkled sheets, straightening from one second to the next. Dorf smiling, his lips forming words: the experience of a lifetime, he says, and toasts us. Maybe I got away. Maybe I got out into the fields and hid and that’s why I’m cold. But I didn’t. I ran upstairs and— They caught me. Oh no. No-no-no. This was stupid, freaking idiotic; I swallowed some of the pill juice. I was knocked out. I’m so dead. The air is perfectly still. The surface under me is smooth, glassy. I listen, the blood hammering in my ears. I’m not alone. Somewhere close by, someone is breathing. Multiple people. Who? Are they watching me? My heartbeat speeds up. I’m sweating despite the cold. My mind instantly jumps to kidnappings, human trafficking, eighties horror movies with meat hooks and dusty lightbulbs and gallons of blood.
