Sleepy
Ok that's enough for tonight. I should really try to push for 28k but I'm a bit too tired right now. So I'll finish that part up tomorrow. I love how I try to write suspenseful and scary and somehow can't help throwing in silly situations.
Wordcount: 27,881
Mara felt a little bit better now. The initial shock was over with and since she really couldn't tell that she was frozen in a block of jello, worrying about it kind of seemed silly after awhile. She was learning a bit about the alien's language and how they wrote things down. Yuyu had been somewhat helpful when she pointed out different symbols on the scoreboard. So far she'd learned the symbols for "win" and "lose" although she doubted she would see them again outside the game. Yuyu was getting a little less sad in his disposition. He seemed to be getting used to the idea of being able to communicate with a human.
Mara moved a blue diamond over two spaces and pressed the red neon symbol in midair by her side of the board. She had a hunch that symbol meant "it's your turn" or something similar. She still hadn't been able to speak but she really didn't need it for the game. Yuyu moved a flat red piece towards her blue diamond. The diamond reacted to his advance by turning green. Rats, thought Mara. Whenever that happened, it seemed she soon lost the game after that.
"We are almost down," said Yuyu, looking over his side of the board. Mara gave him a surprised look. And how could you possibly know that, she thought. Then she noticed he had gained a small written note on his side of the board. Written in the sense that it was printed with the strange square filled symbols of alien writing. Mara felt a small shudder go through her as if the game area vibrated slightly. Yuyu saw Mara looking around, wondering what was going on. "You do not understand?" he asked. Mara shook her head no. "How to explain....that was....engines in reverse." Mara figured he must have simplified that explanation but that was good enough for her. She nodded understanding. Hopefully that meant they were getting out of here soon.
As her hand hovered over her side of the gameboard, Mara looked in confusion as her hand began to quiver slightly. What now? she thought. She couldn't seem to move it away from the board for some reason. It just hovered there and shook slightly like she'd been drinking too much caffiene. Yuyu was starting to blur away along with the grid between them. Mara's breath seemed to catch in her throat and her hands reached slowly towards her neck in reflex.
Then she was cold again. Her eyes were shut and she could sense that her hands were indeed holding onto her own neck. The choking sensation was still grabbing at her chest and Mara tried weakly to move. As the gel emptied from the enclosure, Mara gasped for air as her head finally broke the surface. She coughed and spat out some of the gel, trying to get her breath again. She was covered in a slimy film of the gel, even as most of it exited their pod. Mara used her gel covered shaking hands to tug at the seatbelt around her waist till it came off. Struggling to breath still in the enclosed space, she got up shakily as fast as she could moving towards the door. She threw her whole body against it and it gave way to her, throwing her out of the pod and onto the polished floor of the outer room. Mara lay there for a minute, a sticky mess of a person in a widening pool of gel on the floor underneath her. She could finally breathe easier now. "Let's not do that again," she said, coughing slightly. Yuyu had already gotten out calmly and was looking down at Mara from where he was standing over her, away from the gel puddle. He didn't seem to have a drop of gel on him and looked as if he was wondering why Mara had exited the pod so fast. Mara was confused herself. "Hey, how come you're not...." she pointed at him with a slime covered hand. He just cocked his head, looking at her. "Never mind," Mara said, knowing that he wouldn't understand what she was asking anyway. It took her a few tries but she managed to get herself up off the floor. It was tough with it being all slippery underneath her. She could see her own guard was already out and keeping an eye on her. Down the line of pods, they were opening and closing, letting the aliens disembark at random. All of them seemed to be watching Mara as the guard prodded her with a long white stick to move in the direction of the main doors. As she and Yuyu started off, she could hear him making continuous clicking sounds softly. "What?" she asked. The translator wasn't picking up on any words. She got Yuyu's attention after a bit and he explained. "I am amused that I will not be the one to clean up the mess anymore."
"Oh, you were laughing," Mara said, understanding. "Yeah, that's pretty funny, I guess." Though she still felt bad about him being demoted.
They were walking down the hallways, Mara's bare feet making squishy noises as she walked. The guard led them to a bare room that was colored a soft pink. He prodded Mara inside and shut the door quickly behind her and Yuyu. Mara saw why.
Inside was a small collection of humans, all dressed the same way as she and Chris had been. Some were sitting on the floor, some were standing around, others were leaning against the walls. There wasn't any other door in the place except the one Mara had come through. She roughly counted six to eight humans altogether, counting herself. Everyone seemed to have a spirit of woe or sadness about them, even though they were together. Mara also noted there was an equal number of men and women. Seeing Chris standing over to the side was a sight for sore eyes. She squelched over to him. "Mara!" he said happily and went to hug her but stopped at her disheveled appearance. "Miss me?" Mara said with a rueful smile through the gel on her face, her hair all mussed and stuck together. "What happened to you?" Chris asked very confused.
"I'll tell you later," Mara said. "Suffice it to say I'm never eating Jello again." Yuyu came around the side of her timidly. "Oh, and this is Yuyu, my current cellmate."
A cry came from over in the corner and Mara looked over to see a young woman pointing at Yuyu with a look of terror on her face. "It's one of them," she kept saying over and over. Another person was trying to comfort her and keep her quiet.
"What is that thing doing here?" someone asked and people started whispering among themselves. Mara stepped in front of Yuyu who wasn't aware what was going on yet. She could see this could turn ugly fast. One of the men was stepping forward. "He's not a guard, we could use him," he pointed out. "If we take him hostage, they might let us out of here."
There were murmurs of agreement. Mara raised a hand slightly, trying to get control of the collective floor. "Um, we tried that," she indicated Chris. "That didn't get us anywhere really. And I doubt you could get back home even if you did get off the ship right now."
"Ship? What do you mean ship?" the man asked. "They've got us locked underground somewhere, I'm sure of it," another person said in the back, a lanky man with short spiky hair. Everyone nodded in agreement. "Oh boy," Mara sighed.
"Are they going to hurt us?" Yuyu asked, suddenly getting a handle on what the humans were planning on doing. Mara shook her head no at him, "No, I don't think it would do them much good."
There was a gasp from one of the women as they noticed Mara addressing the alien behind her. She was a white little thing with blonde hair and a thick Russian accent. “He talked!” she exclaimed. “You can talk to them, yes?!” The group surged forward a bit, people getting up off the floor at this new development. Mara backed up with Yuyu backing up behind her to the wall. Chris thankfully stepped forward, “Hey, easy there. We’re all in this mess together, we shouldn’t go attacking each other or we’ll never get out of here.”
“What he said,” Mara agreed. “And yes, I can understand them but I’m afraid it’s only one way. This one alien here, he gets that I can talk but he can’t really understand what I’m saying. And his friends out there have ostracized him because of it so that’s why he’s in here with us.” Chris affirmed what she was saying was true.
That seemed to cool everyone’s fears down a bit. The terrified lady in the corner still was having trouble coping with what was all going on. “Please…” she was saying. “Those eyes, I can’t…” Her new found friend held her close as she avoided looking at Yuyu. Mara knew how she felt and she had a hunch that they all did.
“Where have you all been?” she asked, trying to change the subject. She didn’t know how long they were going to be able to see each other so they were going to need to share information to try and figure out what was all going on. Apparently this group of humans knew less of what was going on than she and Chris did. It also bothered her that none of the other humans she had been imprisoned with were there in the room. She wondered what had happened to the surfer boy, the lady in the red dress, and the claustrophobic business man.
One of the men spoke first, the lanky one in the back. “I was in a white room with some other people till…y’know, they showed up. Then they must have drugged me or something, I don’t remember anything till waking up here with everyone.” Most of everyone’s stories was the same with slight variations. “How strange,” Mara said, looking at Chris. “They seem to have done more with us, I think, than with you.”
The larger man in the front was hesitant to speak. “What sort of things did they do?”
“Well,” Mara indicated her gel covered clothes and appearance. Chris also gave a few small things that had gone on during the experiments but didn’t go into great detail. Some of the people there were scared enough. “Why you two?” the man asked. “And why can only you understand them?”
Mara gave Chris a look, wondering if it would be too much. But finally she turned slightly and lifted up her hair to show the metal pieces underneath. There were a few small gasps around the room. “Yeah, I’m not crazy about it either,” Mara said, letting her hair fall back into place. She noted that most everyone had backed up a bit. Great, now the aliens and the humans are going to avoid me, she thought.
She turned back to Yuyu who was watching the proceedings with interest but keeping his distance. “I fear they may hurt me all at once,” he said. Mara took this to mean they might rush him all of the sudden. “Well,” she said, getting down to sit against the wall. “If they do they’ll have to get through me. And I’m pretty slippery at the moment.”
The humans were dispersing a bit, as well as they could in the small room. The larger man was still fixing Yuyu with a suspicious look. “You really want us to wait for those…things to come back?” he shot at Mara and Chris who was leaning against the wall as he stood above her. “You have a better idea?” Chris asked.
That seemed to deflate the man slightly. “Well…no….but we just can’t sit down and be defeated. There must be some way out of this.”
“I agree,” Mara said, trying to wipe away some of the gel off her tunic front. “But we should all be level headed about it. If we all start panicking they’re libel to separate us all again. We should all keep a lookout for a good way to escape.”
“Yeah, one that includes the whole group,” the lanky man from the back said. Chris wasn’t sure that was such a good idea. “If one of us can get away, they might be able to get help in some way.”
“You,” the man in the front, who’s name was Brent, pointed to Mara sitting on the floor. “You said this was a ship?” Mara nodded, hoping she wasn’t setting herself up for trouble. “If you are right, do you also know where it’s going?”
Mara nodded a little more slowly. “At least, Yuyu told me the name of it.”
Everyone looked at her. “What? I couldn’t get him to say his real name,” Mara said in her defense. “(planet name) is the name of it but I couldn’t begin to tell you where it is or how far from Earth we are. But I do know it was going to land when they pulled me from the stasis pods.”
“What were you doing in there?” Brent asked accusingly. “Are you friends with the aliens now? Are you a spy here in with us with your hardware in the back of your head.”
“No, no,” Mara said. “I mean, do I look like they’ve been treating me like one of their own?” Brent regarded her gel covered state but wasn’t convinced. “Yuyu said something about me being not compatible with the computer simulation Chris and I were in and I had a couple of seizure like episodes before they figured this out. So I couldn’t ride out the trip there.”
“If that’s where you guys were, where did they keep us?”
Mara shook her head. “I don’t know. Chris was the only one I was allowed to see and that not very often.” Brent sulked over to the other side of the room. “I’m still not convinced. It would be just like those…things….to try and fool us by sticking one of their spies in with us.”
Mara let out a very frustrated sound through her teeth. “Fine, don’t talk to me. I really don’t care at this point. After you’ve been almost drowned in green Jello, everything else gets a little bit inconsequential.”
A hum suddenly permiated the air. Everyone got to their feet as it increased with intensity. “Yuyu?” Mara asked. “What is that?”
Yuyu was getting anxious too but before he could answer, a blue energy grid came down from the ceiling and passed through all of them at the same time. Everyone was instantly frozen in place.
The aliens came in then and went from person to person, attaching something to each one. Mara couldn’t take her eyes off the spot on the wall across from her so she couldn’t see what it was till they came to her. Something clicked around her right wrist and the alien moved on to Yuyu next to her. The effect wore off soon after that and people started moving around a bit sore and stiff but non worse for wear. Mara looked down at her wrist and found a smooth band of metal there. It was almost pretty but Mara was sure it was a bit more sinister than that. She moved a couple of muscles in her stiff neck before looking over at Yuyu. Sadly, they had fitted him with one as well. “No,” he was saying. “This cannot be right. I am not one of you.”
“I’m sorry,” Mara said, almost putting a hand on his little shoulder but thinking better of it. She remembered his saying that the scientists believed touching a human was very dangerous. She instead inspected the bracelet on her wrist. There didn’t seem to be any buttons or clasp on it, it was as if it was a solid piece of metal. It didn’t restrict her wrist in any way thankfully but it was making the other humans very uncomfortable to be tagged like that.
Wordcount: 27,881
Mara felt a little bit better now. The initial shock was over with and since she really couldn't tell that she was frozen in a block of jello, worrying about it kind of seemed silly after awhile. She was learning a bit about the alien's language and how they wrote things down. Yuyu had been somewhat helpful when she pointed out different symbols on the scoreboard. So far she'd learned the symbols for "win" and "lose" although she doubted she would see them again outside the game. Yuyu was getting a little less sad in his disposition. He seemed to be getting used to the idea of being able to communicate with a human.
Mara moved a blue diamond over two spaces and pressed the red neon symbol in midair by her side of the board. She had a hunch that symbol meant "it's your turn" or something similar. She still hadn't been able to speak but she really didn't need it for the game. Yuyu moved a flat red piece towards her blue diamond. The diamond reacted to his advance by turning green. Rats, thought Mara. Whenever that happened, it seemed she soon lost the game after that.
"We are almost down," said Yuyu, looking over his side of the board. Mara gave him a surprised look. And how could you possibly know that, she thought. Then she noticed he had gained a small written note on his side of the board. Written in the sense that it was printed with the strange square filled symbols of alien writing. Mara felt a small shudder go through her as if the game area vibrated slightly. Yuyu saw Mara looking around, wondering what was going on. "You do not understand?" he asked. Mara shook her head no. "How to explain....that was....engines in reverse." Mara figured he must have simplified that explanation but that was good enough for her. She nodded understanding. Hopefully that meant they were getting out of here soon.
As her hand hovered over her side of the gameboard, Mara looked in confusion as her hand began to quiver slightly. What now? she thought. She couldn't seem to move it away from the board for some reason. It just hovered there and shook slightly like she'd been drinking too much caffiene. Yuyu was starting to blur away along with the grid between them. Mara's breath seemed to catch in her throat and her hands reached slowly towards her neck in reflex.
Then she was cold again. Her eyes were shut and she could sense that her hands were indeed holding onto her own neck. The choking sensation was still grabbing at her chest and Mara tried weakly to move. As the gel emptied from the enclosure, Mara gasped for air as her head finally broke the surface. She coughed and spat out some of the gel, trying to get her breath again. She was covered in a slimy film of the gel, even as most of it exited their pod. Mara used her gel covered shaking hands to tug at the seatbelt around her waist till it came off. Struggling to breath still in the enclosed space, she got up shakily as fast as she could moving towards the door. She threw her whole body against it and it gave way to her, throwing her out of the pod and onto the polished floor of the outer room. Mara lay there for a minute, a sticky mess of a person in a widening pool of gel on the floor underneath her. She could finally breathe easier now. "Let's not do that again," she said, coughing slightly. Yuyu had already gotten out calmly and was looking down at Mara from where he was standing over her, away from the gel puddle. He didn't seem to have a drop of gel on him and looked as if he was wondering why Mara had exited the pod so fast. Mara was confused herself. "Hey, how come you're not...." she pointed at him with a slime covered hand. He just cocked his head, looking at her. "Never mind," Mara said, knowing that he wouldn't understand what she was asking anyway. It took her a few tries but she managed to get herself up off the floor. It was tough with it being all slippery underneath her. She could see her own guard was already out and keeping an eye on her. Down the line of pods, they were opening and closing, letting the aliens disembark at random. All of them seemed to be watching Mara as the guard prodded her with a long white stick to move in the direction of the main doors. As she and Yuyu started off, she could hear him making continuous clicking sounds softly. "What?" she asked. The translator wasn't picking up on any words. She got Yuyu's attention after a bit and he explained. "I am amused that I will not be the one to clean up the mess anymore."
"Oh, you were laughing," Mara said, understanding. "Yeah, that's pretty funny, I guess." Though she still felt bad about him being demoted.
They were walking down the hallways, Mara's bare feet making squishy noises as she walked. The guard led them to a bare room that was colored a soft pink. He prodded Mara inside and shut the door quickly behind her and Yuyu. Mara saw why.
Inside was a small collection of humans, all dressed the same way as she and Chris had been. Some were sitting on the floor, some were standing around, others were leaning against the walls. There wasn't any other door in the place except the one Mara had come through. She roughly counted six to eight humans altogether, counting herself. Everyone seemed to have a spirit of woe or sadness about them, even though they were together. Mara also noted there was an equal number of men and women. Seeing Chris standing over to the side was a sight for sore eyes. She squelched over to him. "Mara!" he said happily and went to hug her but stopped at her disheveled appearance. "Miss me?" Mara said with a rueful smile through the gel on her face, her hair all mussed and stuck together. "What happened to you?" Chris asked very confused.
"I'll tell you later," Mara said. "Suffice it to say I'm never eating Jello again." Yuyu came around the side of her timidly. "Oh, and this is Yuyu, my current cellmate."
A cry came from over in the corner and Mara looked over to see a young woman pointing at Yuyu with a look of terror on her face. "It's one of them," she kept saying over and over. Another person was trying to comfort her and keep her quiet.
"What is that thing doing here?" someone asked and people started whispering among themselves. Mara stepped in front of Yuyu who wasn't aware what was going on yet. She could see this could turn ugly fast. One of the men was stepping forward. "He's not a guard, we could use him," he pointed out. "If we take him hostage, they might let us out of here."
There were murmurs of agreement. Mara raised a hand slightly, trying to get control of the collective floor. "Um, we tried that," she indicated Chris. "That didn't get us anywhere really. And I doubt you could get back home even if you did get off the ship right now."
"Ship? What do you mean ship?" the man asked. "They've got us locked underground somewhere, I'm sure of it," another person said in the back, a lanky man with short spiky hair. Everyone nodded in agreement. "Oh boy," Mara sighed.
"Are they going to hurt us?" Yuyu asked, suddenly getting a handle on what the humans were planning on doing. Mara shook her head no at him, "No, I don't think it would do them much good."
There was a gasp from one of the women as they noticed Mara addressing the alien behind her. She was a white little thing with blonde hair and a thick Russian accent. “He talked!” she exclaimed. “You can talk to them, yes?!” The group surged forward a bit, people getting up off the floor at this new development. Mara backed up with Yuyu backing up behind her to the wall. Chris thankfully stepped forward, “Hey, easy there. We’re all in this mess together, we shouldn’t go attacking each other or we’ll never get out of here.”
“What he said,” Mara agreed. “And yes, I can understand them but I’m afraid it’s only one way. This one alien here, he gets that I can talk but he can’t really understand what I’m saying. And his friends out there have ostracized him because of it so that’s why he’s in here with us.” Chris affirmed what she was saying was true.
That seemed to cool everyone’s fears down a bit. The terrified lady in the corner still was having trouble coping with what was all going on. “Please…” she was saying. “Those eyes, I can’t…” Her new found friend held her close as she avoided looking at Yuyu. Mara knew how she felt and she had a hunch that they all did.
“Where have you all been?” she asked, trying to change the subject. She didn’t know how long they were going to be able to see each other so they were going to need to share information to try and figure out what was all going on. Apparently this group of humans knew less of what was going on than she and Chris did. It also bothered her that none of the other humans she had been imprisoned with were there in the room. She wondered what had happened to the surfer boy, the lady in the red dress, and the claustrophobic business man.
One of the men spoke first, the lanky one in the back. “I was in a white room with some other people till…y’know, they showed up. Then they must have drugged me or something, I don’t remember anything till waking up here with everyone.” Most of everyone’s stories was the same with slight variations. “How strange,” Mara said, looking at Chris. “They seem to have done more with us, I think, than with you.”
The larger man in the front was hesitant to speak. “What sort of things did they do?”
“Well,” Mara indicated her gel covered clothes and appearance. Chris also gave a few small things that had gone on during the experiments but didn’t go into great detail. Some of the people there were scared enough. “Why you two?” the man asked. “And why can only you understand them?”
Mara gave Chris a look, wondering if it would be too much. But finally she turned slightly and lifted up her hair to show the metal pieces underneath. There were a few small gasps around the room. “Yeah, I’m not crazy about it either,” Mara said, letting her hair fall back into place. She noted that most everyone had backed up a bit. Great, now the aliens and the humans are going to avoid me, she thought.
She turned back to Yuyu who was watching the proceedings with interest but keeping his distance. “I fear they may hurt me all at once,” he said. Mara took this to mean they might rush him all of the sudden. “Well,” she said, getting down to sit against the wall. “If they do they’ll have to get through me. And I’m pretty slippery at the moment.”
The humans were dispersing a bit, as well as they could in the small room. The larger man was still fixing Yuyu with a suspicious look. “You really want us to wait for those…things to come back?” he shot at Mara and Chris who was leaning against the wall as he stood above her. “You have a better idea?” Chris asked.
That seemed to deflate the man slightly. “Well…no….but we just can’t sit down and be defeated. There must be some way out of this.”
“I agree,” Mara said, trying to wipe away some of the gel off her tunic front. “But we should all be level headed about it. If we all start panicking they’re libel to separate us all again. We should all keep a lookout for a good way to escape.”
“Yeah, one that includes the whole group,” the lanky man from the back said. Chris wasn’t sure that was such a good idea. “If one of us can get away, they might be able to get help in some way.”
“You,” the man in the front, who’s name was Brent, pointed to Mara sitting on the floor. “You said this was a ship?” Mara nodded, hoping she wasn’t setting herself up for trouble. “If you are right, do you also know where it’s going?”
Mara nodded a little more slowly. “At least, Yuyu told me the name of it.”
Everyone looked at her. “What? I couldn’t get him to say his real name,” Mara said in her defense. “(planet name) is the name of it but I couldn’t begin to tell you where it is or how far from Earth we are. But I do know it was going to land when they pulled me from the stasis pods.”
“What were you doing in there?” Brent asked accusingly. “Are you friends with the aliens now? Are you a spy here in with us with your hardware in the back of your head.”
“No, no,” Mara said. “I mean, do I look like they’ve been treating me like one of their own?” Brent regarded her gel covered state but wasn’t convinced. “Yuyu said something about me being not compatible with the computer simulation Chris and I were in and I had a couple of seizure like episodes before they figured this out. So I couldn’t ride out the trip there.”
“If that’s where you guys were, where did they keep us?”
Mara shook her head. “I don’t know. Chris was the only one I was allowed to see and that not very often.” Brent sulked over to the other side of the room. “I’m still not convinced. It would be just like those…things….to try and fool us by sticking one of their spies in with us.”
Mara let out a very frustrated sound through her teeth. “Fine, don’t talk to me. I really don’t care at this point. After you’ve been almost drowned in green Jello, everything else gets a little bit inconsequential.”
A hum suddenly permiated the air. Everyone got to their feet as it increased with intensity. “Yuyu?” Mara asked. “What is that?”
Yuyu was getting anxious too but before he could answer, a blue energy grid came down from the ceiling and passed through all of them at the same time. Everyone was instantly frozen in place.
The aliens came in then and went from person to person, attaching something to each one. Mara couldn’t take her eyes off the spot on the wall across from her so she couldn’t see what it was till they came to her. Something clicked around her right wrist and the alien moved on to Yuyu next to her. The effect wore off soon after that and people started moving around a bit sore and stiff but non worse for wear. Mara looked down at her wrist and found a smooth band of metal there. It was almost pretty but Mara was sure it was a bit more sinister than that. She moved a couple of muscles in her stiff neck before looking over at Yuyu. Sadly, they had fitted him with one as well. “No,” he was saying. “This cannot be right. I am not one of you.”
“I’m sorry,” Mara said, almost putting a hand on his little shoulder but thinking better of it. She remembered his saying that the scientists believed touching a human was very dangerous. She instead inspected the bracelet on her wrist. There didn’t seem to be any buttons or clasp on it, it was as if it was a solid piece of metal. It didn’t restrict her wrist in any way thankfully but it was making the other humans very uncomfortable to be tagged like that.