Page 20 of Ruby
With chattering teeth, the only thing I can do is think warm thoughts. In my imagination, I can vaguely remember what it feels like to be warm. Downing a steaming cup of coffee on a wintry day, a hoodie that doubles as a blanket and the warmer I always used during rehearsals.
Drifting even further back, warmth comes to me in the form of a warm hug and a huge, toothy grin. Big arms that cover my scrawny body and a kiss on my forehead that proclaims endless love for me. A pang of pain spreads through my chest, as any reminder of my father.
Or who he was before my career ruined us.
Long lost.
Pain is warm, though. The feeling of pain brings a tiny bit of warmth to my toes and the tear running down the side of my face brings warmth back to my cheeks. Unfortunately, it only lasts for a moment before making it all worse. Even the power of imagination, which I have plenty of, cannot save me from freezing to death.
I just wish I had something on. A huge coat wrapped around me with several layers underneath to protect me from the cold. Something protective yet durable. Something…
I go rigid, panic surging again as something shifts along my body.
There’s something creeping along my skin. Like a thousand ants marching across my body, it steadily spreads from my waist, extending to my extremities. As it spreads, the feeling of coldimproves but another feeling of dread fills me. Am I being eaten alive? What is this?
Once it has spread to the rest of me, covering even my neck, the ticklish feeling of being crawled on stops. Looking down, I find that I’m now covered in an odd black material. It has a certain lustre, like leather but it still feels liquid to the touch. Flexing my fingers and toes, I realize I can move them naturally, despite the fact that they’re covered.
“Nice,” I mutter, mind whirling.
It’s also fucking weird. Clothes don’t materialize from thin air.
I close my eyes and try to recall even more. I was hardly conscious, but the gray blobs of moving flesh are hard to deny. The theory that I was abducted by aliens is becoming more real by the second.
Above me, the sky parts and I see a streak of purple through the clouds. My mind recalls vivid pink slime forming a trail on the metallic floors. Of pain. Even in my terrible childhood, I haven’t been in that much pain before. My hand instinctively reaches up to my throat, which at some point, went raw from screaming so much.
The woman in my memories, she was talking to the gray blobs. Her face escapes me, but I don’t think I can forget the deep blue-purple locks that sprung from her scalp. She pushed me in this thing, but why?
Pods like these in sci-fi movies always had a parachute or jets or something. If it was intentionally sabotaged, I can only shiver at what exactly I’ve gotten myself into.
A new detail moves my racing thoughts in a whole new direction. It’s not some weird alien fabric surrounding me. It’s hair. A giant mass of it and pulling on it confirms it’s attached to my skull.
“What the fuck,” I mutter.
It’s not only red, but also the brightest shade I’ve ever seen. Thicker and much, much longer than hair has a right to be. It quickly becomes apparent that the coarse “carpet” I’ve been feeling the entire time has been thick locks of long, tangled red hair.
“Blyat,” I mutter again, this time in Russian for emphasis.
A shaky breath escapes me as I fiddle around with my “hair.” There are not enough words in any dictionary of any language to describe what I’m feeling at this moment. There’s rage, there’s sadness, there’s confusion and more importantly, there’s fear.
They’ve altered my anatomy.
Just like the Witch, but somehow far, far worse.
My racing mind clings to memories of my mother. When I was a teenager, there were many times I felt bound to my mother’s dreams and wanted a means to rebel. I thought of dying my hair an assortment of colors or destroying something precious to her, just for her to see how much I was hurting inside. Anything to sabotage the pretty career she built for me. She always went onlong rants about branding and how much we would make if I only listened to her.
How my silky white-blond hair was my signature. Something other women found in a bottle. Somehow something powerful in a way that seemed idiotic and incomprehensible to my young mind.
I listened. I had no other choice.
But this… this is downright evil. What else have they altered? What have I become? Where even am I?
I was never the type to believe in government conspiracies about aliens, but evidence can be quite damning.
I always wondered why those characters in horror movies always chose to run and hide instead of taking the easy way out and just giving up, but it has become horrifyingly apparent to me why they chose to run instead.
It’s what I would be doing right now if I wasn’t stuck in this tree. Running and screaming until my breath left my body, yet still clinging to that breath. That hope.
Life is a poisonous drug that people have no other choice but to keep taking until they’re deprived of it. It’s why she trapped me in her plans so long.
