Total pages in book: 159
Estimated words: 149470 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 747(@200wpm)___ 598(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 149470 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 747(@200wpm)___ 598(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
Everything looked strange and huge in the blue, underwater glow. It reminded me of the restrooms they have in some of the convenience stores in and around Atlanta that have blue overhead lights. The reason behind the blue glow is that it’s supposed to keep drug addicts, who go into the bathroom to shoot up, from being able to find their veins. But in this case, I was pretty sure the glow was just what my alien captor liked. Who knew what spectrums of light those strange, full-black eyes could see?
All the furniture in the room was built on a much bigger scale than I was used to. At 5’4, I’ve never been the tallest one in the room, but the enormous furnishings made me feel like I had somehow shrunk back down to the size I’d been when I was ten or twelve. Like Alice after eating the mushroom, everything was simply too big.
The bed was massive—a thick pallet raised far off the ground on some kind of platform whose legs seemed to be made of the same alien material as my crate. I had to stand on my tiptoes to see the top of the mattress, which was covered in a kind of duvet that was made of thick, silky, silver material that gleamed softly in the blue glow. The mattress itself was so big, it reminded me more of a silver sea than a bed.
I flipped the silver duvet up to look under the bed and was met with a vast, black space that gave me the shivers. The dim blue glow didn’t give enough light for me to see what was under there and I decided I’d rather not find out.
But this time I was nearly bursting with the need to pee. I’d had to go even before the doggy wedding, which now seemed like about a hundred years ago, though it was probably barely an hour. I wondered if Great Aunt Maizy had found Princess Prissy and her soiled wedding dress in the bathtub yet and if she was wondering where I had gone to. Would she think I’d had enough and had decided to abandon her precious Pomeranian and hit the road? No matter what she thought, she would never guess what had actually happened. Nobody would.
That led me down the road of worrying about what my mom and sister would think. Mom would want to call the police right away but Taylor would say to wait because maybe I was just “cooling off” after that ridiculous doggy wedding. Of course, it didn’t matter when they called, nobody on Earth would be able to find me.
The thought made me sad and scared but I did my best not to give in to it. This was a bad situation but I was going to get out of it.
“Listen up, Elli,” I told myself sternly. “Nobody back home is going to come for you, so you have to get yourself out of this mess!”
But how? I couldn’t even find the bathroom—let alone get myself back to Earth!
I was walking along the perimeter of the room as I thought this. There was a giant chair in one corner upholstered in the same sleek sliver material as the coverlet on the bed. Its seat came up to my waist and I estimated I could crawl onto it if I didn’t mind leaving my dignity behind. But it was clearly not a toilet, which was what I urgently needed.
Further along the wall I finally found what I was looking for. I was trailing my fingers along the wall so I didn’t get lost in the blue gloom, when I found that I was no longer feeling metal but instead some kind of fabric or cloth.
It turned out to be a kind of curtain which was the same color as the walls. After pushing what felt like yards and yards of fabric out of the way, I found myself in another room—a much smaller one.
The lights came on automatically as soon as I entered, nearly blinding me with their brilliance. I squinted uncertainly, looking around at the bright, white walls and the huge appliances.
The first appliance looked a bit like a square bathtub with high sides but it was as big as a hot tub back home. I couldn’t see where the water was supposed to come from—there were no spigots or faucets—but maybe they were hidden. Anyway, it wasn’t a shower or a bath I was looking for—I needed someplace to relieve myself.
The second appliance was more promising. It looked like a large, shiny silver pot balanced on top of a short, squat pedestal. Well, I say short but the top of the pedestal came up to my thigh and the broad, flat lip of the pot came up to my waist. So I would have to stand on my tiptoes and scramble a bit to get seated on it, but I thought it was doable—barely.