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Their tone of voice spikes my blood with terror.
I try to open my eyes but my lids are heavy, so heavy, like fishing weights the size of boulders.
A muffled sound, like whimpering, comes from a person next to me, but I cannot open my eyes.
Dry.
The corners of my lips ache, but I cannot move my tongue to lick them. Instead, I gag again.
I try to sit up, but my hands are in my lap.
I try to open my eyes, but the lids are anvils.
A blur of words goes by, and I hear my name uttered, followed by soft clapping. Numbers go by—triglycerides, genetics, something about “perfect red blood cells,” and a declaration of natural 20/20 vision. My breath feels like a train inside my ears, and as I breathe in through my nose, I smell steak.
Then sage.
Then I gag again. The back of my throat is so sticky, one tonsil dry as a bone. I need to open my eyes and ask Cam for water.
This must be another bad dream.
“The sedatives hurt the liver,” someone says, and I want to see who, but my eyes are filled with grit.
“Only for a few hours. She is a fast acetylator. See?”
One eye opens and for a brief flash, I see two blonde women huddled together over a small folder, pointing.
“Oh! Good with caffeine, too.”
“Those creatine levels are to die for.”
I don’t know what creatine is, but they make it sound good.
As the anvils over my lids begin to lighten, I open my eyes again, seeing tables, like a cabaret. People are at round, large banquet-sized circles, spread out in the room, six or eight to a table. Perhaps eighty people are in the formation, with waiters in white coats everywhere.
What a bizarre dream.
Then again, I was naked in an ice cave in my last one. Perhaps this isn’t so –
“Mmmph!” Someone kicks my foot. I try to move it but can’t. It’s numb and tingly, the ankle at an odd angle. As I breathe out, I gag again and clench my teeth.
Except I can’t.
I’m gagging because there is something big in my mouth. Big and metal.
“NNNNNNGGGGG,” says someone next to me as the two ladies at the table in front of me look up, their faces filled with annoyance. I’m kicked again in the foot and before I can react, someone is next to me. He smells like wool and faint body odor. He has something shiny in his hand.
A needle.
My pulse is steady and hard, as if someone is beating the walls of my circulatory system with a sledgehammer. I see the needle go into an arm but feel nothing. Suddenly, the thing kicking my foot stops. A long sigh turns into a groan. I turn my head and see a young woman in an upholstered chair next to me, wearing a crown on her head.
A head that tips to the left, then forward, her chin impossibly resting right on her collarbone. She chokes and her head bobs up, then back.
A leather strap, studded by shiny sequins – no, diamonds – crosses her cheeks, a silver metal ball in her mouth.
It glitters.
I reach up to touch the thing in my mouth, but my hands are bound together, my legs strapped to my own chair, and the heaviness on my head makes me think I, too, wear a crown.
