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Despite his flatulence problem, Stinky was the best friend I’d made on this planet.
In fact, he was the only friend I’d made. And that was probably the most depressing thing of all.
For the thousandth time that day, I thought about my friends and where they were. The last time I saw them, we were in the minivan that plunged over a cliff and toward the bottom of a deep ravine. A bright white light froze the van in place and sucked us each up into the sky one by one, like plucking grapes off a vine.
After that, I woke up in this shithole.
Were my friends in the same situation I was? Fighting to maintain their sanity? Used as slaves to a merciless master?
I had to balance most of my weight on one ass cheek to avoid the worst of the searing pain from the lashes Master had given me. Sometimes he wasn’t so accurate after drinking the night before.
Serves me right for spilling soup on the floor.
My vision turned blurry with tears and my head flopped forward on my arms.
What had I done to deserve this?
I’d been an elementary school teacher. My kids loved me. It hurt that I might never see their beaming faces again.
When I turned in for the night, I often cried myself to sleep—silently. I wouldn’t want to wake Master. That would result in very harsh punishment.
That was when the darkest thoughts came to me. That I was never getting out of here. I was never going to be free.
I was going to be scrubbing this floor for the rest of my life, and it might end up being a very short one at that. All it took was for my drunken master to go off crazier than usual, for him to deliver a blow just a little too hard or at just the wrong angle, and it would be over.
My hopes and dreams of escape, to return to Earth and my old life, would be dashed for good.
I delighted in teaching my old students something new, something that sparked that look of pure wonder on their faces. When you worked around children, you never stopped being a child yourself.
And I loved it.
But those children might as well have never existed. They might as well be figments of my imagination.
Escape had never seemed possible.
For the first few days, I hollered for help. I screamed myself hoarse and I could hardly speak for two more days afterward.
Not that not having a voice mattered. I didn’t have anyone to speak to except Stinky, and he only ever liked to respond from one end.
So far as I could tell, the shack I occupied was in the middle of a desert. The view out the unbroken windows proved that much. I hadn’t so much as stepped outside when I woke up. I’d been trapped inside the entire time.
For three weeks, maybe longer.
And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fill that hole in my memory between when we got abducted and when I arrived in this place.
I remember gulping a mouthful of oxygen. I had maybe a twenty-second window of opportunity to escape after I awoke and before they snapped that chain around my ankle.
More than enough time to make a break for it. More than enough time to dash through that open door and try to find someone.
But I’d just woken up like a hostage with the blindfold whipped off. I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing there. I was dazed, confused, and sick to my stomach.
There was more than one man in the room. That was the first and only time it happened. I recalled a strange hat that bent back on itself and a bushy beard of white but I couldn’t recall a whole lot else about that other man.
“Are we square?” the mystery man had said.
“I suppose so,” Master grumbled.
Then they smacked their chests with their fists, and it sounded to me like an auctioneer’s gavel.
