Toyinfestation

16 - One of those confusing..um..lives.

I smiled, put her back in my shirt pocket, clipped on my flash light to my jacket collar and got down on all fours, yes, all fours - it was that small.

Crawling through the tunnel was incredibly boring, smelly and really really uncomfortable. I ended up knocking my head against the ceiling a few times. It got kind of hard to breathe after a while. And then we came to a dead end. But, before I could begin yelling at Anaesthesia, the ground and the ceiling began to sink down, just like an elevator. I had to bring my knees close to my chest, curl up like a ball – part of what I thought was a dead end started to sink down.

I had to pull my legs in or I might have just ended up with only a pair of knees. I didn’t exactly start panicking until I took out my cell phone. There was no signal in the area.

The open end of the strange ‘elevator’ slid past walls with occasional rows of ventilators. Then, it stopped with a jerk and then stayed there.

 I cautiously put my legs out to make sure there was a ground below me and pushed myself out of the “elevator”. Anaesthesia slowly stood up and poked her head out of my pocket; she had curled up into a marble during our ‘ride’.

“We’re in a room.”

“Yes, genius.”

“In one of the workrooms.”

Oh so… “You knew about this? And you asked me to walk into it?”

“I’ve been like this for two years! What was I supposed to do? Anyway, your Uncle won’t do anything to you; you’re like a son to him.”

“My Uncle has no connection with this.” We were in a small store-room like room with a few odd cardboard boxes. The room had those automatic lights. The moment I’d stepped out of the elevator, they’d flickered on. There wasn’t a speck of dirt anywhere. Where was I? How was I supposed to get back and how much actual truth was there to Anaesthesia’s words?

“If you knew about this- ” I started, only to get interrupted by a faint ‘woosh’ sound from behind me. I spun around; the elevator was, moving back up. I took an involuntary step back. Now, I really had no way back. The only way exit left was the lone door out of the room.

There was a corridor outside, like those that join up series of classroom in school hallways which ended with a flight of stairs going both up as well was down.

There were several doors along the corridor. I tried to open them, but, everyone I tried was locked. My footsteps echoed down the length of the corridor. Everything was air-conditioned, so it made the echoes louder. There was no one there, yet, there couldn’t be. The low room temperature gave me goosebumps. Anaesthesia was quiet as well, quiet was well, gripping on to the edges of my pocket.

“Where are we?” she said, after I’d tried the eight door, and failed.

I take pride in saying that I didn’t groan, nor did I sigh. “You don’t know. That’s greaaat,” I smiled wirily. I walked on, looking back now and then, where was … well… anyone?

I was a few metres away from the staircase when someone, or as it turned out later, something, grabbed me from behind. I reached back to try and grab whoever it was. A cold hand stopped mine. And the hand wasn’t made of flesh at all – it was all metal. Track was right. There were life-sized tin men. He wasn’t lying.

One of the two tin men hauled me over his shoulder and walked into an open door a little farther. Someone had been expecting me, us.

The other tin man followed, taking out a strange looking gun and looking me, with an emotionless sprayed on face. A few screams died somewhere in my throat, before I could let them out.

They locked the door before dumping me on a hard cement floor. The room spun around me for a while, I was that scared. I sat up, rubbing the back of my head where it had slammed against the floor. A warm hand closed around my chin and jerked my head up a little.

“ The master will be very pleased with me.” A girl about my age bent down. Her cold, gray eyes glowed a little.

Anaesthesia’s voice shook when she said, “That’s me.”

I knew it, she was a red head.