To the Moon and Back

chapter 1

I don't like cages. I don't even like going to the zoo. The first time I went to one, I almost had a claustrophobic attack looking at those poor animals. I couldn't imagine any creature living that way. Sometimes I even felt a little bad for criminals, condemned to life in a cell. I'd certainly never expected to spend my life in one. But lately, life seemed to be throwing me a lot of things I'd never expected, because here I was, locked away.

"Hey!" I yelled, gripping the steel bars that isolated me from the world. "How long am I going to be here? You can't keep me in this dungeon forever!" Okay, it wasn't exactly a dungeon, not in the dark, rusty chain sense. I was in a small cell with plain white walls, a plain floor, and well... plain everything. Spotless. Sterile. Cold. It was actually more depressing than any musty dungeon could have managed. The bars in the doorway felt cool against my skin, hard and unyielding. Fluorescent lighting made the metal gleam in a way that felt harsh and irritating to my eyes. I could see the shoulder of a man standing rigidly to the side of the cell's entrance and knew there were probably four more in the hallway out of sight. I also knew none of them were going to answer me back, but that hadn't stopped me from constantly demanding answers from them for the last two months.

When the usual silence came, I sighed and slumped back on the cot in the cell's corner. Like everything else in my new home, the cot was colorless and stark. Yeah. I really was starting to wish I had a real dungeon. Rats and cobwebs would have at least given me something to watch. I stared upward and immediately had the disorienting feeling I always did in here; that the ceiling and walls were closing in around me. Like I couldn't breathe. Like the sides of the cell would keep coming toward me until no space remained, pushing out all of the air... I sat up abruptly, gasping. Don't stare at the walls and ceiling, Draco, I chastised myself. Instead, I looked down at my clasped hands and tried to figure out how I got myself into this mess