Lost on Titan

{Part 8}

~Videl~

Videl liked to think that her cooking was improving after a whole week of trial and error. When she wasn't poring over online recipes and cooking, she busied herself as much as she could cleaning with strange supplies and devices she'd found in the broom closet. Her favorite was easily a feather-light contraption that had different blinking lights that she'd managed to figure out after a few days. It had settings that could vacuum the carpets, mop the floors, and it even folded in on itself to become a handheld device, if needed, that had a sweeping laser that sanitized surfaces such as the counters. She hated the thing at first, because it had been extremely difficult to understand how to work, but she felt a sense of accomplishment every time she unraveled the mystery of each function and each time she employed its usage successfully. As pathetic as she knew it was, the cleaning device became like an odd, little robot friend. Once she'd enabled its voice command setting, and programmed it to respond to a few basic phrases, it spoke to her in its tinny, disembodied voice. Videl began chattering away to it like it was her imaginary roommate. She even gave it the name "Belle," after a princess in another ancient movie she'd watched the other night before bed. Belle's blinking standby light, when "she" was not in use, was a yellow color which made Videl think of the dress of the princess in that movie. Videl began sidling Belle next to her on the couch for company, even sharing her pink throw blanket with the machine. It made her feel just a tiny bit less alone.

Videl was gradually becoming more comfortable in her private quarters, now that she had created some memories of her own. It almost felt like it was her home. But the time for bed filled her with dread each night. She would force herself to lay in the bed, covers drawn tight around her, the fear of another nightmare keeping her wide awake. A few nights, she laid there like that for so long, she would move back to the couch to watch a comedic TV show, or another princess film - giving up on the possibility of sleep altogether - only to find herself so tired she eventually passed out, anyway, waking with a scream or a sob at the nightmare that followed. The nightmares were so vivid, yet when she was awake again, they faded so quickly that she could hardly remember a thing about them. The rage and terror that tainted her upon waking made her upset - she didn't deal with any emotion even close to that in her daily life, so far, and it felt like they weren't her feelings at all. They were gnarled, twisted emotions and Videl wanted none of them. She was eager to shake them off each morning and start her day, wishing the days would fly by faster so she could be through with the unsavory symptoms. She had stopped feeling dizzy, stopped feeling voraciously hungry, stopped feeling like she could drink a gallon of water each morning - after the third or fourth day, but the nightmares came every night without fail, ruining any chance she had of getting quality rest.

Every day, the dark circles under her eyes seemed to get darker, and the only thing that reassured her that things would be okay was rereading the part of the article she'd searched that stated cryo-sleep symptoms were temporary, and would wear off. One more week, she kept telling herself, one more week and she could sleep like a normal person should. She could handle it, she could deal with it a little bit longer.

Videl must have nodded off on the little chair in her miniature dining area, waiting for her pizza to bake that she'd made from scratch, because a shrill, alarm-like sound woke her to the smell of smoke. She hadn't set the timer - she had wanted to check it periodically rather than risk the pizza ending up like the small roast she'd followed the directions on the other day that had turned out dry when it was supposed to be succulent. She had decided that relying on the times and temperatures to be 100% accurate was foolhardy, and it was better to keep a close eye on the food she cooked to prevent food waste. She hadn't thought for one second that she would fall asleep, when she was so excited to try her first pizza.