Steele's Storm

Pet Trade

When Steele finally came to his senses, he was cold and stiff. His muscles felt like they hadn't been used for months when he finally regained enough of himself to stretch and move around. His whole body felt tight and sore and he silently cursed whatever had captured him. He hated the unknown, hated anything new. He hated being in the dark and he hated tiny enclosed spaces which is exactly what he found himself in; A tiny, dark, enclosed box that barely gave him enough room to stretch, but not enough to stand and not enough to fully lay out.

A heavy and cold metal collar sat around his neck and thick metal clasps wrapped around his wrists and ankles, but they weren't connected to anything yet. The semi-circle sticking off of each clasp made him think that at some point while he was asleep, he'd been chained down or he would be in the future. He wore nothing but a simple, silk-like cloth that covered his genitals, held on by a small, thread-like string. It unnerved him to know that he'd been stripped of his clothing and when he felt his arm, he'd also been shaved.

Steele's heart beat erratically as if it could sense the panic he felt rising in his throat, trying to make him puke. He hated new things. He hated not knowing what was going to happen. Everything but the hair on his head and the fur on his tail and ears had been shaved clean and when he squinted he could make out dark lettering on the inside of his wrist. His nails had been filed way too short for comfort and when he ran his tongue along his teeth, he realized with horror that they had been filed short as well.

A small whine was all that escaped him as he balled his hands into fists. He wanted to scream and cry and tear apart whoever had done this to him, but he couldn't and his claustrophobia was making him sick. His whole body felt hot and the air was stuffy. He just wanted to go home. Why had this happened to him?

Before he could stew in his thoughts for too long, a small hissing sound met his ears. What he had assumed was the front of the box he was in started to open. He was momentarily blinded as the sudden light hurt his eyes and he had to shut them to adjust. Cool air wafted over him and after a few heartbeats of nothing happening, he dared to open his eyes.

Stretching before him, outside of the box was a small white room. There were no windows and nothing to give him any information. He crawled from the box and the moment he took the last step out, it snapped out of existence.

Steele jumped, goosebumps along his arms and when he reached a hand back to where the box had been, it truly was gone. Dread was welling inside of him and he stalked slowly around the room, trying to find a way out, but there was nothing. No doors, no vents, no windows. No obvious source of the white light, nothing to use as a chair or a bed, no source for the small breeze that he kept feeling wash over his body. It spooked him completely. Aside from his sight, his sense of hearing and smell were cut off. He felt like there was cotton in his ears and up his nose, but nothing was there other than the simple feeling. He hated this more than he hated the tiny box.

When a door materialized in one of the walls, Steele jumped with a small cry before he was able to calm himself. He hurried into the far corner away from the door and watched with wide eyes as a small bit of color started to bleed into the room. The walls turned from stark white to a deep blue before finally settling on a grassy green and he realized that the two colors separated the ceiling from the floor, meeting together in a sort of dark teal halfway down the walls.

He didn't like the implications of everything and slid down against the wall. Steele had never seen technology like this before and it deeply unsettled him. The most his people ever messed around with when it came to technology were inside the unbreakable walls of the Unifleer city and even then, it was primitive compared to this. How could the door just appear out of nowhere? How could the walls just change color like that? A part of him had to think it was magic even though he knew better.