By the time that Lilith's eyes had started adjusting to the blinding fluorescents above her, and a painful ache settled into her bones, she'd already long forgotten what was contained in her dreams.
All that remained was the faint, lingering sensation of liberosis.
Rubbing her eyes furiously as she slowly sat up, Lilith could feel her heavy wedding band drag along her eyebrow. Then she realized she in some sort of bed instead of the limousine, and the room definitely did not appear to be a part of any sort of train.
The ceiling was so high up that there had to be at least three floors above her, and nearly everything was painted in artificial white—the wooden chair, the small desk, even the empty bookshelf.
The single exception that she could see to the limited color variety was a rectangular and tall metal door, one with no knob to twist. Besides it was a glossy and oddly raised section of the wall with a tiny red light.
Lilith finally looked back down at herself before she audibly gasped.
The full outfit she had left home wearing was completely gone, replaced with a mere short-sleeved dress which reached down to her knees. It was colored with nothing but a bright white, and the cloth seemed to almost glow under the room's lighting.
Rubbing her eyes again, she decided to shift her thighs up and down against each other slightly. The sensation of undergarments was there, but Lilith wasn't sure she wanted to check if it was a different pair than before.
Was this... another dream?
She flexed her toes slightly, watching them wiggle underneath the thin blanket which covered her legs.
There was still pain in her body, along with an odd weak feeling, like she hadn't been going on her daily walks for a while. It almost made her want to lay back down and attempt to fall back asleep. Whatever this strange place was, she'd surely prefer reality over it.
Curiosity won her over, though, and she slowly climbed out of bed, steadying herself against the wall as she moved closer to the metal door.
The raised bump on the wall showed no reaction to her hand when she waved over or attempted to press it. Books described sensors and buttons working when interacted with in those ways, but maybe this wasn't one like she assumed.
As Lilith gave the flat metal door a suspicious look up and down before she took a step closer, lifting her arm up to try and touch it.
Before her skin could make actual contact with the door, the piece of metal shot up and out of sight with a subtle swishing sound.
Lilith's knees buckled, and her body abruptly plummeted onto the cold and glossy tiled ground, embedding small square-shaped marks into the bumps of her knees. The sharp and icy-cold pain elicited a yelp from her, and she quickly winced after hearing the noise echo somewhere in the distance.
"You guys hear that?" An unfamiliar female voice said from somewhere down the hall, thick with a slightly nasally and very breathy Avonian accent.
The stranger's words echoed down to Lilith, who immediately froze, her head still facing down at the floor.
What was going on?
Although there was no verbal response from anyone else, she could hear as the taps of multiple bare feet creeped closer upon the gleaming hallway floor.
A sense of dread slowly clawed up from Lilith's stomach and into her throat, before her head slowly began to rotate upwards. Her eyes slowly lifted up as well, before making full eye-contact with a young woman—one who stuck her head into the room, and was now staring down at her.
YOU ARE READING
The Book of Exi
General Fiction"Hurry up, cultie," Ardith was looking at her again. "You better get used to things, fast." Lilith tried to wet her lips using her tongue, but the sensation was as unpleasant as sandpaper rubbing against itself. "What's... a 'cultie'?" "Means you we...
