Settling Slowly

Chapter 18 - I told you it was a bad idea

It took a few minutes of looking at the ceiling to realise I'd never seen it before. But that was ok. I was nice and warm. And comfy. Really comfy. So comfy I didn't ever want to move. Who would want to even think about moving when they were this comfortable anyway? I was so comfortable it was like sleeping on a cloud. I was floating too. Floating in the sky and –

Oh holy crap on a cracker. Oh shit. I'd been fucking kidnapped! What kind of bastard kidnaps people anyway? Some creepy shit with no life and was really lonely that's who. Someone who had never been loved and –

Oh who the fuck cared who had kidnapped me? I had to get out of here! I needed to move! I needed to rescue myself because no one was going to come and rescue me.

I made my feet kick the quilt off even though it was actually in a kinda nice cover. Dark blue with a white stripe down the side and across the top. Then I sat up.

I felt like a heard of elephants was running over my brain because a nuclear explosion had just gone off in there. Oh god, I'd never had a headache like it. And the light was too bright. Who had a bulb that bright anyway? It was insane. It was like I was a foot away from the surface of the sun. It was fucking mental. Insane.

Not that being so close to the sun was the biggest issue here. I'd been kidnapped.

I forced myself to stand up and found my knees weaker than unset jelly that had too much water in it. Still. I had to get out of here. I had to get back home. Had Mum and Dad already called the police? Were people out looking for me? What if I didn't have that long left? What if as well as being kidnapped I was also going to be a murder victim? Of course, I already felt like I'd been murdered. Or that someone had already started and damn near finished the job.

The door handle took some rattling before I could get it to move. Then I had to remember how to open doors. I pulled it and stumbled out. I didn't care about what the place I was in looked like. All I knew was that the stairs looked absolutely deadly. Like the Secret Stair in The Return of the King.

Well, if Frodo could climb them, so could I. I leaned against the wall and slowly stepped down. The door wasn't far away from the bottom of them. More of that too bright sunlight was streaming through the small windows it had, but I didn't care. So long as I was on the other side of it that was good. It was the side of the door that freedom and life was on.

I got down the stairs without falling over and was about to reach for the door handle when I was spotted by my kidnapper.

"What are you doing?"

I jumped around with a scream. There were two of them. And they were identical. If they hadn't kidnapped me I would have said that they were pretty damn fine to look at. And then gone all Olivia in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and said "how wonderful" in a dreamy voice. But the bastards had kidnapped me.

"Zoya?"

The bastard was my boyfriend. The two people shrunk into one, relief filled my heart and I sank to the floor sobbing my eyes out.

                                                                                        *     *     *     *

"So that's what harm it'll do," I mumbled.

It was about an hour later and I was once again hugging the toilet. I felt like a complete idiot, I was embarrassed as hell and my head was still pounding like it was about to explode. Or maybe little bits of it were exploding each time it throbbed.

"Well you did have half a glass of wine, about a point of beer and nine shots of Russian vodka."

I threw up again. And then once more to be sure.