When I woke up the next time, I found that I couldn't feel or see anything. My first thought was; 'was I paralysed?', but I brought my hands together and stroked my right over the back of my left, feeling some kind of tube or rope. I suddenly realised how warm I was. Not normal body temperature, hotter. I continued to pat my hands along my body, feeling more of the same rope things attached to my waist. I found out with relief that I was still clothed, but different clothes than what I was in last. A tight shirt and shorts. I felt down to the hem of the shorts and felt them billowing around. As I was moving my hands, I realised how dense the air seemed. Like water. I still could only see blackness, but when I closed my eyes, the lights that I could see behind them comforted me, that I could be sure that I wasn't blind.
I stretched out into a star shape, then realised that I could do so and stay in the 'air' for a while, even though there was nothing suspending me, not even the rope things, as they stayed slack. I moving my feet around, trying to feel the floor, but there was just emptiness. I decided that I must be in water, but how would I be breathing? I put my hands to my face in shock, and found a plasticy feeling thing over my mouth, with yet another tube attached to it, which must have been giving me oxygen to breathe. I reached up to the top of my head and found that my hair was flowing around. I panicked, thrashing around, feeling the water froth around my flailing hands. I hit something with my left hand.
I felt out with it cautiously, moving it slowly through the water until I felt a smooth, hard surface. I reached out with my other hand in the opposite direction and discovered another wall. I brought them both back to my front, and pushed out in front of me, coming into contact with a different one, and then my put my hands behind my back and did the same, discovering another surface. I was in a box! I curled my hands into fists and brayed against the walls of it, but to my surprise I didn't hear crashing sounds. Come to think of it, I couldn't hear anything. Was I deaf?
Suddenly bright, blinding light shot into my eyeballs, searing my retinas. I snapped them shut trying to quell the agony in my brain, but then rough hands grabbed my arms and lifted them up. I screamed. The touch, after so much nothingness, was unbearable to me, and my arms dropped again. I found that the pain behind my eyes had decreased a bit, so I opened them slowly. At first, all I could see was white, but then I blinked a few times, and two mens faces came into focus.
Startled, I sat up from my current lying down position, and looked down to find that I was sitting in a box, as I had guessed, filled with clear liquid that wasn't water. I snapped my head back up and tried to get up, but my legs weren't obeying me and they wouldn't move. A hand grabbed the back of my head and ripped off my mask that was covering my mouth, and then grabbed all of my hair, squeezing out the liquid. I cried out from the touch, but then I was being lifted out of the box and set in a wheelchair. Before I could do anything, hands grabbed the straps on the sides of the chair and tightened them across my lap and wrists. I screamed again, the pain subsiding now but still pretty horrible. A hand shoved me back into the chair by pushing my chest, but I found that I couldn't sit properly back for some reason. I could feel the back of the chair, but I wasn't feeling it with my back. I wriggled my shoulders and strained my wrists against the ties, but then the chair was being wheeled through a door, along a corridor, left, through some double doors, left and then right. The air felt cold against my damp skin and clothes. I could see windows in the walls out of the corners out my eyes, but were dark and dimmed. The chair paused outside a black door, and one of the men swiped a card on the handle and it opened. I was released out of the chair and laid down on the floor with my back against a wall. The men were only shadows now in the dark room against the light coming from the still open door. I yelled at them, but then the door was shut, and I was left alone.
The dim light in the room flickered, and I looked up to see an orange rectangular light, flickering. I leant against the wall, and found again that I couldn't feel it with my back. I found that most of my strength had come back, so I decided to stand up and trust that my legs wouldn't give way. I braced myself against the wall and stood up slowly. I straightened out my legs and took my hands form the wall, putting my weight on my legs carefully. To my surprise, I didn't fall over. When I had found my balance, I reached over my left shoulder with my right hand to the top of my back, and felt.....something that wasn't skin.
I pulled at the hem of my shirt to take it off, and saw in the dim light that there were two large slits either side on the back. My shoulders ached, and to stretch them I leant backwards, but I felt something touching the base of my back. In the same position, I put my hands there, and felt two things that were cold, and hard, and felt like bone. I straightened up, and put my arm around myself, and felt them again. They were long, and narrow at the bottom, but they were wide near my shoulder blades. I was stunned, but curiosity took over and I stroked my shoulder blades and found that the mysterious things melted into my skin. I then thought that if they were part of my body, then I should be able to move them, and so I wriggled my shoulders and felt them move. I concentrated on each of my limbs, and then I searched for something inside of me that was new, but still a body part. I found it, and thought, move, just like when I move my arms or legs. I could feel the masses on my back stretching outwards, either side of my body. It was strange, like I knew how to move them, just like how you know how to walk, and also like I was figuring out how to move them.
I let my instincts take over, and when I knew that they were fully outstretched, I moved the right one towards my body, curling it around my front. It looked like a...wing, but not like a bird wing, more like a bat wing, with bones and thin skin stretched between the bones. I felt the outside, and found it to be tougher than normal skin, leathery almost in texture. The inside of the erm... wing thing was smoother and softer. I moved them around, and found that they were bluish-grey in colour, and about a metre longer than my arm span. They fitted around my back when I folded them in, and came from my shoulders to the base of my back.
I didn't know what to feel. Mostly, it was amazement that I now had wings, but then there was the hysterical panic, that humans don't have wings! What had they done to me? Or had I developed them myself? Was I a freaking alien, or something? I wanted answers. Then, there was the fear. I was scared now, proper scared. I didn't know why I was here. I didn't know what they were gonna do to me. Even if I got out of this awful place, what would people say? What would my sister say? I pictured her face looking at me in disgust, and it brought tears to my eyes.
I picked up my shirt from where I had dropped it and put it on, fitting my new additions through the rips in it, and I collapsed on the floor. Curling my wings around my body, I cried and cried, shivering and shuddering. Through my tears I wondered if I would by able to fly with the wings.
I intended to find out.
I intended to get out of this awful place.
I intended to use my possible flying abilities to do it.
I intended to see my sister's face again before I died.
