Tiger, Tiger

Tiger, Tiger: Chapter 14

Dedicated to elethewombat because she rocks and I larf her ^.^ x

I am SUPER EXCITED!! It's Christmas tomorrow and I love everything about it! :3

Onto another thing I hope you love. Tiger, Tiger is here! ;P Plus it got to 239 on What's Hot! I know it's not massive compared to a lot of other people, but it's amazing for me, bearing in mind this is my first proper story on here! :D 

Enjoy and have a lovely Christmas, or however you choose to spend the day, I love you guys too much for  my own good :) xx

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My eyes fluttered open and instantly pain so intense that I felt nauseous washed over me. I lay still for a moment, something cool against my cheek, and waited for the dizziness to pass. I groaned weakly and blinked my eyes to try and clear the haze from my vision, but all I could see was a white blur. I rubbed my face roughly and pushed the tangled mess that was my hair out of the way as I sat upright.

When I looked around again there was still only whiteness. A wave of panic hit me square in the chest. Was I blind? I moved my hands up and upon seeing them, my heartbeat slowed. So I wasn’t blind, but was I dead? I ruled that out almost instantly. If I were dead I wouldn’t be in this much pain. My whole body ached with an intensity that burned. And I wouldn’t long to be back with my pack.

With laboured movements I managed to push myself up onto my feet, taking a tentative step into even more white nothingness. Was this another one of their machines? Was I attached to some kind of equipment that made me think I was somewhere else? Did they have the technology to do that?

I put my hands out before me and took another step, and then another and another until my hands met something hard. The surface was smooth and cold under my touch as I ran my hands along it. I sidestepped along the surface for several meters until the side of my right hand hit something else. I turned and carried my palms along that smooth surface until I hit another, before walking the length of that too.

I was in a box, a solid white box, and I was trapped. My heart began to thrum double time, so loud I was surprised it didn’t echo around me. The horribly familiar sense of claustrophobia clutched at my chest and my breathing hitched for a second. Cages were bad, seriously bad, but at least you could see out of them, at least there was some definition to the world. Here I didn’t have a clue what was going on around me. The air felt like it was thinning, not enough of it to sustain my heavy breaths.

I put my back to the nearest blank wall and slid down until I was sitting. My animal was panicking and running circles inside of me. My breathing began to stutter and I trembled, dropping my head between my knees. “Ok, Alexis, calm down,” I breathily whispered to myself, “It’s all going to be fine. It’s just a room.”

I let out a long breath in an attempt to calm myself a little but it failed. I was still shaking like the last leaf on an autumn tree. Surely though, if this was real and not an illusion, then there had to be an exit from the room if they’d gotten me in here.

My breaths came out in ragged pants as I turned around and desperately ran my fingers across the wall behind me. There had to be something there, a key hole or a mechanism, but all I felt was the same cool surface that stretched around the whole room. I was running out of wall and my hammering heartbeat was threatening to swallow me up. Then I felt them: the tiniest little bumps and grooves, barely even deeper than a scratch. I pressed my ear up against the space between them and caught the slightest murmur of noise. Voices? So this was reality.

I raised my fists and desperately thumped against the door. “Let me out!” I screamed. My tiger was roaring to be free, not even caring that a shock would be all I got if I tried. I could feel myself teetering on the edge of a full out panic attack. “I’m going to die if you leave me in here any longer. I swear to you I won’t last. You wouldn’t want to lose a specimen like me would you?”