Stray by Andrea K. Höst Read Free Book Online Page A

I couldn't for the life of me figure out what they were doing to control it.  Maybe someone back at the ship was steering.
    They talked to each other as they went back, and watched me as if they thought I was going to take a knife to them.  I saw no more than a corridor of the ship before they ushered into this little box of a room, and shut the door on me.  So small it's practically a cupboard, but every few minutes it grows warmer or colder or hums.  Maybe they're irradiating me for bugs.
    I've been here over half an hour.  I wish I'd had a chance to pee before being rescued. 
    Monday, December 17
    The excitement of butterfly grapes
    It seems an age since I could write in this book, though my watch says it's only been a day or so.  Where to start?
    On the ship I was finally let out of my cupboard by a woman in yet another uniform – grey and darker grey with a long pale grey shirt over the top.  Just like a doctor's coat, so no surprise that she was some kind of doctor and gave me a medical exam and a bunch of injections.  Most of the injections didn't involve needles, but something like a compressed air cylinder.  The worst was directly to my left temple, which ached, and then ached worse, and now is a dull persistent pain.
    She talked a lot while she peered and prodded, and we did a little pantomime of her pointing to herself and saying "Ista Tremmar" and me going "Cassandra".  Then the best part of the day beyond being rescued: a shower and a toilet (hilarious pantomime explanations).  The toilet was weird – it was a form-fitted bench with a hole, which doesn't flush or have any water in it – you close the lid after you use it and if you open it again it doesn't smell like it's been used.  I couldn't properly see the bottom, but it looked like an empty box.  The toilet paper is thickish, pre-moistened squares like baby wipes.  And the shower – warm water and soap!
    I wanted to stay in there forever, but after Ista had gone through this pantomime of pointing to it and making totally incomprehensible gestures, I'd decided I was supposed to be quick.  No towel: the ceiling blew a gale of hot air at me when I turned the water off.
    There was a white shift to wear, and I had to put all my clothes in a plastic bag.  I couldn't find a comb or toothbrush, so finger-combed my hair into some sort of order before Ista led me off to a room full of chairs.  In the medical room, everything was designed to be tucked away neatly and take up no more space than it had to, so I was almost expecting some kind of cattle class cramped airplane seating, but instead there were these long, padded and reclined chairs, like a cross between a dentist's chair and a bed.  There were three rows of four, each set up on its own platform.  When I lay down the cushions squished themselves in around me like they were trying to hold on – the weirdest sensation ever – but it was absolutely comfortable.
    Once I was settled in, Ista gave me another injection, a sedative this time.  I was awake long enough to see a plastic/glass bubble thing come up around my seat, and then I was out until waking up where I am now, not on the ship, but on a bed-shelf made of whitestone with a mattress on top, in a small but not cramped room.  There's a window, plastic, unopenable and very thick, which looks out over the roof of what seems to be one huge mound of connected building: blockish and white and eerily reminiscent of the town I was in but all joined together and with only occasional windows and doors.  The only other thing to be seen is clouds and a black and choppy ocean.
    The door is locked, but I found a cupboard which had clean clothes in it (underpants, grey tights/pants and a loose white smock).  Other than that, there was only a whitestone shelf before the window and a chair before it which makes me think it's meant to be a narrow table.  I tried knocking on the door, but not in a frantic I'm-panicky-and-bothersome way, and