Touchstone 1 - Stray by Andrea K. Höst Read Free Book Online Page A

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 searched about, but there was nothing to do except stare out the window. At least my eyes have decided to stop being blurry.
    No greenery