Chapter 2: Deprivation

When I woke I felt the futon under my back and thought for a moment that I hadn't opened my eyes, I couldn't see anything. It was pitch black. I sat up, my heart rate quickening as I tried to look around myself but couldn't see anything. I reached up to check if anything was over my eyes but in my anxiety I moved to fast and smacked myself in the face. It stung and I saw sparks from the impact and head the slap as it hit. At least I wasn't deaf. I strained to see and for a moment thought I could make out my hand, but when I moved it the dim image in my mind did not. I don't think I'm blind; it's more likely that my captors have just turned out what little light there was.

I carefully stood up and walked to the wall, my hands out in front of me to keep from smacking into it. When I stepped off the futon I registered something else that had changed, the temperature. It was cool in here and floor was almost cold to the touch of my bare feet. Once I reached the wall I discovered it was almost as cold as the floor. Was I in a new room, or did they just turn the heat and light down?

The cooler temperature was a pleasant change to the heat that had been plaguing me. I didn't feel like I was suffocating anymore. The old sweat that had covered my body had dried in this cooler temperature leaving me feeling refreshed, although a bit crusty.

I held onto the wall and started, carefully, walking down the length of it with my other hand held out to keep from hitting the wall at the corner. Once I reached that side I turned around and walked back, counting my steps as I went, I made it about nine steps before I hit the opposite wall. I turned and did the same down the next length, also about nine steps. And again on the next, and again on the last segment. And then I had a thought, what if this is a different room? What if there are more than four walls? The corners felt pretty close to right angles, but there is no way I could really tell. And if the walls curve slightly than there could be five or even six walls. My mind started spinning as I fixated on figuring out how many walls were in the room. I started walking again, counting steps as I went. When I had traveled two more segments I stopped because I had no idea if I had actually touched these walls yet. For some reason I thought I would recognize these segments, but I knew logically that I wouldn't, just as I knew logically that this room was almost certainly the same one I was in and it only had four walls. Walking it felt the same, about six meters per side.

I turned and carefully started to walk out toward the center of the room, I think. I pressed my naked back and ass to the cold wall and stepped out in a straight line expecting to step in the futon. Instead I smacked into the wall, stubbing my toe and hitting my knee as I stepped forward. I screamed in shock and pain and collapsed onto the floor clasping my hands around my toe. For being in an empty room I do seem to be hurting myself a lot. After a few moments the pain subsided and I ginger felt my toe instead of just crushing it. It didn't feel sticky and the nail seemed to still be attached, so I doubt any real damage, I would just have to walk gently on it for a while.

I stood back up and walked toward a corner. Four steps, how had I missed the futon, I was basically in the middle of the room? Maybe it's not that there are more sides, maybe there is a hallway off one of the side and I'm walking in kind of a square spiral? But that didn't make sense because some of the walls would need to be longer than others. I must have just missed it. Logically I knew this had to be right, but in the dark, it was hard to not start to panic at the confusion and disorientation. I sat down in the corner for a moment, the cold slowly creeping up through my but cheeks and feet, slowly crawling into my calves and lower back. It was almost painful how cold the floor was starting to feel.

I stood back up and walked four steps along a wall. With my toe in pain I was taking smaller steps, this should put me right in the middle of the wall segment. I pressed my back as flat as I could to the wall, feeling the cold press into my spine. I shiver ran through me making my skin prickle and my nipples harden. The sensation was intense and I felt a familiar heat start to rise up from bellow, but this time it didn't feel wrong, because no one was doing it to me but me. And my captors, who are the ones controlling this room.

The heat arrested and slowly diminishing, I try to concentrate on the task at hand. Instead of stepping forward I lay down, trying to keep in as straight a line as possible. I'm not even two meters tall, only one hundred fifty-six centimeters. I carefully straighten myself out on the floor, keeping my feet on the wall, trying not to extend one leg, hip or side, more than the other. When my breasts pressed into the cold there was a bit of shock from the sensitivity again. I felt myself begin to get excited by the cool bite of the floor onto my nipples and stomach; it was hard to not squirm a bit at the gentle and almost enjoyable pain.

Concentrating on my task I stretched my arms out. I may be short, but with my arms out and even with the short side of the futon, we should be more than half the room, if it is square. If it's not I'm screwed, there is no way I can retrace my steps, I have no idea how many wall segments I followed or where I crossed the room and stubbed my toe. The anxiety started to rise and mixed uncomfortably with the sexual stimulation the cold was giving me. When I pulled my hands down I felt the soft, almost warm touch of the thin futon. The relaxation and release of my anxiety was incredible, every muscle relaxed and I exhaled so long that I thought I might fall asleep right there, just holding the futon in my fingers. But instead I crawled forward, not letting go of the fabric under my fingers.

Okay. The futon being in the middle of the room made it pretty obvious that the room is square, but I wanted to be sure. I crawled off the futon while keeping my hands on the side. I gripped it and tried to drag it. But it wouldn't move. I pulled at it and tried to fold it over, and still nothing. I could get a little give, but it was like it was nailed to floor near the corners. So I crawled to the corner and carefully felt around the cloth. Inside I felt something hard, round, and probably ten centimeters across. After a few moments I had confirmed that this existed on each corner.

I sat down on the futon for a moment, feeling beaten. I needed to move the futon to the side so I can count the walls. If I didn't do that I would have no way of knowing how many walls there are. And not even knowing that basic bit of information about my surrounds might make me go crazy. I had to know. I needed it like plants need sun light. So I scrabbled up from where I was sitting and took hold of the corner and started pulling it toward the center. I pulled as hard as I could, digging my nails in as deeply as I could to get a bit of extra grip. When my grip slipped it pulled at my nails and I screamed with pain. Gingerly feeling the tips of my fingers I found all of my nails intact.

So I pressed them to floor to cool of the burn of pain then crawled all the way off the futon and tried again from another angle. This time I lifted from the outside, being able to put my back into it might give me enough force to rip it loose. But as I pushed and pulled at the corner, nothing moved but me. Rather quickly my feet started to slide out from under me and I fell face first to the ground, hitting my knees on the cold floor and my face onto the corner of the futon. Battered and bruised I pulled myself to the center of the futon and curled up. I lay in a fetal position, holding my pained fingers and knees as close to myself as possible.

Lying under the cool dry air I started to cry a little. I wanted to go home, and that was never going to happen. I was going to be cut up for meat or sold as a toy to some pimp where I will be raped until I die or grow too old to be useful. I cried because I still wanted things. I want to go places, fall in love, travel. I wanted to get out of that crappy city and see the stars. In less than two years I could have started a flight program and started heading out with some of the commercial ships. My math and special awareness are good; I could have gotten a training seat. But instead I'm here. I don't even know if I'm in the city still or not. I don't know if my co-workers at the restaurant are looking for me, or even care if I'm gone. My friends are the kind of people who drop out of the universe for weeks at a time; I doubt any of them have noticed I'm gone.

My crying goes down to just a sniffle as I try to think how long I've been here. How many times have I slept? How long have I been awake? It feels like it's been a week, but really, maybe four days? I don't know. I'm starting to feel hungry again; maybe they'll feed me again soon. Of course they waited several days to give me food before, I think. No, that can't be right. When did they feed me?

Confused and anxious I started to feel even more disoriented. I stood up and started to walk around the futon, just pacing in quasi-square, checking with my foot every few steps to make sure I didn't get to far away from it. The thoughts from earlier started to come back into my brain. Was the room square? How big was it? I'm pretty sure it's square, and six by six meters is thirty-six square meters, and we'll assume it's also six meters tall since I can't even jump to touch the ceiling. So that's two hundred sixteen cubic meters. At this point I had made it around the futon several times, I wasn't counting so I don't know how many, not that it matters. And the size of the room doesn't matter either, since I can't see any of the walls, they could be a kilometer away and it wouldn't make any difference.

That though started to bring back on the despair. I was so scared that I didn't want to leave the futon again, the only thing that gives me comfort in this room. I was so weak and useless that I can't even figure out how many walls are in this room. I stopped pacing and sat back down on the futon. I needed to distract myself. Two hundred sixteen cubic meters means twenty-one thousand six hundred cubic centimeters. Not that that was hard since it was just converting to a hundredth.

I fell back and started to count heartbeats, trying to clear the lingering sensations of fear, doubt, and despair from my mind. After only a few moments of the counting, the meditative sensation of it put me to sleep.

When I woke it was still completely dark. I started to panic, my mind not catching up to the fact that I knew it was going to be dark. I grabbed my chest and face to make sure I was still breathing, that I hadn't died in my sleep and was now stuck in an unmoving body, trapped forever in the cold dark. But I was breathing; my breath warm against my hand, and my heart was beating in my chest, sending vibrations out to my other hand.

As the fear and my breathing subsided I stood up. I thought about going to the walls to search for a way out again, but the fear of losing my orientation to the futon again scared me. I didn't want to leave this spot. So instead I started yelling again, well, more just speaking loudly. I called for help, yelled that I was hungry, that I wanted to go home. The sound of my own voice sounded strange coming back to me. I hadn't noticed how load my thoughts had been in my ears, or how different I sounded in my mind than in real life. My voice didn't sound like me. What if I wasn't me? No, that was stupid; I had to be me, just the silence starting to play tricks on my mind.

But the sound did help a bit, so I kept talking, anything to hold the silence back a little. I started to sing, although I'm not very good at it, I sang anything that came to mind, children's songs, nursery rhymes, dirty limericks, whatever popped into my head. Eventually I started just sprouting gibberish, getting more and more insane and random as I went along, the tunes stopped following a sequence and there was no rhyme or rhythm to what came out of my mouth. It felt like hours, pacing, sitting, singing, lying down; whatever stimulated me even a little bit. Then I fell back asleep.

I woke to a buzzing in my ears and I thought that there was something in the room flying around me, a bug of some kind. But it slowly faded as recollection returned to my predicament. I sighed and rolled over, hitting something that was on the futon with me. I jumped back with a shout of surprise and landed on my knees. I slowly felt my way forward and found what it was. I cool, plastic packages, two of them, both soft, but one much more so than the other. It felt like ration packs again. I picked them up and opened the one that felt like water. Taking a cool drink I said to the room at large, "Thank you so much, I was really getting thirsty again." I then drained the package. The food pack was the same temperature as the water, but tasted like spaghetti had been put in a blender, it was bad, but at least it was food.

After eating the paste I lay back down, relaxed a bit and feeling refreshed. I felt energetic, and even a little giddy. My body started to feel warm, my skin prickling in the cool air as a slow heat started to spread over my entire body. I felt strange, more relaxed than ever before; even before I was kidnapped. I put one of my hands on my stomach and it felt amazing, the sensation of warmth from my hand conflicted with the cold air in an amazing way. I put my other hand on my stomach and was treated to the same exciting sensation. I slowly slid them up to cup my breasts, as I squeezed gently I felt a burst of colour spread from my chest down to between my legs and I let out a soft groan. I continued to move my hands up, pinching my nipples between my thumb and forefingers, squeezing and rolling them. The heat and sensation was intense, I felt more colours spreading, reds and greens, even though I couldn't see anything. I squirmed and twisted under my own touch, changing the location of where my hands touched, exposing my back or legs to the air from where it was in contact to the futon. Every change brought on more sensation and my excitement deepened as I started to move faster, sliding one hand back down my body, over my stomach to between my legs.

Slowly the darkness around me was turned into a swirling mesh of colours. Part of me knew the darkness was still there, that I really couldn't see anything, but I imagined I could, my mind playing tricks on me, trying to fill in the emptiness. I imagined I saw myself outlined in yellows and reds, like I was a heat map in a cold room, the deeper darkness becoming blues and purples. As my hand moved over my crotch the red spread out even more as my body continued to grow warmer. My fingers slid down between my legs, caressing the moist crevice and spreading the slick fluid around my labia. My fingers seemed to move of their own volition, sliding across and around, parting and penetrating. I groaned louder and circled my fingers, using my whole hand to cup and rub my vagina and clit. I was so hot, almost sweating now, even though the air was so cool, so comforting.

I slid a finger all the way in, touching myself deep inside. When I pulled it back out I dragged out a deep red so deep and vibrant it was like fire. I used two fingers, driving them in for more red, again and again. I moved faster and faster, groaning louder as more colours flowed around me, mixing in me and being pulled back out. I breathed in blue and my fingers pulled and pounded red out of my pussy, dripping orange and yellow as I moved. I was crushing my breast in my other hand, squeezing and twist the nipple, squeezing out a bright yellow that faded to green with the blues of the darkness.