Sasha’s Story:
How to Find a Mate the Hard Way
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Note to self: never again tell the bartender, “Surprise me.”
Sasha groaned, grabbing her pounding hea d between both desperate hands. This was the hangover from hell and she hadn’t even opened her eyes yet. Her alien fascination had seriously backfired this time.
She’d thought the bartender was cute in that exotic way she found irresistible, humanoid enough not to repulse while capturing her imagination with his large feline eyes, the fleshy ridge on the top of his head flaring when she flirted with him. She’d taken the smirk on his thin mouth for a challenge when he’d handed her a drink he called The Eraser. Now she knew he’d just been laughing at her.
That was her last memory. The Eraser had lived up to its name , obliterating the rest of the night.
She groaned again and gingerly opened her eyes. Then she blinked, staring up at a ceiling suffused with soft white light. That wasn’t her ceiling. She dropped her hands to her sides, feeling the odd, firm surface under her—not her bed. Turning her head, she scanned the small room and stopped breathing.
Not her sleeping room.
Sasha rolled to a sitting po sition in a swift move that spiked agony between her temples. Nausea rolled all the way up from her toes in a horrible wave. Clapping a hand over her mouth, she looked frantically for something to puke into. As the empty little space registered on her mind, the nausea and pain subsided enough for her to take her hand away.
Taking slow, measured breaths, Sasha examined her surroundings with a growing kernel of panic. I know this looks like a cell but it’s not, it can’t be, she told herself, gripping the sides of the bed hard. She glanced over her shoulder hopefully, but the bartender was not lying in the bed behind her. And she still had on clothes, the dock worker’s jumpsuit she hadn’t bothered to change on her way to the bar.
“Where am I?” she mumbled, hearing the kernel of panic flowering in her voice.
The thing that scared her the most—no visible exits. No doors, no windows, not even a ventilation shaft. Just that softly glowing ceiling, white walls, the bed she sat on, and a small ledge sticking out of the wall opposite her. On it sat a drinking glass.
She stared at the glass as if it would leap out and bite her, but it didn’t move. Standing carefully, she squeaked a little when the bed folded into the wall behind her, leaving her alone in a white box with a weird shelf. Gulping, she moved closer. The glass was half full of a bluish liquid and had a label on it. Restorative. She stared at it some more, but nothing happened.
Then a dark flash caught her eye. She jerked up her head and saw the word drink appear in bold black letters on the white wall. She skittered back a step but the word didn’t move and neither did the glass.
However, she was done taking unknown drinks from strangers. “No, thanks,” she said softly, wrapping her arms around herself with a shudder. “Where am I?” she called in a louder voice, staring up into the corners and edges of the room for some visible sign of surveillance.
Her only answer was the word drink blinking out of existence and reappearing in rapid succession three times before it hung steadily over the glass again.
“Who do you think I am , Alice?” she muttered, glaring at the offending command. Was she in some sort of prison? Had she done something while blacked out that had gotten her thrown into this white cell?
She was about to start yelling for answers when the wall to her right turned suddenly transparent. With a yelp, she skipped back. Then she stared blankly. She was looking into another cell identical to her own, except its occupant wasn’t human. The being crouched casually in the center of the room was humanoid, one head, two arms and legs, two eyes and a mouth, though it didn’t look as though it had a nose. From its rippling
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