She wakes up on a small mound of hay. She notices she is naked. Startled, she searches for her clothes. She is alone for now, in a small room.

She looks around, it is a strange room, the walls all look like they were moulded from one piece of a translucent plastic material. The ceiling looks like a lid, made from the same material. She walks around the room slowly with caution. The room is flooded in light, though she can’t see where it is coming from.  Just beside her hay, there is a large glass bottle hanging on the wall. It has a clear liquid in it, that can be sucked out of it from a steel dropper. Besides​ the bottle is a metal mesh cylinder, it is filled with a jelly-like substance, that is almost oozing out of the mesh, it has a strong artificial fruit smell, raspberry she guesses, she hates raspberries.

She walks to the other end of the plastic room. She can reach the other end in ten steps. She can cover the width of the room in five. She stifles a scream, though she doubts if anyone would hear her scream or care. No, she must not scream because she doesn’t want to give into the panic, she will not acknowledge the smallness of the space. On the other side is a small treadmill, it is built into the floor of the room. Beside it is a small steel commode. Everything is vigorously clean, sterile. She goes around the room several times, she touches everything, again and again, making sure it is solid. She keeps going around the room as if she walked long enough there would be more of it. After what seems like hours there isn’t any more of the room. She feels her breathing hasten, her blood is throbbing against her temple, her heart is beating in her ears, she cannot hold her panic anymore. “I am trapped,” she says to herself, “I am trapped…” as she runs around faster and faster she touches the hay, then the water bottle, then the treadmill, then the commode. Her vision blurs, hay, bottle, treadmill, commode. She wants to stop. Hay, bottle, treadmill, commode. This is making space seem smaller. Hay, bottle, treadmill, commode. She cannot stop. She slams against a wall and falls into the hay.

She closes her eyes. She can hear herself scream, at the top of her voice, endlessly. It is like listening to a recording. She drifts into a dreamless sleep. She wishes she would never wake up.

But she does. She lies on the hay, not wanting to open her eyes. She can feel the room around her. Her mind struggles to constrain itself to this new reality. She forces herself to think of other things. She smells her skin, it has a clean sterile smell to it, almost as if she had been cleaned with the same detergent as the rest of the room. It makes her feel like she is a part of the room like she has always been. She wants to scream again but she doesn’t have the strength for it. She notices her hair has been cut short. She is thirsty. She eyes the water bottle. What if it were not water? What if it was drugged? She waits before the bottle. She waits until her thirst drives her to it. She sucks on the steel dropper. She drinks until her stomach distends. She has to pee now. She uses the commode. It makes the room stink.

Now she feels hungry. Her stomach growls. She cannot remember the taste of her last meal. She goes to the metal cylinder, she smells the raspberry jelly oozing out if it. She hates the smell, her stomach doesn’t care. She pulls a bit of jelly and puts it in her mouth. The jelly is tasteless, the raspberry flavour stings her nose. She eats as much as she can.

Hours seem to pass by. Without any warning, the lights are shut off. She is sunk into utter and complete darkness. She tries to sob but she is afraid to disturb the silence, she stifles her sobs and lays down in the hay.

The lights switch on with the brightness of the noonday sun. She sits up startled out of disturbed sleep. Everything is the same as before. She sits around wondering what to do. She doesn’t have the energy to panic.

After a few hours, there is suddenly more light on the outside of her room. She can see more rooms around her, there are rooms beside her, above her and below her. Each room seems to have a single person in it. She shouts at them, bangs on the walls, the floor. They see her too, at least she hopes so, it’s difficult to say what their silhouettes are trying to do, but they are scrambling about their own tiny rooms. A door opens somewhere, it is a door of a size she had never seen before. Two large beings walk in from these doors. Everyone falls silent including her.

These beings are enormous, titans compared to her. They have weird appendages blossoming from their supposed faces. They walk through the rows upon rows of rooms. They stop at times opening the ceiling of a room, checking the contents, making a few changes and moving on. She can see them walking closer to her room. She backs into the wall of her room, afraid to breathe​.

The beings stop in front of her room. Their appendages pass over her walls, they cover her room like a net. Her room is shaken out of its place. She falls into the hay. They have picked her whole room, it is now moving through space. The room is set down on a hard surface with a thud. She flies into the air and lands on the treadmill. The appendages are withdrawn from the surface of the room. The ceiling is raised. A male is thrown into the room.

She gets one glimpse at the male, the appendages cover the room again. The room is lifted into the air again. The male loses his grip and falls onto her. He is an average male. She tries to guess what region he would have belonged to. It is difficult, he is completely shaved, not a single hair on his whole naked body. The room is placed back in its place. The male pulls himself away from her and goes to one corner of the room.

She wants to say something to him. She seems to have lost her words. She just stares at him. He stares at her and back at his feet. He makes no move towards her. She is glad for that. A flap opens in the ceiling. The male looks at it and sighs. A stream of gas enters the room, colourless and odourless. She can feel it on her skin, she smells it gingerly. The male sighs and shakes his head. She can see his dick slowly stiffen, he tries to hide his erection. Her heart beats faster. It is not fear, but excitement she realizes. Her chest heaves, her breasts rise and fall in a shortening rhythm. She is wet. Her knees tremble. Her thighs slip on her wetness. She wants something, she couldn’t say what. The male turns around, his erection throbbing and she knows.

She runs towards him and clambers on top. There is no talking, no kissing, no foreplay. She thrusts herself onto him. He grunts, she moans. They breed like animals. When he is done they crawl into separate corners of the room. After some time there is more gas released into the room. They find each other again, they breed again. At the end of the day, the male is removed from the room. The room becomes dark, she sleeps.

The next day, the male is thrown into the room again. There is more gas, they breed more. This goes on for a week. Then it stops. The male is never brought to her room again. Her room is not disturbed again. She thinks she knows why. She can feel it growing in her. 

And with it comes a hunger that she has never felt before. She sucks on the metal cylinder, gulping up all the stinky raspberry jelly. It is finished before half the day is over and then she just stares at it until she has to shit. Then she goes to the commode. Her life lies between the cylinder and the commode.

It is not normal. She is sure of that. It has way too​ many appendages. She can feel them squirming inside her like uncooked tentacles. She is not sure how much time passes. Her stomach bloats up like a balloon. It is pressing against the diaphragm, she has difficulty breathing.

She wakes up one day unable to breathe. Her stomach is like a water balloon about to burst. The outside of the room lights up again. The titan beings enter, appendages cover the room. She is picked up and laid on a sterile table under a bright light. A gas covers her face, her head swims. A laser slices her stomach, it belches like a burst balloon. An alien appendage pulls out a screaming mass of meat out of her. She passes out.

She wakes up back in her room. She touches her stomach there is no mark on it. She walks to the treadmill and starts running on it until the lights are switched off.

Photo by Anthony Rosa on Unsplash