Elysium Dysfunction

 

Tablo reader up chevron

Copywrite

Elysium Dysfunction

Kirsty Olliffe

Content Copyright © 2012 Kirsty OlliffeCover Art Copyright © 2012 Carly Woodhouse

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1479284998

ISBN-13: 978-1479284993

DEDICATION

Dedicated to all my fellow NaNoWriMo writers, 2010.

CONTENTS

Comment Log in or Join Tablo to comment on this chapter...

Elysium Dysfunction

Cat

I woke with a terrible headache, pounding away over my left eye. One arm of my glasses was digging in behind my ear, the frames skewed over my nose. I appeared to be lying on something soft, but briefly opening my eyes proved that it was not my bed. It was orange. Bright orange.

I began to go through the list of people I knew with orange bedding, but the headache made it a lot harder than it should have been. It must have been some party, I thought, to leave me in such a state. Pity I couldn’t remember any of it. In fact, I couldn’t remember much after walking back from lectures at about 4pm. It had been getting dark already, typical winter weather, and it was very windy. The dead leaves scattered across the streets were being whipped into the air, blowing into my face. I had tucked my head into the wind and trudged forward, focusing on my feet and hoping that anyone coming the other way would see me before we collided. After that, I remembered nothing. It was strange; I usually remembered at least the beginning of the party, even if the memory was nothing more than a slightly fuzzy counter covered in colourful shot glasses.

And I still couldn’t remember anyone I knew having orange bedsheets.

My face was strangely numb, not unusual for waking up with a pounding head and confused memories, but my hands weren’t, and the texture of the bedding I was lying on was very queer. Soft, yet prickly at the same time, like moss. Orange moss. I was lying on orange moss. The absurdity of the situation shone through for a moment and I couldn’t repress a snort of laughter. The resulting movement made my headache worse.

A strangled groan broke through the pain-filled daze I had fallen into. I was not alone; it was time to move and try to present myself in as dignified a manner as possible. I prayed to any deity listening that my knickers weren’t showing and that I didn’t have vomit or any other bodily fluids splattered across my clothing. I took comfort in the fact that I couldn’t smell anything peculiar.

Upon opening my eyes I discovered that I wasn’t lying on a bed at all, but some sort of strange carpet of orange stuff. It was soft, and springy, and a little bit prickly, made of millions of small spirals that flopped around every which way. I spent several seconds just staring at them, tracing the shadows as they twirled around and around. I had never seen anything like it before.

“That must have been some party,” I muttered, pushing my hair out of my eyes.

“Tell me about it,” said a strange voice.

I panicked a little, shrieked, spun around in the direction of the voice and promptly lost my balance and fell over backwards. Head pounding anew, I lay and stared at the ceiling until my heart rate slowed. The ceiling was also orange, and strangely lumpy.

“The ceiling is lumpy. Ceilings should not be lumpy.”

“Well, aren’t you a master of stating the obvious,” said a second strange voice.

“No need to be snippy,” said the first.

“Just how many people are in here?” I asked, sitting up slowly. I was in a very strange room. Along with the orange spiral carpet and the lumpy orange ceiling, there was no furniture. Strange plants grew up out of the floor, although thankfully they were green, and I couldn’t see any walls – the plants just got thicker at the edge of a rough circle about twenty meters across.

I wasn’t alone; a girl around my age, with very short black hair that covered her eyes, was sitting with her back against the main stem or trunk of one of the strange plants, and a man dressed in blue denim dungarees was lying spread-eagled beside me. I could see several more people lying around the clearing, but those two were the only two awake, aside from myself. I didn’t recognise either of them.

“Hi. I’m Catherine Staynes. Some people call me Cat. Where am I?”

The man rolled over and propped his head on his hands. “I have no idea. I just woke up here. I’m Tony, Tony Spencer.”

I turned to look at the dark haired girl, but she was staring intently at her mobile phone and didn’t seem interested in volunteering personal details. I swallowed, my mouth tasting awful, and looked around rather helplessly for water. Of course, there wasn’t any.

“There’s no phone signal, on any network,” the dark haired girl announced. “No internet, no network coverage at all, and my phone is draining power at an alarming rate.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

She lifted her head and stared at me, her hair falling back to reveal startlingly blue eyes. “It means that something very strange is going on.”

Tony sighed. “I’m hungry, and thirsty, and could use a bathroom.”

I looked around again, hoping that I had missed something. There were small round red fruits on the trees, but no water. As I stood up to see if I could spot anything from standing, my foot caught on the strap of my shoulder bag that was wrapped around my waist. I untangled myself and opened it, digging through in search of the water bottle I seemed to remember buying after lectures.

“I have water,” I said, holding it up. “Half a bottle.”

“Better than nothing,” Tony said. “Mind if I have a swig?”

“Go ahead,” I said, uncapping the bottle and taking a large mouthful, before handing it to him. “Do you want some?” I asked the dark haired girl. She stared suspiciously for a moment, and then nodded.

“Thank you.”

Tony took the cap from me and took the water over to her. I began to suspect that the paleness of her face had more to do with pain than make-up; she moved stiffly and bit her lip when she reached for the water.

“Are you all right?” I asked, not seeing much point in tip-toeing around the subject.

She took a sip of water before replying. “I feel like I’ve just fallen down a mountain and I can’t get warm,” she said, handing the water back to Tony. “We should save that.”

“Maybe one of the others will have food or water with them,” Tony suggested, handing the bottle back to me.

“Are they sleeping?” I asked, staring at the still bodies lying around the clearing.

“Out cold, same as you were.”

A horrible realisation was trying to make itself known in my foggy, pain-filled mind. This was too strange. Orange carpets, strange plants that I had never seen before, no door, no way out, and a bunch of unconscious people. Something very bad had happened to me, but I didn’t want to think too hard about what it might be. I could feel my hands beginning to tremble, and pushed them into the pocket of my hoodie. I couldn’t remember anything, the last image in my mind the one of the leaves spinning in the wind.

“Do either of you know where we are?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

“No.”

Tony shook his head, his eyes dark and haunted.

“Have we been kidnapped? I mean, I know it’s stupid, I can’t think of any reason for someone to kidnap me, but this is very weird.”

“I reckon it’s some sort of experiment,” Tony said, looking around. “What do you think?”

I shrugged. “It’s as good an explanation as anything. That means that they’re watching us somehow.” I looked around, unable to spot the red lights of recording cameras, and decided to look at the ceiling. “A toilet would be nice!” I called, not expecting much to come of it.

A strange sucking noise sounded, and a hole appeared by one of the plants. I stared at it in amazement. “What just happened?”

Tony cautiously stepped towards it. “It seems like you called and the Gods answered,” he replied as he peered into the hole. “I can’t see the bottom.”

My knees felt rather shaky and I sat down. “I guess that’s our toilet,” I said, staring at the toes of my trainers.

“I’m going to see if it works,” Tony announced. “Apologies in advance if I scandalise anyone.”

He came and sat next to me once he had finished, looking very serious. When I asked what was wrong he seemed to shudder. “It doesn’t seem to have a bottom,” he said quietly, glancing around. “What is this place?”

We were interrupted by one of the still-unconscious people waking up, attempting to sit up and falling over sideways. Tony and I rushed over to see if we could help. It was another woman, wearing green surgical scrubs and trainers.

“Was I hit by a bus?” she asked, shading her eyes with her hand. “Why is everything orange?”

Tony smiled at her and helped her sit up. “We don’t know where we are,” he said. “We’re just taking things as they come at the moment. My name’s Tony and this is Catherine.”

“Cat,” I interjected. “This is weird enough without thinking that my Grandmother is here too.”

“I’m Lizzie. Elizabeth. I know what you mean.”

We smiled at one another, and then her eyes drifted over my shoulder and widened. The next thing I knew I had been pushed over sideways as Lizzie threw herself past me to kneel beside a girl lying on her side on the orange spirals.

“Esther! Esther, are you all right?”

“Do you know her?” I asked, moving closer.

“Yes, she’s my sister,” Lizzie replied. “What is she doing here? She lives with mum and dad in Kent.”

“Where do you live?” Tony asked.

“London, I’m interning in a hospital in London.”

“So… London, Kent, I’m from Manchester; where are you from Cat?”

“I’m studying in Brighton,” I said, trying to process what we had just discovered. If we had all come from different parts of the country then the kidnappers must be really powerful. I found that I preferred thinking of whoever had brought us here as a kidnapper to pondering that we were some strange experiment for a millionaire mad scientist who wanted to do god-knows-what to us to see how we reacted.

Over the next few hours everyone else woke up. Everyone seemed to have the same headache, although the dark haired girl, whose name was Jo, seemed to be the one in the most pain. Tony said that she had been like that when he woke up, and as she wasn’t forthcoming we had no idea what had happened before we awoke. There were ten of us in total, but Esther and Lizzie were the only two who knew each other. It seemed that we were all from different places in England, all with different jobs and interests.

The three men congregated around one of the larger trees and talked, not really excluding the rest of us, but clearly talking about things that we wouldn’t find interesting. Jo leaned against her tree and stared at her phone, ignoring the rest of us. When the battery finally died she put it into the small shoulder bag next to her and seemed to fall asleep.

The rest of us sat in a circle and swapped life stories. Esther was very pale and looked as if she was on the verge of crying. Lizzie kept a protective arm around her shoulders and answered for the both of them when asked questions.

A bleach-blonde twig of a woman, with mascara smeared down her cheeks was hiccuping softly beside Lizzie, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees. I contemplated offering her one of my tissues, but I had already decided that I didn’t particularly like her after her first actions upon waking were to look around, scream, have some sort of fainting fit (which brought all three of the men dashing across the orange spirals to her side), and then announce to everyone that she just ‘couldn’t cope’ before bursting into tears. Her name, I discovered after the hysterics were over, was Pippa, and judging by her clothing she worked in some sort of customer-facing office. Her perfume made me sneeze.

I felt a little guilty at being so judgemental, but compared to everyone else her behaviour was completely ridiculous. Rose, who I took an immediate liking too, was a lot more sensible and practical. She wore oil-stained overalls and said that she was an apprentice mechanic in a garage in Maidstone. She talked sense when she talked, and she had as little patience with Pippa as I did. She was also the first girl to brave the hole, although all of the men had already tried it out. It appeared to be bottomless, and there was no smell coming from it, for which I was very grateful. I just wished that there was food available, as none of us had anything with us and my bottle of water was now empty.

The last person in the circle was a woman called Katherine, who seemed to make a habit of biting her lip. I first thought that she was overweight when I looked at her, but then I realised that she was pregnant. What kind of kidnappers would take a pregnant lady off of the streets? I began to feel more nervous about the people that had taken us. No-one had contacted us, and since the strange incident where the hole appeared (the others didn’t believe us, they said that the hole must have been there all the time and we just hadn’t noticed it before) nothing else had happened. The light never wavered, the temperature stayed the same. There was no breeze, no vibrations of machinery through the floor and no noise other than the noise that we made ourselves. It was like being on another planet.

“We should explore,” Rose announced, standing up and straightening her overalls.

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Jo said from behind me, the first thing she had said in over an hour.

“Why not?” Rose asked, moving to crouch next to her.

Jo shook her head. “Exploring is how I got hurt.”

We asked more questions, but we got nothing more out of her, and eventually we gave up. My headache hadn’t faded, and I decided to lie down in the shade of one of the plants to see if I could sleep through the pain. It seemed that most of the others were in similar states, and soon the clearing looked as it had when I first woke up; full of comatose bodies. I pillowed my head on my shoulder bag and watched the spiral spikes of the floor tremble as my breath blew past them. I almost didn’t notice that the light was fading, a gradual drop that seemed to pulse in time to my heartbeat, although it could have been that my eyesight was dimming with sleep at the same time. At that point I was too tired to care.

I woke up from a dream about sitting at a restaurant table in a bathroom, to a strange new room. I was sure that I had not been moved – my sleep had been restless enough that I had woken several times, and I felt sure that I would have noticed, therefore I had to be in the same room, but the room itself had changed. There was nothing orange in it. The floor had changed to a smooth grey substance that flowed up into low walls, sectioning off curved segments of the room. The toilet hole was in one by itself, the tree still growing next to it. I was lying on what looked like a gigantic slab of jelly that shimmered in rainbow stripes away from every movement I made. I tapped my finger against it, to watch the rings of colour shiver away, as if I had dipped my finger into a pool of water. Jo was lying on her side under the plant, also cushioned on a jelly mat. I could see colour every time she breathed.

Now that the toilet hole was partially surrounded, I decided that it was high time that I used it. It is a very strange sensation, to perch over nothing while relieving oneself. I almost expected a breeze, but there was nothing, and no sound at all. It was as if anything dropped into the hole just vanished into thin air, and it was so dark inside that you couldn't see more than a meter down.

Feeling a lot hungrier now that my bladder had been emptied, I stepped out from around the barrier to find that Jo was now awake and staring at me.

"It changed around us," she whispered.

"I know. I'm trying not to think too hard about it."

Jo sniffed dismissively. "We should be thinking more about it, not turning a blind eye."

"But there's nothing we can do, other than explore."

She shook her head. "I tried exploring, it doesn't work. You're the only one who actually accomplished something – somehow, you made the hole happen."

"I was beginning to think I imagined it," I said sheepishly. After telling the story to those who had been unconscious at the time – who had dismissed it out of hand as the product of a fevered imagination and a killing headache – I had been very careful about what I said to the others for fear of being seen as crazy.

Jo snorted in derision. "No, you didn't. I saw it happen, and so did Tony."

"The others didn't believe me," I pointed out.

"The others are stupid. Ostriches sticking their heads in the sand."

I sighed and shrugged. "Too much work to pull them out." Jo laughed, looking a little surprised as she did so, as if she hadn't expected to be amused. She looked straight in my eyes and smiled wryly.

"Can you help me?"

"What do you need?"

"I need help getting to the hole," she admitted, blushing a little. I immediately stepped forward to help her, putting my arm around her shoulders and lifting her, supporting her weight until she got her legs under her. She was favouring her left leg, and we limped around the new grey wall until we reached the little cubby that now held the hole.

"I think I'm all right from here," she said as we stopped beside it. "Could you turn around?"

"Let me help you get your jeans down," I said firmly. "Denim is a pain at the best of times."

Embarrassed, she nodded, and I knelt down, trying to be as quick and impersonal as I could. I failed impressively at that as soon as I saw the patchwork of bruises on her legs, in an oddly regular diamond pattern. There was also what looked like a burn on her left thigh.

"What on earth happened to you?"

"I told you," she said impersonally. "Exploring is a bad idea."

I was speechless, and eventually gathered the brain cells together to realise that she probably really needed the toilet, and my concern was the last thing she wanted at that particular moment. I turned away, and took two steps so that I was standing in the 'doorway' to the 'bathroom'. Just in case anyone else had woken up and decided to take advantage of the facilities, such as they were.

"I'm done," she said, what seemed like an eternity later, although it couldn't have been more than a few minutes. I turned around to find that she had managed to pull her jeans back on by herself. Rather than comment, I just took myself around to her right side and helped her back to the jelly pad she had slept on.

"We should ask Lizzie to have a look at you, she's a nurse," I said as we reached the plant. Jo shook her head.

"No, I don't want the others to know. The bruises are fading; it's a lot easier to move today. Tomorrow I'll be able to walk about normally, so long as I'm careful."

"Tomorrow?" I asked.

She shook her head. "I noticed the light change too," she said quietly. "Do you know what that means?"

"What?"

"We're in a controlled environment. The day was exactly 12 hours long."

"I thought your phone died," I said, somewhat inanely. Jo rolled her eyes.

"I tell you something amazing and that's your first comment? I thought you were one of the smarter ones in this bunch!"

"I'm sorry," I said defensively. "I have a raging headache, I'm hungry, thirsty, am on some kind of sugar crash and have been kidnapped. I'm not at my best."

"My headache has already faded," Jo replied.

"Caffeine withdrawal," I admitted.

Jo was silent for a moment, then she met my eyes. "Better than nicotine," she said with another wry grin. "That accountant bloke smokes; he's going to be a bear when he wakes up."

I sat on the jelly pad next to her, causing a rainbow of colour to wash across the surface. "Let's pray that he isn't a chain smoker."

"Oh I doubt it. He obviously works in an office from the suit, and all offices are non-smoking. There's only so many fag breaks a person can take. Besides, if he was we'd be able to smell him from here."

I smiled at her. "You think like a detective," I pointed out. The cheerful expression fell from her face.

"I'm not," she said quietly.

Any further conversation was interrupted as Lizzie and Esther appeared from around the wall to the right. Esther was rubbing her eyes, her fair hair a halo of frizz around her head. I rummaged in my shoulder bag and handed her the comb I carried for when it rained on the way to lectures – nothing worse than sitting in a lecture hall with long hair slowly drying into a knotted rat's nest around your head.

"Thank you," she said quietly, sitting on my empty jelly mat and sweeping her hair to one side. She started from the ends, with brisk strokes. I put my hand to my head to feel my own hair. I had washed it before leaving my flat the morning of the abduction, but I hadn't had time to dry it properly before I left so I had twisted it into a french plait. The braid seemed to be holding in well enough, only a few wispy bits sticking out at the edges. I could probably get away with it for another day before I needed to comb out the whole length.

“It changed,” Lizzie said quietly. “It changed while we were asleep. I thought that we had been moved to a different place, but all the plants are the same.”

“I know,” I said, looking around. “All the trees are exactly the same.”

Lizzie shifted uncomfortably. “You know I said that you were imagining things when you told us about the hole opening?”

“She wasn’t,” Jo said shortly. “I saw it too, and so did Tony.”

Lizzie nodded. “I think I believe you now. If walls can grow overnight, then a hole can appear out of no-where.”

“I wish a hamburger would appear out of nowhere,” Esther said, handing my comb back to me. Her words made me remember just how hungry I was.

“I think those fruits might be edible,” Jo said thoughtfully, looking up at the plant we were sitting under.

“What if they aren’t?” Lizzie asked. “We could poison ourselves.”

I shrugged. “Or we could starve to death. We’re all pretty dehydrated, another few days and we could be dead anyway. Poison would probably be quicker.”

“What kind of attitude is that?” Lizzie hissed, sounding furious. She kept on darting glances sideways at Esther.

“It’s a practical one, Liz,” Esther said, sounding tired. “I’m not six any more, and I don’t particularly want to starve to death. We don’t have that many options. We’ve been brought here for a reason, and we haven’t been hurt. Why would they want to poison us? The could have killed us while we were all unconscious, or gassed us in our sleep.”

Jo was looking at Esther with a new respect, and so was I. She had been so quiet and mousey so far that none of us had imagined that she had any backbone at all, or much of a personality. I revised my opinion, and suspected that Jo was doing the same.

“Enough talking about it,” I said, standing up. “There’s no point. I’ll try one first, and if nothing bad happens to me within an hour, we can be pretty sure that we’re safe.”

“Why you?” Esther asked. Lizzie seemed to be ignoring our conversation completely. I smiled at Esther.

“I have no skills to offer the group. Jo is smarter than me, Lizzie is a nurse and she would never let you try first; she’s your big sister. The others are asleep or ignoring us, and most of them have skills to offer too. I’m the most expendable.”

"You forgot to point out that most of them would be too scared to try," Jo added.

I turned to the plant, reached up and pulled one of the red globes off of the tree. I picked one of the darker ones; if the plant followed anything like the usual biology, the darker ones would be riper. It was soft, with a surface covered in tiny hairs like a peach, but more widely spaced. I lifted it to my nose and sniffed cautiously. It smelt a bit like a raspberry, sweet and fresh. I nibbled at one side. Juice spilled out, which I caught with my tongue automatically, as I would with a pear.

“How does it taste?” Jo asked.

“Like fruit,” I replied. “Not one that I’ve tasted before, but definitely fruit. A sort of cross between raspberry, peach and apple.”

Esther grinned. “That sounds pretty tasty.”

“You’re not to try one,” Lizzie snapped.

“Oh, so you want me to starve?” Esther retorted, tossing her hair. I bit into the fruit and chewed. It tasted wonderful, but I was so hungry that I suspected that anything would taste good at that point. It didn’t take long for me to reach a stone in the middle, that I carefully bit around. The fruit was very juicy and my fingers quickly became sticky. I walked to the toilet hole and threw the stone in, licking my fingers as I returned.

“How do you feel?” Jo asked anxiously.

“Fine,” I replied. “Better for the food.”

The three of them stared at me as the minutes ticked by with a strange fascination. After about half an hour, we figured that the fruit was safe to eat, and the four of us sat and munched through the ripe fruit on the tree, staining our fingers and chins red with juice. It was wonderful to feel full again.

Tony walked around the wall to see how we were, and gasped in amazement as he saw us eating. “There’s food?” he cried, picking up one of the fruit from the ground and taking a massive bite. “Wow, it even tastes good,” he said with his mouth full, an irrepressible grin stretching across his face.

“You’d best go tell the other men,” I said, sucking my fingertips. “All the plants have fruit on them. The dark red ones are the ones we’ve been eating, they seem to be ripe.” Tony grinned and vanished, taking the half-eaten fruit with him.

“Do you think these are juicy enough to combat dehydration?” I asked Lizzie, assuming that as a trained nurse she was the one who would probably know the answer. She studied the fruit in her hand carefully before answering.

“They should be, just about, if we eat enough of them,” she said eventually.

Esther laughed. “That shouldn’t be hard; I’m still starving!”

The discovery that the fruits were edible almost drove the memory of the horrible bruises and burns on Jo's legs out of my mind, but as I nibbled on my sixth fruit I suddenly remembered. She seemed to sense me looking at her, for she met my eyes and shook her head slightly. After a moment, I decided that perhaps it would be best to wait and see if she really was better in the morning, and if not to make an issue of it. After all, Jo was practically a stranger. I didn't even know if Jo was short for Joanna, Josephine or Jocelyn.

Finally having a full stomach made me very sleepy, and I lent back against the grey wall for a catnap, not really following the conversation about the fruit that Lizzie and Esther were having, It was a pointless conversation at any rate; with no other ingredients no utensils and no heat source, most of their suggestions were completely useless, unless our prison changed again as I slept, which I thought was unlikely. It now contained the minimums that we would need to survive in relative discomfort; sleeping places, minimum privacy, waste disposal and food. At this point, with my underarms prickling uncomfortably and a chafe mark from my jeans forming behind my knees, clean clothes and a shower would be the height of luxury. It was a pity that I didn't think I'd get either of those any time soon.

Jo

I couldn’t believe how stupid they were all being, or how blind. I thought that I had a pretty good idea of what had happened to us, and it was nothing as inane as a kidnapping. A kidnapper wouldn’t just leave us; there would be threats. The mad scientist idea had merit, but it would have had have been a bloody rich scientist to be able to afford the technology in the room. It was a sealed environment; I had figured that out from the start. The plants were genetically engineered to keep the air fresh. The floor layer was like nothing I had ever seen before.

I had woken first, in a strange orange room surrounded by unconscious bodies. I had spent a few minutes checking that they were all breathing, and had then turned my attention to the area. I stood in the middle of the clearing, next to the largest plant, and stared upwards, trying to make out any irregularities in the lumpy ceiling that would indicate the presence of a camera or microphone. I contemplated climbing the tree to find out, but the thin stems looked too fragile to take my weight.

Instead I walked to where the plants thickened and began to push my way through, hoping to find a second clearing, or some evidence of plant or animal life. I had barely gone two meters in when I saw something strange ahead of me, a sort of shimmer in the air. I reached forward tentatively and felt a tingling in my fingertips. Odd, but not unpleasant. Deciding that I would never get anywhere if I stood still every time I found something unusual, I took a step forward.

Pain immediately shot all over my skin as if I had been electrocuted. A strange squeezing sensation ran over me from head to toe, and then my left leg, which I had stepped forward on, went completely numb. I was thrown backwards somehow, and crashed through the plants I had just pushed past until I landed on the springy orange matting that I had woken on, narrowly avoiding a girl in a grey hoodie curled on her side.

I lay there, gasping for breath, for several minutes as pain screamed along every nerve and tears ran down my face.

It fucking hurt.

Eventually the pain faded, and I realised that the bruises across my chest made it hard to breath when lying on my back, and the bruises across the rest of me made it uncomfortable to lie in any other position. Slowly, I crawled on aching knees and scorched palms to the nearest tree and propped myself against it.

I spent the next hour concentrating on breathing and thinking about what I had found out. The conclusion that I came to was a pretty fantastic one, and I was careful not to let on when the others woke up, just in case they thought I was crazy. It would be better, I thought, for someone else to figure out as well before I spoke of my suspicious.

We had been abducted by aliens.

Mad? Yes, but it was the only explanation that I could think of that fitted. Humans had not invented force field technology yet, it hadn't happened. Force field technology was light-years away, an amoeba in a scientist's theories and a science-fiction writer's dream. It did not exist. When the technology is invented, which I have no doubt it will be, it will be small and weak and just about enough to stop a paper airoplane, and there will be many papers published, Nobel Prizes and someone will have their picture in the Guardian. Force-fields that pick people up, hurt them and throw them through the air had not been invented yet, I was sure. True, offensive force-fields would be well kept military secrets, but the existence of the possibility would be known. Like machine guns – an awesome invention, but we all knew that guns already existed. Machine guns were just more advanced.

There's always a simple, well documented discovery before the military steals a concept.

I lent against my plant and watched as they all awoke, one after the other, and immediately seemed to blank out the irregularities between the reality and what they were used to.

The student, Cat, seemed to have potential, especially after she caused a hole to appear in the ground. She seemed to actually use her brain, and look at her surroundings. Unlike the Nurse, who seemed to ignore anything that she could not imagine or explain. The kid, Esther, also had potential as someone who could figure out what was actually going on; she was young enough to not be overly prejudiced.

The blonde screech-machine was a hopeless case, that was obvious as soon as she woke, and the men didn't seem particularly promising, even the gay one.

After Cat did the bravest thing I had ever seen someone do – or the stupidest (and no, I am not referring to helping me pee, but to eating the fruit) the atmosphere in the little clearing noticeably lightened. The strange grey walls that the aliens had provided us with gave me a lot of comfort; I value my privacy. I knew that it was an illusion; the aliens would have surveillance all over the clearing and there was no way to hide from them. They were probably analyzing what came down the hole particle by particle, and had by now figured out that I had had a chicken baguette for lunch the day before.

After eating everyone seemed unusually sleepy. I wondered if there was a soporific in the fruit as I lay down, the bruises having abated enough for me to contemplate lying on my side if I was careful. It still hurt to breathe, but the throbbing in my side had faded enough for me to curl into the recovery position and that made breathing a lot easier. The denim of my jeans scratched uncomfortably on the scorch mark on my leg so I shifted until the material no longer pressed against it. I knew that Cat wanted me to let the Nurse have a look at my leg, but I had already seen that she had nothing more than a stethoscope, two pens and a thermometer with disposable sleeves with her. Although a burn cream would be heavenly right now, we had nothing, and there was no point in worrying the rest of the group if nothing could be done. If the men got it into their heads that there was something dangerous here, who knows what they would do.

Probably follow in my footsteps and incapacitate themselves as well.

I woke up after passing out in a fruit-induced stupor strangely warm. Everything was red, as if a million rose bushes had shed their petals all at once. As I sat up, I found that the thought was strangely accurate; I was covered in a plethora of things that looked suspiciously like flower blossoms. Tentatively, as I figured that the Aliens would want us alive and wouldn't introduce anything to the environment that would actually harm us, I tasted one. It reminded me of prawn and cocktail crisps more than of roses, but the savory flavour made a nice change to the sugary fruit. I picked up a handful to munch on, and reached out to shake Cat awake.

"More food," I said by way of explanation as she stared wide eyed at our new red carpet.

"Is the floor still grey?" was her first question.

"I have no idea," I replied. The red petal-crisps were waist deep, but the sleeping mats were raised enough that we hadn't suffocated, just been covered by about a foot.. "We'll have to dig down. Or eat a lot."

"That shouldn't be hard; I'm starving," she replied, taking a large handful and eating them one by one.

I could hear muffled exclamations coming from the other sections of the clearing that I assumed were there, not being able to move easily enough to go check them out myself. I would have asked Cat to verify for me, but Lizzie and Esther had been with us for most of the time we were awake, and they would have asked awkward questions about why I did not go myself. I wanted to avoid being seen as weak at all costs; being strange and unapproachable and perhaps a little intimidating was far more preferable.

The walls had a curious ability to absorb sound that I had noticed the 'day' before. If speaking in low voices, I didn't think that anyone not in the area would be able to hear what was said, considering what were probably rather loud exclamations were muffled, and a voice at a normal volume was a mere background hum.

Still munching on the petal-crisps, I began to stretch out my legs and arms. I knew I would need to wade through the morass to get to the toilet-hole, and if I could make it on my own hopefully Cat would stop looking at me with such a pitifully concerned expression on her face. I stood carefully, and took a few experimental steps. Cat immediately got to her feet, but I shook my head at her.

"I can walk now, thank you," I said, trying not to sound as if I was ungrateful about her assistance the day before. "I'm feeling a lot better."

"Ok," she said reluctantly, watching me closely as she sat back down. "Shout if you need me."

I decided to refrain from mentioning that once I walked through the gap into the 'bathroom' she wouldn't be able to hear me. Strangely enough, once I had walked through the gap that I could just see – the walls protruded about two inches above the red sea – the ground was clear. The petals weren't held back by anything; a drift of them fanned away from the gaps in the walls, and I could see that the other cubbies were also full of them, but the toilet hole itself was clear. I was grateful for this, as digging through the stuff to expose it wasn't my idea of fun, and the movement of the drifts should give me some warning if someone else needed to use the facilities.

Once I had finished I waded back through the drifts to find Cat busily scooping out our 'room', tossing the petal-crisps into one of the sections next to ours. I assumed that she had checked that it wasn't occupied before she started, and started to help her. She smiled at me, surprised.

"Are you sure-" she began.

"Shut up," I interrupted. "Let me evaluate my own health, thank you."

Cat was quiet for a moment, throwing several more handfuls over the wall. "I didn't mean to imply that you couldn't take care of yourself," she said eventually. I had already known that she was perceptive, but I didn't expect her to shoot so close to the mark so quickly.

"I think we should make some sort of shelter," I said, although I had been thinking nothing of the sort.

"Out of what?"

"The plants have leaves."

"Yes, but I think they're what's providing us with oxygen," she said.

"A shelter is important from a psychological point of view," I said. "We're in an unknown environment. Making something, changing that, will probably make us feel more secure. And if it vanishes in the morning we will have learned something new."

"I don't want to suffocate," she argued.

"They won't let us."

"Who are they?"

I rolled my eyes. "Come on, Cat. Someone had to bring us here, and if they wanted us dead we'd be dead already."

Cat stood with her hands on her hips and looked me in the eye. "So, if someone is doing this to us, what is the possible benefit of changing our environment while we're unaware of what is going on, not giving us anything to drink or wash with, and covering us with food while we sleep?"

I shrugged. You couldn't assign human motives to an Alien; who knew what they were trying to achieve by studying us? But I couldn't say that to Cat. She still thought that we had been kidnapped. Still, I was pretty sure that nothing bad would happen if we took some leaves off of the tree.

"The red thing that you slept on is sort of in a corner, let's see if we can somehow rig a roof over it if we uproot one of the smaller plants at the edge of the clearing," I suggested.

It turned out that the plants weren't very firmly fixed in the grey floor, and Cat managed to knock it over easily with a surprisingly elegant rugby tackle. We dragged it back to the mat and pulled the leaves off of one side, leaving them on the other to create the beginning of the roof. The leaves grew in a spiral pattern around the trunk and came off with a sharp tug. I didn't have to use the folding knife I had in my bag, for which I was grateful. I didn't want anyone else to know that there was a weapon to hand, even if it was in need of sharpening. It takes less than a pound of pressure on a sharp tip to cut skin.

When pressed into the top of the wall, the plant seemed to sink into a groove, like a memory foam mattress, but that could have been the stem flattening out slightly, or just my imagination. We began to lay the leaves between the edge of the wall and the stem in a criss cross pattern, which worked at the edges, but towards the middle the leaves weren't long enough to reach.

"I think one of the plants had a fork in the main stem," Cat said, picking leaf fibers out of her fingernails. "We could break that off and make a cross beam."

"Sounds like a plan, show me the plant."

There was a forked plant, several of them in fact, all growing in a clump together on the other side of the toilet hole. I picked out the straightest one, and we lent on it to break it off. Like the first plant, it broke easily. They didn't seem to be the sturdiest of biological creations. The internal structure reminded me of aloe, or a celery plant. I decided to stop thinking of them as 'trees'; they didn't deserve the title.

With a second beam in place, it didn't take long to complete the roof. Cat and I sat on the mat underneath and munched our way through the pile of fruit we had collected off of the two stems we had broken.

"I wonder what the others are up to?" Cat said, arranging her fruit stones into a pyramid.

"We seem to have separated into little groups," I pointed out, taking the second to last fruit and passing it to her before taking the last for myself.

"I wonder if we should go visiting?"

"Perhaps. I'd rather carry on trying to make this place more livable. I'm dying for a drink of water," I admitted. The sugary fruit juice seemed to have crystalised into a layer on my tongue.

"We could always dig for it," Cat suggested. We both looked at the grey floor under our trainers. I raised an eyebrow at her and she laughed. "Ok, not my best suggestion ever," she admitted with a grin. "But it's better than sitting here dreaming of waterfalls."

"It would be useful if one of these cubbies had no door and was full of water, like a pond," I said.

"I'd want an overflow to keep the water clean," Cat objected. "I don't want to drink water people have washed in."

"All right, a clean fall of water into it, like a tap or waterfall or something to drink from, the pool to swim in and an overflow lip to take the dirty water straight into the toilet hole," I suggested.

Cat sighed wistfully. "That would be awesome. Any chance of it appearing?"

"I doubt it. It's far too practical for the strange mind that has thought up this little scenario."

Cat wrapped her arms around her knees and rested her head on them. Her dark hair had escaped in places from her plait and wisps of it fell around her face. "This is the strangest thing that has ever happened to me," she said eventually.

"Me too," I admitted.

"You seem so calm about it."

"On the outside. Besides, someone has to be calm and rational, and I like to think I'm rather good at it." Cat smiled, and I smiled back.

"I'd like to go visit the others, but I smell," she said.

"We all smell."

"I'm thinking of taking off my top and airing it on a tree. My socks too, it's safe enough to walk around barefoot and let my feet air out, I think."

As it was the most sensible suggestion I had heard since I arrived that hadn't come from my own brain, I immediately began to untie my trainers. Cat toed off her skate shoes, and we both winced at the smell of our socks.

"Woah. My feet cannot possibly be worse than my socks," I commented, pulling them off and placing them on the wall at the other side of the cubby. We tucked our trainers by the side of the sleeping mat, and then Cat performed some strange gyrations to get her top off without taking of her hoodie. I just unzipped my jacket, pulled my top over my head and pulled my jacket back on. Of course, I was on the mat under the roof the entire time. I'm not that immodest, even if I am practical.

Feeling moderately better, we decided that it was time to go and see what had happened to Lizzie and Esther at least. We found them in the next cubby over, tentatively eating the petal-crisps and looking a little lost. They had clearly accomplished nothing since they woke, and I felt rather proud of our impromptu shelter.

"We cleared out our section," Cat said. "Want to come sit in it? Yours is still rather full."

Esther smiled sunnily and began to wade towards us. "Lizzie is mad at me," she announced, "for eating the flowers without telling her, but she was asleep and so unavailable for consultation. Besides, they taste like prawn cocktail crisps."

"I think they taste like that too," I said. "We ate them a while ago now, and we feel fine, right Cat?"

"Yeah," Cat agreed. "No stomach pain, nothing. Makes me want a drink of water even more, but it makes a nice change from fruit."

We waded back through the red to our cleared section, where Lizzie and Esther gasped in amazement to see our shelter.

"How did you make that?" Esther cried, running up to it and sitting inside, looking up with an expression of complete wonder on her face.

"Oh, it wasn't hard," Cat said modestly.

I moved and sat on the sleeping mat under the tree to rest my leg. The burn was stinging unpleasantly, and my bruises ached down to my bones. It was a relief to lean against the tree and stretch my legs out in front of me.

"I wonder if you can eat the trees?" Esther said, staring at the end of the stem where it lay on top of the wall.

"I wouldn't recommend it," I said. "Think about it: you can eat an apple, but you can't eat apple wood. You eat tomatoes, not the vines."

"You can eat leaves of herbs and nasturtiums and stuff," Esther argued.

"Those are special cases. You can also use eucalyptus leaves to flavour things, and bay leaves, but you don't eat those. Anyway, if we eat all the trees then there won't be any fruit to eat."

"That is a very good point."

Lizzie sighed, and sat cross-legged on the floor. "I'm going to take my trainers off too," she said, picking at her laces. "My feet feel awful." Esther, who was wearing flip-flops, shrugged.

"Mine are fine. May I borrow your comb again, Cat?"

"Go ahead," Cat said, pulling the desired object out of her hoodie pocket. "I should probably comb mine out."

She pulled the end of her plait out of the back of her hoodie and I suddenly realised just how long her hair actually was. Unbound, she could probably sit on it. No wonder she had put off combing it out and re-plaiting it!

Esther froze with the comb pulled halfway through her hair. "Can you hear that?"

Lizzie said no, but before I could I heard it; a high-pitched whine that seemed to cut through my eardrums. Cat had already clapped her hands to her head, but I suspected that that wouldn't do a lot to help.

"What is that?" Cat cried. "It hurts."

"Like a bitch," Esther agreed.

"Esther!" Lizzie protested.

"Shut up, you can't hear it.

Thankfully, the noise stopped. There was a blissful silence for all of two seconds, before there was an almighty crash, and red petal-crisps went flying in the air in all directions, from the cubby in the center of the clearing. Wet petals.

"They're wet!" I exclaimed, pulling one off of my face.

"Water!" Cat cried, running to the wall. "This room thing is full of water! It's just like-"

She stopped there, and turned to look at me, walking past Lizzie and Esther who were leaning over the edge of the wall to scoop petals off of the surface of the water. It seemed that even the skeptical Lizzie had thrown away her caution in the presence of liquid.

"They're listening to us," Cat said quietly. "But no-one will believe us, will they? It's like the hole."

"No, they won't. Esther might, but Lizzie would scoff and Esther would soon be convinced that we were lying."

"If they think that we're liars... well."

"Things could be dangerous, yes. Best to say nothing."

"Jo..." Cat said, seemingly reluctant to say what was on her mind.

"What is it?" I prompted.

"Technology isn't this advanced, is it?"

I shook my head. "I'm pretty sure it isn't."

She stared at me, her eyes wide. With her disheveled hair, it made her look more than a little crazy. "Then... where the hell are we?"

I shook my head. "Not now, not while the others might overhear us. Let's get a drink, see if they've done as we suggested, and if they have, have a bath. If not, let's fill your water bottle and empty it over our heads!"

It is amazing how much of a difference being clean makes. I sat, in soaking wet clothes, and stared at the pool. It was exactly what I had described, but nothing like I had imagined; they evidently did not have the capacity to read our minds. The ceiling above the pool was dripping wet, as if the water had come from the whole area in a large gush. There was a still a stream coming through the ceiling, falling into one end of the pool. A waterfall poured slowly out of the other end, washing down the wall into the toilet hole.

My stomach was so full of water that it felt as if it would slosh if I moved, so I sat very still and enjoyed the sensation of cool water washing slowly past my toes. The men had stripped self-consciously to their boxers and slipped in with a lot of splashing, joking and fooling around. They looked like complete idiots, but no-one had a hope of convincing them of that, not with Pippa perched on the wall making doe eyes at them.

Cat and Rose were lazily swimming lengths, having stripped down to strappy tops and knickers, the rest of their clothing hung dripping from the trees. It was warm enough in the room that they would probably be dry by tomorrow. The bruises on my skin had faded enough that I had taken my own jeans off, rinsed them thoroughly and hung them out. It seemed that Lizzie was too preoccupied with washing her hair to notice the livid burn on my leg, not that I was advertising it's presence.

Esther climbed up next to me, having finished wringing out her clothes in the 'bathroom'. "Isn't it weird that it just appeared out of no-where?" she said.

"Yeah, it is very strange."

"I wonder what happened that they decided to give us water now rather than earlier."

"Maybe so we'd appreciate it more?" I suggested, not sure whether or not she was implying something or not. Esther shifted uncomfortably on the wall, splashing her feet in the water.

"It's just... the red things."

"Yes?"

"You'll think it's weird, but it's just like this TV show I watch."

I raised an eyebrow at her. "Waking up in prawn cocktail flavoured petals is normal for you?"

Esther laughed nervously. "No. It's this Japanese show, and a character has an attack that looks a lot like this, only the petals are pink, not red. I was telling Lizzie about the latest episode last night, because she watches it sometimes too, and then when we woke up we were covered in flowers."

"That is a strange coincidence," I said.

Esther frowned at me. "I'm beginning to think it's not a coincidence," she argued. "First walls appear, and I know that Pippa was moaning about the orange and the lack of privacy, then my conversation manifests in red petals, and I'm sure that everyone has been talking about water, what's to say that one of the others didn't describe this?"

I decided to put her out of her misery. "It's exactly what we described, but nothing like I imagined," I admitted.

"Really?" she queried.

"Really." I confirmed.

It seemed to me that the Aliens hadn't studied Earth before abducting us – perhaps abducting us was their preliminary study? They seemed to have no idea about what amenities humans required to live comfortably. I wondered if describing my perfect pet to the ceiling would mean that I woke up with one, or telling Cat about my dream house would cause one to magically grow in the clearing. I knew it wouldn't be long before someone else took it into their heads to explore and the force field was discovered. I had a feeling that once the reality was discovered – that we were trapped – the atmosphere would change. Well, once the men discovered that we were trapped. I suspected that Cat had figured it out long ago, and the other girls probably suspected that there was no escape, with the exception of Pippa, who was too stupid to figure it out. The thick screen of plants gave the illusion that there was something beyond, and no-one but me knew that our actual area was only two meters more than the circumference of the clearing.

Once they found out I suspected that attitudes would definitely change.

I glanced behind me, checking that my bag was beside the sleeping pad where I'd left it. I really didn't want anyone finding out that I had a knife with me. People can be funny about weapons at the best of times, which this certainly wasn't.

"Are you all right?" Esther asked.

"Yes," I lied. "Just hungry. Do you want some fruit?"

"No, I'm going to get some of the flowers."

The grey ground seemed to absorb the water on my feet, and they were dry on the bottom by the time I reached the tree. It was odd, as if all the ground had that property, the overflow for the pool was completely unnecessary, and possibly only there because it was what we described when we talked about the pool. I wonder if I described a variety of different fruits the trees would change and grow oranges and apples and bunches of grapes.

Still, although they might look like grapes, they could taste of roast beef, you never knew. I suspected that the Aliens had scientists frantically trying to work out what humans liked to eat, and which things it was best to feed us to keep us healthy. They would want to study our behaviour patterns as much as possible.

I wondered what we had shown them so far. That humans mingled in different groups dependent on gender and intelligence – they hadn't got enough people in the group to realise that common interests also played a role in social groupings. That humans preferred to expel waste in private. That we liked variety in our food and to be covered while we sleep. That when presented with no water but an acceptable substitute from a dietary point of view, we complained, and when presented with water we first drank, then washed, and then played or exercised in it. That we covered our bodies in clothing. I wonder what they made of that. The three men were all shirtless, but the girls had all kept their tops on, and probably would continue to do so for a while. I suppose that eventually, once we all knew each other better, we might be comfortable wearing less, but that would take a long while – perhaps not until the clothes themselves began to wear out through constant use.

They already seemed to know that we need to eat, and that we liked it to be dark when we slept, although the last could probably have been figured out from looking at our planet rather than our society.

It all depended, I supposed, on how much of our conversation they could understand. They seemed to take everything literally, but not to respond to everything we said, so perhaps they did not have a full grasp of our language?

Well, if they didn't now, they soon would. I certainly didn't intend to stop talking in an effort to baffle them – I couldn't see the point in trying to withhold information from a species that effectively held my life in its hands.

If they even had hands.

tony

Ok, so they figured it out. It was inevitable, for sure. I mean, stick a gay man in a pond with two other guys, both shirtless, all of us in our underwear, and Peter, who obviously worked out, was wearing white boxers that went more than a little translucent. There was no reaction, I managed to keep that part of myself under control at least, but I did look. I wasn't going to do anything! The guy has a wife and kid for crying out loud. I was just looking. Of course, the blonde bimbo Pippa spotted me. Probably because she was checking me out – and that isn't vanity; I caught her at it three times. Can't help it if I'm good looking and irresistible.

So I may have admired Peter's fine arse and muscled thighs as he heaved himself out of the pool. That's no reason to screech 'that's disgusting, you faggot!' at me loud enough for the heavens to hear.

There was a cartoon-like moment of absolute stillness, before the other two guys were throwing themselves away from me, hiding behind the wall and staring back, wide-eyed like frightened children. I shrugged at Pippa.

"What did I do?" I asked calmly.

She was breathing as if she had just run a marathon, her large breasts bouncing in a way that I'm sure most men found attractive. I just found it ridiculous; she had been sitting on the wall the entire time, so why pretend to be out of breath?

"You looked at him!" she said theatrically.

I adopted a puzzled frown. "So? I've been looking at everyone, it's a side effect of having vision."

"Yeah, but, no, but you checked him out!" she protested, forgetting to breath heavily in her puzzlement.

"You've been checking us all out," I pointed out reasonably. "And not been very subtle about it at all."

She actually turned green, I was impressed. She muttered something that may have been 'I feel sick', before dashing to the hole and throwing up down it. I swam lazily to the side of the pool, ignoring the other two men who were still standing uncertainly behind the wall, in wet boxers. I tried not to think too hard about that. I ended up next to Jo, who was sitting with her feet in the water, munching on a fruit.

"So, are you gay?" she asked.

"Are you homophobic?" I asked in return.

She shrugged lazily. "No."

I folded my arms on the ledge and rested my chin on them. "So why does it matter?"

Jo grinned at me, and I relaxed a little. "It doesn't really,” she said. “It's just that I can trust you not to turn around if I ask you not to when I'm changing. Or not to feel me up when dancing, although it doesn't look like I'll be going dancing again for a while."

"Ah. Good reasons for wanting to know," I admitted. "I don't know why you're asking me though, I thought you had already figured it out."

"I had," she said placidly. "But it's nice to have confirmation sometimes."

I took a chance and looked back at the other two men, fighting back the urge to laugh at how ridiculous they were being. "Can I talk to you?" I called.

"Sure," Peter replied. He took a few steps closer, and Thomas followed him. "What do you have to say?"

I grinned. "I am unsure as to why you are acting as if I had suddenly professed a fondness for cannibalism. I am not going to eat you." They both looked uncertain, so I decided to turn it around and make the conversation about them. "Are women safe from you?" I asked.

"What?"

"Well, a woman walking down the street, or one that you work with. Are you likely to hit on her? Do you go around hitting on every woman you see?"

Thomas frowned. "Of course not!" Peter looked a bit embarrassed, and I thought that he had got what I was trying to say.

"So, you don't go around hitting on every woman you come into contact with?" I asked, getting ready to hammer the point home.

"No," Thomas said firmly.

"Then why should you expect that I would go around hitting on every man I meet?"

"I... uh... I..." Thomas obviously couldn't think of what to say. Peter, still blushing a little, climbed back into the pool.

"Sorry mate," he said. "Got a little carried away."

"No problem," I replied.

"Out of interest," he said, swimming over to me. "Which one of us were you checking out?"

I gave him a cheeky grin. "As a sportsman you should know that you arse is far superior to his."

He grinned back, and my opinion of him immediately went up. "There's something to brag about to the wife when we get out of here," he said cheerfully. "She's never been checked out by a lesbian; obviously I am sexier than she is!"

Of course, coming out never goes all that smoothly. Thomas had gone to help Pippa, and although he wasn't outright avoiding me, it was obvious that he wasn't comfortable with me. Pippa had evidently decided that I was a disgusting pervert to be avoided at all costs, and the two of them took their belongings and retreated to the sleeping mat furthest away from the rest of the group.

Rose, who had been swimming laps with Cat, grinned as she floated past. "What's the betting the mating calls of a horny Pippa will resound through the clearing tonight?" she asked.

Jo stood up, balancing carefully on the wall. "It's already started," she said. "He's feeding her fruit." I held out a hand, which she took without hesitating to help her balance as she sat back down. "At least the walls muffle noise," she said cheerfully. "Unless she's ridiculously loud we shouldn't be able to hear them.

Despite the noise-muffling capabilities of the walls, they were defeated by the sheer volume of noise Pippa was able to produce. Some of it I was amazed I was able to hear, it was so high pitched. Again, I was amazed that any male at all found her arousing. I found that she was a headache.

I sat with Rose discussing the finer points of the new Audi as we munched through a final helping of fruit and flower petals. Rose was arguing that Japanese cars were superior to German in every respect, while I maintained that the Deutsch had a long tradition of making fine German Automobiles. By the time the lights dimmed and we settled down to sleep, we could still hear them going at it.

I wished for earplugs as I buried my head in my hands.

The next morning the drifts of pink petals had mysteriously disappeared and Thomas was speaking to me again, although Pippa still resolutely ignored my existence.

We decided that we needed to have a conference, just the men, and took ourselves away from the pool where the girls were swimming, to one of the sections where there were no trees, no rainbow jelly beds, nothing. We sat in a circle and stared at each other for a moment. I wanted to laugh, but the moment was far too serious for that.

“This is stupid.” Peter said eventually. “We need to do something.”

“Like what?” Thomas asked.

“Explore, for a start. We haven’t even tried seeing if there are other clearings through the trees.”

“Jo said that that was a bad idea,” I said quietly.

“And how does she know that?” Thomas asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I do know that she was the first one awake, and when I woke up she was leaning against that tree in a lot of pain. None of the rest of us woke in pain, so there was no reason for her to wake up like that. And the way she was sitting, it looked like she dragged herself there.”

“But she hasn’t said anything about it.”

“Perhaps she doesn’t want to cause a panic,” I pointed out. “She’s smart, and anyone can see that Pippa or Lizzie wouldn’t react well if they thought that this place was dangerous.”

“We should ask her about it,” Thomas said. “I’ll go get her.”

He walked away, and Peter and I shared a look. “I bet that he comes back with nothing,” Peter said. I laughed.

“I’m not taking that bet!”

True to our predictions, Thomas came back in a few minutes with a face like thunder.

“What happened?” I asked.

“What happened? She told me to fuck off!” he said, highly indignant. He was even less impressed when Peter and I burst out laughing.

“Screw her, anyway,” he said in the manly fashion that only the recently-laid sport. “We don’t need her and her vague warnings. I think we should explore anyway. Perhaps there willll be some decent food in the forest.”

“I doubt it,” Peter said. “All these plants are exactly the same; there’s no variation in vegetation at all.”

“Out of interest,” I interjected. “What do you think has happened to us?”

“Oh, I think we’ve been kidnapped by a very rich very mad scientist,” Peter said, leaning back against the wall. “It’s the only plausible explanation.”

“No it isn’t,” Thomas interjected. “I think this is some Government experiment. They’re studying us like lab rats.”

I thought that it was something far stranger than that, but I wasn’t about to start throwing strange theories about, the more plausible ones were already out of spy movies. My explanation was more science-fiction, and I didn’t think that it would go down well with the other two. They were far too normal for that, but I had been a fan of Doctor Who as a kid. The technology in the room, and it was a room, and there was technology present, however cunningly disguised, was of a far higher level than human scientists could even dream of. Of course, going by the conspiracy theories this could be some secret government installation, but it was unlikely.

You see, we would be missed. I had a job, Peter had a wife. We would be reported as missing, the police would get involved, there would be a manhunt. If the government had done this, they wouldn’t have taken us, they would have taken those who wouldn’t be missed, offered them money to follow them into unmarked vans where they would be drugged into a stupor and wake up on another continent… or perhaps just fifty meters lower than where they had been before if secret underground bases were your cup of tea.

No, it made no logical sense for a human to have taken us and put us in a place like this for the purpose of studying our reactions – it would have to be a bloody strange study. I thought that we had been taken by someone or something with no knowledge of the way that human societies worked. Perhaps we had all been on our own before we were taken, and they assumed that because we weren’t travelling as part of a pack we wouldn’t be missed because we were social outcasts. It’s a strange fact that people rarely walk alone, we like to be in groups.

The other two had been discussing escape plans as I thought, but they all boiled down to ‘walk into the forest and see what we find’.

“We should leave some people here, to be a base camp,” I said. “And take food in one of the rucksacks, and fill Cat’s bottle with water.”

“It would be good if we had a weapon,” Thomas said. I rolled my eyes.

“Sure, because that shows that you’re a brilliant representative of humanity. Nothing has hurt us, so why would you need a weapon? Besides, all my tools are still in my van.”

“You have tools?” Thomas said, looking puzzled. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes again, and twice in ten seconds would be a little over the top.

“I’m a chippie, of course I have tools,” I said reasonably, certain that I had already told him this, possibly twice.

“Why do you need tools to make chips?” came his brilliant response. I sat, gaping at him. Peter started laughing.

“A chippie is a carpenter, you plank,” he chuckled.

“Oh, you’re a carpenter?” Thomas evidentially felt the need to clarify. He was looking at me with a new sort of respect, which wasn’t surprising if he had thought that I was a chip shop owner.

"Yes, one with a van full of tools that is not here. It would be very helpful if it was, but it isn't."

"I didn't think there were many queer carpenters," Thomas said, obviously without thinking.

"There are more than you think," I decided to tell him. Let him wonder how many of the tradesmen he had let into his house had been gay.

Peter was grinning at me behind Thomas' shoulder, and I have to admit that it was nice to feel that I had an ally. Once over the initial shock, Peter seemed to have no homophobic tendencies at all, and I had already noticed that he managed to keep his feet out of his mouth on a regular basis. It really was telling that he was the same age as Thomas, and yet he was married and happily settled down and Thomas was still single.

I felt awful every time I remembered Peter's wife, and so I tried not to think of her. Of course, it must have been ten times worse for him.

"So, we're agreed. Two people will go into the forest, with food and water, to see what there is to see. They will tramp in for approximately one hour before turning back," I summarised.

"If we're only going in for an hour, why take food?" Peter asked.

"Just in case," I replied. "It's always better to err on the side of caution."

"What happens if we don't find anything?" Peter asked next.

I shrugged. Thomas looked around at the silent trees. "I guess we just try another direction," he said.

Peter nodded. "Ok, that just leaves the main question; who is going to go?"

To be perfectly honest, although I would only admit this under torture, I did not want to go. Oh boy did I not want to go. I trusted Jo, even if the others didn't. If she said that there was a good reason not to explore, then there was a good reason. Exploring could potentially lead to finding out that we were trapped, which lead to finding ways to escape, which obviously wouldn't be easy or we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. Whoever had us here was smarter and more powerful than we were, with advanced technology and a truly odd sense of humour. I didn't want to get on their bad side.

"Well, obviously I want to go," Thomas was saying arrogantly.

"I don't like the idea of the girls being on their own with only one man," Peter said. "I think that we should have two men here at all times."

I nodded. "That sounds like a good plan. We can take it in turns exploring with one of the girls."

It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Thomas was going to take Pippa with him.

Now all he had to do was convince her to go with him.

Ha. Like that was going to happen.

True to form, as soon as we presented the idea to the girls there was a universal protest. Jo said that it was too dangerous, and curiously enough Cat backed her up. She obviously knew something that we didn't.

I completely understood their reluctance to mess with the tentative status quo we had managed to achieve, but I also knew that the other guys weren’t going to change their minds about exploring, and in principle I agreed with them. We couldn’t just sit here on our arses and wait for something to happen to us. Still, I couldn’t blame Pippa for not wanting to be one of the first to venture into the jungle. At this point Jo had thrown her hands up in disgust and walked off to sit under her little shelter, staring moodily at her backpack. She was very careful never to let anyone touch it, and I often wondered what was in there that was so important to her.

I hoped that it was a bar of chocolate that she might be persuaded to share with us, but I doubted it. The argument still hadn’t stopped by the time the lights dimmed and we all retreated to our individual jelly beds.

I had a strange dream that night.

I was cold, very cold, and I got out of my bed to find that there was snow everywhere, inside and outside of my house. Strange sliding and groaning noises echoed around me. I went downstairs to make sure that the heating was on, but when I reached the bottom of the stairs I was outside in an ice-bound forest. My dog, Elias, came bounding up to me and barked once before running off into the trees. I started to run after him, but I couldn't catch him so I ended up following the imprints of his paws in the snow, but the snow kept on falling and my breath was steaming in front of me so that I could barely see. My slippers were encrusted with ice and grew heavier and heavier as I walked, following the fading paw-prints in the snow.

I woke to find that I was shivering with cold. I quickly pulled on the extra clothing I had left folded beside my jelly-bed, which wasn't a jelly-bed any more, and pulled on my boots, looking around for the others as I tried to rub the feeling back into my fingers.

At that point I would have sold my soul for a hot water bottle.

I had been lying against the back wall of a small circular chamber. There was tunnel at one edge, and the walls were a blue-ish white. It looked like I was inside an igloo, and from the temperature that didn't seem far off. There was nothing in the igloo, only myself and my possessions. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled into the tunnel. Who knew what was in there, but most things are better than starving to death alone while there was potential exit right next to me.

After a few meters, which was more than enough to completely numb my hands and knees, I found myself in a larger circular chamber, with a steaming pool in the middle. On one wall was a protruding basin that caught a stream of water that came from the wall. It was obviously a drinking fountain, although as there was no waste hole I was baffled as to where the water went afterward. Jo and Rose were lying in the pool, looking rather pale.

"The water's warm," Rose said. "I'd get in if I were you."

"Take your clothes off," Jo advised. "You don't want to get them wet, it's bloody cold."

"Where's everyone else?" I asked as I stripped.

Rose shrugged. "Judging by the caterwauling, I think Pippa and Thomas are keeping warm the traditional way. You can barely hear them, thankfully."

"There are ten tunnels," Jo said. "I think we've all got our own rooms now."

"Can we all have our own towels too?" I asked as I slid into the water. "That would be nice. I'm not looking forward to climbing into cold, dry clothes dripping wet."

Just as I finished speaking there was a strange shiver in the ceiling, and a clump of fabric fell to the floor. Jo and Rose stared at me.

"How did you do that?" Rose asked.

"I did nothing!" I protested. "I'm as surprised as you are!"

Jo looked thoughtful. "That's how Rose made the toilet hole appear, remember?"

I nodded. "I thought that was a fluke."

"Apparently not."

Rose perked up. "Does that mean we can ask for anything?" she queried eagerly. "I'd like a bowl of soup, with some wholemeal bread please!"

We waited expectantly, but nothing happened.

"Looks like they don't have any," I said.

"Or that they don't know what you're talking about," Jo muttered. "How about some food?" she said more loudly, speaking towards the ceiling.

This time there was a response; a square hole appeared in the wall, and behind it was a cubby full of different coloured balls. I volunteered myself to climb out into the cold and fetch some back.

There were four different colours, and I brought three of each back in my t-shirt. We sat in the warm water and tentatively tasted each one.

"This black one tastes of meat," Jo said. "Unidentifiable, but meat."

I took a bite out of my red one, suspecting that it was the same fruit that we had had before. "This one's the red fruit from the plants," I said. Tastes exactly the same.

Rose was munching on a green ball. "Tastes of unidentifiable green vegetable," she said. "Quite nice though."

"That just leaves the yellow," Jo said, picking up the mustard coloured ball and nibbling. "Bread," she said. "It's very bread-like."

I raised an eyebrow at her. "We seem to have major food groups here," I pointed out. "Fruit, veg, meat and bread. What do you think?"

"You don't want to know what I think." Came her immediate response.

"Yes I do," I countered.

"Me too!" Rose said, picking up her bread-ball.

Jo sighed. "I think that I don't want to tell you."

With that she climbed out of the pool and wrapped one of the new 'towels' around herself before picking up her clothes and crawling through the tunnel next to the water fountain.

I stared at Rose, who shrugged. "Weird."

She smiled. "Yup, but not a lot we can do about it. Think you could raise the temperature? I'm really cold!" she said to the ceiling.

This time there was a response to her words. The blue-white center of the ceiling began to glow a rosy pink. Rose smiled, pleased.

"I was beginning to think that I was being ignored," she commented.

"Evidently not, it's just that whoever kidnapped us only responds to certain requests," I said. Rose looked somber.

"Do you really think we've been kidnapped?" she asked.

"Well, what else could it be?"

"I don't know... but kidnappings aren't usually this elaborate, there's usually some sort of ransom."

"I don't earn enough to warrant one," I pointed out.

"Neither do I, and none of us have anything in common, well, apart from Lizzie and Esther, and I'm beginning to think that that was a strange fluke."

"Maybe we all have some strange disease and that's why we were picked."

Rose gave me an odd look. "That's the weirdest thing I've ever heard of," she said. "How on Earth did you come up with that?"

I shrugged. I really had no idea, the thought had just popped into my head while I was trying to figure out a connection. "I guess that I was trying to think of ways that we could be connected without knowing about it." I said. "That's what I thought of."

"As a theory I suppose it's a valid one," she said thoughtfully. "Not very likely, although it's better than mine."

"What's that?"

"That we're all psychic," she said, blushing a little.

"If we were, wouldn't we know?" I asked. "I mean, I'm pretty sure I would know if I were psychic. I would be seeing ghosts or hearing thoughts or something. I'm just a normal guy. Wait, are you psychic?"

Rose blushed even harder. “No, of course not!”

"Maybe that's the connection," Jo said with a laugh. "We're all perfectly normal!"

I smiled. "It's as good a reason as any."

At that moment Esther and Lizzie came crawling into the room. "Ooh! It's a bit warmer in here," Esther said with a relieved smile.

Rose grinned. "I complained, asked them to turn the heat up. Check the ceiling out!"

Lizzie and Esther looked up, made appropriate noises, and then investigated our new storage cupboard.

"What happened to the toilet?" Lizzie asked.

Rose pointed to the tunnel to the left of the water fountain. "It's in a room of it's own down there," she said. I couldn't help smiling at the way Lizzie scurried down the tunnel.

After informing Esther of our new variety of food, which she greeted with delight, we settled down to a gossip session about Pippa and Thomas, a conversation with frequent pauses as we all glanced guiltily at the tunnel that we suspected they would crawl down shortly. Eventually we were joined by Cat, complaining about the cold. Kathy and Peter settled down on the opposite side of the pool, after exchanging morning greetings. They seemed to be involved in an ongoing conversation carried out in hurried whispers. I suspected that they were talking about the fact that they both had long term partners who would be missing them. Peter had his wife and child, and Cathy was obviously pregnant. I hated to think of the state that the father-to-be was surely in almost as much as I hated thinking of Peter's wife and child. Both subjects left me with a sick guilty feeling in my stomach, although I obviously had nothing to do with separating them, and I was grateful that they were conducting the conversation in such a way that I was not subjected to it. This seemed to be a common feeling; none of the others made any sort of comments that indicated that they were anything other than relieved to be left out.

We spent the day in idle conversation. Thomas and Pippa made one appearance, to drink and use the toilet before retreating back into their own personal sex chamber. I was sure that it must have reeked inside. Eventually Pippa ventured back down, wrapped in a strange toga of her own making. Strangely enough, she began a whispered conversation with Esther, which sparked a strange possessive reaction in Lizzie. I don't have any brothers or sisters, so it took me a minute to figure out why she was glaring at the pair of them.

"So, what do you think about the new variation in our diet?" I asked in what was probably a transparent attempt to distract her. I was amazed when it worked and almost gave the game away by blurting that out when she replied.

"I'm glad, it means that we'll stay healthy, if these things are composed of the things that we identify them with and not artificially flavoured."

"I hope they won't go off."

"No, it's still really cold in the cupboard, although the temperature is now tolerable in here."

"Like a fridge?" I asked, not sure if I really believed her.

"Yes."

I had to go check that out for myself. I snagged one of the 'towels' and climbed out of the pool, wrapping it around my waist as I did so. I didn't mind being naked in the water; we had all given up on that, but walking around naked was just wrong. Besides, the straight guys might get ideas. Or worse, the straight girls!

Lizzie was right, the food cupboard was noticeably colder than the rest of the room, but strangely the cold air stayed within it rather than spilling out into the main chamber. I ran a finger around the edge, wondering at the strangely contained temperature change.

"So you noticed too, huh?" Cat asked, coming up behind me and grabbing a veg-ball. "Weird, isn't it? I can't figure it out."

"Me neither," I admitted.

"I keep on seeing things or noticing things rather, that haven't been invented yet," she said softly. "Makes you wonder, doesn't it?"

"About what?" I asked, not sure where the conversation was leading.

"Well, even if we have been captured by a mad scientist, I don't think one person would have the power or knowledge to create this. So I've come up with a new theory."

"What's that?" I asked although I was almost afraid to.

"That this is all a hallucination, and we're in a padded room somewhere. Or I am, assuming that this is my hallucination. I don't even know if you're real anymore, do you know how weird that is?"

"I'm pretty sure I'm real," I said.

"Ah, but how can I know that? Of course you would say that, it's a logical response. How do you know that I'm real? You've never met me before. I could be a figment of your imagination."

I shook my head. "Think too much along those lines and you'll go completely paranoid." I warned her.

Cat grinned. "No, I won't. It's just a theory. I'm a student, I'm used to theories and having to think of things that I don't really believe in. It's the basis of most of my essays. I make up a plausible point and argue for and against it. I never actually believe in it. I don't really think that this is a hallucination, and I'm not going to start basing my actions on a theory; that would be illogical. Still, I think that it is as valid an option as any that we have come up with."

Somewhat reluctantly, I had to agree that she was right. It was a good theory, it explained some of the mad stuff. I personally didn't like the idea of being a figment of someone's imagination – but what if I was the only real one and I had made the others up?

If that was the case there must be hidden depths to my brain, because Cat had just proved herself to be a hell of a lot smarter than I was.

pippa

I hate the cold. I mean, I really really hate it. I don't particularly like Thomas, but Peter was taken and Tony turned out to be a fucking queer so the options for a quick shag were rather limited. Besides, I had already seen that he had a nice cock through the wet underwear, and trust me, it was yummy.

He didn't seem to mind that I was a bedraggled mess with three days worth of stubble when he went down on me either, which was a definite bonus. I managed to refrain from remarking on the rug, although picking pubic hairs out of my teeth is really not my idea of a good time.

I will admit to a slight overreaction to Tony's sexuality – slight! It was only that he was really fucking hot, and the idea that such a tasty man was gay just messed with the universe. I mean seriously, the saying that 'all the good ones are gay or taken' is a cliché, it's not supposed to apply to real life, ever. And I had just found myself stuck in the middle with it, because looks and muscle-wise, Thomas did not compare. I felt rather cheated, to be honest. Tony had lickable abs and a nipple ring.

So, I let Thomas take me to the back and baby me a little before I decided to show him a good time. I also decided to be as loud as possible, especially after he had produced enough lube to experiment with sodomy. The experiment was short lived – real lube is necessary for that sort of play – but I got a good two orgasms out of it while he laved my clit with his tongue as two fingers slick with his own cum drove into my arse.

I fell into the boneless state of stupor that only occurs after at least ten orgasms (only three of them during actual penetration; Thomas liked to play with a wet pussy, I discovered) but I woke up cold. I hate cold. There was only one thing to do; wake Thomas, inform him that with the right stimulation it was possible to give any girl a squirting orgasm but no man had managed it with me yet – a blatant lie but I wasn't going to ever admit that to him – and climb onto his erect penis to give him the ride of his life. How else was I going to keep warm?

So, I like sex. Who doesn't, when done properly? Sex is good, healthy and normal. Everyone has it, and these day's it's those that don't who are the weird ones, not those that do. I wasn't a slut, most of the time I find a guy who is as into sex as I am, we have fun for a long while, and then we usually break up because he finds a girl that he has something in common with other than a mutual interest in playing around under the sheets.

I will not lie to myself. My only interests are sex, make-up, clothes and shopping. Usually for sex related items like lacy lingerie, new bedsheets, chocolate or vibrators. I have quiet a nice little collection of those in my flat, in a cabinet next to the bed. You would think that being an escort would be the perfect career for me, but I'm not a whore. I work for an estate agent. You have no idea how many horny young business men want the cute, big breasted blonde to show them around. I make sure to always carry condoms and wipes when I show them around the furnished properties.

Wait, I wasn't going to lie. I usually have them with me for the unfurnished ones too, I just make sure I'm on top for those so I don't get carpet burn on my bum.

I had been thrown into a strange place with a lot of uninteresting people. I was pretty sure that it was some kind of TV stunt, and seeing as they hadn't asked my permission beforehand, I would demand to see the footage once the filming was over and insist that the bits I didn't like would be edited out, or I would sue. That would bring in a nice amount of money, both from the royalties and from selling my story afterwards. Perhaps I could even write a book, or tell the story to a ghost writer and let them write it for me. If the production company did not want me to do that, then they would have to buy my silence, as well as pay me the royalties.

It amused me to think of what I could buy with the winnings, when Thomas wasn't screwing my brains out. Sometimes the sex got a little boring, especially if I was on my back and he was just pounding away with my legs over his shoulders – a position I had always found a little uncomfortable. It was easy to roll into a daydream about faux fur coats and satin sheets with roses embroidered around the edges. I would amass a large fortune, and live off of the interest once there was enough interest there to sustain me. It wouldn't be a wickedly extravagant house though. Something small-ish, maybe fifteen rooms and a swimming pool. I hoped that I would have enough for a cleaner, and perhaps a cook; cooking had never been my strong point. I lived off of salad and pasta when I wasn't eating out. I had a relationship with a trained chef once. I could have been really happy with him, but our hours were so different that we hardly got to spend any time with each other. He was forever waking me up for sex in the middle of the night, and as previously mentioned; I like my sleep. He rarely cooked for me, but he always filled my fridge with the most delicious leftovers, all I had to do was stick them in the microwave for a few minutes.

I would have to find an agent, make sure that only the tasteful shots were shown to the public. I might be able to make some extra on the side by taking ownership of the more explicit clips and making a porn DVD of them.

My only real worry was what I would do when the supply of condoms and lube in my bag ran out, because Thomas clearly didn't have the self control needed to pull out at the right moment. Life in this little reality show set would be remarkably boring without the sex, I was certain.

Once the lights dimmed and Thomas fell asleep, I crawled down the tunnel and had a bath and a lazy swim in the pool. The water flowing over my bare skin felt fantastic. I had been positively sticky with sweat, saliva and sperm, and being clean was wonderful. Once bathing had been taken care of, I climbed out and picnicked on the last of the coloured balls in the cupboard. I was slightly annoyed that there was only one green one left, as it was by far the tastiest. I would have to come down earlier the next day, while more people were awake, and actually socialise. Thomas might be adequate in bed, but he certainly wasn't an adequate conversationalist. Who wanted to talk about escape all the time? Where was the point in that? I suppose it might look good to the viewers if they thought that there was a possibility of us getting out, but it would never happen. If we were supposed to escape into another area of the set, we would have been given tools, or the materials to make them. We hadn't; therefore we were supposed to stay here while the producers decided which moments were the most interesting to splice into a show.

I washed down my meal with a drink of water, and decided to explore a little before crawling back into the cubby. It reeked of sex, and I didn't fancy facing that again straight away.

There were ten tunnels leading away, and ten of us, but as Thomas and I had been sharing, only nine of those led to sleeping chambers. The spare one contained another hole. I relieved myself down it, and wished for a tissue afterwards. Then I spotted a pile of paper to my left. Picking one up and peering at it in the dim light, it was a page from a science textbook. Looks like Esther had got fed up and decided that school work came second. To be honest, I didn't blame her.

I had had a pack of tissues with me initially, but I had used those up in the first few days. Hopefully the producers would provide something once we were out of paper; it must just be an oversight or supply issue that we didn't have any.

In fact, I had got the impression that this show was rather shoddily put together; it had taken them several days to provide adequate food and water. The lack of privacy at the beginning I thought was just to see our reaction, and perhaps to see how many different areas would be needed. Letting us shape the environment, rather than letting the environment shape us. It made sense. I found this third layout to be the most preferable, although I would have liked furniture and some sort of entertainment.

Still, I supposed that sex was quite entertainment enough for the moment.

With that in mind I crawled back up the tunnel, to find that the reek of sex had dispersed, although Thomas still stank of it. I poked him awake.

“Go wash, you're making the place smell.”

“What? It's dark,” he protested.

“All the better,” I pointed out. “No-one can see your balls. Go wash your dick for crying out loud, I can smell it from here. I'm not sleeping next to you while you smell like that.”

Grumbling, he moved off of the bed and down the tunnel. I snuggled up under the piece of fabric I had dried myself off with and was thankful that the temperature had risen to a tolerable warmth.

I wondered what had happened to the heating system to allow the set to get so cold. Perhaps there had been a breakdown. It would have had been a big breakdown, and it seemed to take a ridiculously long time for them to fix it. I would have to complain to the management once the isolation period was over.

The next morning I had a nice breakfast of green and yellow balls; meat or sugar upsets my system in the mornings. Everyone seemed rather subdued, those that were in the pool. Jo, Cat and Esther were conspicuous by their absence. Deciding that such a gloomy place really wasn't for me – the cameras aren't going to linger on such a depressing sight – I drank quickly and took my food back to the room. Thomas would be awake soon, and that meant finding more creative ways to keep ourselves amused, seeing as the initial excuse of 'it's bloody freezing' was no longer valid.

I sat with my back against the wall to eat my breakfast, as Thomas had moved once I had left to sprawl across the entire platform that we had been sleeping on. I sort of missed the colourful jelly-beds.

I had to wonder about that. What kind of TV show made the contestants sleep on jelly? Although perhaps they were the latest in ergonomically designed mattresses. That would explain a lot, but not the lack of covers. Perhaps if we provided more entertainment covers would be provided on a sort of barter system? I set out to be entertaining.

It always amazes me that the most random thoughts cross my mind during sex, although I've found that the better the sex is, the less I think during the act. Thomas had got rather boring, his performances repetitive. I didn't enjoy myself as much as I usually did, which meant that I couldn't seem to keep my mind away from the fact that neither of us had brushed our teeth in about a week.

His breath stank, mine wasn't that much better, and I wasn't aroused enough to ignore it. I had been riding him, and considered switching to doggie style because at least that isn't face to face, but the mood was broken for me.

I climbed off, pulled on my clothes and began to crawl out in search of further amusement.

“What the hell are you doing?” Thomas demanded.

“Leaving,” I replied. “Isn't it obvious?”

“What?” he cried, sitting up. His erection was wet and gleaming, it bobbed gently with his movement, almost tempting me to get back on the bed. Still, I was off now and getting back on would be effort.

“I'm bored,” I told him. “You've somehow become boring enough that I can't ignore the lack of toothpaste any more, so I'm going to go and find some alternative amusement.”

I left him gaping like a stranded fish. The hot pool was a much more diverting amusement. There were people in it, who had the potential to carry out an interesting conversation with me. I thought that Kathy might appreciate another girl to talk to. Peter had been monopolising her somewhat, and I suppose that having another parent – although she wasn't a parent yet, more like a pre-parent – to commiserate with would comfort her, girls also need girl talk sometimes.

“Hi Kathy, how are you feeling?” I asked as I got in beside her. She smiled at me.

“Not too bad, thank you.”

“Have you eaten?” I asked. “Can I get you something?”

“A few of the black balls would be nice. I'm craving sausages at the moment and they're the closest we've got.”

I climbed out and got some for her, picking up a red ball for myself. It was still a little chilly out of the water compared to in the water, and I was glad to get back in again.

“There are scratch marks on your back,” she said. “Are you all right?”

I did the stupidly predicable thing of trying to look over my shoulder to see my own back, and as I do not have a quadruple jointed head I naturally failed. “Don't worry about it,” I said with a grin. I've had rougher sex than that. I didn't even notice them, so I guess I'm not bleeding?”

“Not at the moment,” Kathy said. “The hot water probably makes them look worse, I expect.

“Yes, it seems to have that effect on my skin.” I told her, lying back so that my shoulders were underwater. I had woken with a crick in my neck that was still easing out.

“I might do a few laps once I've eaten, would you care to join me?” Kathy asked.

“I would, some exercise sounds lovely,” I said, smiling. Hopefully some slow breast stroke would ease out the last of the pain in my neck, I hoped. A stray thought made me laugh.

“What's so funny?” Kathy asked.

“Oh, it just crossed my mind that in times of stress the British peoples always fall back on Victorian politeness as a coping mechanism,” I replied, still smiling. “We're British and things are weird so of course the last thing we can possibly do is offend one another! One must watch every single word one says!” I said in my best Queen's English. Kathy was giggling next to me.

“Quite, quite, one wouldn't want to be rude, that would be unthinkable!” she giggled, doing a good impression of Mary Poppins.

Giggling like schoolgirls, we continued to gently mock British protocol in our poshest accents. I was happy, for the first time since I had come on the show I was genuinely enjoying myself. Now, if only I had some toothpaste things would be divine!

esther

I was getting tired of white, very very tired of it. White walls, white floor, white ceiling with a pink spot in the middle. The pink didn’t help dispel the white, it merely emphasised it. I hated white. They say that white is white because it is made up of every colour, but I think I prefer black – the absence of colour.

Of course, as Jo pointed out, it would be quite hard to move around if everything was black. That didn’t stop me from asking the aliens to make my sleeping cubby black. I also got them to grow a screen across the entrance for me. It was a strange screen, made of strands of something that looked suspiciously like intestines that had grown out of the wall, but they weren’t the right colour, weren’t slimy and didn’t smell like intestines; that was the main thing.

I hadn’t been into Jo’s room, we usually talked in the main chamber, but I suspected that she had made similar changes to her room.

I’m not an emo or a goth or anything like that, it’s just that after so much white I had a terrible migraine and I needed a little darkness. It was soothing to lie there, away from my sister and her incessant worrying. I was seventeen, not seven, and well past the time where I needed to be lead around by the hand.

With that in mind, I decided to avoid her as much as possible. She had begun to be more interested in Kathy and her pregnancy anyway, listening with her stethoscope – although what she expected she would hear I didn’t know. She prescribed light exercise, and so was supervising Kathy as she swam several slow laps around the pool. Breast stroke apparently strengthened and stretched the muscles used for labour, or some such bullshit. Personally I thought that she was making it up, but that wasn’t for me to say.

If I were Kathy I would be completely freaking out for the safety of myself and my child, but then the very idea of being pregnant freaks me out anyway.

Jo wasn’t really talking to me, although we shared a strange kind of camaraderie since we both believed that we had been abducted by Aliens. I had no idea what plans she was formulating, but seeing as she wasn’t sharing I thought that it might be best to make my own. It seemed to me that there was a distinct lack of communication between ourselves and the aliens, and I didn’t like it. I don’t like secrets or being kept in the dark.

I was quite pleased with my newly coloured chamber. It showed that communication was possible, as the colour of walls had nothing to do with my health… although it did as I had complained of white-induced headaches. Perhaps they thought that I was going mad, and that was why they changed the walls?

I toyed with the idea of seeing if they would put purple swirls across the walls for me, but decided that that was probably a dead end. The pink glow of the heater in the ceiling spread away from the center point like a flower. There was a strange, simple beauty and elegance to the layout that the aliens had created for us.

To be honest, I was enjoying myself. I knew that I ought to be scared out of my mind, but so far the aliens hadn’t harmed us, and I could think of no logical reason for that to change. They were actually quite accommodating, once they understood what our needs are. It was ignorance, not cruelty, that had lead them to leave us without water.

The new food balls were easily explained; they had obviously analysed what had come down the hole and created a basic diet from that. I wouldn’t be surprised if the balls were entirely digestible, and we stopped needing to pass anything other than water.

So, food, water and privacy. The next thing they needed to understand was that humans get bored. Some games would be nice, or a book of some sort. I wondered if Cat told stories; she seemed like the type. Perhaps we could create a choir.

“How about some music?” I asked the ceiling. All was quiet. “You need an example of music?” I asked. “All right… um…”

I racked my brain for a song that I knew all the words too, and ended up singing through West End musical hits. I knew that I probably sounded completely mad, but it was better than sitting there doing nothing. I was reaching the end of “All That Jazz” when Cat poked her head through the door.

“I thought I heard something,” she said, coming to sit on the floor next to me. “I take it you’re as bored as I am?”

“I’m teaching our captors something new,” I replied. Cat smiled at me, and stared at the flower on the ceiling.

“Love what you’ve done with the place. May I join you in serenading the ceiling?”

“Sure. I was going to do Abba next.”

“I’ve been cheated by you since I don’t know when!” Cat sang in reply.

After singing our way through Mamma Mia, we moved onto Disney songs. Jo had also crawled into my chamber, probably for the company, and stayed to impress us with her rendition of the Circle of Life.

As changing the colour of the room had been a resounding success, I thought that I might have a go at changing the shape. Human rooms being almost universally square because of the difficulties of partitioning circles comfortably, the strange curved roundness of the alien structures had begun to get on my nerves. I wanted a corner to kick my wet towels into, and a straight wall to lean against.

“Make it square,” I said to the ceiling. “Make the walls flat, some right angled corners would be good.”

The walls stayed stubbornly curved.

“No, straight!” I insisted. “The curved-ness of it all is annoying me. I’ll go mad! Straight, like this.” I fished a marker pen out of my school bag and began to sketch a square on the white floor. “See? It’s a square. I want one of those as each wall.”

A strange groaning noise sounded, and a white square appeared on each wall.

“That’s not what I meant!” I exclaimed in exasperation.

“I don’t think that’s going to work somehow,” Jo said. “They just don’t get it.”

“You’ll just have to put up with the roundness of it all.”

I humphed and lay back on the floor. I was probably getting marker pen on my clothes, but I didn’t care.

“Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer! Take one down, pass it around, ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall!” I began to chant.

“Oh, I am so out of here,” Cat said, crawling out down the tunnel. Jo sat in silence for a few more verses.

Then she joined in.

I wondered if the pause was because she didn’t know the song, before dismissing that thought as impossible. Everyone knew Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall.

“Sixty-seven bottles of beer on the wall, sixty-seven bottles of beer! Take one down, pass it around, sixty-six bottles of beer on the wall!”

Tony crawled up the tunnel, a towel wrapped around his wait and his hair dripping wet. “I can hear a time honoured drinking song,” he said hopefully. “Have you found alcohol?”

I shook my head. “Sixty-five bottles of beer on the wall, sixty-five bottles of beer! Take one down, pass it around, sixty-four bottles of beer on the wall!”

"Pity," Tony said before joining in. It was something to pass the time.

The next several days were spent in various stages of boredom. We experimented with turning the towels into clothes, for use until the aliens figured out that we wanted fresh garments and provided us with some (they never did). I used one of my school notebooks to make a makeshift deck of cards, which was the best idea I have ever had and I was amazed that I had not thought of it before.

The food cupboard was restocked every night, and by the end of the day we were usually running low on one colour or another, so we gambled for our favourites. Of course, Lizzie disapproved of this immensely, as she thought that we should eat equal amounts of each to remain healthy.

It turned out that Kathy was quite an avid gambler, which I was surprised at; she really didn't seem the type. She missed her husband dreadfully, and was often seen pressing her hands against her stomach with a melancholy look on her face, but she made a very valiant effort not to let that lower the tone of the party. I often thought that she was the strongest out of all of us, not that I would have admitted that to her. If I had been in her shoes I don't think I would have been half as calm and composed.

Kathy knew more card games than the rest of us put together, and she was a good teacher. She was going to make a fantastic mum as well, not only did she teach us she had a sharp enough eye to catch it when Peter tried to cheat.

Playing cards was all very well, but it didn't feel particularly productive, and I was beginning to miss deodorant with a passion. Thanks to some peculiar nature of the walls or the air, the actual rooms didn't smell if no-one was in them. Walk into an occupied room and you noticed it! We were all bathing frequently to try and stay as clean and smell-free as possible, but there are some things that require soap. That's why it was invented after all.

I tried to explain the concept of soap to the pink blur on my ceiling time after time, to no avail. After my fifth attempt, which resulted in turning the water in the pool purple – an interesting side effect but not what I was going for – I felt like screaming.

"I just want to be properly clean, you bastards!" I protested. "I mean, it's not a lot to ask, for crying out loud. I want clean clothes and clean hair, a fuzzy bathrobe and slippers with a mug of hot chocolate! I want to go home!"

The next thing that happened was the freakiest thing to happen so far. The room morphed, right in front of my eyes. The walls bulged and twisted, a huge lump rose out of the floor. I screamed, curled into a little ball and shut my eyes.

When I opened them again I was standing in a standard bedroom. It looked like something from a furniture advert. There was a dressing table with a mirror that didn't reflect properly, only showed a silver sheen, a chest of drawers that didn't open. They had got the carpet mostly right, although it was a little more mossy than carpets usually are; I wasn't going to complain about that. My requested slippers were sitting on a mat by the bed. I picked one up, trying to figure out what it was made of. It was very soft and squishy. Still holding the slipper, I sat on the bed. It bounced.

It was only then that I realised that there was a door, a plain white wooden door, leading out of the room. The exit tunnel was still there, in a strangely blank wall that I assumed was blank because this was a three-dimensional copy of a photograph and that was the angle that it was taken from. The door must have been in the photograph. Slowly, I got up and walked to open it, almost afraid of what I would find there.

There was no need to be concerned with what lay beyond, as the door would not open. I suspected that it was similar to the drawer fronts; the aliens had known what things should look like, but not their purpose. They probably studied the adverts and images of human homes completely perplexed as to what half the things in them were for. Perhaps in their eyes we surrounded ourselves with inexplicable, space-wasting things. Perhaps they themselves had no concept of possessions, or of owning something. Everything in their society might be communal, or perhaps they shared minds and had no sense of self. If there are no individuals, then there would be no reason to own anything.

All the thinking was giving me a headache. I sat on the desk chair by the bed and began to make a second set of playing cards from my maths notebook. The first set were going to get ragged pretty quickly, and at the moment we could only play one game at a time. With seven people regularly playing, we needed more than one deck.

I had considered using the paper to play hangman or something similar, but I had decided that making playing cards meant that everyone had a chance to join in the fun, and if they were cards then we could use them over and over again.

I considered actually drawing the picture cards for this new deck, but decided that my rudimentary art skills were not up to the task, and settled for writing 'King of Hearts' inside a large heart, carefully drawn out in red biro.

Of course, I couldn't keep the room a secret, oh no. It was the cause of the biggest stir in the group since we all woke up freezing, although to be honest that wasn't a hugely big stir because we were all too fucking cold to do anything about it.

"How did this happen?" Cat asked, waving her fingers in front of the non-reflective mirror. "Did you ask for it?"

"No," I replied from the desk.

"Does it look like your room at home?"

Lizzie snorted. "Mum's house looks nothing like this, this is like something from an advert."

"I think it is," I replied.

"What?"

"I was fed up with trying to get soap out of them, and I kinda screamed that I wanted to go home to the ceiling. The next thing I knew, this happened."

"Happened? How?" Jo demanded.

I shook my head. "The floor and the walls started bulging. I freaked out and curled up before I saw any more. When I dared open my eyes again it was like this."

Lizzie frowned as she tried to open the wardrobe. "None of the doors work!" she protested. Jo and I shared a knowing look – she knew as well as I did that the aliens holding us didn't know that they were supposed to, but Lizzie was still stuck in the 'mad scientist abduction' theory and I wasn't going to be the one who revealed to my big sister that we had been abducted by aliens. She would say that I had been watching too much TV and make me take a nap.

Occasionally it struck me that considering I had been abducted, I was being remarkably calm about the whole thing. In fact, we all were. I think it might have something to do with the human brain having a coping mechanism for such things; the ability to ignore the bigger picture.

We sat around all day, eating and drinking and complaining about the lack of variety, alcohol and cigarettes. Rather than formulating escape plans, however likely the concept may be, I had spent several hours tearing paper into squares and making a deck of cards. When I thought about it, I wanted to do something more than I was doing, but then when I tried to think of what to do I hit a dead end. How do you escape from an alien spaceship? This wasn't a film. In all probability, the aliens breathed a different atmosphere to us and this was the only area of the ship where we could survive. Hell, we might not even be on a ship. This could be the alien's homeworld, or the alien's stomach for all I knew. We might even have been transported into another dimension, that would explain the horrendous headache I had had when I had woken up. Inter-dimensional travel would be painful, right?

Ok, if I'm honest I have no idea. I'm no scientist, I'm a teenager who gets good grades in Science and English. I can analyse a poem in under ten minutes and I have memorised the composition of a plant cell. I suppose I had thought of this whole venture in terms of an analytic experiment as a coping mechanism.

Revealing my coping mechanism to myself really wasn't helping me cope.

Back home my parents would have reported me as missing to the police, and my friends would be wondering where I was. I was missing classes, every day I fell more behind. The longer I was away, the harder it would be to pick the pieces of my life up again. That must be what kidnap victims go through. Once they get back to their normal life, their life isn't normal anymore. My job would probably go to some other girl, and although a Saturday job in a sweet shop is nothing special, it was a job.

I would miss the two red-headed twins who came in with their mother at ten o'clock every Saturday to buy sweets and a newspaper.

I felt like laughing at myself. I didn't even know if I had lost the job yet, and I was already reminiscing about it. Perhaps my boss would be nice and keep the position free for me until I showed up. Well, probably not, but if we escaped soon (from an alien spaceship in space with no spacesuits) I'd be back before he finished interviewing new candidates.

Still, I was determined to be cheerful about the situation – at least I had a proper bed now! And as the others seemed to think that if they went back to their sleeping cubbies and had similar temper tantrums they would get shiny out-of-the-catalogue rooms too, I had the place to myself again.

I decided to test the bounciness of the bed as soon as I was alone. No point in being serious and introspective all the time! I had done more than enough thinking for one day. As I looked around, a sad smile crept over my face. Mum would have been amazed; this was the tidiest a room I have owned has every been. It was a pity that it was because there were no possessions in it.

I still hadn't managed to acquire soap, but as I lay back on the comfy mattress I couldn't help thinking that having furniture was a close second. After all, at least we could still rinse off in the pool!

By the next morning it seemed that everyone had been able to get a new bedroom for themselves. Despite the annoyance of drawers and doors that would not open, we could still sit on the chairs and lie on the beds and write on the tables. It made a tremendous difference, just being able to sit down. Now I continued my singing campaign in relative comfort, going through as many of the current top hits as I could remember.

A piano had appeared in Tony's room, which was more of a studio apartment than a room, but it didn't work. The keys were completely solid. I wondered if the aliens were able to discern from our conversation and actions that they hadn't got things quite right, but perhaps they didn't know how to fix it If I were an alien I probably wouldn't have a clue, so I couldn't blame them. Pianos have a lot of years of design and evolution behind them, after all.

"You wouldn't be able to play it anyway," Lizzie said when she saw me staring at it.

"I could learn," I pointed out.

"Well, at least you'd have no distractions to stop you learning," she said reflectively. "And it's not like there's much else to do."

"Sucks," I said, feeling unusually childish. I suppose older siblings bring that out in younger. It's a vicious circle – we act more childish around them so they always treat us like children, which annoys us, which makes us more childish in their eyes.

"I almost wish that something would happen." Lizzie admitted. "Even though it's weird and scary when it does, anything is better than this incessant waiting. I hate waiting for things."

"I know," I said quietly, remembering her many outbursts of temper over late trains, delayed flights and the queues at Thorpe Park.

She smiled at me, a tired smile that didn't quite reach her eyes like her smiles used to do. "I suppose you do." She looked at me, then looked away and chewed her lip for a minute.

"Spit it out," I prompted.

"It's just... I'm glad you're here. Everyone else is a stranger, I mean, we're all strangers to one another, and I am so glad that I have my little sister with me. It would be dreadful if I didn't know anyone."

I stared at her. "I hadn't thought of that," I admitted. "I guess it would be horrible if you weren't here."

She laughed at me. "You'd be all right, you always did make friends more easily than I did. I always envied that about you."

"You envied me?" I asked in amazement.

"Sure," she grinned. "You were the youngest, so you always got whatever you wanted when you were small. I used to hate that. But then you grew up and started talking and you were so friendly and trusting and adorable that I couldn't hate you. So curious! I could have strangled you sometimes."

She had a far off look in her eyes, and I wanted to hear more of the story, but I kept quiet, knowing that she would continue in her own time.

"Mum left me with you in the park once," she said. "You were into everything. I would take one thing out of your hand, and you'd have picked another up by the time I had thrown it away. 'Wha's 'is Lizza?' you used to ask all the time. All. The. Damn. Time. And Mum kept on telling me to be patient, that you'd grow out of it." She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. "It took you four years to grow out of it. Seemed like forever."

"I remember some of that," I admitted. "I also remember the time I managed to ruin your make-up playing dress up."

"I wanted to do it properly for you, show you how, but Mum wouldn't let me."

"Why not?"

"She said that you were too young, and I suppose you were. A lot younger than I was at any rate, but then mum doesn't wear make-up so I had to learn from school friends with older sisters and magazines."

"I don't remember any of your school friends."

"I never brought them home. Sarah has the most awesome Mum in the world, so we always went to her house. Or Jamie's, because she had a huge TV that was great for watching films on."

"So that's where you always went after school!" I exclaimed. Lizzie nodded.

"By the time you were old enough to actually make a friend of I was at Uni," she concluded. "We haven't seen much of each other since."

"The house is weird without you in it," I admitted. "Mum kept on making too much food for the first few weeks, and for the first couple of days she still laid your place at the table, then realised and looked really sad as she put the cutlery back in the drawer. I started bringing friends home for dinner more often, so that your seat wouldn't be empty."

"I came home for the holidays," she pointed out.

"Yeah, but you were always talking about University, lectures and friends that we had never met and probably weren't going to. You seemed very far away," I admitted. "Like you were turning into a different person. I didn't feel like I knew you anymore."

"I'm still me," she protested. "Just older."

"And more grown up," I said, hating how I sounded like a child.

"You've grown up while I've been gone too," she said. "You'll be going to University yourself soon."

"I suppose," I said, shrugging. "I hadn't really thought about it yet.

"You should pick a London Uni and come and live with me."

"Won't having your little sister around cramp your style?" I asked.

"Not really, I don't have much of a social life as it is," she admitted. "I'm the newbie, so I keep on getting the graveyard shifts."

"That must suck."

"Really does, but it's a job and it's money. Nothing to sniff at."

"Any cute doctors?" I asked.

Lizzie sighed happily. "The main pediatrician in the children's ward is gorgeous! He has dreamy eyes..."

"But?"

"Dreamy eyes, a wife and two kids. Damn her."

"How come all the cute ones are married? Look at Johnny Depp," I said. I had always been deeply disgusted by the fact that he was happily married.

"Orlando Bloom is still single," Lizzie pointed out. I snorted in disgust. "I thought you loved Orlando Bloom?" she asked, puzzled.

"For a start he's not single," I said. "His acting isn't actually all that good either, not compared to Johnny Depp or Hugo Weaving or Kate Blanchett-"

"I get the picture!" Lizzie interrupted, throwing her hands up. "I take it you took his poster down then?"

"Naw," I said grinning. "He is pretty to look at. Just no substance, and therefore no awesome acting career ahead of him."

"He's been in two box office hits, he can probably live of the royalties for a while," she said. "So long as he's careful with his money."

"Film stars are never careful with their money," I objected. "None of them. That's why they're always acting in new films."

"You might be right."

"Of course I'm right."

It was nice, to sit with my sister (in an alien spaceship) and have a discussion about the various features of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. It was something that we had never done at home, too big an age gap (eight years) and not enough time spent in each other's company. Even on family holidays we had usually done our own things, me making friends with the other children also on holiday and Lizzie with her head in a book the entire time. I couldn't remember the last time we had sat together and just talked. It was nice, in a weird way, although it also highlighted for me just how separate we usually were. We liked a lot of the same things, in films at least, but I had never known that. I couldn't remember ever sitting down to watch TV together or going to the cinema with her.

"It's weird that we like the same things," I said. Lizzie laughed at me.

"We share genes, and we have the same sort of upbringing. It's not that weird"

"It's weird that we didn't know it," I protested.

"Maybe," she consented. "But I'm glad to find out."

"Me too."

At that moment my stomach growled and the mood was broken. "Time to feed you!" Lizzie announced. "Come on, I'm hungry too. And then I fancy a swim after I've digested."

"Exercise would be good," I agreed. "Make a nice change, I've been doing a lot of sitting."

"And singing to the ceiling."

"Singing to the ceiling is relaxing," I said with as much dignity as I could muster while crawling down a white tunnel. "You should try it sometimes."

"Maybe I'll sing a duet with you after our swim," she said.

"I don't know any duets."

"Mum has the Phantom of the Opera on DVD, didn't you ever watch it?"

"Yes, I love Phantom," I said, squashing the urge to start humming.

"There you go, that's a duet, we can sing that," Lizzie said, straightening up and brushing her scrubs down. "I bag Christine."

"I want to sing Christine!" I protested. "The Phantom's bit is too low."

"It starts out higher than Christine's bit!" Lizzie argued.

"But... but... I want to sing Christine!"

Lizzie rolled her eyes and passed me four balls, one of each colour. "How about we sing it through twice?" she suggested.

I took a big bite out of the black ball and smiled. "Sounds good to me," I said.

Lizzie frowned. "Don't talk with your mouth full; Granny would be scandalised if she saw you."

"She'd also be horrified at the state of your hair," I said, mouth still full.

"Granny was easily flustered," Lizzie conceded, taking a bite out of her yellow ball. "She also hated it when I wore jeans, or skirts that showed my knees. I mean, she was a teenager in the sixties; you'd think she'd be more liberal."

"I guess she was scandalised by the sixties as well," I suggested. "Maybe she had a really strict Grandmother herself."

"That's no excuse for her to be a strict one too," Lizzie said petulantly. "Maybe we should make a concerted effort to scandalise her when we get back?"

"Back?"

"Yeah, when we get back home."

I thought about that for a moment, picturing my house and Granny's shocked face. I smiled. "Sounds like a plan, but we've got to get back first!"

"Something will happen."

"Oh, are you going to make it happen?" I asked, biting into my green ball.

"I'll make sure it does. I'll kick and scream and hit the walls if it doesn't."

"Will that work?"

"I have no idea."

peter

It's strange when you realise that you would rather hang out with a gay man – who could potentially be checking out your arse every time you turn around – than a straight man. Thomas was an idiot, Tony was a pretty cool guy. The kind of person who has his head on straight.

I will admit to not being the best of company. My little girl, Sasha, occupied a lot of my thoughts. I kept on picturing her looking up at Emily and asking 'where's Daddy?' all the time, in her little voice. I wonder how they're coping without me, whether they've started up one of those family search appeals for missing family members. I hope that they have, I'm scared that they haven't.

I have no idea what has happened to all of us, why we have been taken. I'm just pissed that it's even happened. What sense is there in taking a man away from his family? The family away from the man I can see the sense of, because a man will do anything to get his family back, but why take me away? I'm a football coach, not a millionaire. A failed player who never made it big, and so teaches the game to others on the off chance that one of them will. I never really cared about anything but football, until I met Emily. She was the aunt of one of the kids I taught, and one day she came to pick her nephew up. At that moment, I realised that I might care about something other than football, and ten years later I care about two things other than football. Emily and Sasha, my two pretty girls.

I miss them.

What has happened is fucked up on so many levels. I haven't even tried to understand it. I'm really worried about Kathy; I remember how Emily was when she was that far gone with Sasha, and it wasn't a fun time. Kathy is amazingly strong, but there are hard times coming ahead. What if we don't get home before she goes into labour? It doesn't even bear thinking about.

Lizzie is a trained nurse, so there is some hope there I suppose. We don't even have anything to use as nappies, or any baby clothes. Never mind what could happen if something goes wrong with the birth.

It made me shudder just thinking about it.

When Esther appeared with a hand-made deck of cards in her hand I could have cried in relief. Finally, something to do other than sit around talking and thinking depressing thoughts. I know that I could have just thought happy thoughts, but after days away from my two girls I wasn't feeling particularly cheerful. Gambling for food balls and playing good natured rounds of gin rummy helped a lot, and it seemed to perk Kathy up too. It was nice to see her smiling.

Still, the entire time I felt this driving need to go home, that I couldn't do anything about. Kinda like the nagging 'I've forgotten something' feeling that you get once it's too late for you to do anything about it – like thinking that you left the bathroom light on when you're already on the plane ready to go on holiday. Of course, in that situation you resign yourself to a larger energy bill that will be less than usual anyway because you aren't going to be in the house for a week.

I needed to get home, I needed to know that Emily and Sasha were ok. I needed that, more than anything else I could think of.

I just couldn't figure out how.

While the others lay on their backs trying to persuade the ceiling to give them soap or more food or chocolate, I tried to guilt trip whoever or whatever had us here. My pet theory at that point was that a super computer somewhere had gone fully AI and kidnapped us to try and understand us. That way at least I was still on Earth, probably still in England seeing as I had been taken from England and computers tend to be stationary objects – although anything could happen. If I was still in England, as opposed to a secret Russian Military base or a mad Scientist's hideout in Japan, at least I was only a few short hours away from home.

"I just want to see my kid, you must understand that!" I said to the ceiling. "She's only five, and she has no idea where her Daddy is. Do you know how terrifying that is to a child of five? Her whole world has been turned upside down, she's going to be traumatised. She'll probably have ongoing trust issues for the rest of her life if I don't get back soon. Every time I leave the house she'll be afraid that I won't come back. Do you really want to have that on your conscience?"

I didn't know if it was working or not, but it felt nice to vent, in a strange way. It didn't count as talking to myself as by this point, with the strange picture-perfect bedrooms, the nice temperature and the swimming pool we were all pretty sure that there was something listening.

It just didn't seem to have a conscience. Or much common sense, facts that supported my AI theory. Ok, common sense is logic, and computers are logical, but this one probably didn't have all the facts it needed to function properly. At least, that was my theory, or a continuation of it, rather.

I couldn't remember the last time I had thought so much; my old teachers would have been proud of me. Of course, I had nothing on Jo, but then the girl was some kind of anti-social genius. The odd comments she dropped were enough to convince me of that.

In America she would probably have skipped school years, but they don't seem to allow that in England, they just have more classes for different skill levels. It means that some people come out of school very highly educated, and others with the bare minimum. It often strikes me that that isn't particularly fair, but then there's not a whole lot that I can do about it. I hope Esther comes out of school with a good education, but with her it's a little early to tell. She doesn't even have a uniform yet.

I sat with my feet in the water and played a friendly game of cards with Tony and Rose while Kathy and Pippa swam laps around the pool. I must have blacked out, because I blinked, and opened my eyes in a completely different place.

I was in a garden. Tall trees grew around me, their trunks stretching upwards into mist. The pool was still there, but now it looked more like a dark pond. I was sitting on a matt of purple moss, and the plants from the orange room grew abundantly. Yellow, green and black fruit hung from the branches as well as red. Vines draped themselves around the tree trunks, vines with dark green leaves and white trumpet like flowers. Paths wound away through the plants, paved with the purple moss.

"What the fuck?" Rose exclaimed from beside me.

Cat walked down one of the paths into our clearing, a look of complete bewilderment on her face. "I just woke up in a cabin," she said. "A log cabin, with bunk-beds and a table and what looks suspiciously like a chess set on the table. What the hell is going on?"

I shrugged. "Not a clue. I blinked, and then I was here."

"We must have blacked out," Tony said.

I looked around for Kathy and Pippa, remembering that they had been swimming, but they were nowhere to be seen. "Have you seen anyone else?" I asked Cat.

"No, the cabin was empty. Is something wrong?"

"Kathy and Pippa were swimming," I replied, standing up and peering around. I couldn't see them. "We should try to find them."

Everyone agreed, and we split up to search around this new area.

Each path seemed to end in a log cabin, each with it's own water fountain and toilet hole next to it. The tall trees only grew beside the pool, but the green plants were everywhere. Paths only lead to cabins, all identical apart from what was on the table. Some had nothing, some had games, one had bowls made of something that looked like glass but wasn't. Don't ask me how I knew that it wasn't, it just wasn't. It sparkled oddly in the light. The blanket of mist or cloud overhead was uniform. It diffused the light so we couldn't tell if there was one source high up or if the light came from many points lower down.

We found Pippa and Kathy on the floor of the third cabin, naked, soaking wet and apparently asleep. There wasn't anything obviously wrong with them, but Cat ran to get Lizzie nevertheless, and we didn't touch them until she arrived, just in case.

Thankfully they were fine, just dizzy and disorientated. Pippa complained of a splitting headache, and we all retreated so that she could get some rest on one of the bunk beds. Kathy said that she was fine, so she walked back to the pool with us.

"Are all the cabins the same?" she asked.

"Pretty much," I replied. "I haven't seen all of them, but so far they seem very similar."

"Everyone else seems to have woken where they last were," Lizzie said thoughtfully. "And the paths do seem to be in the same pattern as the tunnels. I wonder if this is the same place or a different one?"

"Perhaps we have been in the same place all along," Cat said, looking around her. "They keep on changing it, but I don't think we actually move, I think the world moves around us."

I shivered involuntarily, and my skin crawled at the thought. "That's freaky!" I protested.

"This whole situation is freaky," Cat replied. "I hate it here."

"Well, none of us like it here," Lizzie snapped.

"Fighting amongst ourselves won't get us home," Kathy reprimanded the pair. I smiled at her as Cat and Lizzie were subdued into a sulky silence.

"You sound like a mum already!" I whispered.

She smiled back at me, her eyes bright. "It's all good practice!" she confided..

I'm ashamed to admit that it took at least an hour for us to recognise the real problem; Thomas, Jo and Esther were nowhere to be seen. We searched for hours and hours. Pippa woke up and joined in, pushing through the leafy plants, even calling down the holes. We searched under the beds in the cabin, I had a go at shimmying up one of the tall trees to see if I could spot them. They were nowhere.

By the end of the second hour, Lizzie couldn't stop crying. Her eyes were red, and she had the hiccups but she kept on going. Kathy kept on forcing her to drink to replace the lost liquid, but nothing that anyone said seemed to penetrate her guilty fugue. It wasn't surprising that she was the first one to figure out that we were trapped. I was behind her when it happened, a step, a flash of bright light and then she flew backwards and crashed into me. I crashed into the plant behind me, and we all went over backwards.

Lizzie had a terrible burn on her forehead from where she hit what we decided to call the force-field. It was some sort of electric fence without wires that circled the entire area. It didn't let anything past, and by throwing fruit at it we figured out that it stretched at least as high as we could throw. If we were to find Thomas, Jo and Esther they would have to be on our side of the barrier or we were screwed.

I reckoned that I had cracked ribs from where Lizzie slammed into me, it was difficult and painful to breathe. My arm gently around my ribs I walked carefully back to the pool and sat back against one of the larger trees. I had fared better than Lizzie; Rose and Tony ended up carrying her back on a cradle of their crossed hands. A startling red criss-cross pattern had begun to appear on her bare arms. Cat looked at it and frowned.

"So that's how it happened," she muttered.

Kathy immediately pounced on her. "That's how what happened exactly?" she demanded.

"Woah, chill out! Jo had marks like those on her in the first area, that's why she spent the first forty eight hours leaning against a plant."

"Why didn't she tell us about it?" I asked. It hurt more to talk than to breath and I decided to talk as little as possible from now on.

"She didn't want us to panic about being trapped," Cat replied. "It was early days then, remember? She told you not to go exploring, that must have been why."

"Not very honest of her," Kathy grumbled.

"Trying not to cause a panic is a good thing," Cat countered. "She would have mentioned it before we charged off into the bushes I'm sure. She wouldn't have wanted anyone else to get hurt, but she probably didn't want to cause panic. Remember what those first few days were like? We weren't sure why we were there, or whether or not we were going to be harmed."

Grudgingly, Kathy nodded. "You have a point, I suppose," she said. "We didn't even have water, and we didn't know that we had food then. Although I would like to point out that we still don't know why we're here!"

"I wish I could tell you," Cat muttered, coming and kneeling next to me. "Are you ok, Peter? Did you hurt your ribs?"

"Lizzie slammed into me," I said quickly. I then regretted it as speaking quickly meant that the air left my lungs more quickly. Speaking slowly would probably be less painful. I'd try that next time.

"Let me see," Cat said, tugging at my open shirt. "I did a first aid course at Uni. I'm not Lizzie, but she's not really in the condition to examine you at the moment."

I lifted my arm so that she could see my ribs and bit my lip as she carefully felt along the bruised area.

"I don't think they're broken badly," she said. "Just bruised, and at least one has a fracture, but no actual breaks. You're lucky. Besides, if it were broken badly you'd know about it. Sit still and try to breath slowly, I guess. We'll bring you anything you need."

I sat against the tree trunk and tried to breath slowly as I watched the others carry on searching. Cat brought some of the strange bowls from one of the huts and filled one with food and the other with water. Tony appeared occasionally to help me to the toilet hole, and then once I could manage that well enough on my own left me to it. It was strangely lonely, and I spent a lot of time looking at the pool, the way the plants were reflected in the dark water, the way the ripples spread when one of the others came to wash in it. We were all ridiculously comfortable with our own nudity at this point, and it no longer seemed strange for the girls to be wandering around in wet knickers while the rest of their clothes dried.

I didn't see Lizzie for several days, but finally she and Cat decided that she was strong enough to be moved outside, and they brought her to lie on the purple moss beside me. By that point my ribs only hurt if I moved, so I was perfectly capable of looking after the pair of us while the others searched.

From what I could tell of their conversations around the pool in the evening, while Cat's comb was shared between the girls and Tony swam laps around the pool and attempted to dive to find the bottom, the force field enclosed a large area, and they had searched all of it, but had then decided to search again. I suspected that it was as much that searching felt more productive as it was that they expected to find them. Cat seemed to believe that they could be given back at any moment, and so it was important to keep on looking and be alert for any changes.

Lizzie felt incredibly guilty for not being able to search for her sister herself, and I spent hours attempting to convince her that Esther would not blame her for being injured. I'm not sure that I was particularly successful, but it passed the time. We seemed to be doing a lot of pointless things to pass the time.

Not that I thought Thomas, Jo and Esther were dead. I just thought that looking for them when we had already established that they were not lying unconscious somewhere within the bounds of the barrier it was pointless to continue searching over the same ground. As I lay there recovering, it occurred to me that we needed to find a way to climb the trees and see what lay above the mist. If nothing else, the extra height would mean that we could see beyond the barrier. Perhaps the missing trio were in another clearing, held in by another barrier, but we just couldn't see it through the thick clusters of plants around our barrier.

I just needed to figure out how we could climb the tree.

I broached the subject with the group when we were all gathered together for the evening meal. Now that I could walk, slowly and with frequent pauses, I spent my afternoons gathering food for everyone, putting balls of each colour in the different glass bowls. Then we all sat by the pool to eat together before the light faded.

It is embarrassing to admit, but that quickly became my favourite time of day in the garden. It was nice to have everyone together, eating after a day of activity. I was tired from moving around with cracked ribs, Lizzie was still in a lot of pain. The other five had spent the day tramping through the plants, over the uneven ground, and most were soaking blisters in the cool water of the pool. It became a time of stories and jokes, trying to figure out how we all know each other using the six degrees of separation law and complaining about the lack of proper 'food' in the garden.

"You know, this place has to be artificial." Cat said one evening. "Everything, I mean, right down to the vines around the tree trunks and the plants."

"How do you know that?" Lizzie asked.

"For a start, there's no flowers on the trees, fruit just grows. The vines have flowers, but there are no insects to pollinate them, and they're all the same, no male or female variations."

"They're plants, not animals," Tony pointed out.

Cat shook her head. "Plants have genders too. That's why some holly bushes have berries and others don't."

"I never knew that," Lizzie admitted. "I just assumed that they were different varieties of holly."

"Oh, you get that too," Cat agreed. "But plants do have genders.

By this point Lizzie and I were well enough that we retreated to the cabins for the night, Lizzie assisted by Cat and me by myself. I had spent the first few days against the tree, after a brief experiment on the moss revealed that breathing hurt three times more if I lay down. Despite the lack of light there was no appreciable temperature difference between the 'night' and the 'day'. It was strange, as it indicated that our heat source was completely independent of our light source, and also that the light source gave of little or no heat. It was hard to imagine a light that could illuminate such a large area without producing heat.

The ever-present cloud over the garden had also begun to get on my nerves; I kept on subconsciously expecting it to rain and it never did. It gave the area a gloomy feel to it, that was more of a habitual feeling towards the anticipated rain than anything physically accountable for.

The beds in the cabins were rather uncomfortable, or at least less comfortable than they looked. I don't think any of us dared complain however, in case the cabins were taken away. The jelly mats had been marvellously comfortable, but the cabin beds had sheets, blankets and pillows and so were far superior in my opinion. I didn't want to have to go back to sleeping on the ground, and who knew what would happen if we commented on the hardness of the beds. We all knew, after a few days of aching shoulders and 'how did you sleep?' it was established that they worked best if you lay flat on your back and weren't a restless sleeper. The last is less to do with the condition of the mattresses, and more to do with how narrow they were. It would be rather easy to fall off of the top bunk.

Lizzie was healing faster than I was, although the burn on her forehead looked painful. As the days passed she fell into a sort of deep depression, and didn't seem to care much about anything. She stopped eating as much, and once she could walk again she started to spend hours wandering amongst the plants. By then the others had cut back to only searching in the mornings, but Lizzie was often gone before the rest of us woke up. It had become an obsession for her.

"I'm getting really worried about her," Rose said one morning, sitting down next to me with a bowl of food. "I haven't seen her eat in two days, she's getting awfully thin."

"She might be eating as she walks, I suggested, although I didn't believe it. Rose gave me a sceptical glare.

"That's bullshit and you know it."

I sighed with resignation. "Yeah, I know. Crush my fantasy of a normal life, why don't you!" I said theatrically. I managed to startle a laugh from Rose, which made a nice change. I don't think that any of us had laughed in days, not since waking up in the Garden.

"I feel awful," Rose said next, "for not being more upset myself. I have a little brother, and if he went missing I'd scour the country looking for him."

"But Esther is not your sister," I pointed out. "Obviously you aren't going to be as upset. There's no need to feel guilty about it."

"But I do."

"Well, stop."

We both laughed again at that. "This whole situation is impossible!" Rose complained. "I just want to go home, fix a few cars, fight with my mother over my lack of boyfriend. Eat beans on toast. You know, normal things."

"I wonder how normal things will be once we are back?" I asked. "I mean, will there be reporters fighting to hear our story? Will the government immediately carry us off for debriefing?"

"Will we ever get out at all?" Rose countered.

"That's gloomy," I said. "Can't you be a little more cheerful? We could all write a book and make millions, you know."

She rolled her eyes. "And then it will be made into a film and we'll all play ourselves, I suppose?"

I nodded. "Think how weird it will be; we'll remember this conversation and write it into the book, then a screenwriter will take the book and turn it into a script, and we'll have to memorise an alternative version of the conversations that we have had for the film! It's like the worst kind of deja vu ever."

"I can just see the director. 'That wasn't in the script, Tony!' 'But it was what I said the first time!'."

I lent back against the tree trunk and stared into the pool. "What's the first thing you want to do when we get home?" I asked.

"Um... eat pizza. No, order in pizza and eat it in the bath with the radio playing. Or maybe order pizza, have a shower while waiting for it to arrive, and then eat it in bed. With ketchup to dip the crusts in."

"Oh that sounds awesome!" I said, my mouth watering.

"What's the first thing that you want to do?"

"See Emily and Sasha. Have a shower and take them out for dinner. No, take a shower while Emily cooks her Grandmother's Shepherds Pie recipe. "

"Is it a good recipe?"

"The best."

"Hm, we'll have to stay in touch once we get back, then you can invite me over for dinner. I love shepherds pie."

"Really?"

Rose nodded decisively. "Yes, it's my favourite meal, and every time I try to cook it it's never quite right."

"Emily cooks it perfectly. You'd be welcome to come over for dinner."

"Thank you," Rose said solemnly. "I'll give your car a free service when the time comes."

I grinned at her. "I have a motorbike," I told her and watched as her eyes lit up with enthusiasm.

"What kind?" she demanded.

"Kawasaki Ninja," I replied.

"Oh, you're so predicable!"

Eventually, even Lizzie gave up hope. Well, not gave up hope entirely, but accepted that the likelihood of us finding the missing three lying unconscious in the bushes was very slim. We still believed that they were alive. This was a test of some sort, I was sure, to see what happened when the group was separated. I don't know why only three had been taken, it would have seemed more sensible to split us into two groups of five.

I spent several hours trying to figure out if anything linked Thomas, Esther and Jo. The only thing that I could think of was an attempt to split up couples. Lizzie and Esther were sisters, Thomas and Pippa had been sleeping together and Jo and Cat had become close friends, well, they had spent more time in each others company than they had with the rest of us. I'm not sure exactly what that says for the state of their friendship, but it's a pretty safe bet that they were pretty close.

Pippa didn't seem overly bothered about Thomas' absence from a personal point of view; she seemed more worried about Esther. I suspected a misplaced maternal instinct had something to do with that, as Esther was the youngest in the group. We were probably all worried on that account. Cat seemed a little distressed over Jo being missing, but understandably wasn't making as much of a fuss as Lizzie was.

I had to wonder at the thought processes of whoever was behind our kidnapping. Take eight complete strangers and two sisters, put them into a strange environment where the sisters cling a little, not a lot as they didn't seem to me to be overly close siblings, and then separate the siblings. Why not kidnap one sibling and another complete stranger and then observe?

Well, I suppose that seeing as Esther and Lizzie weren't that close, giving them the opportunity to bond before separating them made them closer.

And now I'm thinking like a scientist and I don't like that. I don't like scientists or science, and I proved that to myself during my school years.

After blowing up six test tubes and accidentally creating a fireball in the middle of the chemistry lab I was only allowed to do theory anyway.

As the hours and days progressed with no sign of the missing trio, Lizzie began to withdraw badly, until I was more worried about her than I was about Kathy, because at least the pregnancy appeared to be progressing without a hitch, even if her feet were swollen and the baby pressed so hard against her bladder that she needed to waddle to the toilet hole every hour. If something did go wrong with the baby – and I knew that Kathy was fretting about the lack of scans – the only person with a hope of helping her was Lizzie, and if Lizzie was in a blue haze she wouldn't be of any use to anyone. Even Esther, if she happened to reappear and be injured.

I considered pointing that out to Lizzie, but after talking over the idea with Cat we decided that it might not be the best thing to introduce the idea that Esther might be injured to Lizzie.

We spent several hours sitting around the pond, Cat and I pointing out to Kathy that women had been giving birth for years without scans, occasionally without doctors, and as Rose pointed out, in some parts of the world they still were. There was no reason to believe that anything would go wrong with the birth. Lizzie woke up enough to join in the conversation and help reassure Kathy.

I took it as a good sign that she still cared enough about things other than Esther to take an interest in the conversation and help. She also ate something with us that evening. I began to hope that she was recovering, but I didn't really like the feverish look in her eyes. I knew that bereaved people often concocted fantasies to explain the absence of their loved ones, and I was afraid that Lizzie may have been concocting some crazy reasons to explain Esther's disappearance during the long hours she was searching for her.

To be honest, the general mood was a pretty low one. Unless the food ran out (unlikely) or things changed for the worst again, and the group was split again, I didn't think that things could get much worse. Of course, thinking that way just tempts fate, and there is a reason that I try not to do that:

Fate's a bitch.

rose

Of course we got them back. I never doubted for a moment that we would. It's just that after getting them back, I started thinking that maybe I hadn't wanted them back after all. Well I had, of course, but I wanted them back as they were. But they weren't. As they were, I mean. They had changed – not on the outside but on the inside. I don't know what happened to them, they were uniform in their refusal to talk about it. Almost too uniform.

I like engines. I always have. My earliest memory is of poking the guts of a red 1993 ford fiesta with an adjustable spanner. I was three, or thereabouts, and my dad had lifted me up so that I could see over the chassis. "Go ahead, Rosy-posy," he said to me. "Fix it for Daddy!"

Once I got my qualification, I showed up at the garage with the white piece of paper in my hand. He took it from me, his grease and oil covered fingers holding the pristine square by the edges, and smiled at me, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the most sorry looking excuse for a car I had ever seen.

"Go ahead, Rosy-posy. Fix it for Daddy?"

So I sweated over that piece of crap French auto-mobile, while he welded together a picture frame for my certificate our of an old car door that had been lying around forever. And you know what? I did fix it.

Engines are simple. They get dirty and gummed up and occasionally things split or rupture or catch on fire, but the reasoning behind it is always logical. People, people I don't get. That might be why the boys never stick around. Or that could be because when I introduce them to Daddy he always makes sure he's doing something that makes him look tough and intimidating. It's not like I care – anyone who I actually want to stay with would have to be able to handle my dad. If they can't they're just pussies, right?

Esther, Thomas and Jo just walked into the clearing one morning and sat down. Lizzie burst into tears and flung herself at Esther. We decided to leave them to it, and gathered around Thomas and Jo, babbling questions at the top of our lungs.

They didn't say a word. Not a damn word.

It was just plain weird

Oh, they talked, I'm not saying that they were completely silent, but they refused to answer any of our questions, and refused to acknowledge that they were refusing to answer. Their eyes have an odd flat quality to them, and most telling of all; every night they wake up screaming.

Screaming fit to wake the dead.

The screaming in itself is enough to give me nightmares.

I'm going stir crazy with nothing to do, nothing to build. I make interesting patterns with the fruit and the leaves and the flowers, and try not to be too upset over the fact that my fingers don't smell of motor oil any more. My fingers have smelt of motor oil for as long as I can remember, just the same as my father's fingers. With the lack of soap, even after swimming in the pool they still smelt faintly of it. Now they just don't any more.

It just reinforces that I've been away from home for a very long time, and I want to get back. I really, really want to get back.

So, with the whole gang back together again, I decided that it was high time that we started looking for a way out of there. During our search for Thomas, Jo and Esther we had established that the barrier completely surrounded us. The next step was to try and climb the tree trunks as high as they went.

Suppressing the urge to crack Jack in the Bean Stalk jokes, we used two towels and two people for a sort of 'brace and walk' technique. It required a lot of muscle power, so Tony and I ended up being the lucky pair. Peter has more muscle than I do naturally, but he had cracked ribs, and although I would have expected Thomas to be the next best choice, we established that I could beat him in an arm wrestling contest (he is a sore looser).

So, using a technique that Cat had seen on the discovery channel, we mimicked the cocoanut pickers and began to attempt to ascend skywards. Well, cloud-wards.

Six attempts later we established a rhythm that seemed to work for the pair of us, and managed to get higher than head height. The task was made much more difficult because we couldn't see each other – there being a large tree trunk in the way. The others shouted encouragement from ground level, all grouped around the trunk. I hoped that they were willing to attempt to catch us if we fell as well, but I had my doubts on that score. Still, doing an insane crazy stunt like climbing a really tall tree with no safety harness, or rather, no safety of any kind, beat just sitting.

It really did.

You know when you've been really ill and you're really bored but don't have the energy to do anything? Being kidnapped was like that, only worse because we had the energy to do things, we just had nothing to do. Even housework would have been better than nothing, but as we didn't cook anything, there was no way to really wash clothes and as the huts seemed to clean themselves, I couldn't even occupy myself with that.

Pure boredom, that's my excuse for climbing up a twenty meter tree to a cloud bank.

As my mother would have said had she been there; I should have broken my fool neck. Dad would have just grinned proudly at me and handed me a clean rag.

Once we reached the cloud bank my arms were trembling with the strain. I yelled to Tony to warn him, and lent back away from the tree, stretching out my cramped muscles. My arms were still supporting my weight, but at least they were in a new position.

I craned my neck to look around, but all I could see was the green tops of the plants, and more greyish purple smog. There were no structures other than our cabins, and the landscape didn't extend much beyond the barrier, perhaps fifty meters beyond it the mist swallowed the plants.

"Fancy trying to go through the cloud?" Tony yelled.

"I'm game if you are!" I replied.

With a heave and a tug I got my boots back under me and braced while Tony walked up the trunk, before he braced and helped pull me up. As soon as my head was in the grey mist, it began to swim. Strange colours flashed around me, and there was a really off taste in my mouth. I quickly inched back down.

"Tony!" I yelled.

"Yes?" he replied. I hoped that he wasn't still in the cloud.

"I think it might be poisonous or something."

"It certainly tastes weird, and seems pretty hostile!" he agreed. "Let's go down, eh?"

"Sounds like a plan."

Stretching out, we began a controlled skid down the twenty meters we had just sweated our way up. I don't know about Tony, but I was already planning what I was going to say to the others once my feet were back on the ground. Needless to say, they were very curious. Pippa was a little sarcastic about the possibility of the cloud being poisonous, until I pointed out that it had made me dizzy and did she really want me loosing my grip and falling on her from such a height? It wasn't like Tony and I had been climbing a flight of stairs. She shut up after that.

I think everyone was grateful for that.

After a snack and a quick dip in the pool, I headed straight to bed, and Tony wasn't far behind me. If his arms felt anything like mine did, all I could fell was complete sympathy for him. Those people who climbed cocoanut trees for a living must have awesome arm definition. I would have to look some up once I got back home, maybe see how expensive flights to the Caribbean would be.

The next morning, the tree trunks had changed. They no longer resembled textured wood; the surface had transformed, reminding me of smooth glass. It would be impossible to climb them now.

"That's new." I said, running a hand over the material. "It makes no sense. If they didn't want us climbing the trees, why not take them away?"

"Because they need them there," Jo said. "They must serve some kind of purpose, that's the only reason that I can think of to let them remain. It makes them all the more interesting."

"It does?" I asked. I knew that I sounded dumb, but then compared to Jo we all were pretty dumb. I had never met a smarter person in my life, even if sometimes it did seem that she had read one too many science fiction books.

A close inspection of the ring of trees followed, but revealed nothing of what their purpose could possibly be. To be honest, I hadn't expected anything different. Whoever had us here was smart, far to smart to just reveal his purpose like that.

"I think we should go back to trying to communicate," I suggested over lunch, once it was established that yes, the trees had changed, and no, we didn't have much of an idea why, other than to discourage us climbing them.

"Really?" Cat said. "That didn't seem to get us very far last time."

"It got us water, privacy, heat and food," Tony pointed out.

"Yes, but it didn't get us entertainment or anything that could help us get home."

"Maybe it would be a good idea to try and establish why we're here in the first place," I said. "Maybe whatever they need us for is a temporary thing. Research or money or whatever, I have no idea and I try not to think too hard about it anyway. My point is, if we know why we are here, we might be able to do something to shorten our stay."

"She has a good point," Jo said quietly. "Without knowing the intent, we have no idea how long we will be here for."

"I for one would like to get out of here before I go into labour," Kathy pointed out, one hand resting lightly on her distended stomach.

At that point Tony wandered into the clearing, rubbing his biceps. I strode over to him, smiling as I remembered our shared ordeal.

"I hope your arms hurt, because mine a killing me," I said.

He grinned at me. "Aching like crazy," he said. "Want to do some stretches together? Peter might have some ideas, being a football coach and all."

"Yeah, let's go ask him."

As it turned out, Peter had a lot of ideas, and so did Lizzie. The pair of them spent longer discussing which stretches would be more beneficial than Tony and I did actually stretching. Still, I think it cheered Lizzie up a bit, to be useful. Peter seemed rather flattered to be asked, and to be honest the things they were getting us to do we probably would have been doing anyway – your standard P.E warm-up is not rocket science, although from the concentration on their faces as they watched us move it might as well have been.

The other six went into some conspiracy theory huddle, sitting cross legged in a circle and talking in low voices. As there was no-one else around, I thought that whispering was a little over-dramatic – who was going to eavesdrop? Judging by the levels of weirdness exhibited since we arrived, whoever or whatever had captured us had the ability to listen in on us muttering to ourselves. Whispering wasn't going to stop them hearing us.

If anything it would make them more interested in what was being said.

I pointedly ignored the group, and it seemed that the other three had the same idea. Lizzie cast a few longing glances at Esther – she reminded me so badly of a puppy, but I wasn't going to tell her that – but we had somehow all decided silently that we would leave them to it. Even if they were discussing my idea of making contact, I didn't think that sitting around in a circle was the way to go about it. Screaming at the sky, yes. Conspiring together, no.

The four of us gathered in one of the cabins, two on the chairs and two on the bed. Tony and I got the chairs, because according to the 'experts' they would be better for our aching backs. I actually found them rather uncomfortable, but it just was not worth the argument. I tucked one foot under me in an attempt to keep the circulation moving, and we indulged in a riveting game of dominoes – these ones had actually come with the cabin and not been made from one of Esther's notebooks. They were made of something halfway between glass and plastic, and the dots on the surface were an odd shade of greenish-purple, almost impossible to describe unless you have been to a craft shop and seen the two tone balls of wool they have there, or have been asked to paint a car that particular shade of.... greenish-purple.

Colours aside, I still won the first game, and we started a second before we actually started talking to one another. Somehow it was easier to discuss heavy subjects when half our minds were occupied with a game of dominoes.

"What do you think they're talking about?" Lizzie asked, placing the double six on the table.

"Probably trying to think of ways to persuade whoever has us to let us out," I said, adding my only six to the double.

"You're very careful never to speculate about who has us here," Tony pointed out, placing a tile.

"That's because I don't like thinking about it," I said, staring out of the window while I waited for it to be my turn.

"Why not?" Lizzie asked.

"It scares me, I guess," I admitted.

"We're all scared, Rose," Lizzie admonished, placing a tile.

"I know, but if I keep out of the conspiracy theories and don't think about what is happening to us then I can sort of ignore my fear," I explained as I dropped the double two next to the six-two that Peter had placed.

"I know what you mean," Peter said, smiling at me. "I try not to think too hard about it too."

"Sometimes I think that part of their problem is that they focus too hard on who is keeping us here and not on the problems of the moment," I said, reaching out of the window and snagging a red fruit off of the nearest plant. "Anyone else want one?"

Peter did, and I was glad because I always feel like a pig if I'm eating alone. He smiled at me around a large chunk of fruit and slurped it into his mouth before turning to Lizzie. "So, if you've been thinking about who has us here, what conclusions have you come to?" he asked.

Lizzie shrugged and blushed a little. "At first I liked the mad scientist idea, but I'm beginning to think it's more than that, maybe a mad scientist who somehow has government backing."

"Sounds feasible," I agreed. "There has to be an element of insanity in this though, I mean, we were taken off of the street."

Tony nodded. "Usually that only happens to girls in rough areas who are going to be sold to the mob or something."

"Child prostitute rings," Lizzie said with a shudder. "People don't like to think that they exist in England, but they do."

"How do you know that?" I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.

"We used to get the victims in the hospital, sometimes," she said. "I always felt so sorry for them. Some were teenagers, others even younger than that. It was awful."

"Wow, that must have been pretty rough," I said sympathetically. "No offense, but I'm glad I don't have your job."

"It was nice to feel that I was helping," Lizzie replied, making her move. She only had one tile left and despite the serious conversation I was disgruntled when I realised that she was ahead of me – I had two tiles left and at that moment I couldn't place either of them on the table.

Peter shook his head. "I love working with kids, but I wouldn't be able to deal with abuse at that level," he admitted. "I know that's bad, but even thinking that people could do awful things to a child makes me sick to my stomach. I had one boy on the team last year who I was pretty sure was being abused, he kept on coming in with bruises, and not the sort you get from football practice."

"What did you do?" Lizzie asked.

"Reported him anonymously to social services. I didn't want to get the football club involved; my boss wouldn't have liked that, but then he was always more interested in money than the kids. I did tell him about it, but he dismissed it. Said that the kid was probably just clumsy. I saw him for two hours every week, I would have known if the kid was clumsy for crying out loud."

"You did the right thing," Lizzie said calmly, placing her last tile on the table. She didn't even seem to notice that she had won, but then we were all pretty riveted on Peter's story.

"I'm glad you managed to prevent it," I said, sweeping all the dominoes into a pile in the middle of the table.

"Yeah, but the kid didn't thank me for it. He lost a dad, not his own but a dad, and his mum couldn't afford football lessons anymore. That was the last I saw of him."

"Still, kids can play football anywhere," Tony pointed out sensibly. "Even if the family were struggling after, I think I'd rather not have had the money for kitkats as a kid than have some guy smacking me around all the time."

"I know it was the right thing to do," Peter said, poking the dominoes with one finger. "I still didn't really like doing it. I felt like a tell tale."

"Well, you shouldn't," I said in a moment of brain-numbness. The only thing to do was state the obvious and hope that it would make someone laugh – I had my reservations about how successful that would be until Tony broke out into stifled giggles. I grinned at Lizzie's shocked face and shrugged, making her laugh too. Soon we were all giggling, although I had a feeling that if we weren't careful the mirthful moment might turn into group hysterics.

"Ok, guys!" I said cheerfully. "Are you going to let the girls beat the pants off you at dominoes or are you going to fight back?"

My words sparked off another game before the hysterics could break out, and another game after that. Before we knew it, it was getting dark. None of us were hungry, as we had all been munching throughout the play sessions, so we all headed to bed.

I woke up the next morning really missing toothpaste. Seriously, you have no idea how much a person can miss toothpaste. There's waking up with a hangover and a mouth that tastes like shit because you were so drunk the night before that you lacked the coordination to raise a toothbrush to your lips. There's camping for a week, trekking in the middle of nowhere and eating apples to try and keep your breath fresh, if you even have apples. And then there's two weeks eating weird food with no soap, shampoo or toothpaste. My teeth would probably be in a worse shape if we had a greater food variety. As it was, the crunchy fruit and fresh water supply had conspired to keep my teeth in pretty shiny shape with a minimum of tooth-fuzz. That didn't mean that I didn't want to brush them. I also really, really wanted to shave my hideously hairy legs, but that wasn't an option either. If I had been forced to choose, however, I would have chosen the toothpaste.

It seemed that the conspiracy continued, but at some point before I had woken up Lizzie had been drawn into the group. I couldn't help feeling a little betrayed as I stripped off and jumped into the pool to complete my customary ten laps before breakfast. If nothing else, I would be in great shape by the time I got home; there was nothing to do other than exercise and eat. Eating gave me more energy, which I burnt off in exercise. Peter appeared and started his usual stretching routine before starting a round of sit ups and press ups. It was strangely companionable and repetitive, both of us breathing hard as we worked our bodies. After he had finished his routine he would strip and swim a few laps as a joint warm down and wash. Then we usually ate breakfast together.

Tony wandered up and joined me in the pool, swimming faster than my tired muscles could. "Show off," I grunted as he passed me for the third time, earning a mouthful of water for my troubles. I spit it out in his general direction, feeling rather childish now that Lizzie had 'deserted' us. Of course, she had done nothing of the sort, and we were all in this together. It took me until I had hauled myself out of the water and dried off to realise that Jo was not one of the group sitting around the tree. In fact, she was nowhere to be seen.

I decided to eat first before searching for her, although the moment that I realised that she was missing I was determined to do so. I did not want a repeat of what had happened before; it had been very worrying. Even if she just wanted a day to herself in a cabin, I wanted to know which one she was in for my own peace of mind.

Well, as much peace of mind as was possible in such a strange situation.

Have I mentioned that I hated being there and wanted to go home?

After eating I set out in the direction of the hut I remembered Jo walking to most evenings. I expected that she would be there, and was rather concerned to find that she was not.

Without alerting the others, I checked the other huts. No Jo. Still, I didn't want to raise an alarm if she had done nothing more than go for a walk. If she really was missing, they'd know soon enough, and it wasn't like we could do much about it anyway. I hadn't actually told anyone that I was looking for her, so for all I knew she could have told one of the others that she was going for a walk. I just didn't know.

But finding out beat doing nothing hands down.

I walked outwards from the clearing until I reached the barrier, and then wandered along. Sure enough, after a while I found Jo. She wasn't doing anything, just sitting with her back to one of the yellow fruit plants and staring at the barrier. From the things littered on the ground, it looked like she had been throwing things at it.

"Hi Jo," I said, sitting down next to her. "Mind if I join you?"

"Not at all, and I'd say that that's a good thing seeing as you've already sat down."

"I could get up again?"

"No need."

"So..." I said, leaning back and wiggling until I had created a comfortable hollow in the purple moss. "What are we doing today?"

"Experimenting," she replied. "I'm trying to figure out if anything here will pass through the barrier."

"Will it?"

"Nope. Was a pretty useless experiment, if I'm honest," she admitted.

"Well... anything is better than nothing, right? At least we know that we've tried everything."

"As scientific experiments go, it was a pretty poor one," Jo complained, throwing a piece of the chess set at the barrier. It bounced back.

"Are you a scientist?" I asked. It seemed strange that anyone who wasn't a scientist would refer to things as experiments, but then I suppose we all had mad scientists on the brain so perhaps it was just a wild guess. I was a little surprised when Jo nodded.

"Yeah, a scientist of sorts," she said.

"What sort of scientist?" I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.

"A bad one, apparently," she replied, gesturing towards the fallen objects scattered at her feet. "I don't seem to be getting very far with figuring any of this out."

I shook my head. "Don't feel bad," I admonished. "I bet Einstein would have a hard time with this one. Scenery that changes while you sleep, weird fruit that tastes like meat and a strange barrier that gives any living thing that touches it an electric shock, and yet inanimate objects bounce off unharmed."

"It did electrocute the metal buckle off of my bag," Jo said, pointing to a blackened chunk of something. I conceded that it might have once been a buckle. It sure didn't look like one anymore.

"Well, that tells us that it is electric," I said. "I mean, at this point we can't be sure of anything, but metal and the human body both conduct electricity."

Jo gave me a slightly impressed look. "What did you say you were again?" she asked.

"I'm a car mechanic. All my life."

"You seem to know a lot about physics," she said.

"Only when it comes to car engines," I replied apologetically. "Anything different or more complicated and I'm lost, I'm afraid."

"Still, you seem to get the mechanics more than the others," she said.

"I thought Cat was pretty smart too?" I asked. I had noticed that they had spent a lot of time together before Jo had vanished with Thomas and Esther,

"Oh she is," Jo said. "She's a good thinker, very observant and she draws good conclusions. However, she doesn't know much at all about science, about what human technology at it's normal level has made possible and impossible."

I looked around us. "I'm pretty sure that this whole place is impossible."

"Me too," Jo agreed. "That's the scary conclusion bit."

"What scary conclusion?" I asked.

Jo shook her head. "You don't want to know. You're too logical; you'd think that I was crazy."

"Hey," I argued. "I've head everyone else's crazy theories, and so far none of them have convinced me completely, and I've been trying very hard not to think of what might of happened to us myself. You might as well tell me, it won't hurt."

"Really?" Jo asked, looking me straight in the eye for the first time in our conversation.

"Really." I said, as firmly as I could manage, which to be honest probably wasn't all that firmly.

"Ok," Jo said, taking a deep breath. "I think we've been abducted by Aliens."

"I think the weird thing is how not weirded out I am by that statement," I admitted.

"Really?"

"I also think that we've over-used that word."

"Probably."

"Good substitute." I took a deep breath. "Aliens? I'm assuming that you have some kind of conclusive... conclusion."

"What?"

"How did you decide that? I'm sure it wasn't on a whim, you're too smart for that," I explained. "How did you figure it out?"

Jo lent back against her plant and closed her eyes. "Well, for a start there was the barrier," she said. "Earth just doesn't have that kind of technology invented yet. We're not even close, because before there are top secret military developments, there's always a science geek with an idea, and that usually leads to awards and things get publicised, especially with the internet."

"Ok, I'm with you so far."

"Also, there's the environments. They've been getting better and better, more suited to our needs, as if the Aliens are leaning more about us the longer that we stay."

"Convincing," I conceded.

"There's the way that we were taken – you remember a strong wind and then waking up surrounded by orange, right? That's what I remember, what Cat remembers, what as far as I can tell everyone remembers. That's weird No strangers with guns, no sounds, no black cars, no pain. Just wind. Even if we were all drugged, we should remember being drugged, you know? There's also the fact that we are who we are."

"What do you mean?"

"We're from all over the country, and I think Lizzie and Esther being related was a complete fluke. We were supposed to all be strangers. Now, any human would have checked out our names and realised that Esther and Lizzie were related, and not taken one of them because of that. Therefore whoever took us didn't do a back ground check – or couldn't do a background check. This was an abduction of opportunity, not a planned one. They picked ten people who were alone without witnesses. We're not the sort of people that you hold to ransom, and we're not the sort of people who won't be missed."

"I see what you mean. People who are kidnapped are from wealthy families. People who are taken off of the streets for experiments will not be missed. Still, that doesn't immediately equal aliens."

"I know... the final thing that convinced me is that they have not tried to make direct contact with us, not once. A kidnapper would want to gloat, threaten, maybe get us to make a video to send to the government. A mad scientist would want to do experiments on us, take samples, probably gloat too."

"Evil people always want to gloat in the movies."

"Yes."

"Jo? I wish this was a movie."

"Me too."

"The scariest part is; I believe you," I admitted. "It's a pretty logical conclusion, the best I have heard so far."

Jo looked amazed. "You really believe me? You don't think I'm crazy."

"Oh, we're all a little crazy," I said flippantly. "But I think you're right. I think we really have been abducted by aliens."

Thomas

There was obviously some sort of conspiracy going on. Perhaps the Chinese. You know, every damn thing you pick up in the shops has a 'made in China' tag on it. I always though it slightly suspicious that China never seemed to be a major contender in, you know, the world. I mean, America and England are no-brainers, Russia has it's own space program for crying out loud – and not a lot else in that ice-bound hell-hole of a country, and the Japanese are just scary smart. I read somewhere that it had to do with Samurai training, and how they've meshed that in with their school work, which sounds like bullshit with an edge of plausibility.

China are never on the news, unless there has been some kind of major disaster, and yet they seem to have their hands into everything. It must be China that has us here, and that's why none of our kidnappers have shown their faces, after all, if you're Chinese it's pretty hard to hide the fact that you're Chinese. It's all in the slanty eyes that those buggers have.

Most of the others in the group seemed to have gone with the mad scientist theory, apart from the blonde bitch Pippa, who confided to me while she was very naked that she thought this was all a reality show. As theories go, it isn't a bad one, but there are about a million different legal reasons as to why it cannot be a reality show. Seriously, the amount that we could (and I would) sue, it would not be worth keeping us here.

Speaking of the blonde bitch, I cannot believe that she said I was boring! She's a complete air-head herself, and I was making her cum often enough that I expected a little loyalty from her, not to have her climb off of me in the middle of having sex and walk out, leaving me with a rather troublesome stiffy covered in her juices. I didn't even want to jerk off using them I was so upset.

Once my apparently brief sexual encounter was over, I was forced to interact with the others, which meant coming back into contact with Tony, the fucking pillow biter. I cannot abide gay people, especially not one in a setting where lack of clothes mean that he is guaranteed to see my arse. What if he started getting urges? The thought was enough to make me sick. Strangely enough, Peter didn't seem bothered. Maybe that was because he had made sure from the start that everyone knew that he was married, and so off limits. I had to wonder if he was actually telling the truth there. Maybe he was only saying that he was married because he didn't find any of the girls attractive, although I found that hard to believe; Pippa was a babe, although a bitch, and Cat was pretty cute. Esther was too young, but Lizzie had nice hair. Kathy obviously wasn't lying about being pregnant, putting her off limits for sexual pursuits as well, unless fucking pregnant women was your kink, which it definitely is not mine.

So, I blamed China. It seemed the more sensible option. The British Government would never have authorised the abduction of ten taxpayers, the American Government wouldn't risk pissing off the British, and the French don't have the technology for something like this. As far as I am aware, France have never been particularly renowned for science. Art, music, clothing and fine food. That's France. I sure could do with visiting a French restaurant about now, although now that we have progressed into a palette of food rather than just red I am a lot happier – and so is my digestive system. Too much of the red fruit gave me the runs. Never good when you're in a place with no toilet paper. I resorted to using the leaves, while we still had plants, and after that Esther tore up some kind of text book. I have never been more grateful to anyone who wasn't giving me head.

At least if the Chinese had us, we'd have been taken to China, and that meant that there'd be shipping records and the like, so the Government would be able to track us. Men in Black film plots aside, I was pretty sure that the British Government would be devoting their best efforts to seeing if we were safe. I also expected that we would be rescued eventually, but it made a much better story to tell people back home if we managed to rescue ourselves, or at least break out of our holding area – you couldn't really call the places that we had woken up in 'cells' – we would be seen less as pitiful victims and more as heroic victims.

And that's the kind of victim I wanted to be, assuming that I had to be a victim at all. That choice had obviously been taken away from me, but I have always been one to swing a bad situation to my advantage. That didn't work so well at Uncle Bobby's barbecue, but I try not to think about that time. I was only fourteen, after all, and didn't know half of the things that I know now.

We sat in a circle by the pool as I tried my best to make the others see that for our own psychological well-being we needed to try and escape. My efforts were hindered by the sad fact that we had already done everything that we could think of to get out of there, and were pretty much reduced to shouting at the strange layer of cloud over our heads. I was sure that the cloud was there because there was something on the ceiling that we were not meant to see. Jo disagreed with me, saying that it was probably due to the contained atmosphere. It seemed that she had managed to convince herself, with no physical proof, that we were in a contained environment Everyone else seemed to think that she was very clever and convincing. I was convinced that she was utterly mad, although I did not go out of my way to advertise this opinion. It isn't always a good idea to go against the masses. Sometimes, but not always.

"I don't get why you're so intent on escape when it's pretty obvious that we've tried everything," Esther said to me, the day that Jo had decided that she had had enough of our company and Lizzie had been persuaded to lend her brain to the pow-wow.

"Because I don't think that giving up is a good thing to do," I replied, deciding not to go into too much detail. Esther's only a school kid after all.

"But we tried the trees, and Tony and Rose have pulled muscles to show for it." Esther argued. "The barrier completely surrounds us, and nothing goes through it, not even the fruits that grow here. How are we supposed to get out?"

"We haven't tried digging," Cat pointed out. "Not that it would be an easy task without spades, but we still haven't tried it. And then there's the holes."

"What about the holes?" I asked her.

She gave me an 'are you stupid' look. I really didn't like her at that moment, but then once I heard what she said I realised that maybe we all had been a little blind. Trust a girl to think of something like that, their brains are wired up differently.

"The toilet holes go down. They're potentially a way out, if a dangerous and potentially unpleasant one. We could die if we tried it, I have no idea what happens to the stuff we throw down there and neither do you."

"If we had rope we could find out," Lizzie said, picking up a green fruit from the bowl Pippa had placed in the center of our circle. I had been purposely avoiding that bowl as the bitch had touched it and I didn't want to get contaminated. That was the last thing I wanted.

I'm sure the slag was sitting there topless on purpose, just to taunt me. The wet shirt drying over a branch was an excuse; she could have washed it before bed and left it to dry overnight, or wrapped her torso in one of the towels. Obviously her aim was to make me uncomfortable by flashing her tits at me, making me remember how soft her skin was and how her nipples hardened if you rolled them between your fingers.

I felt the beginnings of an erection stirring in my briefs, and excused myself before anyone noticed. It had been several days since I had last had sex, and I hadn't been wanking for fear that someone would walk in on me. It seemed that my cock had decided that enough was enough. My erection was hot and heavy, pressing against the zip of my work trousers, the kind of erection that would not go away until it was satisfied. If I ignored it now, it would be waiting to spring again at the next sexy thought or image that my brain processed, which meant that as I was sharing space with seven scantily clad ladies, I needed to take care of my little 'problem' now, before one of them got the mistaken impression that I was a pervert.

I am not a pervert.

In the privacy of my hut, I sat on the edge of the bed, dropped my trousers and briefs to me knees and took myself in hand, my eyes closing briefly in response to the jolt of pleasure my fingers closing around the shaft had caused. I smiled. This wouldn't take long at all.

Once I had taken care of my little problem I rejoined the others. It really hadn't taken long for me to jerk off, catching the result in a large leaf and pitching it down the hole. They probably thought that I had gone to take a dump. I wish. That would be a task for later in the evening, judging by the ache in my lower back.

"Ok, so if we were to talk to them," Lizzie was saying as I returned to the group, "what would we say? We should agree on that before starting at least."

"I agree," Pippa said. I wanted to disagree just because the she-demon had agreed, but that would have been rather childish behaviour and I like to think that I am both smarter and more mature than the others in the group, so I merely sat down and said nothing.

"We should ask for an explanation," Esther said quietly. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I would like to know why I am stuck here with you all – no offense, but if I have to take a forced holiday in a strange garden, my first choice for companions would not be a bunch of strangers."

"Maybe it's better that we're all strangers," Cat countered. "At least we had stories to tell each other. If we all knew each other there would be less to talk about."

"But if we knew each other and were already friends we would have more common interests to talk about," Esther argued.

I decided to cut in and say something before their 'discussion' turned into a full blown, useless and time-wasting argument. "I think we should find out where we are," I said. "We could be anywhere in the World, we should know were so that we know whether or not we're going to have to run to an Embassy or the nearest train station once we're free."

"Ok, that covers why and where," Pippa said with a smile. "That just leaves what, when and who."

"I doubt we'll ever find out who," Cat said, shaking her head. "At this point, it's been days. If whoever kidnapped us was going to talk to us face to face they would have done so already. Their greatest asset once we are free is that we have no idea who they are. If they dropped us back where they took us tomorrow morning, everyone would think that we were crazy."

"They can't do that!" Pippa objected.

Cat shrugged at her. "I don't see what's stopping them, do you?"

"You... you can't treat people like that!" the bitch squeaked.

Kathy shifted uncomfortably, her hands rubbing circles on her stomach. "We're assuming that they're planning on letting us go," she said. "Man, this baby can kick!"

"What do you mean, assuming that they're letting us go?" I demanded, panic making my stomach churn. "Of course they have to let us go. The government will track us down and force them to."

"What if they don't?" Kathy countered. "What if our kidnappers hid their tracks too well?"

"She has a point," Esther said. "We've been assuming that we're going to get out of here."

Cat shivered and pulled her hood up. It was warm in the garden, so I assumed that she was cold with fear rather than cold. "We can't get ourselves out," she said. "We can't get through the barriers, and I don't particularly fancy diving into a black hole that may well spit me out again covered in shit. If we aren't rescued, we could be in here for a very, very long time."

Identical looks of horror were present on everyone's faces. I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea. What if we were in here for months, or even years? What if we grew old and died? There was a big enough gene pool to continue our presence here, but would I really want to condemn a child to this existence? No school, true, but no way of building or making anything no. No chocolate, no toys, no footballs or climbing frames. Theirs would be a life of swimming and eating and talking. I didn't think that we had enough paper and materials to teach a child to read, definitely not enough to teach them to write. Without resources, mankind would quickly go back to the stone age – only without any stones.

"Just... shut up," I said, resisting the urge to clap my hands to my ears so that I wouldn't hear any more. "Shut up, I don't want to talk about it, don't want to think about it. The Government has to be looking for us, it would be stupid if they weren't, so let's not start thinking about not being rescued, because we will be! We have to be."

I turned away and left the group then; if they were going to ignore me and carry on talking about depressing shit like that I did not want to hear it. I decided that a swim in the pool was what I needed, I had started to smell myself again, and I hated that.

Cat apparently had the same idea, and I averted my eyes as she stripped at the edge of the pool. After a few circuits she swam to the edge and swept her clothes into the water to rinse them through.

"Hey, Esther!" she called. "Could you please get me one of the sheets to wear while my clothes dry?"

"No problem!" Esther replied, jogging off in the direction of the hut Cat was sharing with Jo.

I continued to swim, enjoying the feel of the water against my skin and the pull of the muscles in my arms as I cut through the water. I adjusted my circle to avoid Cat, who was balanced on the ledge at one side of the pool as she vigorously rubbed her clothes against each other to get the dirt off, splashing water everywhere. Not that our clothes got particularly dirty, with no mud to be seen and precious little to be split on them, but everyone sweated, and after being worn for a few days straight clothes got pretty grungy.

I sort of envied those who had been taken in casual clothes, for I was getting pretty tired of my suit. Pippa was stuck with a blouse, cardigan, skirt and high heels. Cat had been dressed in a tight top and jeans beneath her overalls, and Lizzie had been wearing leggings and a t-shirt under her scrubs. My trousers, which had had sharp creases all down the front, now looked rather baggy at the knees, my suit jacket I had given up on a while ago. It would obviously have to be replaced once I was back in England, and since the temperature had gone up I had left it hung over one of the chairs in my cabin. At least I had worn a blue shirt that day, a white one would probably have been completely stained and disgusting by that point. My tie had been loaned to Cat after her hair band had snapped. At that point I wasn't all that fussed about getting it back – it was only a strip of fabric after all.

Laps complete, I climbed out of the water and pulled my underwear back on, having decided to do some more exercises to pass the time. It hadn't escaped my notice that Peter and Tony were a lot fitter than I was. Of course, career-wise Peter spent his days running around a field after a bunch of children, and Tony carried wood and heavy tools around, so it made sense that they were more muscled than I was – the most strenuous thing I had to do at work was carry a few folders around occasionally. I had often wished that I had time to work out more often than my once-weekly gym session, but with irregular hours, meetings over dinner and a love life of sorts, it was difficult. All the more reason to milk the chance to buff up a little.

Pippa might think I was boring, but that didn't necessarily mean that the other girls would be of the same opinion, and not all of them were taken. Pippa might even get bored enough of a life without sex that she'd try to get me to fuck her again – not that I was about to. I had more than enough experience with that particular she-witch. I wouldn't have minded if she had told me that she didn't want to any more, but to leave in the middle of a sex session – the woman wasn't human. I know that she had been aroused, I had had more than enough proof of that. No normal person leaves in the middle of fucking, it's not natural. The human instinct is to fuck and have babies; it's written into our genetics. Logically, biologically, she should have stayed until I had orgasmed.

I hoped that denying her genetic heritage was bugging her, niggling at the back of her mind. It would only be justice, after all.

"Mind if I join you?" Tony asked, wandering over to where I was doing sit-ups."

I wanted to say yes, but it didn't seem like anyone else had a problem with the fact that the guy was a fucking queer, so I just grunted. No reason to make a second scene so soon after leaving the discussion that the others were having. It had been a damn creepy discussion, but I didn't want the others talking about me behind my back, saying that I was an argumentative arsehole or anything like that.

Tony settled down and started doing push-ups. I glanced at him a couple of times, but it didn't look like he was checking me out at all, so I relaxed. Well, as much as a guy can relax when he's doing sit ups.

Guys being guys, we started to mimic each others rhythm. He worked a little faster than I did, but I kept up. Wouldn't want the faggot thinking that I was a wimp, after all. "Haven't seen you around for a few days," I said, keeping my eyes on the tall white trunk of one of the trees."

"Been playing dominoes, mostly," he replied. "That and walking around. I had a go at jogging but this purple shit is a pretty bad surface to run on."

"How so?" I asked. "I thought it would have been good for the muscles – like running on the beach."

"Naw, nothing like," Tony replied with an authoritative air. I wondered where he had got that from – it's not like Manchester is anywhere near the sea. "This moss stuff is slippery, and not firmly rooted once you're going fast enough."

"Ok, I can see how that would be a problem," I conceded. "Sort of like running on wet leaves."

"Yeah, something like that."

I peeked at him out of the corner of my eye, but he had his gaze firmly fixed on his fingers as his arms flexed, pulling his torso up and down. My abdominal muscles were getting tired, so I switched to press-ups as well. I couldn't do them nearly as fast as he could, but after I had reached five he rolled over and started doing sit-ups. I was thankful, although at the same time I hoped that he hadn't noticed that I was struggling. The last thing I wanted to do was appear to be weaker than the other two men, just because I didn't have big bulging muscles in my arms (yet) didn't mean that I couldn't take care of myself if fists started flying!

After thirty press-ups I decided that I was done, and slipped back into the pool to cool off with some more laps. If I was swimming slower than I had earlier, well, I had been exercising for a while. Much longer than Tony, the stupid show off. Peter seemed to have realised that there was exercise happening. I watched as he jogged over, pulling his football shirt over his head and tossing it to one side of the clearing.

As watching the others outside of the pool wasn't doing anything for my swimming form, I switched from breast stroke to back stroke. There was no-one else in the pool to bump into, my ears were underwater so I couldn't hear the conversations and the swirling clouds overhead were oddly soothing.

After what seemed like a long while, I twisted and swam to the edge, just in time to see Peter begin some sort of trick routine. It was probably supposed to be with a football, but Peter was playing around with one of the larger black fruits. I watched in amazement as he bounced it off of his knees, ankles and the top if his feet. The whole routine fell apart when he twisted it and caught it between his shoulders, as the 'ball' was small enough to roll between his neck and shoulder and fall to the floor. I reckoned that that was one fruit we wouldn't be eating. There was a round of 'aww's and clapping, which I joined in with. I hadn't thought that football could be entertaining, but apparently it could be. You learn something new every day.

"Teach me how to do that!" Rose demanded.

Skin partly dried after sitting and watching Peter's routine, I pulled on my shirt and went to lie on my stomach on a thick patch of moss and watch the fun. If nothing else, I was pretty sure that Rose trying to learn football tricks without a football would be hilarious. Maybe they would eventually create a whole new form of entertainment – for all we knew we would have the time.

Apparently this performance had been some sort of challenge, as the hours that followed were a miasma of different 'talent' performances. I kept well clear. The best was Cat, surprisingly, who proved very nimble at both juggling the fruit and rolling one around in a manner that reminded me of Bowie in Labyrinth – my dyslexic cousin's favourite film, we were all forced to watch it every time we visited my Aunt or had a family gathering at my Grandparents house. I had always been slightly disappointed when Bowie and the Goblins didn't win. The main character annoyed me to death. By the time I was fifteen I had started refusing to visit their house, unless it was summer and I could spend the entire visit outside somewhere away from the damn TV screen. Once I finished my degree and got a high paying job, I got the brat a portable DVD player and the DVD of the movie. And a pair of headphones. I had the feeling that the rest of the family were eternally grateful, because after that he would sit in a corner nodding along happily to the songs, and we were free to sit and talk in the living room without being told to be quiet every two minutes.

The sound of my name being called dragged my attention away from the spinning balls in Cat's hand and onto Lizzie's face.

"Don't you want to join in the madness?" she asked.

I shrugged. "I don't really have the kind of talents that you can show off," I replied.

She grinned at me, a strangely impish grin. "Can you dance a tango?" she asked.

I raised an eyebrow at the odd question. Most people, I assumed, would probably say no, but as it happened I had been part of the Latin dance society at my University, as there had been a lot of very pretty girls taking part in it and a dearth of male partners.

Rather than responding, I climbed to my feet and struck a pose, holding out my hand for her to take. Smiling, she put her palm lightly across mine. I gripped her hand firmly and twirled her into my stance, pleased to find that she moved well with the movement. As I began to lead her around the edge of the pool, I was surprised and rather pleased to hear that she was humming a tune under her breath, and one that I knew. As I swept her back into a dip, I heard someone begin to clap a slow beat. The others joined in, and by the time we finished the move and were 'E Paseo'-ing again, it was impossible to tell who had started clapping.

I was enjoying myself as Lizzie and I danced around the clearing, adding in leg hooks and the occasional twirl. The only thing missing was a red rose to pass between us.

Once we were both breathless with suppressed laughter, we collapsed onto the moss, giggling. The others congregated immediately, having pressed themselves to the edges of the clearing to make sure that they weren't in the way.

"That was awesome!" Cat enthused, her 'juggling balls' still in her hands.

"I didn't know that you could dance like that!" Esther said to Lizzie, a slightly accusing look on her face.

"I learned after I left home," Lizzie explained. "That was fun! We should do it again sometimes."

"Maybe we could even try and do some lifts?" I suggested.

Lizzie's eyes lit up. "That would be great! My previous dancing partners weren't particularly adventurous in their moves."

I smiled at her. "I hope I can make up for that."

I lay back on the ground to rest, feeling pleasantly tired. My stomach growled at me, reminding me that it had been a long time since breakfast. Lizzie laughed.

"Give me a minute and I'll fetch us some fruit and a bowl of water," she said.

True to her word, I had barely caught my breath by the time she was back, handing me a dripping bowl.

"Go ahead," she urged. "I already drank about a pint."

"Thank you," I said before draining half the water in three large gulps. I hadn't realised just how thirsty I had been until I had started drinking. Lizzie handed me four fruits, one of each colour. I noticed that she had the same.

"Balanced diet?" I asked, biting into a black one. Lizzie shrugged.

"As far a I can tell without a lab. It makes me feel healthier at any rate."

"The black ones kind of freak me out," I admitted. "Things that grown on trees should not taste like meat."

"I know what you mean," she said, eyeing her own untouched black ball. "Still, I was getting cravings for burgers before all the colours appeared, I'm glad that we have a selection now."

"It is much nicer," I agreed.

"A balanced diet is a good thing," she said quietly, picking up the black ball. "Who knows how long we'll be here?"

I shivered. "I really don't want to think about that," I protested. "It creeps me out. My brain takes off and insists on thinking about what could happen if we were stuck here for years."

"Sorry."

We ate in silence for a few moments, and then the silence became uncomfortable. I hoped that I hadn't hurt her feelings.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I just... it's not a nice thing to think about."

"Do you have someone back home, waiting for you?" she asked. I shook my head.

"No, just family, but it's a pretty close family. My mum is probably calling the Police station twice a day, asking for updates." I smiled at the mental image. My mother is not the sort of person that takes no for an answer. "I expect they're completely sick of her, she is possibly on first name terms with the call handlers."

Lizzie grinned. "I doubt that mine will be any different – both of her little girls gone, what a calamity!"

"Still, it'll all be ok once we're home," I said optimistically. "Next year we'll be laughing about this."

Lizzie hugged her knees and rested her chin on the back of her hands. "I wish it was next year now," she said wistfully.

"Me too."

lizzie

I figured out that Esther thought that we were abducted by Aliens pretty early on. She might not have known me that well as a big sister, but I have clear memories of times that must be pretty dim and fuzzy to her. Plus the same sort of upbringing. Add the fact that I wasn't letting her out of my sight, much less of of earshot for the first few days of our incarceration, and it wasn't that hard. Myself, not having been privy to Jo's whispered reasoning or meaningful looks, I was pretty sceptical, and willing to consider other options. As the days passed I heard a lot of theories, but the whole 'Abducted by Aliens' idea never really went away. I began to question whether I really wanted it too, after all, it seemed like a pretty good idea.

The downside was that if we really had been abducted by aliens our chances of rescue were practically nil. I figured that we'd have to majorly freak the Aliens out in some way before they'd let us go home. So, I spent my time getting to know my little sister again and trying to think of ways to freak out the little green men holding us captive. I hadn't come up with many great ideas, if I'm perfectly honest.

Then they took Esther away and I spent days unable to think. I wore holes in my feet walking around the area they had penned us in like a caged tiger – and I mean that literally. They started out as blisters, but after a few days they were holes. When she was given back to me I cried, finally freed of the ongoing scenarios my imagination had forced upon me, the ones where I never forgave myself, the ones where I had to go home to my mother and tell her that I had failed to find her baby girl, the ones where she didn't forgive me. I think the ones where she didn't forgive me lingered the longest and cut the deepest. I'm the big sister, the more reliable and more responsible one. I'm supposed to look after her.

I still have nightmares.

It hurt that she wouldn't tell me what had happened, it hurt really, really badly. I was surprised, I hadn't thought that it would, but it seemed that I subconsciously expected more trust than that. Not that I'm saying that Esther didn't trust me, I'm sure that she did and still does. But when two people trust each other it is expected that they will share information, and Esther wasn't sharing, at all.

I consoled myself with the belief that she would tell me later and got on with my life, which wasn't much of a life to be honest. When everyone started to show off their party tricks, I slunk to one side. I couldn't do anything spectacular, at least not without a partner. Then I saw Thomas also lounging to one side of the clearing, and thought that it was worth asking. I was almost certain that Peter and Tony would have no idea how to dance; they just weren't the type to be interested, but Thomas? He was the kind who would learn just to pick up girls.

It turned out that I was right, and he could, and I spent the best five minutes of my time since being abducted by aliens (or whatever happened) dancing in his arms. Not that I was planning on sleeping with him or anything like that – I'm not that sort of girl – but it was nice to move to the music in my head and not think of anything but my dance partner and the next steps. The tango has always been one of my favourite dances, and I knew enough of the fancier moves to make a performance interesting.

"You dance really well!" Thomas said, surprise obvious in his voice as we finished the dance.

"Of course I do, I would never have suggested it otherwise," I said in my best 'speaking to a dyslexic child' voice. He bristled at me a little, his male pride smarting, but didn't say anything further. I hoped that he would still dance with me; although there was not a lot else to do, I had noticed after the end of his brief fling with Pippa that he was the sort to cut off his nose to spite his face.

I found out the next morning that Thomas had at least learned something since his last temper tantrum (unlikely) or was so bored that he was willing to overlook the fact that I had treated him like a stupid child. I had little patience with him, to be honest, but I had learned to hide my dislike for the people I was forced to interact with during my Saturday jobs before University, and he wasn't as bad as the some of the patients I had to deal with in the hospital.

Predictably, Thomas and I ended up heading an impromptu dance class. Kathy opted out for obvious reasons, and Jo was notable by her absence, but Esther and Cat were eager to drag Peter and Tony into the clearing. Rose opted to watch, claiming that she had two left feet and would just trip and knock both herself and her partner into the pond. It didn't take long for her to entice Kathy into some light exercise, and they both swam lazily around the pool like bored goldfish while I tried to drill the basic steps of the tango into my students.

To my eternal surprise, they actually did pretty well. The lack of music hindered them considerably, and by lunchtime my palms were red from too much clapping, and my throat sore from calling out the beat.

"I think it's time for a break before teacher collapses!" Cat said with a smile. "Besides, I'm really hungry now. Who wants some grub?"

"Me!" I croaked, very relieved to finally be able to stop shouting 'one, two, three, four' on repeat. I made a beeline for the drinking fountain at the side of the nearest hut and began to scoop water into my mouth and over my hot face. I smiled to find that the others had formed a queue behind me.

"So, how do you like the tango?" I asked, wiping my face with the hem of my t-shirt.

"It's an awesome dance," Cat replied. The others nodded, cheeks flushed with exertion.

"My arms ache," Peter complained, rubbing his biceps. "But then they've been aching since Rose and I climbed that damn tree trunk, so I don't know if I can blame the tango."

"Never blame the tango," Thomas said, sounding so serious we all knew that he had to be joking, and all burst out laughing on cue.

"Thank you for teaching us, Liz," Esther said as she stepped away from the water, droplets running down her forehead and cheeks.

"Any time, little sister," I replied, throwing an arm around her shoulders and steering her towards the stack of bowels by the edge of the pool. "Now, let's get some food; I'm starving!"

Esther laughed, and I was amazed by how happy that sound instantly made me. "Me too!" she chimed, bending down to pick up two bowls. She handed me one with a smile. "Let's go harvest some lunch?"

"Sounds like a plan to me."

It was nice, all eating in a group. My impromptu dance class were all tired and hungry, so conversation was limited to things like 'pass a green one, please," and "Aww, we're out of yellow? I'll go get some more." It took a refill of most of the bowels before we were all satisfied, lying around in various poses that all somehow managed to convey 'stuffed' and nibbling on the red globes.

"More tango tomorrow?" Cat asked.

"If you want," I replied, ignoring the exaggerated groans of Tony and Peter.

"Shut up, you two," Cat said severely. "It's not like we have more thrilling options for entertainment, and think how impressed the girls will be once you're home."

"I'm not interested in impressing girls," Tony said sulkily.

"There are a few variations of the tango that ignore the traditional male and female roles," I told him. "Once you've got the basics down it shouldn't be too hard for you to adapt for a male partner."

"But what if I'm not interested with dancing with a man?" Tony argued.

Esther sat up. "You have a family, right?" she asked.

"Yes?" Tony replied, clearly unsure as to where she was going with the question.

"Members of your family will be getting married at some point?" was Esther's next question.

"Yes?"

"Well then, you'll be able to dance nicely at the wedding," Esther concluded, sounding so much like Mum when she was pleased with herself that I had to stifle a snort of laughter. Esther would only question why I was laughing after all, and if I told her she reminded me of mum she would probably hit me. Pissing off my little sister was not on the top of my to-do list for that afternoon.

"Who's up for another game of dominoes?" I asked instead, feeling like sitting down for a while. Esther and Cat fancied a game, so we walked to the hut with the domino board and sat down together. After one traditional game we decided that it would be far more fun to take turns making a pattern of upright dominoes across the table, the person who caused the wobble that knocked them all down being the looser.

As we were telling each other funny stories and jokes while doing this, it took several hours before we managed to stand all of them up on their end, making a snake across the table. Then we looked at one another.

"Who gets to knock them all down?" I asked.

At that moment, Tony poked his head in through the windows. "Ooh, fun!" he said, and reached through to flick the domino on the end. We stared as the snake collapsed around the table.

"Tony!" Cat cried, pushing her chair back and chasing him out of the room. Feeling a bit like punching the man myself, I was quick to follow her, and started sprinting, Esther hard on my heels.

"You won't get away with that!" she cried.

"I just did!" Tony called over his shoulder, still running.

"Not for long!" I yelled, running faster.

In a beautifully comedic moment, he tripped on a patch of the purple moss and fell flat on his face. At that point we were running too fast to stop easily, and we all fell on top of him. Not to be daunted, this just gave us an easier vantage point to smack him from.

"Owch! Mercy! Uncle! Stop!" Tony shouted, his arms protectively over his head as we pummeled him. Gently, of course, there was no point in properly hurting him over something as trivial as dominoes, but it had taken us hours to get to that point and he was going to pay for messing with us.

"Actions have consequences, Tony!" Cat cackled as she started to tickle him. Once it was established that Tony was rather ticklish, the war had begun. We had him giggling so hard he turned purple and I was a little amazed that he didn't wet himself.

Eventually Peter and Thomas took pity on him and walked over to haul us off of him. Of course, by then we were laughing ourselves and not in a fit state to put up much resistance. Tony lay on the grass, gasping like a landed fish. "You girls are vicious!" he said once he had the breath.

I grinned at him. "That'll teach you to mess with us!" I said victoriously.

"Yeah, leave our dominoes alone!" Esther chimed in, setting off a fresh wave of giggles. The dumbfounded looks on everyone else's faces was priceless.

"You mean this was over a dominoes game?" Kathy asked, one hand on her distended stomach.

"No, we weren't playing a game," Cat explained. "We had made a snake out of them, and just when we had finished and were debating who was going to get to knock it over..." she ran out of breath.

"He leaned his big head in the window and knocked them all over!" Esther finished for her.

Kathy and Rose shook their heads. "You're both absolutely mad!" Kathy announced. "Still, as a fellow female I am completely on your side, of course."

"What? No fair!" Tony protested, sitting up. He was still a little red, but he could talk without gasping, so by my reckoning he was recovered. "There are seven of you and only three of us."

"It's five / three at the moment," Cat pointed out. "Which is a lot fairer. Besides, you're bigger and stronger than us, so it works out."

Peter walked over and put his hand on Tony's shoulder, shaking his head. "Dude, they're girls. You're not going to win, so it's best to quit now."

"Why should I quit?" Tony demanded, nettled.

Peter winked at me. "Because it hurts to see you trying!"

It was strange to fall into a time of laughter and happiness after so much pain. Thinking that I had lost Esther had almost killed me – and although that sounds melodramatic, in the hospital it is a well known fact that if the mind gives up the body will too, eventually. Esther had been given back to me, to us, along with Jo and Thomas, and for me it was as if the sun had started shining again.

Of course, being in a strange garden-like place that was probably underground (unless we really were on an alien spaceship) the sun wasn't really shining.... except that somewhere it was, being as the sun is a star and shining is what stars do.

Convoluted thought trains aside, once Esther and the other two had been given back to us, the atmosphere in the garden was surprisingly relaxed, and we all relaxed more around each other. Cat taught me how to juggle, a skill she had apparently learnt from her crazy aunt Barbara during a visit enforced by her mother one half term. Esther decided that she wanted to learn too, although I was pleased to find that I had better hand/eye coordination.

"It's not fair!" Esther pouted after missing a throw for the fifth time. "I'm younger, aren't I supposed to have better reflexes?"

"It's not a question of reflexes," I replied my eyes on the two balls I was tossing into the air. "I am more coordinated. Perhaps because I've been this height for longer."

Cat, who was juggling three balls and making it look easy, agreed with me. "You're probably not as used to the length of your arms," she explained. "Makes it harder for you to catch. Remember; eyes on the ball, not on your hands."

"I know, I know," Esther grumbled, picking up her fallen balls. I was pleased to note that despite her whining she didn't give up. Dad would have been proud of her. She seemed to notice the look on my face because she rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at me before she renewed her attempts at juggling.

Amazingly it only took her two days to be able to juggle two balls. By that time I could juggle three and Cat was beginning to teach me the different patterns to throw in. Kathy had had a go as well, but found it too uncomfortable to bend down and pick the balls up when she dropped them, so she decided not too. Not that we minded picking them up for her, but I think she minded that we had to do it. She stuck to swimming slow laps around the edge of the pool and floating in the water, complaining of a back ache. Rose spent a lot of time in the water too, so I knew that Rose would be able to sound the alarm if anything went wrong.

I was beginning to get rather worried about Kathy; it looked like the baby had dropped lower in the womb. Delivering a baby with no soap or sterilisation or something to cut the cord was going to be bad enough, but we didn't have baby clothes or blankets or nappies. It had got to the point where I had to stop looking at Kathy because every time I did and started thinking about what would happen when she went in to labour – and it was kind of hard to look at Kathy without thinking about that – I felt like I couldn't breathe and it was very hard not to go into a session of panic-induced hyperventilation.

I hoped that no-one had noticed that yet. I knew that no-one else had the knowledge that I did, and in this particular instance I think the knowledge that I had was a hindrance rather than an asset; my mind kept on presenting me with all the ways that a birth could go wrong. Add to that the fact that I had only assisted with births, I had never handled one myself. I was usually the person given the baby afterward so that the mother (and occasionally father as well) could coo over the infant before I whisked it away to be checked out. I would be the one doing the checking as well, so at least I would be able to tell if Kathy's baby was healthy or likely to develop strangely in later life, I just would be the one panicking while trying to appear calm while she was in labour.

I really was not looking forward to her being in labour. Screams are distracting, and with the general lack of painkillers, she was going to be screaming. I just knew it. I mean, it's only natural. Pushing something that big out of a hole that small, ok, she should dilate to ten centimeters, but right now her cervix is only a pinprick, and this will be her first child. If it was the second it wouldn't be so bad, on average the second child takes half the time of the first.

I was anticipating eight hours of hell, if what I remembered of the chapter was accurate. So not my idea of a good time.

What sane person kidnaps a pregnant woman for crying out loud?

The easy answer to that is that they don't. Whoever did this was obviously insane. If they wanted us to go back to basics they should have provided a more varied environment that we could actually use. If they wanted to perform a psychological experiment why give us cosy cabins and board games but not bother with soap or toothpaste? And although all the girls were steadfastly ignoring their growing body hair, and the men were being very polite about it, my legs were really starting to bug me.

I knew there was a good reason to take up waxing. evidentially being abducted by a crazy person was the reason. Or people. Or things.

I really hoped that it wasn't things. I really didn't like the idea of being taken away by things, to be observed and studied, have notes taken about what colours of food we preferred and the social groups we formed by a little green man in a white lab coats.

Because the lab coats have to be white, it's a universal constant. Even the aliens can't mess with that.

Sometimes I wondered if I was going mad. Maybe I had already gone mad and hadn't noticed. Perhaps this whole thing was in my head and I was imagining everything and I really didn't have a little sister after all, I had just wanted one desperately when I was a child. Maybe this was the real world and my life, my studies, were the dream and the garden was the reality. I didn't really think that that one was possible; it would take more imagination than I possessed to make up the Earth, and I really couldn't see how we had evolved, just ten people in a cage.

Of course, we could have been grown in test tubes, but then where did the memories come from? One could dive into conspiracy theory overload; we were all grown in a lab and imprinted with the personalities and memories of living people. We only thought that we had been abducted, what had actually happened was a memory scan that copied our neural structure to the hard drive of some super computer that then placed the memories of the people scanned into our own brains. That's why they could get away with keeping us penned in like goats and not talking to us; they had all the time in the world for their experiments, as we weren't actually missing. We just thought that we were. Well, there was data theft there, a crime had indeed been committed, but we would have a hell of a time proving it unless our kidnapper could be persuaded to reveal the technology that made it possible.

Mad theories, crazy theories that only a person studying medicine could come up with. I had realised early on that to work in medicine in England you had to be a little bit special. But then these days there is no normal, so who am I to decide that all the NHS staff are special, other than one of them? Perhaps those who work for the NHS or teach are normal, and it's the accountants and the bankers and those who take management degrees and yet cannot manage their own wardrobes who are the weird ones.

Maybe it would have been easier if I had believed in aliens from the start. At least that way I wouldn't have suffered from so many self-induced headaches as a fevered imagination that I still didn't believe could invent the entire plant kept on coming up with crazier and crazier theories about what had happened to us.

Dancing the tango and learning to juggle were lifesaving activities. Or should that be sanity-saving? At any rate, they were a welcome distraction from endless games of dominoes and discussions with people I honestly didn't have much in common with. Not that I disliked any of the others that I had been forced to keep company with, they were all perfectly fine, and I was glad that Esther was with me. But none of them were the sort of people I would have usually made friends with, we all seemed to have interests that only overlapped briefly. Pippa, for example, loved to watch soap operas. Although I will admit to watching East Enders occasionally, I barely follow the intricate plots when I do tune in; I'm usually too tired. Thomas and I both like dancing, but we have nothing else in common. Esther and I could fill hours complaining about our relatives, and have done so, but then it's expected that you will have some things in common with your little sister. It's in the genes, or something.

Cat and Esther shared a love of musicals, but otherwise I had more in common with her; we were both students after all. She was nice to hang out with and talk to, although sometimes I had to wonder if she wasn't a little too perceptive. She seemed very good at connecting the fragments that people reveal about themselves and creating surprisingly accurate assumptions about their lives and their probable reactions. She hadn't mentioned to me which degree she was doing, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that it is some form of psychology. Or maybe law, but she seems much too fun to be a law student.

The morning of what was to become our second to last day in the garden started out normally. I took a quick dip in the pool before breakfast – it had been a particularly restless night for me. I had dreamed that I was running through the plants searching for Esther. I could hear her crying but I couldn't find her, the sound of her sobs kept on echoing around me. I woke several times in a cold sweat and wanted nothing more than to rinse off once I woke. Rose and Esther joined me in the water and we swam in circles.

"Did you sleep well?" Rose asked.

"Yes," I lied, not wanting to worry Esther. No such luck.

"You're lying," my oh so perceptive little sister said immediately. "You're sluggish and there are bags under your eyes. You didn't sleep well."

"Ok, so I slept badly," I conceded. "I just didn't want to lower the tone of the morning by admitting to it."

Rose grinned as she backstroked past me. "Thanks for the kind thought," she quipped. "Pity Esther ruined it."

"Oi!" Esther protested, splashing water at her. A water war quickly escalated between the two of them and I climbed out of the pool to dry off rather than involving myself in it. Next came breakfast, and then my impromptu tango class assembled in the clearing.

"This would be so much easier if we had music!" I said to my students, unable to keep the exasperation from colouring my voice as I looked at two couples moving completely out of time with each other. "Even a drum to keep the beat would be better than nothing."

"Well, nothing is what we have to work with," Thomas said sensibly. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to smack him in the face very badly. I noticed that my fingers had curled into a fist and uncurled them.

"You count for a while," I spat. It was more of an order than a request. Thomas rolled his eyes at me – nearly gaining himself a slap – and turned away.

"All right!" he called. "From the beginning!"

Now that the irritating task of counting out the beat no longer fell to me I was able to start enjoying myself again.

The dance lesson continued, with Thomas counting, until we were all hot and sweaty. After several minutes of moving past the 'pleasantly warm with exercise' phase, and into the 'I'm getting itchy with salt water' phase I decided that that was enough practice for one day. After all, we had ages to perfect the art of dancing without music, didn't we?

If there had been animals to kill, and stones rather than the ever present purple moss we could perhaps even have made some instruments. I know that making whistles and pipes out of bones is an old practice, all stringed instruments used to be strung with gut, and if we could tan some skin it would be possible to make a drum, although who knows what we could use to make the frame.

I rinsed off the sweat in the pool, contemplating as I did so the fact that I seemed to spend almost as much time in the water as I did on dry land. I had never been particularly fond of swimming at home and I still wasn't, but swimming was a nice relaxing form of exercise, and I had found that the more often I was in the pool the less often I noticed the smell of myself.

Dripping wet, I went in search of evenly shaped fruit to use as juggling balls. The ones used yesterday had been bruised into squishiness, and had vanished overnight. I had noticed that strange phenomenon several days before; any discarded or half eaten fruit left lying around simply vanished. My mind had come up with Narnia-esque invisible servants or Mr Wonka's oompa loompas, both interesting theories although both sadly unproven. And pretty unlikely, but the whole situation was pretty unlikely.

"I think it's time for you to work with single colour balls," Cat said, handing me two red ones. "It's a little harder to keep track of that way, at least I find that it is, and it'll make you a better juggler if you rely less on the colours. Knowing which ball is which rather than watching means that you may, one day, be able to juggle completely without looking."

"That sounds impossible," I argued. I can barely juggle as it is!"

Cat shook her head, smiling. "My crazy aunt told me that her teacher could juggle blindfolded. Just balls, not knives or anything, although he juggled them too, but not blindfolded."

"He should have had his own circus act," I observed.

"My crazy aunt ran away with the circus when she was fourteen. That's where she met him."

"You have to be joking," I said after a moment of staring at her in amazement.

"Nope. She really did run away with the circus. My Grandparents were scandalised, and Grandpa never really forgave her. Mum thought that it was terribly romantic, but then mum was only ten at the time."

"How long was she with the circus?"

"Oh, I think only a couple of weeks. She vanished a few days after they had left town. She took her pocket money and caught a bus to their new location, and joined up with them then, so the Circus wasn't the first place that people looked."

"Wow. You really have a crazy aunt!" Esther exclaimed.

Cat nodded. "Yup! She can be kind of fun, but I hate visiting her because she cooks really weird meals."

The juggling lesson commenced after we all had found fruit that weighed roughly the same amount. Occasionally we picked one that looked right but wasn't suitable, and so we put those in a bowl to eat at lunch time.

After an hour of juggling my arms usually ached fiercely and I was more than ready to eat lunch. Esther, Cat and I say against one of the white tree trunks and munched in companionable silence, watching the subtlety masculine competition taking place as the three men exercised for want of anything better to do.

Kathy didn't appear until after lunch, having spent the morning in bed. She had one hand pressed against the base of her spine, and the other resting lightly on her stomach. I didn't know it then, but the events that would eventually lead to our release had already begun.

Cathy

It is surprisingly uncomfortable to be pregnant away from home. I don't mean having to urinate in a hole every few hours, that got old quickly. More uncomfortable even than the lack of clean clothes was the lack of a comfortable armchair. I knew that I was getting closer to my time, but I couldn't be sure what day it was, so saying that I was due around the 22nd of the month really didn't mean much when it could have been the 25th already, or later, or earlier. We had no way of knowing, and my watch had stopped days ago. Or what I thought were days.

Being heavily pregnant is uncomfortable. Why does no-one ever mention that? It's impossible to get comfortable with a great big bulging stomach affecting your every move. The baby inside doesn't help much either, kicking and squirming just when you don't want it to. Him, I should say. We had a scan and the nurse said that it was a boy. A stomach full of squirming, hungry child is comparable to having a stomach full of frogs, in my opinion. Not that I know what a stomach full of frogs feels like, but I'm pretty sure that it feels like being pregnant.

I found that life got a lot more comfortable, and wrinkly, if I spent a lot of time in the pond, letting the water buoy me up and take the weight of the baby off of my back. I think during our captivity my spine had become permanently curved. I could feel that one of the vertebrae was out of place a little, but with the baby there there wasn't much I could do to click it back.

Sometimes I wonder if the female body is really designed for childbirth. It often seems to me that it isn't, especially when I am contemplating the birth of my child.

I hadn't mentioned this to any of the others, although my friends, family and fiance back home are familiar with the rant, but I really disliked the idea of giving birth. Being pregnant didn't faze me so much, but pushing the baby out at the end freaked me out. I had spent long hours while Chris was persuading me that having a baby together would be wonderful insisting that I get a good doctor, a bevvy of nurses and lots of painkillers. Or alcohol, I didn't care which, but there was no way that I had planned to go through with the birth of my first child in my right mind. I planned to be completely out of my tree for the entire time. If necessary, I would open a fresh bottle of sloe gin the moment my waters broke.

I hated to think about Chris. He was probably worried sick. God knows what the police would have been telling him; worse was the idea of what the newspapers might be saying. "Pregnant woman runs away to have baby in secret" perhaps? "Mother-to-be Missing" seemed more appropriate, but I could be wrong. Perhaps someone had decided that it would make a great story if they said that he had driven me away, been abusive or sick in some way. Perhaps they had put it down to pre-labour paranoia. Perhaps they had decided that the baby wasn't his. The truth would be more awful than the papers would print. Or not exciting enough. After all, who in England wants to read that I love him and I miss him and I was taken away from him without my will? No, it's much more sell-able if there's scandal involved. The grieving husband pull on the heartstrings spin would loose the readers interest quickly. Scandals sell papers.

Of course the baby was his. I hadn't so much as looked at another man (who wasn't fictional) since I met Chris. It annoyed me, on one level. I disliked the apparent fact that one man could have such an impact on my mind and body that I no longer found anyone else attractive. Of course, there are some pretty perfect characters in films and on paper, but the knowledge that those people are made up to a certain extent kinda kills any inklings of budding romance before they can really develop.

Another of the really annoying things I experienced during my 'captivity' was the complete inability to indulge my cravings, and the necessity of keeping my temper and not screaming 'I want pickles!' every time some poor unsuspecting soul inquired how I was feeling. I really, really wanted pickles. I also wanted McDonalds – a curious urge as I disliked McDonalds. I liked the chips, but the chicken in that place worried me, and the only time I had had a Bic Mac I had been sick afterwards. Just to clarify, I had not been drinking, or hungover, nor did I have an illness of any kind, and at that point I had not been pregnant. The burger just made me sick.

When pregnant, apparently the memory of the smell (of MacDonalds, not of vomit) made my mouth water. As did the thought of a ham and pickle seeded bagel with peach slices and avocado. Maybe cold sliced beef instead of ham, but definitely pickle, peach and avocado.

It was very strange to me to wake up, around lunchtime I supposed – I had that delicious 'have been in bed for three hours too many' feeling – and not want any food at all. For the last five 'days' or so I had been wanting different foods all the time, and eating whichever of the coloured globes was closest to what my body wanted. I felt kinda sorry for the little guy; he probably wasn't getting all the vitamins that he needed to grow well in this strange environment. Chris and I had talked about making our own baby food for him, and given the lack of a varied diet while in the womb, I couldn't help but feel that that was a good idea. Of course, for the first few months he would be breast fed, which meant that I should probably start eating the varied diet. Not that I thought that that would be a problem.

It was nice, not to crave anything strange. I took the necessary trip to the toilet hole, picked four globes to munch on, one of each colour and, feeling rather thirsty, slurped a lot of clean water from the water fountain in the wall of the hut. I washed the food too, out of a strange sense of paranoia. There was a strange twinge in my back when I bent over to drink, but I dismissed that in favour of waddling over to my little table and hoping for the hundredth time that the spindly little chair would be able to take my increased weight.

The backache persisted after I had eaten, so after rinsing my hands and face I made my slow, wobbly way to the pool to float for a while, and perhaps attempt some careful stretches within the water.

"Morning!" Pippa greeted me cheerfully.

"Good morning," I replied as I slid into the water. Pippa's eyes watched me cautiously. "Going to catch me if I fall?" I asked.

To my surprise, Pippa nodded. "Yup. Don't want anything hurting the baby, or god forbid, sending you into premature labour."

"At this point I don't think it'll be all that premature," I said regretfully. "I wish I knew what the date was."

"Can't help you there," she said regretfully, pushing off into the middle of the pool. "Hell, I wish I knew what the date was. I have a feeling that my period is due."

I laughed, as I expected that she wanted me too, and gently shoved my body away from the side of the pool, wanting to float in the water for a while. Slow, lazy strokes kept me moving at a snail's pace across the surface of the water. The water in the pool was a bearable temperature as always, but no-where near as warm as a bath.

"I really miss baths," I told Pippa.

"Me too. A bath with scented oil, or maybe bubbles. I can't decide which I want more."

"I prefer scented oil," I said as I drifted past her. "Bubbles tend to go everywhere, and Chris always tries to give me a bubble moustache. It was cute when we first got together, but now it's a little old."

"You met at University, right?" Pippa asked, frown marks creasing the skin between her eyebrows as she tried to remember.

"Yes, at a very fun time in my life. Back when I found bath bubble facial hair hilarious."

"I think everyone goes through that phase," Pippa said reflectively. "University doesn't necessarily have to be included."

"I'll take your word for it."

I drifted until I was hungry, and then I climbed out and waddled around, picking fruit off of the trees for dinner. Annoyingly, I had to pause halfway through to use the toilet hole again. Pregnancy was getting less and less fun by the hour, and I had made up my mind that this would be my only child. There was no way in hell that I was going to go through that again, especially if I stood even the slightest change of being kidnapped a second time.

Really, did these people have no moral standards at all? I mean, who kidnaps pregnant women? Seriously! Society still has some taboos, and the mishandling of pregnant woman is one of them. Whoever had taken us had to be a sick bastard. Or an alien, which made more and less sense at the same time. I mean, if it was aliens, then of course they couldn't be expected to know that harming a pregnant woman (ok, I hadn't been physically harmed but I was beginning to suspect that the mental scarring was considerable) was something that just was not done. Aliens could be forgiven for inhumane actions, as they weren't human. But the idea of aliens kidnapping people didn't make all that much sense in the first place. If they had the technology to kidnap us, then why couldn't they just study us in our natural environment. You know, like badgers, with night vision cameras on the BBC. The badgers didn't have the cameras, obviously, the presenters did. Well, probably not the presenters... the film crew. Yes, they studied badgers in their natural environment and left them alone (apart from the smelly camera crews tramping around with their big feet getting the equipment set up). I began to feel quite sorry for the badgers, but at least they got to stay in their own homes. Setts. Whatever.

Dinner in the Garden was particularly unsatisfying, and I didn't eat much. I hoped that I wasn't coming down with something, because that really would be the last straw. None of us had gotten sick yet, and I was not going to be the first. I had the baby to take care of.

"What are you going to call it?" Lizzie asked, sitting down beside me and looking with disapproving eyes at my small pile of half-eaten fruit. "The baby, I mean."

"I hadn't really thought about it," I admitted. Chris and I had talked about names a little, but it was a discussion we were planning on having after my last ultrasound pictures. The ones that weren't taken because I couldn't make the appointment because I had been kidnapped. I wondered if the nurse had been annoyed that I hadn't shown up, or if someone had explained it to her.

Lizzie was beaming at me, an odd sort of excitement on her face. "Everyone!" she bellowed. "Kathy hasn't named the baby yet! Let's give her a hand!"

To my slight surprise, everyone came running, various expressions of excitement and anticipation on their faces. With more thought, it wasn't all that surprising. We were all bored, and this was something constructive to do that had the potential to be amusing. No wonder they were all crowded around like eager schoolchildren at story-time.

"How about naming him after someone famous?" Cat asked.

"Or your favourite author."

"Or a big movie star." Pippa, of course.

"That's a terrible idea." Jo never could stand to agree with Pippa's more... basic ideas. "That happens all the time and I think it's a terribly unimaginative way to name your child."

"Oh? What would you name yours?"

"Something unusual that meant something to me."

"Unusual? So you want your child to get teased at school?"

"The child will only get teased if they don't have the personality to combat an unusual name. If they're timid, they'll be teased anyway. If they're outgoing, they will take the name and make it their own, and the other children will respect them for that."

"You're thinking way too hard about this," Cat cried, breaking up the argument.

Peter gave her a scathing look. "It's a child's name, one that they will carry for the rest of their lives. You're supposed to think really hard about it!" he argued. "What are your parent's names?"

"My dad is Gilbert, and Chris's dad is also Chris," I replied. "Neither of them are acceptable."

"Woah, three Chris' would be too much!" Tony agreed.

"What's your favourite flower?" Pippa asked.

"You can't name a boy after a flower!"

"Tree, then."

"That's just as bad!"

"My favourite tree is a Rowan," I said, just to shut them up.

"That always struck me as more of a girl's name."

"It's unisex, moron."

"It sounds girly."

"What's your surname again, Kathy?" Tony asked.

"Stone," I replied.

"Ok, so it's got to be a name that sounds good with stone."

"How about Jasper?"

"Jasper is a stone, moron!"

"That's my point!"

I sat back and listened to them bandying names back and forth, arguing over them. As soon as someone came up with one they liked, three others found seven different reasons why it would be unsuitable. It made me smile. I didn't even have to contribute much, occasionally putting in my opinion or making a comment. Pippa and Esther had nearly got into a cat fight over 'Tobias'

"I think I'll call him Reese," I said softly, grabbing everyone's attention. "If Chris likes it, that is."

Everyone silently blinked in astonishment at me, and I felt a little bad for taking away their game, but the nagging ache at the back of my spine was getting much worse.

"My back really hurts, guys," I said. That seemed to snap them out of their amazed staring.

"Do you want to lie down?" Lizzie asked.

"I'll help you to bed," Peter offered as he and Lizzie helped me to my feet.

"That'd be nice... thank you."

I dropped off to sleep quickly, despite the lingering pain, and had strange and crazy dreams that involved pirates on a ship. I was the first mate, and the captain – who looked remarkably like a male version of Jo – was obsessed with finding a purple unicorn to present to the Queen of England. We had a map and a heading, and the heading sailed us straight into a really bad storm. The deck was heaving under my boots, and although in the dream I didn't have a bulge to prove it, I was terrified for the unborn child I was carrying. Suddenly the ship tilted and I was thrown back into the mast, a sharp pain tearing through my body. I watched in horror as a gigantic wave rose up and water washed over the deck of the ship, soaking me.

I woke with the bedsheets cold and wet around me, feeling pain ripple through my back and stomach. I cried out in surprise, and Rose, who had been sleeping in the upper bunk, sat up sharply and hit her head on the ceiling.

"Owwwww!" she moaned. "What the fuck?"

"Rose!" I said, panic creeping through my voice.

"Are you all right?" She asked, leaning over the side of the bunk bed, her hair a messy halo around her head in the dark.

"I think my waters just broke."

I burst into hysterical laughter as Rose overbalanced, lost her grip in shock and tumbled to the floor in a mess of blankets and pillows with an inelegant squeak.

"I'm ok!" she said, bursting out of the pile of laundry. "My pillow broke my fall. What did you just say?"

Somehow, Rose managed to wake and assemble everyone else in one tiny hut – ok, Jo and Cat were leaning through the window rather than actually inside – within three minutes. Lizzie was trying to keep everyone calm, while Tony, Pippa and Thomas panicked.

"Guys, it takes time for a baby to be born! It's not going to burst out straight away!" she eventually yelled in frustration.

"How do you know?" Pippa demanded.

A strange silence fell as everyone stared at the blonde as if she were an idiot, which, to be honest, she clearly was.

"Because I am a nurse. I have studied these things," Lizzie said slowly and clearly.

"She's right," Peter backed her up. "It took nine hours for my daughter to be born. They were nine of the crappiest hours of my life."

"Really?" Cat asked, her elbows on the windowsill. Peter grinned at her.

"My wife fractured two bones in my hand."

"Dude!"

What I reckoned was a small contraction rippled between my legs. Or maybe that should be ripped. Nothing actually ripped, of course, but ripple does not quite convey the pain and discomfort of ripped, and I don't want anyone thinking that having a baby is comfortable. Because it isn't.

"I would sell my soul for some alcohol about now," I said in an attempt at humour. I wasn't joking, but then they didn't need to know that. I was a little surprised when everyone agreed with me.

"It's a pity we never went through with that plan to see if the red fruit ferments," Thomas said.

"We don't have a suitable container," Jo said immediately. "Trust me, I tried to make mead once. Well, I did make mead, it was very tasty. It also involved honey, which we don't have, distilled water, a large milk carton and a balloon. None of which we have."

Cat sighed. "You've already had this conversation," she reminded them.

Lizzie stood up, pulling my t-shirt back down over my stomach. "Ok, this is going to take a while; it's her first child. Why doesn't everyone go back to bed? I'll stay here and keep Kathy company, Rose, you can take my bed."

"No way," I said, before the inevitable argument broke out. "This is going to take a while, right? I want you awake and not sleepy at the end of it."

"But we can't all go back to sleep and leave you awake," Lizzie protested. "And there's no way that you could sleep through the contractions."

"I'll stay awake with her," Cat offered. "I can have a nap later, someone else can take over from me."

"Shifts!" Esther exclaimed. "We can work out a rota. Three people for three hours, then another three, then the final three for the actual birth. The final three would have to involve Liz, obviously."

"Sounds like a plan," I gasped. "Now, you go discuss who gets what shift outside. I want a drink of water and I have no idea where the smallest bowl is."

It was rather amusing how quickly people jump to perform the commands of a woman in labour. Pity that doesn't work so well in Downing Street.

After what sounded like a furious whispered discussion outside, Thomas, Cat and Jo walked back in. "Looks like we'll be keeping you company," Cat said with a smile. "Um... what do you want to do? Can you do anything? We could play a game, or talk, or take some gentle exercise if that would help. I've read that some women walk. Do you want to walk?"

"No, I don't want to walk," I said to stop her babble. She had an almost panicked tone to her voice, and I guessed that if she wasn't interrupted she would continue to spew suggestions until her throat was sore. "Talking could work. Some kind of talking game?"

Cat's face fell. I found it strangely comical. "I don't know any talking games," she said softly.

"I do," Thomas said, surprising us all. He and Jo sat in the two chairs, Cat perched on the edge of the bed. She was holding my requested bowl of water in her hands, and I reached for it eagerly; my throat was so dry it hurt to talk.

"All right. I think most people have heard of this, it's called twenty questions."

"Oh!" Cat straightened up suddenly, jolting the bed. I came close to spilling water all over myself, although as I was already wet I didn't suppose that it would have made much of a difference. "I do know that one!"

"I know it too," Jo said. "Do you know it, Kathy?"

"Yes," I replied. "Although we call it 'animal, mineral, vegetable' and don't have a question limit. Who wants to think of one first?"

"I've got one," Jo said.

After about an hour of 'Animal, Mineral, Vegetable' frequently interrupted by me gasping with a pain that seemed to drive all rational thought out of my head for as long as I experienced it, I was ready to scream. Surprisingly, it was Jo who pushed Cat out of the way and began massaging my spine lightly.

"I don't know if this will help," she murmured, her expression veiled by her hair, "but I doubt it will hurt, so long as I'm careful, and it'll distract you for a bit."

"Thank you," I said. Thomas and Cat sat in silence and watched as Jo's tanned hands moved rhythmically around, to the sides of my distended stomach.

"Hey," I said, trying to inject a note of humour into the room. "By tomorrow I'll be able to see my toes again!"

Cat cracked a grin, and produced her comb from her hoodie pocket. "Can I comb your hair out for you?" she asked. I nodded, a strange lump in my throat. No-one had combed my hair for me since my Grandmother died.

With a little maneuvering and Thomas's help, we ended up with most of my head in Cat's lap while Jo perched by my hip and rubbed my back. Thomas busied himself fetching and carrying. A dry blanket, some food to nibble on, fresh water. He was fussing, I knew. Men always fuss when they feel helpless, and Thomas had no other way to help. The plastic teeth of the comb scratching my itchy scalp was soothing, and I drifted off into a light doze, the pain of the contractions countered by Jo's gentle fingers.

I will be eternally grateful to Jo and Cat for that help. I'm sure that after ten minutes their arms and fingers would have been aching, but they never said a word and they never stopped. Thomas hovered like an overprotective mother hen, but he managed to avoid disturbing the rare tranquility of the moment.

I felt like I was only half aware when Lizzie stuck her head in the door and made a noise of approval.

"Massage was a good idea," she said quietly. "It's recommended for the first stages of labour. How are you feeling, Kathy?"

"Relaxed," I murmured in reply. "Doesn't hurt so bad now."

"Contractions can feel pretty painful," Lizzie agreed. "Remember, it's more strange than painful, it's just that it's so strange that your mind interprets it as pain."

I smiled at her. "All pain is in your mind," I reminded her. "That's why you can be trained to ignore it."

"That's right. Your mind is just extra weirded out by this particular kind of pain because it has never felt it before."

"Lizzie, you're not supposed to be here for another three hours," Esther complained, pulling her older sister out of the doorway.

I am sure that some sort of argument ensued, but in the bustle of Jo, Cat and Thomas leaving, and Tony and Pippa coming in I missed it. A few minutes later Esther joined us, a satisfied look pasted across her face.

"According to a quick pep talk by my beloved sister, you're about at the stage where the contractions become more intense. She recommended that someone hold your hand and that we try to distract you. She says that she'll check on us again once she's eaten." Esther rolled her eyes. "As if we weren't perfectly capable of getting her if she's needed."

"What do you want us to do?" Pippa asked, her big blue eyes completely mystified. During the time that I had known Pippa, I was continually confused by her. How had she managed to survive to the age that she was with so little sense? Surely the laws of evolution should have stepped in to ensure that she did not live long enough to pass her idiocy on to others. Unfortunately, humans had managed to thwart what nature intended for our species in a number of ways, one of them being protection for idiots. I wish that they had kept in the killing of the idiots in society and turned their efforts into finding new ways to procreate. I mean, honestly! All the improvements to medicine and science, and we were still giving birth in a fashion not that dissimilar to a dog or a cat.

Pippa took on the task of chief hand holder, which wasn't all bad because she is the sort of person that is incapable of just holding someone's hand. She started out rubbing her thumb in soothing circles on the back of my hand, and progressed to a full scale hand and wrist massage without seeing to be aware of the fact, talking about make-up, hair care and the distressing lack of shampoo the entire time.

She and Esther then entered a full scale argument about the pros and cons of herbal essences, Esther saying that it was the best shampoo ever and Pippa holding that smell wasn't everything and as a long term cleaner it didn't cut it, as prolonged use left a residue on the hair itself, impacting on performance, and there were other shampoos out there that smelt just as nice and did a better job.

"It's a good thing you're here rather than one of the other two," I said to Tony. "They would probably have killed themselves or passed out by now."

"I'm getting close to slitting my wrists," Tony joked. "I might be a gay man but there's only so much talk about shampoo that even gay men can take.

"I would contemplate joining you but unfortunately I'm rather busy having a baby at the moment."

"How's it coming?"

"The baby?"

"Yes."

"Slowly."

Tony laughed, and I joined in. I'm not sure if laughter is an appropriate activity to engage in while in labour, but it was nice to be cheerful for a while, even if I was in the middle of my worst nightmare.

"I had planned on being dead drunk by now," I admitted to Tony. "Completely hammered. Smashed. Out of my tree. Either that or as high as a kite."

Tony swatted Pippa's hand aside and took a firm hold of my fingers, looking intently into my eyes. "If I had some weed," he said very seriously. "I would let you smoke it. Unfortunately, I have not smoked weed since my early twenties, and so my stash ran out years ago and now the local drug dealer pretends not to know who I am."

"Don't they always do that?" I asked.

Tony shook his head. "No, for the first two years he greeted me every time he saw me in the hope that I would buy some off of him. It was only once I had made it very clear though the incredibly sophisticated process of blanking that I was not interested that he began to pretend that I was invisible whenever I passed by."

"Wow, I never knew that drug dealers acted like that," I said, for some reason completely enthralled by the concept."Have you ever done drugs?" Tony asked. He had to repeat the question because of a contraction that happened just as he asked, but I was pleased to find that the fact that I was in labour didn't stop our conversation.

"I have," I admitted. "But I never bought them, I just used to join in at parties and pay my share to whoever had bought them."

"Ah, the one friend that everyone somehow has who knows the local dealer. It's one of those connection law thingies, everyone must know someone who knows a drug dealer. It's like one of the laws of the Universe."

"As universal laws go, it's a pretty cool one," I pointed out. "Much better than gravity or entropy."

"Yeah, entropy sucks big time."

"Let's not talk about entropy while I'm having a baby."

"Ok, new topic! Have you ever seen a dolphin show?"

"Actually, yes, when I was little and my parents took me to Orlando during the school holidays."

As random conversations go, it was a pretty random one, but it drowned out the sound of Pippa and Esther arguing, and it passed the time until the contractions came closer together and Esther went to fetch Lizzie. I lay back and let the pain sweep over me, breathing with Rose in an exaggerated manner. I always thought that it was stupid that in films and on TV the people around the pregnant woman are always telling her to breathe, but I know now. It's hard to breath steadily when you're in that much pain. The instinct is to hold your breath and breathe a lot when the pain passes, to breathe very shallowly not to aggravate the pain or not to breathe at all. Of course, that means that you get light headed and are not in the best position to control your reactions and not push to early.

Lizzie informed me, after poking gently between my legs, that I have quiet a firm cervix, which apparently is not a good thing when it comes to childbirth. Some day I shall have to remember to ask her if it's a good thing for someone's sex life. The later stages of labour get a little fuzzy around the edges in my memories, but I seem to remember that she looked pretty worried, and I caught the edges of a conversation with Peter that included the word 'induction'. I didn't know what it meant, but it sounded scary.

I tasted blood as I bit down hard on my lip to prevent myself crying out as a particularly strong contraction twisted my muscles. Lizzie crouched between my spread legs with a look of intense concentration on her face.

"Push, now!" she cried.

I pushed with all my might.

The world went white as electronic signals raced along every nerve strand in my body, overloading my brain with a red hot wave of pain.

I couldn't hold it in any more; I screamed.

The pain seemed as if it would last forever, and my eyes streamed tears down my cheeks as the stinging sweat dripped down my forehead, my sodden eyebrows no match for the volume of water. I didn't care, I didn't care about anything other than getting the baby out of me.

“Come on, just one more push,” Tony said encouragingly, gripping my hand and and squeezing back when I tightened my grip. He held a cloth in his other hand and was using it to wipe my face and neck.

I gritted my teeth and pushed, and there was a sigh of relief from the other end of the bed. “You did it!” Lizzie called. “Just relax and wait for the afterbirth. We'll cut the cord and then get him over to you, ok?”

I leaned back against the pillows that they had piled behind me and concentrated on breathing. The thin cries of my newborn son seemed to echo inside my ears as I tried to catch my breath. Thomas came over with a cloth wrapped bundle held carefully in his arms, and passed it gently to me. I looked down, into the blue eyes of my little boy, and I was suddenly terrified.

He was so small, so fragile, and neither of us were where we were supposed to be. His arrival changed the group dynamic, changed everything. I had no idea what our invisible watchers were going to do now. He wasn't safe.

I held him close and felt myself begin to shiver, filled with an irrational urge to escape. I needed to keep my baby safe, but he wasn't safe here. None of us were safe.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kirsty Olliffe lives in England with her long-suffering fiance and two cats who like to play with her pens when she isn't looking. Elysium Dysfunction is her first novel and her second published work.

Comment Log in or Join Tablo to comment on this chapter...
~

You might like Kirsty Olliffe's other books...