Personal Log 114: A Recollection
15 Oct 2016Jemine Caesar
The long, tedious hours wore on and on. We lay still on the hard stone floor, too exhausted to move. We hadn't eaten in Gaia knew how many days. Gayle had kept us alive - barely - on a cupful of water each day.
We had given up crying.
We'd given up hope of rescue.
We were waiting to die.
I watched a spider pitter-patter its way back and forth past my outstretched leg.
The beginning of the end came when Gayle strode in waving her stun pistol. "Ladies!" she called out. "I'm going to take you for a little trip. It's a one-way ticket. My friend Jemine here is going to carry each of you across to one of those slave pods over there, and strap you inside."
One of the women, Norma Webber, rose slowly to her feet. "She doesn't need to carry us," Norma said, trying to sound defiant. "We can walk."
Gayle glowered at her. "Not if you're unconscious, honey!" she growled, and fired her stun pistol. Norma crumpled to the floor. Gayle pointed her pistol at me.
"OK, Jemine," she said. "Pick her up and get going."
With barely enough strength in my arms, progress was slow and agonising. One by one I placed the women in their individual slave pods and strapped them in. Then, once I had wearily clambered into my own pod, Gayle secured the restraints across my arms, legs and body as tightly as she could.
"There," she said. "Make yourself comfortable. You'll be in here for a little while yet. Oh, and I've disabled the sleep inducer. Instead, you're all being drip fed with Wakey-Wakey. So there really is no sleep for the wicked. No sleep at all."
Gayle closed the pod lids. She was like a spider, cocooning her prey in a silken web. Helpless, I could now only lie and stare out of the pod's tiny viewport. And wait.
And wait
And wait.
*****
Hour after sleepless hour passed with mind-numbing slowness. It was almost a relief when I became aware of the pod being moved.
"This is it," I thought.
Through the pod viewport I could see the sky, then the darkness of a transport vehicle. I felt the rumble of a cargo loader, followed by a thud as the pod was secured in position in the hold of The Last Thing. Then a bigger rumble, thunderous in its intensity, and the unmistakeable sensation of a jump into witchspace.
More jumps, then long silence. The ship must have reached its destination.
I waited. I could do nothing else.
Suddenly, a new, yet familiar sensation. Laser-fire? Had we been interdicted? Were there spiders attacking the ship? Perhaps they would break open our coffins and spin their webs around us. Perhaps they would crawl all over us, their tiny feet pitter-pattering back and forth across our helpless bodies in an endless dance.
Then, a flash of light, followed by darkness. A muffled thumping sound. The grinding of machinery. A cargo scoop?
Oh! The spiders! The spiders had me now! They would open my coffin and encase me in their silken web. It would hold me so tight that I would be unable to move, to breathe, to cry. I would never escape.
The pod opened. Hundreds of spiders poured in, descending ravenously upon my naked body. They crawled all over me, around me, inside me. I screamed. The spiders just laughed, and spoke among themselves.
"Multiple bruising. Lacerations to the head," said one.
"Some broken ribs. I'd say she's been repeatedly kicked in the stomach," said another.
"They've clearly not eaten for days," said a third spider, touching my sides with his antennae.
"Good god!" exclaimed another. "According to the pod readouts, these women have all been awake for over eighty hours straight!"
All at once the spiders grew to an enormous size. They wrapped me in a web and lifted me out of the pod. I screamed at them to get off me. Then one of the spiders spoke to me. It sounded just like Sam.
"Jem," said the Sam-spider. "You're hallucinating."
I flailed my now free arms limply at the spiders. "SamINeedToSleep," I said. My mind was racing. "PleaseLetMeGoToSleepI'mSoVeryTired."
"You'll get a good night's sleep, my love," soothed Sam-spider, as he pressed something sharp against my arm. My eyes closed, for the first time in days. Then, finally, I slept.
*****
When I woke the next day, Sam was at my side. "High hoop," he said. Or something like that.
"Where am I?" I asked, weakly.
"Dalton Gateway medicentre," he replied. "You've been through one hell of an ordeal, my love."
Sam briefly filled me in on some of the details. I had been kidnapped on March 21st. On March 31st I was strapped into the slave pod. On April 4th I was rescued, having been continuously deprived of sleep for eighty-one hours. I had not eaten in all the time I had been held hostage, fourteen days in total. I had lost 7.25kg.
My ribs, spleen and kidney had been taken care of. All the other Harem girls had responded well to treatment, and we would be kept at the medicentre under observation for a couple of days.
Carina had sadly lost her baby.
And Gayle Graham was dead. She had chosen not to eject after Sam had fired on The Last Thing. He had found her lifeless, vacuum-bloated, star-burned body floating towards the slave pods, its arms outstretched towards them.
As though she was trying one last time to take her revenge.