Page 1 of Prison Moon
Chapter One
The screaming finally stopped. Sara closed her eyes and sighed in relief. The wild beating pulse in her head from the artificial light caused the headache she couldn’t get rid of to pound harder with each beat of her heart and the screaming only made it worse. Not that she blamed the girl. If it had been her on the receiving end of that last attack, she’d still be screaming too.
Everyone shifted nervously, some in small clusters talking in hushed whispers. Every face she looked at wore the same shell-shocked expression. Hers probably did too. Foul odors filled the room, the stink of unwashed bodies and human waste lingered in the air, and it took every ounce of willpower she possessed to not throw up. She tried to block it out, to imagine she was somewhere other than the cargo hold of a spaceship headed for who knew where. She snorted a laugh. Aliens. It was still too fantastical to believe but she did. She’d seen them.
She’d been a skeptic until she stepped out of the shower and her entire dorm room was flooded with light so bright she’d been momentarily blinded. The darkness that followed was a blessing she fought to get back after opening her eyes to this. A small metal, doorless room filled with frightened women who either spent their time crying, complaining or screaming to be let out. Hence the headache.
A section of the wall to her left opened to reveal a door that hadn’t been there before. The chirping noise she’d come to recognize as some sort of language filled the room moments later. One of the aliens she liked to call Big Heads walked in and the screamer started up again. Sara’s head throbbed more intensely at the shrill noise. She would have thrown a shoe at the girl if she’d had one on.
Three aliens stopped just inside the doorway. As many times as she’d seen these guys, she still stared. The alien’s neck was as long as her arm, its head three sizes too large for his body. She wasn’t sure how he even held it up but he somehow managed. His bug-like eyes were large bulbs sticking off the side of his head and as horrid as they looked, they smelled even worse. Like ammonia mixed with wild onions. Every time one got near, her sinuses burned. Maybe it was the slimy substance that clung to their skin or some pheromone only other ugly aliens would find irresistible. They were brown for the most part but dark green stripes slashed across their flesh in neat rows. She would have nicknamed them something closer resembling a lion but Big Head had popped into her mind first. They all wore dark gray, one-piece suits, each with a wide belt around their waists where gadgets of varying size hung in small pockets attached to it.
The Big Head who walked into the room made a motion with his hands that looked as if he wanted them to stand. Those able to do so wasted no time obeying him, herself included. The last girl who didn’t was still lying in a heap over along the wall. Sara glanced the girl’s way. As she’d been most of the day, the blonde stared straight ahead at nothing, her eyes unblinking. Her torn clothing hung off her slim frame, scratches and blood staining her thighs. Tears filled Sara’s vision. She blinked them away and turned back to the same aliens who’d done such vile things to the poor girl. The memories still made her stomach churn. If she lived to be a thousand, she’d never get the images out of her head. Had it been her, she’d be lying over there staring at nothing, too.
She gritted her teeth and turned her attention to the Big Heads, leaving the girl to her fate. She wiped tears she wasn’t even aware she’d been shedding away with one shoulder. They did no one any good to shed now, anyway. Life as they knew it was over.
The chirping language they spoke spilled from one of the Big Head’s fish-like mouth before he pointed at the door. He grabbed the blonde who stood closest to him and shoved her out, then grabbed another. They were being moved. As much as she feared what these aliens were going to do with them, sitting in this stinking hole of a room was getting to be too much. She’d take a walk and breathe fresher smelling air if they wanted her to.
The corridor was dark with small green lights lining the floor of the walkway. It was colder here with a faint odor she couldn’t place but it wasn’t human waste so she inhaled deeply to clear her head. The metal under her feet felt like she was walking on ice and she’d have given anything for shoes—or clothes. She crossed her arms over her bare chest when she neared a Big Head on her way down the hall, not that it mattered. It wasn’t like he couldn’t see she was a fan of the Hollywood wax with just a glance. Thankfully, it was growing back in but not nearly fast enough.
Being the only girl abducted in her birthday suit drew more attention than she liked, even from them. The girl they’d taken turns amusing themselves with earlier came to mind and she shuddered before lowering one arm in an attempt to cover her bare lady parts.
A doorway at the end of the corridor came into view. The line of girls in front of her slowed and she watched as each girl was ushered inside. No one screamed after going in so it was too soon to panic. As she was ushered forward, her headache grew along with her racing pulse. The doorway loomed ahead, the light coming from inside almost blinding. When she stepped inside, the room was bare. The walls were white, the light overhead, bright. A noise on the other side of the wall drew her attention. She peeked around the corner—and wished she hadn’t. Her pulse stuttered, then raced when the girl in front of her was grabbed, the Big Head just on the other side of the wall taking her arm and sticking it with something that resembled a needle. The girl fell as if dead, another alien there to catch her before she hit the ground.
Sara screamed as the Big Head waiting behind her pushed her forward, the needle-like thing in the other one’s hand biting into her skin moments before the world went dark.
* * *
Voices pulled her from sleep. Sara opened her eyes and groaned. Her headache was worse and a spot behind her right ear pounded so hard it stung. She brushed her fingers over it and winced. It was tender and wet, her fingers smeared with blood.
“It’s an implant.”
A girl with red hair was staring at her. She looked ragged, her curly hair in tangles around her face. Dark circles lay like bruises underneath her green eyes and even though she was thin, her pixie-like features didn’t look as gaunt as some of the others. This girl had been taken recently. Sara sat up and wiped the spot behind her ear again. “What kind of implant?”
The girl tilted her head a fraction to the right, motioning to the front of the room. Three Big Heads were there, talking. Sara’s eyes widened. It wasn’t the chirping she’d been hearing since waking up on an alien spacecraft, but actual words. They were speaking English. Or rather, she was hearing English. She rubbed the spot behind her ear again. “It’s a translator?”
“I think so.” The girl slid closer. “I didn’t understand them before today so I’m assuming that’s what the wound behind my ear is from. They did knock us all out. I’m thinking it was to insert something into our heads.”
“Wonderful.”
The girl looked at her and the corner of her lips turn up into a tiny smile. “I’m Marcy, by the way.”
“Sara.” A glance around the room told her it wasn’t the same one they’d been in before. This one was clean and feces-free. “Do you know what’s happening? Why we’re here?”
Marcy shook her head. “Not really, but I don’t think it’s good, whatever it is.” She took a shuddering breath. “From what I’ve been able to hear, we’re to be used for some sort of entertainment.”
Sara raised an eyebrow. “Entertainment for who? And how?”
“Don’t know.” Marcy motioned behind them. Sara turned and when she saw what Marcy pointed at, she gasped.
A large section of the wall was glass, or something similar, and beyond it sat thousands of stars in a vast ocean of darkness. Since the moment she woke after the abduction, she’d prayed this was all a bad dream, that someone spiked her drink and she was having a really bad, drug-induced trip, but what sat beyond that window wasn’t anything her imagination could come up with.
There was a planet in the distance, three smaller ones orbiting it, and sitting between them and the ship, was a ring of scattered objects that spanned the entire length of the window from left to right. They varied in size and as she watched them, small blinking lights became visible. They looked like—satellites of some kind, hundreds of them.
Further in the distance, behind the planets, a massive cloud of stars glimmered like diamonds. The entire thing shined in shades of gold, blue, red, and purple. A nebula, if she wasn’t mistaken. One large enough to see its brilliance with the naked eye. As much as she wanted this to be a bad dream, she could no longer deny it. She really was in an alien ship—in deep space.
A series of hissing noises filled the air, and a few screams followed as gravity seemed to disappear to leave them floating in mid-air. Sara reached out to grab anything she could and found Marcy’s arm. Long minutes later, the artificial gravity returned, and they fell back to the floor. Grunts and groans followed, Sara’s elbow ached and she laid there a few moments, then sat up.
She looked at the window again. They were landing. The planet wasn’t blue like Earth. The colors below were varied with wide oceans of red, green, and teal. As they drew closer, the window turned white, her view of the planet below gone.