Perry Verihard
Lustin And Teasin
Chapter 1
Darlene Williams rolled over. The usual softness and clean smell of sheets on her bed wasn't there. She opened one eye and peeked through the tangle of her long, wavy hair. No wonder it didn't feel like her bed, it wasn't. The other eye opened quickly, so did her mouth.
White. All white. Like a blank piece of paper with nothing on it but her. Darlene rose to her hands and knees, shook her head, closed the blue eyes and opened them again. This time, as if she expected her first impressions to disappear, she reacted with shock. Yes, it was true. All white. A room with four walls, a ceiling, a firm but padded floor, all white.
Her hand came to her mouth as she gasped with confusion. The two blue eyes squinted with puzzlement. Again she shook her head to drive away the unfamiliar blankness and hope for a familiar sight to materialize. When she peeked out of her long-lashed eyelids it was all still there.
She touched the canvas-like floor with her hand, felt it, wondered where it came from-or, more important, what she was doing on it. Then slowly she crawled toward the flawless bleached wall and stretched a hand out to touch. It too was there. White, hard, uninterrupted by doors, windows, trim. Darlene's hand was shaking uncontrollably as she pulled it away. Why was she here?
Nothing made sense. She tried to remember entering the colorless room, tried to remember anything other than her name. When she crawled back to the center of the large room Darlene suddenly looked up. It was light, there had to be a light source somewhere. But there was no light bulb, no fixture which might have some brass, or even a plastic base which might be some color other than no color at all. Disappointment shadowed her face as she realized the whole ceiling was some kind of luminous light source… and white.
But Darlene's memory started to return, bits of information, facts fell haphazardly into place. Married, yes. To a man named… Ken, Ken Williams. A nice man. Two kids… a boy aged five and a sweet daughter aged three… Her hand came abruptly to her open mouth as she remembered Timmy and Leila. How were they? Where were they? Again Darlene screamed the-question in her mind, What am I doing here?
She crawled more frantically and this time didn't notice the white wall until her head banged solidly into it. Grabbing her aching brow she sat back on her haunches and grimaced. A slight curse came from the quivering lips.
Ignoring the throbbing pain in her head, she kept a shoulder against the wall and crawled around the confines of the square cell. All the while more and more bits of history came back to her. Ken, an electrical engineer. Their home, a beautiful ranch-type, three bedroom house in a clean, safe neighborhood with good schools. Where was it now?
She almost missed the slight crack in the wall, it was so tight. But Darlene's darting eyes were searching for any relief from the all-white, and subtle shadowing inside the crack suddenly became heaven. Pressing her face close to the razor-sharp edges on each side she tried to peer through… it was impossible. But she followed the grey pencil line up, then across, then back down. A doorway. She must have come through it.
"But how?" she screamed out loud.