Page 1 of Stowaway to the Stars: A Duet
I
Stowaway to the Stars
Stephenie’s Story
Chapter 1
It’s dark.
Stephenie Robinson awoke with a jolt, gasping for breath. Her lungs struggled to expand as she worked desperately to inhale. What was happening? Where had the air gone? She reached blindly out in front of her, and her hands hit something. It was some sort of wall caging her in. It was cold against her skin, like glass.
Her eyes shot open… And fuck, if she could breathe, she would be screaming. She was trapped, encased in some sort of glass container. How the fuck did she end uphere?
She kicked with all her might against the thing withholding her. She had to get out. She had to get out right now. She couldn’tbreathe.
Her kicks became frantic the longer it took to free herself, and she felt panic rising in her throat. What if she couldn’t get out? What if she died here?
And what the hell had happened? The last thing she remembered was telling her roommate, Darcy, goodnight before heading off to bed. And then… Nothing. Nothing until now.
She felt the glass begin to give way under her blows, and that was the encouragement she needed to continue her desperate escape attempt. She braced herself against the far wall and used her legs to kick at the cracking glass.
It seemed like hours before it finally gave way, and she tumbled out of the container onto the floor. She didn’t even notice the glass shard embedded in her palms.
Air filled her aching lungs at once, and she coughed in between gasps of sweet relief. She fell forward, face first onto the floor, her cheek landing in the glass shards. Her head spun from the lack of oxygen. She lay there for a moment, just breathing. The floor was cool against her overheated cheeks.
What the fuck is going on? She squeezed her eyes shut tightly, willing away the sudden migraine that pounded in her head.
She didn’t know how long she lay on the floor like that, struggling to ground herself. It could have been minutes…or hours. All Stephenie knew was that she would never take the ability to breathe for granted again.
Finally, after her heartbeat calmed back into a gentle rhythm, Stephenie sat up.
She scanned her surroundings carefully.
She was in…a storage area of some sort? Her eyes were starting to grow accustomed to the darkness, and she could see that the room was littered with different shaped boxes. Some were made of wood, like crates, and some were made of weird black plastic with huge signs stuck to them, marked with strange symbols. Was she on some sort of cargo plane?
Okay, she seriously needed to get out of here and fast. After that, she could try to figure out what the hell happened last night. For now, her main priority was to find out where exactly she was and how to get back home.
Huh, she thought to herself.I guess I don’t need to worry about my psychology exam tomorrow. I mean, gettingkidnapped is a pretty damn good excuse to skip school if I ever heard one.
The room was surprisingly large, and the only thing that fought against the darkness came in the form of a blinking red light from above.
Stephenie hugged the walls, running her hands along the cool, metal surface in hopes of coming across an exit. The longer it took to find one, the more panicked she became. What if there was no exit? What if she were underground? What if she were in someone’s basement who happened to collect discarded boxes of random shit? Thewhat ifthoughts circled in her mind, growing stronger and more terrifying the longer she searched.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she finally came across what appeared to be a door. There was lettering across the top, but she couldn’t make out the words. It looked as though it had been written in some foreign language. Surely that was just the trick of the blinking red light, though. There was no way she had left the country overnight.
She pushed against the door, and it didn’t budge.
“Fuck,” she muttered and quickly pressed her lips tightly together. Her voice seemed magnified in here, being the only sound to break the silence.
Well, she found the door. Now to figure out how to open it.
She took a step back and observed the area as best she could with only the red blinking light for illumination. She put her hands on her hips and thought for a moment. There didn’t appear to be any sort of doorknob, let alone a sign that saidPush to Open.In fact, if she hadn’t been feeling along the wall, she probably would have missed the door completely. It was little more than a traced outline in the metal.
She scanned the area, and her eyes settled on a little black pad to the side of the door.
Bingo,she thought to herself, too scared to speak out loud again.
She frantically pressed the touch screen of the pad, and it lit up in response.
