Emily's Awesome Adventure 4 (3/28/2016)

 There is no tiny cell, there is no forced schedule of exercise or eating. They have free reign of the apartment, only ever made to do anything on the odd schedule of the creature whose nest this is when she wants to cuddle with them or interact with them. It brings them snacks, and movies, and such to build up an ever growing collection. They have every luxury, bath, showers, snacks, perfect health, even better than Emily had before, they just can't leave.

    Emily would find herself some nights cuddling the creature's leg, embraced by its breasts, spooned, waking with its leg on her, buried in the blankets, and even cuddling with and spooning Vicky. The days however are not so eventful, one may be amazed at how many movies and episodes one can watch in eighteen hours. Even with the extensive collection the creature has been gathering, most of it had been seen within four days with nothing to do. Emily doesn't touch the computer, which has been moved to one of the two rooms she has not entered and feels like she shouldn't enter. It is on day four however that Emily while going through the (not watched yet in this cycle) pile that she looks over to see Vicky looking out the window on her knees, hands up on the glass; reminding her of a cat wanting to go outside.

   "So," says Emily, "you were talking about those guys..."

   Vicky stares out the window, "yeah, I wander where they are now."

   "Ya'know," says Emily, "I was thinking....about those different...theories about what this place is and how we got here? What if it really is Hell? I mean the...uh...mistress...she does look an awful lot like a demon."

   Vicky *shrugs* and *sighs*, "Yeah, kind of."

   "So," says Emily, "if this is Hell why...I mean..."

   "Why am I here?" asks Vicky, "Yeah...don't worry, I've been avoiding this conversation too. Guess you can only watch so many movies and cartoons to avoid conversation huh? Still...four days...better than other New Arrival meeting the group...well the ones who think this might be Hell anyway...why are we here...how did we get here...how do you think you died?"

   "Sorry," says Emily, "I guess..."

  "Oh no, no," says Vicky, "its alright, just...heard them so many times go over this...one of the reasons I avoided direct contact. If its Hell...I have no idea why I'd be here...heck even taking into account some of the total assholes and douchebags we've seen here...you get more than a few of the I don't deserve this types, there was this priest...lost him...a few soldiers who confessed to some serious shit...they didn't think it was wrong...I sure as Hell did though, lost a few of them too..."

   "Lost?" asks Emily, "But we can't die here right? Not...permanently..."

  "There are worse fates than death," says Vicky, "if you were tied to a chain and dropped in a river...you wouldn't respawn, same with stuffed in a sack and buried...or stuck in a safe. Stuck till someone or something got to you and pulled you out or...destroyed about eighty percent of your body..."

   "Yikes," says Emily, "wait so lost is..."

   "Something got them," says Vicky, "and dragged them off someplace..."

  "Like us?" asks Emily

  "We found some Lost Ones before," says Vicky, "Not like this, there is one guy from I heard who was being kept over a burning pit to have this meat carved off in sections...wait for it to regrow and do it again..."

  She turns a bit pale, "Avoid the Barbeque joint at the north...west side of the city."

  "Uh," says Emily.

  "Sounds like Hell," says Vicky with a *sigh*, "So I show you mine you show me yours okay?"

  Emily would blush if they hadn't already been sleeping naked together, not that they've gone any further than that..so far (she adds mentally).

  "Okay," whispers Emily.

  "Okay then," says Vicky, "I was a Commander in the United States Navy, I was deployed here and there, mostly in the Middle East...it was two thousand and four when I got here..."

   She sees Emily's expression, "I wasn't killed in the line of duty...." she says, "I personally don't think this is actually Hell...I went home, tour was over. So I was visiting my parents in the country and the last thing I remember was feeling this like stinging sensation in the back of my neck and then...I wake up in a totally different house...some old farm house...the one outside the city here actually, the rest you heard when I...had my breakdown. Thought it was the zombie apocalypse and someone had dragged me to this other location for some reason...like an evacuation gone wrong or something. But ran into some very....not zombie things...and traps...lots and lots of things that did stupid things..."

   Vicky *chuckles* slightly and sits back cross-legged, "your turn,"

   Emily thinks, "Well...boring life...nothing really bad...I mean not even in that...I don't think what I did was bad but others would way that would like involve killing anyone or stealing to pawn stuff to make rent or anything really...but I could see how I could have died...but...it doesn't make sense. Okay, I had an asthma attack at work, and my emergency inhalor was out...I grabbed the wrong one...should have thrown the old one away. But...I..."

   Vicky turns and watches Emily being genuinly confused as Emily continues, "I remember the ambulance, I remember having an oxygen mask on and breathing as I passed out...I woke up in a hospital bed but it was....this fucked up place, escaped it...ran into...messed up shit...the only...death...I remember is from here...when I went nuts and tried to jump off a building onto the rails, smacked into them instead and fell..."

   "The train track?" asks Vicky, "Wait...you jumped from the buildings...and hit the train track?"

   "Yeah," *chuckles* Emily.

  Vicky is thinking, "Right...I was only told you jumped...by...that thing...to get away from River Alpha...the snake...which...yeah..."

   "Yeah," says Emily, "I...wish I could repress seeing that footage...glad I didn't feel any of it and just woke up in that car...rather think I woke up in it and the footage was fake but..."

   "Except we confirmed it," says Vicky.

   After a brief pause Vicky leans back and says, "Okay how about this...what if its like the Matrix? Or Aliens?"

   "What?" asks Emily.

   "Well," says Vicky, "I mean this place really does feel like Hell...with the monsters and thing doing stupid things and even doors that open up to random location...could be mini-stargates though, or some code...shifting...computer thing. I mean there are alot of people here...alot more than makes any sense that I know of, but alot less than you'd think would be in like...Hell...especially running around loose or...what we're doing. Feels alot more psychological than some eternal damnation punishment stuff. I mean...."

  Vicky stands up and starts to pace, "I mean...thinking about it...the people here have next to nothing in common, for every soldier or murderer or perverted pedophile or scam artists, there are plenty who spent their whole lives flipping burgers and paying their taxes or were in college and were model citizens...."

  She stops, "or that's what they claim anyway..."

  She starts to pace again, "But then there's the death thing, no offense but I can see how your story could have lead to dying, leak in the oxygen tank, wrong tank...plain old medical neglect..."

  She stops, "But how the hell did I die? Hell we got a girl who says she was sitting in her apartment watching tv, bright lights...and then here...she definetly thinks its aliens...Tina's story was that she was driving, went through a tunnel and ended up here...her car is even here....was here anyway..."

  Vicky points out the window, "there is a group that got snagged by that train, who were out in the country, all here together after....apparently going through a zombie apocalypse, and crashed their vehicle into the stairs to the train stop..."

   "I saw that car," says Emily, "wait...they went up for the train and..."

   "It got them," says Vicky, "but we've had people...show up later than them that say...there is no zombie apocalypse going on..."

  Vicky sits on the couch by Emily, "the weirdest ones are these three guys, Robert, Greg, and Peter, Robert claims to have found his way to this...island...he has this wild story about the city and miles of country floating in a sea of darkness...no one I've spoken to has gone much farther out there than the factory, suburbs, or up north to this little town...they said it was worse than the city. Claims he got here in some escape capsule from a Mall where people are chained up in department stores forced to work for monsters and sell too monsters...possibly being sold themselves...sounds like some weird movie, escape, escape pods...a star gate...and crashing here in the woods to the south."

   "That...is weird..." says Emily.

   "Gets better," says Vicky, "Greg...mostly doesn't talk right...but he believes this is Hell...says he was actually executed at a prison via the electric chair...but...and this is where it gets good...he says he didn't end up here...that he had actually ended up in a different Hell, and found his way here up river through a spring in these mountains...which are apparently west of here a good ways off."

   She pauses, "Yeah these three guys are the only ones who say they didn't wake up here that I've heard so far..."

   "What about the third guy?" asks Emily.

  "Oh right,: says Vicky, "says his name is Peter, some call him Wolf to mess with him...Peter and the Wolf...the guy is another guy who describes a totally different Earth than the one I came from..talks about werewolves and vampires and claims he actually left the planet for a while...stuff about magic...real Dungeons and Dragons shit, and went back there and it had aliens and real life Furres and stuff...honestly I think the guy is snapped, but like a functional snap so maybe he didn't snap back fully and believes his own stories."

    "Weird," says Emily, "...multiverse...what if..."

   "Aliens invaded Earth and have us in a beta-testing version of the Matrix?" offers Vicky, "and those guys were in some even earlier models and were brought over to test the program further? They always say...robots and Matrix or this is an alien based...but what if its both?"

   "What if its Earth?" offers Emily.

   "Huh?" asks Vicky

   "What if this is...their Earth, and they are kidnapping people from other realities to experiment on them...test out avatar bodies and psychological effects on them?"

   "Pretty much the same thing," says Vicky, "but who knows."

   "Maybe we should...ask...." Emily stops her own thought train there.

   "I've tried that," says Vicky, "I've even offered up different theories and she just smiles at me and pets me on the head...pretty sure she finds us trying to figure this all out cute..."

   Emily suddenly shouts, "Oh my God!" and holds her chest.

   "What?!" shouts Vicky looking up, the mistress as they call her is standing perfectly still watching them from the kitchen with a smile on her face and arms crossed.