Page 1 of Victoria's Discovery

Chapter 1

“No. This isn’t real. This is just a bad dream. Please, let this be a bad dream,” Victoria whispered frantically.

Sweeping some of the curly, red hair back from her face, she darted another panicked look around, squinting to see in the gloomy light, but the things in the cells around her still didn’t make any sense. They were all just shapes and colors, scales and claws, and her eyes wouldn’t comprehend what she was seeing, as though her brain was trying to protect her from the truth.

She knew she was on the verge of hyperventilating. Or maybe she already was? Her chest was rising and falling with rapid, panicked breaths, drowning her in the musky, animal smell polluting the air, and her heart was beating so fast it physically hurt.

Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, I’m having a heart attack. I don’t wanna die.

She tried to calm down, but she was getting dizzy and lightheaded, and every time she looked around, the panic doubled, shattering all her efforts to pull herself together.

She could feel her back starting to bruise from how hard she was shoving herself into the corner of the glass box caging her, but she couldn’t seem to stop.

I’m gonna pass out. Oh, fuck. This isn’t real.

Unconsciousness never came, even after she started chasing it, trying to pull the black crowding in on the edges of her vision over her like a blanket to protect herself from the monsters under the bed.

Except the monsters hadn’t stayed under the damn bed where they belonged.

They were surrounding her.

The screams, yells, and weeping of the women crammed into the cells in her aisle only ratcheted up her terror and made her ears hurt and her head throb.

Worse, their cries were riling up the…things.

Animals?

Victoria loved animals. Who didn’t? But these things didn’t look anything like any animals she’d ever seen. They were the wrong colors, the wrong shapes, and…

Holy fuck, is that a blue monkey? With a mouth on its throat?

The roars, screeches, clicking growls, and chittering of the animals added to the cacophony until Victoria felt like her ears were bleeding. Covering them with her hands didn’t help, so she shut her eyes and did the only thing she could think of.

She used to get horrible anxiety as a kid, and her mother would sing to her to calm her down, one of the few times she displayed any maternal instinct. Victoria sang that lullaby now, desperate and uncaring how silly she looked: balled up in a corner with her hands over her ears, singing to herself. It’s not like any of the other women in her nightmare were doing any better. At leastshewasn’t wailing.

Just singin’. Which is obviously more sensible and kinder on the ears.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she focused on the lyrics instead of the screams, letting the familiar restrain ground her. Gradually, her breathing slowed, and her racing heart stopped trying to hammer its way out of her chest.

With that small semblance of calm, her mind had room for something other than flight or fight or, in her case, sing, and supplied her with what she’d learned in the latest virtual meditation podcast she’d tried.

It said to focus on the smallest aspect of your situation, find something positive about it, then move on to something a little bigger and find something nice to say about it, as well. Rinse and repeat until you could finally look at the big picture with your positive outlook intact and without being overwhelmed.

She’d thought it sounded kinda silly at the time, but it was the only thing she could think of, and honestly, she was willing to try just about anything to stop from descending into another panic attack. That shit sucked and going a second round didn’t appeal.

Opening her eyes, she stared at the tiny plastic balls covering the bottom of her cage, tracing their shape with her gaze then flexing her hands to feel them shift between her fingers.

“Focus on the little things. Like this er, pellet. Perfectly harmless little pellet. Kinda squishy.”

Okay, now find something positive.

“I can do whatever I want with this pellet and no one will stop me.”

To prove it, she picked it up and moved it an inch to the right. Victoria knew it was dumb. Moving a pellet didn’t fix anything, but it made her feel better all the same.

Next, she raised her gaze to the walls of her cage, not looking at what was outside them but at the walls themselves. They looked solid, with no doors or windows or hinges. Instead of thinking of them keeping her lockedin, she focused on the fact that they were keeping the throat monkeysout.

That was a good thing.

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