The Redux Part II

This is the new manuscript. Same world. Some of the same characters. Different story. This is rough draft. It is unedited. Comments are welcome.
-matt


I was taken violently from my home world like so many others but I was ignorant as to why. I was unaware of the vast system of checks and balances that keeps the omniverse in a constant and tenuous state of equilibrium. I was merely currency, another flesh-coin from some out world forced to pay tribute to the mighty Telek.

“Ted,” I whispered, “you there?” Stifled sobs echoed off of the cold metal walls.
“We’re dead man, dead.” A voice whispered in the darkness.
“Ted,” I whispered again, “Ted, you there?” Someone close by was mumbling what might have been a prayer. I felt along the wall whispering Ted’s name as I went.
“We’re dead. This is it. This is hell.” The voice was louder this time.
“We’re not dead you idiot. We’re in some kind of cell.” A soft voice from the black answered the morbid fellow. “This is some kind of holding tank.” Knuckles rang against metal.
“Stop it you fool,” a woman cried, pleading, “they’ll hear you.” Fear crept into my mind. Fear of what kept us trapped. Only once had the deep blackness been breached. A circle of light had formed and in that circle stood a creature out of nightmare, scales, claws and fangs. It had snatched a gibbering man from the floor and dragged the poor fellow screaming into the shining circle, the death circle. Then the light had winked out silencing the man’s pleas for help. Everyone began whispering after that.
The silence was palpable as I waited in the cold darkness, waiting for the death circle to shine down again like God’s wrath. Silence for an hour, then two. I renewed my voyage through the sea of bodies whispering for Ted. Listen, whisper, listen always keeping one hand on the solid metal wall. Despite the numbing sensation I experienced after only a few minutes contact with the freezing surface I refused to step away. The wall was the one remaining bastion of reality in the waking nightmare in which I found myself.
As I passed I could feel knots of bodies, people crouching in groups of three or four, whispering, crying, huddled together for warmth. Other travelers passed by me unseen whispering the names of friends or loved ones, groping through the blackness for a familiar touch, testing the air a lover’s perfume or the scent of a favorite soap.
The smell of stale alcohol announced Ted’s presence a full three seconds before his rasping whisper.
“Fin, over here.” Ted’s voice floated from the left, away from the wall. I reluctantly left the cold metal behind and blindly pushed off into the sea of bodies. As I waded through the press frightened whispers rose around me like fog, writhing in the cold air before being overtopped by uncontrolled whimpers and sniffling sobs. Ted’s smell grew stronger. It was the scent of a hopeless addict, a body that has become so saturated with alcohol that it exudes the smell of old liquor.
“Ted.” I ventured a whisper and the answer came from less that a foot away in the darkness. I crouched and shuffled over next to him. He was not alone. An unfamiliar grunt sounded in my ear as shoved in next to Ted.
“Hey old friend,” he whispered. I could see his sardonic smile in my mind as he spoke and even though the utter darkness kept me from seeing the genuine article I was reassuring knowing that Ted had kept his sanity in the face of the situation in which we found ourselves.
“Who’s there?” A female voice thick with fear called softly from my right. I thought it was the same woman who had begged for quiet earlier, but in my exhausted state it was hard to tell.
“He’s a friend, Jackie. Ted, meet Jackie. Jackie, this is my friend Fin.” Ted sounded like he was still drunk.
“Pleasure,” I whispered. Jackie grunted.
“Jackie thinks we have been abducted by aliens,” Ted whispered quietly in my ear.
“Well, the wall goes all the way around. There are no doors, or windows. There aren’t even any rivets or seems from what I could tell. It’s perfectly smooth.
“What about near the death circle?” Ted ventured. “There has to be some kind of doorway or hatch or something.”
“I’m not even sure where the circle was and even if I did know where it was I’m wouldn't going near that spot. Did you see what happened?”
“Yeah.” Ted suddenly sounded very sober.
“What do you think that thing was?” I asked.
“How should I know?” Frustration tinged with fear edged Ted’s response. I quickly changed the subject.
“O.K., what do you remember about how we got here?”
“Fin, we’ve been over this a hundred times already.”
“Let's make it one hundred and one.”
Ted sighed vodka. “I was at Julio’s. I called you to come pick me up because I was drunk and that red headed tart, what was her name? Wanda? Wilma?” Air moved around me as Ted shook his head in an attempt to clear his thoughts. “Whatever, that red headed tramp stole all my coin and my multi-pass and I needed a ride home. Next thing I know you’re there. I pass out and wake up in this freezing hole with a bunch of other people.”
His story sounded the same as the last two times I made him tell it. I had shown up at Julio’s in the pre-dawn hours to take him home. I was furious at the time. Ted was my friend, but I would have been furious about having to get out of bed at three in the morning to pick up my own mother, let alone a sloppy drunk who had vomited in my vehicle on more than one occasion. I had passed out as well, though I hadn’t had a drop to drink that night.