The soft sound of a light-jazz saxophone solo teased Donna awake. She rolled over and pressed the snooze button on the alarm clock, then curled back up and pulled the covers tight under her chin. The alarm clock was set ten minutes early, that meant two extra five-minute snoozes. They felt wonderful.
At six o'clock, she pushed back the sheets and swung her legs slowly over the edge of the bed. The smell of coffee and a fresh omelet drifted through the room. She turned off the alarm clock, stood up and pulled on her slippers. The clock said it was the 12th. That meant she'd been in her new rooms nine days now. It seemed like less.
As she walked from the bedroom to the dining room, she looked up and saw herself in the monitor. There were four monitors in every room, full color 40 inch monitors, each reflecting the view from one of the four corner cameras. Everywhere she looked, she was confronted with herself - wearing the silly, see-through baby-doll lingerie she always found laid out on the bed at the end of the previous day.
She headed into the bathroom to relieve herself, brush her teeth, and splash some water on her face, keeping her head down to avoid seeing herself performing her morning ritual. The only place she'd found so far that didn't have a monitor was the back wall, the one inside the shower. But the bathroom itself had a total of six cameras. Compensation? she wondered.
There was a newspaper on the table next to her breakfast but it was in Chinese (yesterday's had been Spanish) and two years old. She sat down and took a sip of the coffee. She opened the newspaper and looked at the pictures. A minor distraction at least.
Everything was so artificially normal, so perfectly warped. She tried to remain calm, treat it like a normal day. She'd tried that every day. It never worked.
After a few forkfuls of the omelet, she pushed it aside and picked up the coffee mug. "Welcome to Texas" it said. She smiled, she knew she was in San Francisco. Or maybe not. What could she be sure of? She walked back into the bathroom, sat the mug on the cabinet and stripped for a long, hot shower. The water felt incredible, the mirrors and monitors in the room were steamed white by the time she finished. As she soaped and shampooed her hair, the phrase ran through her mind: your one reality. Feeling the hot water running over her shoulders, down her back, along her legs, she smiled. I beg to differ. This reality is undeniably delicious.
Donna dropped the towels to the floor - she had been told not to take them from the room - picked up her coffee, and returned to the bedroom. The clock said it was eight o'clock, nearly time for her first visitors. What would it be today? Would they let her remember it? Or would she come back to consciousness tonight, asleep in bed, wondering what they had been doing to her all day.
She slid open the closet door and selected one of her uniforms. She'd learned the first day that the dresser drawers were all empty and that the outfits on each hanger were identical. Except for the color: black, white, red, or the same burgundy as the leotard they still sometimes had her wear.
The uniform was simple: a pair of white, high-waisted cotton underpants, a bra and elastic-top stockings the same color as the uniform, and a knee-length, cotton pullover dress. On the dresser was a tray that held a half-dozen narrow gold bracelets for each wrist, a gold chain necklace, and a variety of earrings. Another tiny bit of freedom she was allowed - like setting the alarm clock a little early. The shoes were always black high-heels.
Donna dressed, sprayed herself with the sweet smelling cologne they provided, then took up her standard position, standing just inside the front door with her back to it. --- "You know, I never much cared for Celia's new hair, I just didn't want to let her down. She was so excited about it." The bleached-blond woman blew and popped a huge pink bubble.
"I know, I had to do the same thing when she had her lips done. It made her look like a fish, but I...oh, do pay a little more attention to her nipples, dear...I didn't have the heart to tell her."
Donna heard the two women's voices from a distance but growing closer. She turned her head slightly to look at them but immediately felt a sharp pull at her hair. A third woman's voice commanded "now, you know better than that, don't you? Focus!" The mouth that had been lightly kissing her left breast now focused directly on her nipple. There was a small click and the vibrator between her legs hummed at a higher pitch.
"Look, Even if there IS another shipment of parts from Fremont, it will never get here in time," she heard a man's voice say from a different part of the room. She looked up and saw that there were several small groups of people all around her, all nonchalantly going about their business. She was naked on her back on a cushion of some kind but nobody seemed to notice. Or they didn't think it was unusual. It was a surreal scene, even the walls and furnishings of different parts of the room looked different. She leaned forward and the mouths drew away from her body, the vibrator fell to the floor. The women who had been holding them were no longer there. She leaned over the edge of the cushion and saw one of them, squatting on the floor out of sight. The woman raised her finger to her lips and whispered "shhh...", then closed her eyes and froze in place.
The rest of the room dropped into silence at the same time. Donna looked around and saw that nobody was moving. Some were in mid-stride, others standing with coffee cups at their mouths or cell phones raised to their ears. She climbed off the cushion and approached one of the men standing with a pencil in his mouth and a pad of paper in his left hand. She slowly raised her hand, inching it toward his face. As she got closer, she thought she heard something behind her and turned around. Nothing. Her finger shook slightly as it reached forward and finally touched his cheek.
Soft music flooded the room. It was a waltz, all strings and poetry. The man dropped the paper and pad and took her into his arms, dancing her gently and romantically around the room. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, then came back a second time and kissed her lips. He pulled back and swayed with her for several more minutes, expertly walking her through a standard waltz, though he would occasionally speed up into a Viennese. She relaxed into his arms, feeling the strong hand on her waist, admiring the firm body that was holding her close.
The music faded and he brought his right arm in, took her arms behind her back, then leaned in for a kiss. She opened her mouth and felt a hand between her legs. A gentle brush against the inside of her left thigh. Two other hands were holding her wrists then and her partner's hands returned to her waist. He slid them around front and cupped her breasts while they continued kissing. The hand between her legs became an open mouth and the tongue started driving her mad again.
The voices around the room started talking again, but the conversations were new, the voices different. Frightened, Donna kept her eyes closed. Everything had changed again and for no apparent reason. She continued kissing him but focused on the rising heat between her legs. The voice had been right all those days ago - there was only one reality she could unwaveringly count on. That single moment when it all coalesced into the release.
Dimly, she realized something that had bothered her on and off during the last several weeks. Or days? Or months? If they were using the drug to increase her desire and at the same time to wipe out her memory, why these moments of lucidity? Why was she aware right now of what she was doing, when so many other times, there was no memory of it at all? It must mean something, but she had no idea what.
The background noise grew louder and louder, the words and movements less distinct until it was a single blur of noise in her head. At the same time, the sensations in her body focused more and more tightly - her tongue, her nipples, her clit. She closed her eyes and gave herself over to it, abandoning herself again for the minutes or hours or days it took her to finally cum. --- Donna was naked when she returned to her room, looking forward to a hot shower, a warm bed, and a good night's sleep. When she turned the door handle, she noticed that it opened outward, not inward. Odd. She'd remembered it opening into the room. No matter.
She pulled the door open and stepped through, backing into the room and pulling the door closed behind her. When she turned around, she froze. Everything was different. There was no sofa or end table, no plush carpet, no doorways into the kitchen and hallway. It was a run-down studio apartment with a fold-out cot and broken down, third hand furniture.
Donna rubbed her eyes hard, dropped to her knees and shook her head. Nothing was reliable, everything had shifted again. She looked at the wall, there was a clock that read 7:30. A small stack of hot-cakes was on the table near the closed, curtained window, and a cup of hot coffee.
"No, no, no..." she mumbled. When they'd finished with her last night, some of them had turned on the television and were watching the Late Show. She wasn't interested and one of the women walked her down the hall to her room. It couldn't have taken more than two or three minutes. Had she passed out? Fallen asleep in the hall? Was it the herb again? That caused time loss, right? But then, why did she remember the rest of the night so vividly?