I awoke groggily with cotton-mouth, and then had an intense start. Have you ever woken up in a strange place - a hotel room, on a drinking buddy's couch, the in-law's guest bedroom, etc. - and you experienced a momentary jolt in the lower registers of panic that subsides almost immediately upon remembering where you are and how you got there? This was similar, but instead of a wave of relief, as I looked around, my panic rose toward some elusive crescendo.
I was in what seemed to be a polycarbonate - that strong clear plastic - box that was suspended, who knows how, so as to allow bright light to be projected in from all six sides simultaneously. Because of this light, I could not see anything outside the box despite the material's transparency. The box was both a little taller and a bit longer than a coffin, but was about twice as wide. This extra space contained a woman lying next to me in the box still unconscious.
The woman was completely nude, which, I should note, mirrored my own state. As a gentleman, I will note that I made no efforts to see her most intimate parts and my cursory glance resulted in seeing nothing private besides the outline of her overall form. Though the woman faced me, she was positioned partially curled up and laying halfway between being on her side and her stomach and she had an arm tucked into her chest and the knee of her closest leg was stretched up and between us so as to touch the bottom of the box with the inside of the bent knee. This leg obscured her nether region. I was, in fact, quite pleased that the woman was covered up because I was myself mortified to be in the presence of the naked stranger. I didn't know her, and she didn't even look familiar - except to the degree that many people look vaguely like someone else you've seen. She was about my age, which is to say in her thirties, had short dark brown hair, and smooth skin that was neither darkly tanned nor pale. The outline of her curves was admittedly graceful and pleasing to the eye.
I heard a faint noise outside the box. It was like a cough, but not precisely. The apparently "biological" nature of the sound reminded me that, though I could not see out, anyone outside the box would have an excellent view of the inside. This realization startled me, and I immediately reached down to cover my nether region while unthinkingly moving to sit up. Of course, I didn't get more than half of the way to a seated position before my forehead careened into the almost invisible top of the box. This resulted in my unknown "coffin-mate" suddenly regaining consciousness. Needless to say, she had the same panicked reaction as mine, but multiplied by some factor explained by the two-fold disadvantage she suffered. First, I awoke with an unconscious person next to me, and, therefore, the threat factor within the box was minimal even while the weirdness factor was off the charts. She, on the other hand, awoke with a conscious and moving person next to her in this confined space who had made a loud and reverberating thump for a reason unknown to her. She had no time to determine what the objective of my motion was. Second, at the risk of sounding sexist but intending only to be objectively truthful, a delicate woman finding herself unexpectedly naked with a strange man is quite likely to be more fearful than a man finding himself naked with a strange woman, all else being equal.
I tried to reassure the woman as she started to scream bloody murder and thrashed about to keep me at bay, not realizing that I had no intention of doing anything other than keeping my distance. She was immediately at a loss as to whether she should use her limbs to try to lash out at me, no doubt reasonably assuming that I was the cause of her current predicament, or to cover herself. There were a series of thuds as heels, elbows, and knuckles bounced off the box as we both awkwardly alternated between covering while she attacked and I defended. Ultimately, I kept my open palms facing her direction to fend off blows while showing her my hands in an attempt to put her mind at ease.
