Alien Pet (mxmxm)

.3

BENNETT

       With little else to occupy my time, I found myself at a loss in my cage. I couldn't fathom what I was waiting for, but I couldn't shake the feeling that the Banties had essentially dressed me up like some sort of pet to be displayed. The sensation was dehumanizing to say the least. And instead of feeling thankful for clothes- albeit skimpy ones- for the first time in what might possibly be weeks, it was making me feel like an unwilling participant in some cruel game. One that was orchestrated by unseen puppeteers I had no interest in meeting.

Sleep remained a strange sort of comfort, the unforgiving floor offering little to help the aches I felt all over my body. Still, the ability to change positions and sit up provided some relief. I tried to cling to the few positive things I could find in a situation that seemed devoid of any silver linings.

As I continued to drift in and out of a restless slumber, I was jolted awake by the sound of the sheet being pulled away from my cage. To my astonishment, a new creature, utterly unlike the Banties in just about every way, was peering at me through the bars. These creatures stood at an imposing height that had to be at least seven feet tall, boasting ethereal, willowy bodies that appeared otherworldly upon first glance. Their skin was translucent, emitting a soft, shifting bioluminescent glow, reminiscent of glass as it catches the light. Their ovoid heads were crowned with delicate, feather-like appendages that swayed and ripple with a quiet humming noise. They seemed to be using those feathers to communicate to each other, the soft humming the result of quick pulsing shakes of the feathers  as they spoke back and forth.

While I couldn't discern any conventional form of eyes, I could tell that they were keenly aware of my every move, tracking even the subtlest twitch of my fingers by the way their heads tilted and their feathers twitched.

A blinding burst of light and a deafening boom caused my ears to ring as my cage was sent into motion, descending with a groan through the floor into a colossal, stadium-like room below. I cried out despite myself, clinging to the bars as my stomach rolled with the sensation of falling. It almost seemed as though I was in an invisible elevator shaft, moving down at a very rapid speed from the floor of one room through the ceiling and into a very loud and open space that must have been below me all along. The abrupt shift in my surroundings left me fairly overwhelmed and disoriented, but fear felt almost normal to me at this point. I hadn't been anything but scared in weeks.

I flinched as a high-pitched keening noise pierced through my head, feeling like a thousand daggers against my frontal lobe. I dropped to the floor of my cage, hands clamped tightly over my ears in a desperate attempt to block out the cacophony. It was as if a multitude of different voices spoke all at once into my head, a chaotic and overwhelming symphony of sound that left me feeling as though my ears were on the verge of bleeding.

The cage finally reached the ground with a teeth rattling jerk and the new creatures with their feather crowns and eyeless faces, shifted into motion across the stage. Their willow bodies surrounding me quickly, with two standing on either side of my cage, while three more occupied the central pit of the vast arena. As far as my bewildered eyes could see, towering above me on every side, stretched a sea of creatures unlike anything I could have ever imagined, and I had thought after the past few weeks of insanity there couldn't possibly be any more. The sheer spectacle took my breath away, as if it had been forcefully pulled from my lungs as I tried to calm myself by any means necessary.

Just a few weeks ago, the idea of this being my reality would have been deemed impossible, an absurdity that defied the limits of human understanding. Now, I found myself kneeling with the weight of it all, stunned and disoriented, at the apex of a new-age Roman colosseum, surrounded by thousands of creatures I had never fathomed could exist. They yipped and howled, chirped, and hummed, creating a bewildering symphony of alien languages that defied every logical thought I felt I had ever had. The world as I knew it had irrevocably changed that day I had woken up with a collar, yet this was the defining moment that seemed to plunge me into a reality that was beyond my wildest imagination. I didn't know how much more I could take, I felt like I was scraping at the bottom of an empty barrel, my sanity all but tapped.