The Disappearance of Cow Creek

Restless

I hung by my hands and feet  from the ceiling of the cage, watching the many alien animals in this huge room. Each had a cage, set up differently for each kind. I was frightened by the fact that I was getting the exact same treatment, as though I were just another relatively unintelligent animal, who would be fine with being kept in a cage and hand-fed. I gripped the bars tightly in frustration, but then my fingers slipped, tired already from holding on, and I fell -"umph!"- into the soft paper shreds below.
I've lost so much strength being stressed and confined all the time...
back on earth, I was quite athletic, and a good climber. I laid there in the shreds where I had fallen, and stared at the bars of the cage ceiling.
Where did all the other women end up?
My question was answered when two of the huge aliens entered the room, carrying kennels. I sat up in the paper shreds and fled to the back of my cage, where I watched the aliens walk over to the large cage next to mine, and set the kennels down on a shelf, and then started pulling women out of the kennels, and placing them in the large cage next to mine. In total, four women were put in the cage, and then the aliens left.
"Hey!" I called over to them, standing at the wall closest to them.
The other women, who seemed to be a bit groggy, like I had been, were picking themselves up, and looked around, then at me.
"We thought you were.. dead. When we saw you get taken first, then the alien walking back out with a bloody neck, we figured you had gotten in a fight and was probably killed."
One said, with a look of surprise on her groggy face.
"No.. I'm okay. I did attack it, but then I was shoved in a sink, bathed, poked at, and put here."
I climbed up on one of the wooden blocks, and jumped from there into the hammock-silk hanging from the top bars of the cage. Two aliens entered the room again, and put more women I'd been with before into the large cage, in the end making three trips into here, and all of us (minus the woman who was killed by the toothed alien) were in the cage, except for me. I was still separated in my own cage.
Once the drugs (maybe they were sedatives?) wore off of everyone, we just sat around, if possibly in higher spirits than before our rescue.  Everything was really quiet, aside from an alien coming in at one point and feeding some of the other creatures in the room, looking in at us humans, then leaving again. After that, the lights went out. It was so strange being indoors again, rather than sheltered in a crude, drafty cage outside, this place was clean, brightly lit, quiet, and the warmth was ambient, rather than the heat source being a lamp in our cage. After the lights went out, most of the creatures also in the room became fairly quiet, but some started becoming a bit more active and eating, pacing, or watching. I decided to try and make myself comfortable, so I grabbed as many arm loads as I could of paper shreds and dumped them in my "hammock", so that I could have something warm to rest in. I instinctively didn't feel as safe in the hiding place on the floor of the cage, even though it was logically the same as the hammock and nothing was going to get me. I stayed in the hammock anyways, and ended up laying there for a long time, unable to sleep. There was a quiet humming from the walls, and I was used to sleeping with strange alien birds and bugs calling in the night, rather than the silence of this room. The darkness and warmth was nice, and more than that, the cleanliness of my enclosure, but I was restless and unable to sleep more than five minutes at a time. After a few hours, the silence increased as the many other alien animals in the room bedded down and slept, their nocturnal hours of activity over. The depth of the night stretched on, as did my mild misery. I wished to be with the other women, so I could lean on someone and have a steady heartbeat near me as I slept; something else which I had grown accustomed to in this awful misadventure. But I was alone, and could not even very well see the other women, who were about as quiet as me. I didn't know if they were sleeping or not. Long hours later, some dim, filtered, morning light began seeping into my small world through a window in the room we were in.
I groaned, knowing I wouldn't feel good today, not having slept. I looked over at the other women. They were sleeping in a close huddle, mostly buried in paper shreds. It felt like the safest way to rest, in this insane reality. Most of them were sleeping, but a couple seemed to be just resting, and a few were wide awake, one watching me. I blinked at her, and she gave me a pitiful sorry you have to be all alone look.  I turned away, and shuffled in the paper shreds I was nestled in in my hammock. Every muscle in my body was tired, and my throat was dry and felt like it was cracking apart in layers. I looked over at the water source on the wall. Rather embarrassing to have to drink from what was practically a giant hamster water bottle, but I slid out of my hammock in the dim light, and plopped onto the floor anyways.
Ow...
I slowly ambled over to the water, and stared at the large metal straw which had about the diameter of an oversized strawberry. I poked the ball in the end of it and the result was a trickle of unpleasantly cold liquid running down my arm. Here goes nothing..
I stuck my mouth around the straw and pushed the metal ball with my tongue. It tasted of iron and aluminum, and the water which was flat and almost seemed thicker than normal water should be, like it was creamy. But not.
I swear if this water is drugged too..
I drank a bit until my throat hurt slightly less, and then wiped my wet face off with my arm, which I then was able to sort-of dry in the paper shreds.
Just as I made it back into my hammock, the lights in the room turned on. They seemed to be automatic. I groaned and hid my face from the bright, white light. The other animals in the room, right on cue, woke up and became active again. I huffed and tried to ignore the strange vocalizations, scratching, chewing, and other noises they made. suddenly, they quieted down really fast, so I looked up to see why. An alien was walking into the room, with a small case and a folded piece of cardboard. It took its time, making noises at one animal as it bent over and put its hand against the cage. Then it straightened up, and set its case and the cardboard down on a table. The case opened, and the alien rummaged through it and pulled out a couple strange things. One was fabric, another I couldn't tell, then there was an oversized syringe filled with clear liquid.  The alien held this up, and tapped the air bubbles out of it, preparing to use it. On what? The alien suddenly turned, and headed straight for... me.