***

  Dawn arrives too soon, she’s only just begun dozing off. It’s the muted splashing and hushed tones in the distance that rouse her from half-sleep.

  Her body tenses but she stays quiet, observing. Four figures carrying a fifth, clearly a woman, limp in their arms, a group of three others follow behind. She watches as they carry the body to another of the cactus-trees about fifteen yards yonder, sees the glint of the chain as they wrap it around a branch.

  Sasha feigns sleep as the figures walk back to the pier. It’s still too dark to make out much detail, but they all look like men—those of the triad not particularly large or intimidating, they look like they’ve just come from a party, well dressed, slurred laughing sounds, tiddly swaying and stumbling. Polar opposites of the other four: clad in thicker garments, what might be helmets too, stepping swift and decisively, almost in unison.

  One of them turns her way and she snaps her eyes shut.

  There’s no fucking way they can see my face from here

  She slowly lifts her eyelids, the men are back on their little catamaran and they’ve set off. She wonders where they’ll go. There’s no land masses that she can see, no large ship waiting to receive them. Unless they plan to sail around the island—or peninsula or whatever this place is—gradually slipping from sight?

  No, they’re headed straight out. Straight out into empty ocean… or sea… or maybe huge lake?

  Where the fuck am I?

  She watches them recede slowly. Are they just going to keep going all the way to the horizon? That’ll take hours. How fast can a boat even go?

  It’ll be dusk by the time they—

  Wait… they’re stopping, slowing at least.

  They’re far, but Sasha can just make out what appears to be a radio in one of the men’s hands. He’s sitting at the bow casting deck, pointing to something. Gesturing towards… towards what? There’s nothing there, it’s just empty ocean, but the man at the helm is looking that direction too.

  A fucking submarine gonna pick them up or wha—

  And then she sees it, or thinks she does. A faint shimmering on the water some distance from the boat. It’s like… it’s like a reflection, a mirage. It’s very subtle, but with the contrasting layers the sunrise has provided, she can begin to make out a faint circular… thing.

  Her curiosity has overridden any compulsion for inconspicuity, she walks out onto the beach as far as her binds permit. Walking lengthwise along the sand, she sees the clouds and bright orange and yellow and blue layers of sky seem to—push outward as they pass behind the shimmering. It looks like a tiny segment of fun house mirror, she thinks. Like the whole vista is being projected onto a flat screen, while a mischievous child hidden behind gleefully pokes their thumb against the backside.

  She watches them approach the mirage, the man up front and man in back seemingly in constant communication.

  And then, as the bow touches the glimmering—is it touching? Is there anything there to touch?—the man in front grows and twists into a backwards C shape, as does the bow and the other men sitting. Their colors and textures blur together as the backwards C wraps into an O. Finally, the single man back at the aft platform joins his fellows as a ring-shaped smudge, and then the blurry O turns into a C—turns into a period—turns into nothing.

  “whatthefuck...” The words come out as a whisper, involuntary. “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.”

  She slowly drops to her knees and cradles her head.

  They just fucking… they just fucking—no. No!

  In an instant she is back on her feet scanning the water.

  They’re fucking out there. They’re out there on the water, too far to see. It’s bright out. If it wasn’t so fucking bright out I could fucking see them. If the fucking sun wasn’t coming up directly in my fucking face I’d fucking see them!

  The wave of anxiety washes over her again. The little voice saying this isn’t right this isn’t right something is wrong something is wrong!

  No fucking shit something is wrong! Everything is wrong! I’m chained to a fucking tree on a beach and I just watched a boat full of men chain an unconscious woman to another tree and then fucking—fucking… go… and then just go fucking sail away or some shit!

  She rips at her cuff, it’s tight. She pulls against it with all her might, it’s too tight. She backs halfway to the tree, runs toward the water, hoping to pop her hand free when the chain pulls taught. After three such attempts she concludes that the only thing popping out will be her shoulder.

  She storms back to the basket, turning it over, ripping it apart, seeing if there’s anything she could use to pick a lock.

  But there’s not even a lock. She looks at the cuff, there’s nowhere that a key would go, there doesn’t even seem to be a hinge on it. No crease where the two halves meet. It’s one solid piece around her wrist, tight around her wrist, as though form-fitted. Like it was wrapped around her skin while still red hot and left to harden.

  No, breaking her own hand wouldn’t do—especially not with her two fingers forced bent like that—she’d have to cut her damn hand off to be free of this.

  Likewise for the chains around the branch. They are wrapped tight, not so much as an ant sized gap between. The padlock doesn’t even look real. It’s one solid piece, no gaps, nowhere to put a key, nothing jiggles or slides, she hears the rattling of no mechanism within when she shakes it.

  While she’d much rather chop off a tree branch than her hand, she has no knife, no axe, no stone, with which to do so. She has her teeth, of course, but that branch is almost two feet thick. She’d have a mouthful of nothing but gums before she was even an eighth the way through.

  She pounds her fists in the sand and screams, a primal howling sound from deep inside. And then again. And again.

  “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”

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  The tears stream down her face, her throat goes horse from the yelling.

  “Fuuuuuck!” She turns her head to the sky and bawls. “Fuuuuuuuuck!”

  It takes her a moment to hear the sound over her own wailing.

  “Hey! Hey!” A voice calling out for her. Sasha whips her head to the sound.

  The other woman is awake, at the end of her chain, as near as she can come, jumping up and down, waving her hands. “Hey!” she screams. “What is happening? Where are we?”

  Sasha blinks uncomprehendingly for a moment, somehow she’d forgotten all about the other woman.

  “Hey, are you okay? I’m Allison. Do you know where we are? I don’t know how I got here. My phone… I don’t have any service.”

  Sasha rises and walks to the end of her chain, til her and Allison are not even 15 feet removed, far too close to necessitate yelling, they merely need project their voices. She gives a little facetious salute with her right hand. “Hi, Allison, I’m Sasha.”

  “Do you know what’s going on? I don’t remember how I got here and I don’t—“

  “Same here. I just woke up here a couple days ago, chained to that fucking tree. Did you say you have a phone?”

  “Yeah but I already tried it. There’s no service here at all!”

  Sasha decides against asking for her phone. She could always try later, once she’d established some trust with the newcomer. Last thing she needs is this Allison to think she is somehow in on the ruse.

  She settles for commiseration. “Ooh that sucks. I can’t use my phone either because… well, because it’s in my purse which isn’t here.”

  Allison nods her head. “You said you just… just woke up here too?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you don’t know how you got here either?”

  “Nope. Last thing I remember was being at a big party and then—“

  “A party?” Allison’s eyes have gone wide. “What kind of party? I was at a party before this too! I remember dancing and drinking and laughing, and then at some point I got really tired and must have fallen asleep, and the next thing I know I’m here!”

  “It was some really extravagant thing up in the hills, I had” —Sasha’s expression drops into a frown— “hey, Allison?”

  “Yes?”

  “You didn’t happen to go to this party with a guy named Ethan, did you?”

  “Wha—y—yes, who told you that?”

  Motherfucker, the rage makes her fists clench. Motherfucker

  “This Ethan,” Sasha continues. “He’s tall, handsome, rich, has a sort of strawberry blond mustache… and uhh” —Sasha gestures to her crotch— “has a freckle on his… umm—“

  “How do you know that?! How do—how do… where am I!” Allison is verging on hysterics.

  “Hey hey hey hey sweetheart hey listen to me listen to me,” Sasha says as gently as she can manage. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I don’t know what’s going on either yet, but everything is going to be fine. We’re going to be fine, this is all just a big prank or something I’m sure.”

  Yeah, a prank or the start of some Most Dangerous Game type shit.

  She wonders how easy it would be to actually kidnap someone. She might not have family anymore, but she has friends—acquaintances at least—who will miss her, or who’ll at least wonder where she’s gone. And from the body language and intonation she’s picked up in the last few minutes, Allison looks very well-to-do. Surely you can’t just abduct a rich person and get away with it, right?

  Ethan you fucking prick. If I ever get within 10 feet of you I’m going to bite your fucking dick off. D’you just go around seducing women for your private island Lord Of The Flies roleplay fetish or what?

  Her mind swirls with questions.

  Of Who, What, When, Where, How, and Why, she’s only answered Who and When: Ethan, and Probably A Few Days Since The Party.

  But there’s always Who Else and How Long Exactly Since? She could’ve been out for weeks for all she knows, obliviously dreaming away the days while some boat took her here. And Ethan—if that’s even his real name—he obviously isn’t working alone, there might be a whole fucking sex cult involved with blood orgies and gang rape and shit.

  But what’s really eating her is the What and Why. The rest she can guess easy enough. Where: some dickhead’s private beach. How: Hot Rich Dickhead seducing women, fancy parties, spiked drinks, chains and trees and boats and… stuff.

  But What the fuck was going on, and Why was whoever was doing it doing it? Those were the questions foremost in her mind.

  Sasha wants to ask Allison for more details about her encounter with their shared siren, to see if she can remember anything that might be relevant—as if the right words might see the cuffs simply fall to the ground abracadabra—but the woman is rocking on the sand in the fetal position.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Sasha says. “I’m going to grab you some food, okay? Stay there hon’.”

  She runs back to the basket she’d torn apart, hurriedly gathering the remaining waters and the crackers and jams and cheeses.

  “Allison… Allison.” The woman looks up. “Here, I’m going to toss you these things. It’s water and food. You need to eat, it will make you feel better.”

  “I… okay, yes… thank you.”

  The woman is tentative at first, merely prodding at the food, but the first few berries seem to kickstart her appetite, and she finishes the rest without so much as a word.

  Sasha watches the woman stare out at the slowly-pink-turning horizon.

  At least she seems to be calming down

  Sitting there in the sand, the last of the food finally finished, a shiver racks Allison. She whimpers softly.

  “Hey, hey,” Sasha says. “It’s okay, you’re fine, everything is fine. Here, wait a moment—“ she runs back to her tree and grabs the blanket and pillow “—I’m going to throw you these, okay? You can wrap yourself up in this blanket.”

  Allison looks up at her, doe-eyed. “You’re sure? I mean, won’t you be cold tonight?”

  “No, no,” she reassures. “It doesn’t get much colder than this. It stays really comfortable actually.”

  “Well… okay, if you’re sure.”

  “I am.”

  Tossing the blanket and pillow proves more of an ordeal than anticipated. The pillow goes wide and lands almost ten feet from Sasha, well over ten feet to Allison.

  Fucking cunt shit!

  Using the blanket like a whip, she manages, after a time, to flop the end over the pillow, reel the blanket back in—pulling the pillow incremental inches with it. Then she repeats the whole maneuver again. And again.

  Her second toss lands the pillow directly at Allison’s feet.

  “Okay, see how far you can reach to me, Allison. I’m going to see if I can whip that end to you without having to let go of my end.”

  After a few attempts, Sasha manages to snap the blanket into Allison’s hand. After a few more attempts, Allison manages to grab it.

  Pleased that her strategy worked so well, Sasha sits in the sand.

  Allison mirrors her Propped Up On An Elbow posture and looks in her eyes. “Do you really think we’ll get out of here? This is just all so… so bizarre.”

  “I promise, we’ll find a way out of this.” She’s not sure she believes it herself.

  “Would you mind… I mean, would you stay here next to me please? Just for a bit at least?” Allison is looking into her eyes with something like pleading.

  “Yes, Allison, I’ll stay here. I’ll sit here all night.” She smiles and looks out at the deepening orange of the sky as Allison curls up in the blanket. “We can watch the sunset together, it will be beautiful. And in the morning I’ll still be right here and we’ll watch the sunri—“

  The sunrise.

  The little voice in her head is screaming through a megaphone now.

  The sunrise.

  It’s found the PA system, it’s blaring its dread through the intercoms of every cell in her body.

  The sunrise.

  And all at once it clicks.

  There’s something wrong, many things in fact, but the one that’s been right in front of her face the whole time finally steps out from the shadow.

  The sun doesn’t rise and set in the Same. Fucking. Place.

  “Where the fuck are we?” It comes out more a gasp than anything. She is sitting bolt upright, mouth agape and eyes wide as she takes in everything with new eyes.

  “Hmmm?” Allison murmurs from that place on the border of wake and sleep. “What did you say?”

  Sasha swallows, clears her throat. There’s no point in frightening the girl now, she thinks. “Oh nothing, nothing sweetheart. You just go back to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.” She hopes her tone sufficiently masks the existential terror bubbling up within.

  The sun has come up and down in the same spot everyday. And the nights! The nights have been short, too short! I know they have! A few hours at most!

  Her head spins. None of this is right.

  They’re above the arctic circle—yes!— where the sun never sets, or only does briefly. Finland, Siberia, Alaska, somewhere like that!

  But they’re not in Finland, or Siberia, or fucking Alaska. They’re not above the arctic circle. It’s warm here, tropical. Where on Earth is it so warm at such high latitudes?

  And what of the stars? Surely she should have been able to pick out one constellation, right? The guy with the belt! Whatsisname… Orion! Or the Big Fucking Dipper at the very least! Could she really have failed to recognize a single one of them?

  No… no.

  None of this is right.

  And just like that, the Where had superseded the What and the Why as the most pressing of her questions.

  ***