TNP2-08 "Missing Items"

A Chapter by dw817

I was so - electrified - that my body glowed a bright yellow, seething with heat, until I finally vaporized in an ashless fire. Looming over me were strange clouds, all different kinds of shapes.

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THE NANCY PRINCIPLE-2
© July 2014 Written by David Wicker
Please do not reprint without permission

CHAPTER 8 - MISSING ITEMS
[ CHOOSE A DIFFERENT CHAPTER ]

* * *

Rated: EVERYONE

While I had planned on sleeping late, apparently everyone living here was on a timed schedule.

Early in the morning heard a warning chime coming from the ceiling, where the speakers were for the beaded screen when I was watching cartoons on earlier. Grumbling to myself, I reached over and fumbled with the remote, unsuccessfully to turn it off.

Finally I turned the device over in my hand to see if I could remove the batteries but because I was still half-asleep the control box fell out of my grip and clattered noisily onto the floor. Fortunately that stopped the chiming so without even checking to see if it was damaged, I turned over facing the wall with Susan still in my hands to get more sleep.

An unknown time later I sensed that someone was behind me and I turned over to see that it was Tricia, and she was glowering angrily down at me. She was dressed really nice and looked like she was headed for work.

"Huh ?" I asked intelligently.

"Yes," she said in a disapproving tone lowering her eyes down on me. "I see you like to sleep late, don't you. Well, you're still recovering from your head injury so that's fine, for now. As for me, =I= have to go to work."

She turned to leave but I said, "Hey, wait a minute."

She looked over her shoulder a little irritably, "What ?"

"Do you think you can get my phone working today ?"

She looked to my receiver disinterestedly, "We got that working this morning. You'll also see there are two lines going out now. One for your BBS and one for regular calls." Then as if she was going to forget something, she stepped back to my bed and around it to retrieve the remote control that fell down and set it on the counter strip around the room.

"Awesome." I said without even asking who had entered my room earlier to hook this up, and then turned back over to sleep.

Tricia grumbled something unintelligibly but it was clear she didn't like the fact she had to wake so up early to get to work while I could sleep in.

I heard my door close behind me and I slept some more. And I dreamed - and it was a strange one. That I was outside and electricity was raining down from the sky, like water, and it hit me all over, and I cried out, but I couldn't escape. It was as if moving in any direction somehow brought me back to the same location where the electric rain was.

I was so - electrified - that my body glowed a bright yellow, seething with heat, until I finally vaporized in an ashless fire. Looming over me were strange clouds, all different kinds of shapes. One of which looked almost like a teddy bear looking down at where I would be, but it was fearsome and nightmarish.

I woke up with a start patting my body all over seeing that I was still intact and it was just a nightmare.

I had left the cable connection on and peering at the display I could see it was already 11am. Welp, I didn't want to be late for lunch or breakfast or whatever you called it this time of day, not with that full freezer of goodies I saw earlier, so I creaked up out of bed stretching and looked around.

I listened too. It was quiet. Really quiet. Unlike my older place where my upstairs neighbor was always making some kind of noise or other, mostly for my benefit, or at least I believed that.

I now had a chance to look around my room. I didn't notice earlier, but it wasn't square ! It was round, and there was a flanged edge all the way around it, a kind of shelving that came up to my arm's length.

I saw Trudy had already started to put my collection of Teddy Bears filling up the far side of it.

Why I didn't notice the room wasn't rectangular earlier was beyond me. I guess all the rooms I had been in normally were.

* * *

Hopping up I investigated the restroom to find that no, it wasn't round, but square, but no ceiling to it's own. Instead the restroom was clearly just 4-walls with no top to it.I imagined the layout in my head. If my room was round like a disc, then the restroom was just a smaller 4-sided square on the side of it, clearly added as if it wasn't common for the room.

I confirmed this by stepping out to see the curve of the wall outside had some filler-space, like cheap fiber-boards, before it met the restroom door, which I also noticed was pretty flimsy. I went over and touched the side of the walls of my room. It was made out of - something - really rather sturdy. Durable, stronger than my regular apartment wall.

I immediately nicknamed it Duranium, as kind of a joke to myself, or maybe I heard that term somewhere else.

The closet was inside the bathroom area too but - right then, nature was calling. Even though I knew I was alone in my room, I couldn't help the feeling like I was being watched. So I closed the door in front of me so I was in the tight stall and there was a low roof over my head in there as well. The first roof I saw outside of the 25-foot convex at the top of my entire room.

A truly claustrophobic person would likely die in here as the whole stall area I suspected was about 6-feet perfectly cubed. I got up, flushed, opened the door, noticing it was made out of the same flimsy material, then looked to the bathtub.

It was still filled with that rose scented bubble-bath. I sighed but stripped down and finally took a nice relaxing bath and it really was good after all. The water churned around my toes and side and was just the right warmth. I found a bar of soap still in a wrapper by the side. I peeled off the paper and washed myself proper.

Afterwards looking in the closet I saw a wide gray body towel. I quickly dried off and then looked around the plastic containers for my clothes. But there weren't any ! Surely the movers wouldn't have forgotten them.

To confirm this, opening up the last container I saw a grimy hand-written checklist on the top. The movers were in fact very thorough and listed everything that got shifted out of my old place. Sure enough they moved all my underwear and socks, it's just that Tricia got to them before I did and tossed them out.

But what about my other clothes ? I scanned my finger down the checklist to see they did indeed get all my shorts, pants, and T-shirts. Surely she didn't throw away my two good business suits for BBI as well ? Going through all the crates I couldn't find them.

My Dad paid good money for those ! Finally I snapped my fingers and went back to the bathroom to look in the 2nd closet, to the right of the toilet stall. Hanging up very neatly were my 2-pair of business outfits, complete with clip-on ties, and they looked like they were well washed. Well at least those were safe.

But is that =ALL= I had to wear around here ? I looked around the closets more and only found another dinner robe. I scratched my head. Fine. In a way this is no different than when I was in the mental ward and I always wore a robe there so, for now, I'll wear a robe, until I'm back at work.

I put it on and was relieved I was dressed because suddenly my door opened and I saw Trudy there. She looked really cute in a relaxed flowery skirt and blouse. But - shouldn't she be at work ?

"Good morning." I told her.

"Hi." she said and stepped around me to look at the clutter I had made with my boxes. "Did you find what you were looking for ?"