Tumblers filled with dark amber liquids. A hazy purple twilight. The gentle lapping of waves. A man in a nice suit, black hair, tanned skin, cologne with subtle cedar notes and a hint of citrus. A soft breeze carrying a scent she cannot place. Fancy people in fancy dresses at a party way too fancy for the likes of her. Bitter crystals on mirrored trays in the powder room. The Man In The Nice Suit’s hands on the small of her back, on her ass, in her crotch. Blushing and laughing and giggling like a schoolgirl in one of two dozen en suite bathrooms. A sunrise over the ocean. Laying her head back on a couch, such a comfortable couch. Hands lifting her, carrying her.

  The memories come to her unbidden and unwanted. Tied together by nothing, belonging in no particular order that she can discern.

  Lying there with eyes still closed, she takes inventory, letting the world outside intrude only piecemeal, wondering how bad the hangover will be.

  Too many drinks, she thinks. Feels like I’m lying on a pile of rocks.

  She runs her left hand along her face, fingertips just grazing her eyelids, lips, neck. She feels the fabric over her chest, the scaly texture of that far-too-expensive dress’ sequins.

  Well at least I’m still wearing my clothes.

  Her hand reaches her naval, her hip, traces the curve of her buttocks and comes to rest on the— sand?

  This is a new one, she thinks, eyes still closed, still content to simply lie back and savor this fleeting space separating the sweet, sweet mindlessness of oblivion from the transition into wakefulness, from the moment that she will open her eyes and let the new day in, with all of its regrets and Morning After Pills and splitting headaches and adult responsibilities.

  When did we go to the beach?

  She runs her fingers through the sand, scooping up handfuls and feeling the grains flow through her fingers. She smiles. She imagines opening her eyes to find herself lying next to him outside of his private beachfront property. Perhaps they made passionate love out here last night. No doubt he’ll invite her inside when he too wakes. They’ll laugh like bashful teenagers. He’ll blush when he makes her breakfast, omelets and toast, a Bloody Mary too hopefully. Or perhaps he has a personal chef for all that.

  A maid too, she thinks.

  He drives a fucking Hennessey Venom with Mansory interior trim, surely he can afford a maid.

  She imagines what it will be like to never again have to cook or clean or haul her overflowing laundry bag down three flights of stairs to that fucking laundry room that smells like piss and half the machines steal your quarters and the other half are always occupied by Henrietta from 32c who might as well be running a goddamn dry cleaning business with how often she’s down there.

  Maybe the maid who does the laundry will look like Henrietta, all chunky and flabby with a ruddy race and two extra chins that match the perpetual frown she wears. Or maybe she’ll be a pretty little tan thing from Guatemala or Ecuador with a nice plump ass and perky tits.

  She wonders if she’d be okay with him secretly fucking the maid on the side, she decides she probably would.

  She really hates doing laundry.

  Maybe she’d get to fuck other guys too. Other guys like him, at other fancy parties. Or maybe a pool boy named Alessandro when he comes by once a week.

  But she thinks pool boys are better suited for middle aged housewives who have gotten a little thick around the sides. She figures she can wait a decade or two before she needs to be on the lookout for any pool boys named Alessandro.

  She enjoys indulging in such fantasy. Prolonging the brief transition before full lucidity, before this moment of seemingly infinite possibility space ceases to be. Wherein she might still believe that some unspeakable beauty yet awaits her gaze.

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  She lets her arm drift wide out to her side, expecting—or merely hoping?—to brush against him, against somebody.

  What was his name again?

  Ethan, that’s right. Three dinner dates last month and then the party last night, plenty of time to commit two syllables to memory. Maybe he’d forgot her name too, call her by Sarah or Sonya or Sally instead of Sasha.

  But no, from the start he had made a point to use her name frequently, he wouldn’t have forgotten.

  She’d chide herself later.

  Finding no skin, no hair, no fabric, to her left, only sand, she lifts her right hand out to the side. Immediately she notices the weight at her wrist.

  Christ, did my klepto-ass gank someone’s bracelet last night?

  It is quite heavy. Bringing it across her chest for tactile inspection, she feels cold metal press into her arm, coil against her side. She hears the chlinkchlinkchlinkchlink of interlinked metal and that is a stimulus too novel, her eyes snap open.

  “What the fuck?”

  She is on a beach, with a shackle on her wrist, chain snaking through the sand, wrapped around and locked to the branch of a tree, a fucking— what the fuck kind of tree is that?

  It is just peculiar enough that the identification of it takes momentary precedence over the concern for why exactly she’s chained to it. It’s quite unlike anything she’s ever seen before. Is it even a tree? It looks more like a weird giant shrub, she thinks. Most of its profile is low, a majority of the thick branches hang mere inches off the ground, fanning out in all directions. And it’s barkless, completely smooth, a light crème color. In a way it reminds her of a bonsai tree with the way the trunk and branches dip and twirl and spiral out—except…

  What kind of tree doesn’t have leaves?

  She remembers her ex, Kyle, in school for botany. No doubt he could tell her in a heartbeat what it was, followed by a hour’s worth of tangentially related factoids that she couldn’t care less about. She would welcome one of his litanies now though, if she could figure out what kind of tree it is, then maybe she’d have some sort of idea where she is.

  She wonders if it might be some sort of cactus. If anything, she thinks, it looks like a giant sea anemone.

  Satisfied with that categorization, she turns her attention to the other thing.

  The cuff on her wrist is gold, as is the chain. Probably plated, she thinks. Moreover, protruding from the cuff are two stiff wires running over the back of her hand and connecting to a set of rings at the base of her pinky and ring fingers, from which extend a final set of rings that wrap the distal segment of those fingers, bending them flush against her palm.

  Although thin, the wire connecting cuff to rings cannot be budged. Try as she might, she cannot extend her last two digits.

  She chuckles at the strangeness of the configuration and, shrugging, turns her attention to other things.

  “Hellllooooo?” She scans along the beach. “Is anybody there?”

  She stands and listens.

  “Heh—loooo—ooh!”

  Peering back past the bonsai-cactus, she sees a tropical forest, totally generic to her eye, filled with generic tropical palm trees and generic tropical spiky shrubs and generic tropical vines draped about. She doesn’t see any expensive beach house tucked away in the lush greenery. Turning to the sea she doesn’t see any expensive yacht bobbing in the surf. There’s a small pier extending out into the water about twenty feet, but not so much as a paddle boat berthed there.

  “What the fuuuck dude!” She walks out onto the beach the dozen or so feet her chain will permit. “Not funnnnnay.”

  From her vantage she can see farther, not much, but enough to confirm that the beach front curves inland each direction. Whoever her pranksters are, they’re tucked behind the tree line just out of sight, perhaps behind one of those other leafless bonsai forming a perimeter around the jungle.

  “Okay, you got me! What a good joke, el oh el, I’m sure this is making some really great content!”

  She wonders then if her makeup still looks okay. If her humiliation is going to be posted for all to see, she might as well look good. She adjusts her dress and tilts her pelvis ever so subtly.

  Yeah, my ass looks fucking good in this.

  “You want me to dance a fuckin’ jig or what?” she yells in the direction she’s decided offers the most likely hiding-spot-camera-angle combo. “I’m not sure what fetish this is tickling for you, but I’m pretty sure this constitutes kidnapping or unlawful detainment or something like that!”

  After 5 minutes of standing left hand on her hip, chained hand shading her eyes, scowl on her face, she walks back to the tree and lays against the branch she’d been splayed over that morning.

  “Of—fucking—course,” she sighs.

  All she has are the clothes on her back. Her phone is in her purse, and her purse is probably still somewhere in one of that mansion’s many bedrooms, so no phone calls. No iPod either, so instead of music to kill the time, she gets… what, gentle waves?

  Not even a fucking gull in the sky, and barely any clouds to look at.

  Watching the sun dip below the water’s edge, she entertains the thought that she’s found her way onto a reality TV show.

  Haven’t I always said that I’d absolutely crush the competition on Survivor?

  She thinks about all the things she could do with a million dollar prize. Student loans? Blam, gone. Car payments? Could actually afford them and maybe drive something that wasn’t a total shit box always in and out of the shop. Rent? She could pay it on her own, no more rooming with bitches that steal shampoo or creepy guys that just want to get in her pants.

  She contents herself with such thoughts and drifts away.

  ***