Dr Precarious smiled kindly, but the effort left it insincere. "This is your home now, so just to bed. I'm certain you will greatly appreciate it in a moment."

"My home?" She tried not to sound too panicked, so followed it with, "So this position includes accommodation. Excellent." She gingerly stood, "Well then, let's get this over with. Which way to the bedroom?"

Dr Precarious stood to join her and as they walked he offered his elbow, which she took but avoided relying on. Her stability was acceptable so long as she didn't think about it. Her legs seemed to have learnt a pattern of responses that her mind had been left out of.

They walked around the same corner that Dr Precarious had fetched the shoes and cocktails from earlier and she saw it was a long stone corridor with an arched ceiling. It seemed light and welcoming where she stood, but it grew dim is it burrowed along away from the sunlight. The flickering torches in the distance didn't add any warmth. She looked on the upside. At least she couldn't see any stairs, her rolling high heels were too unfamiliar for that.

Every few metres there were wooden doors in stone arches. The doors were held together with wide steel bands, only mildly decorative. She felt him slow as she held his elbow and then relied on it to balance when he stopped to press his palm against a dark steel plate on the door before them.

It clicked open with a snick implying some inclination towards mechanical perfection, then the door squeaked, or more accurately, groaned open. He apologised, "I know steel bars don't look particularly secure, but I assure you, you will be safe. The polycarbonate on the outside is thick and strong enough to be marginally tougher than the stone wall it is set into. So you can make this place your peaceful spot."

The room was sparsely appointed. A large round mirror in a heavy silver frame was mounted on a wall, near, but not above, a heavy wooden table, devoid of decoration except for its clawed feet. A similar table was pushed into the corner where it met the external wall, not far from the barred window. Apart from that there was only a panel of wooden planks attached to the remaining wall. It was as wide as it was tall and near the top, just within reach, hung two heavy metal rings. The room smelt faintly of wax smoke, like candles had recently been snuffed.

Dr Precarious remained in the doorway as Marissa circled the room, close enough to be able to reach a wall if required. When she stood below the metal ring, she reached up an touched it. Snick. The same mechanical sound she had heard when the door unlocked. She felt a slight tremor in the metal ring to match, so she gently pulled on it, to find that the whole panel swung down lightly from the wall. She continued to pull it down to reveal a silk quilted bed.

The hinge must have been sprung because it never gained weight or momentum as it sunk to the floor and after letting go of the ring she saw it had a matching groove in the floor so that when it was down the bed was low, but a comfortable height.

Then it hit her. Pain like a steel spike through the brain accompanied with the tunnel vision she had considered earlier. Tunnel vision was accurate and it came on fast like looking out back of a train as it rushed into an endless black hole leaving only a tiny dot of light in the distance. She sunk onto the bed and squeezed her skull between both hands groaning and falling onto her side in foetal position.

She was barely aware of Dr Precarious' voice, "Again, I must apologise. While the chemical cocktail concoction, conceived by myself has its merits, I still have to work on the side effects. You will recover soon enough. Until then, try not to think about it. I shall see you tomorrow, or the day after if needs be."

He must have walked out the door and locked her in because the snick she heard bashed and echoed around in her brain. She wanted to get up and try the door to see if she was truly trapped, but could not so much as direct the movement of a finger. She felt like vomiting and resigned herself to the fact that it would end up on the bed if it came to that.

She woke, shivering with cold. The moonlight streaming in through the window was cut into a grid on the floor by the barred window. She stared at it from where she lay, cheek pressed across the edge of the mattress, as her memories came back to orient her. The arm underneath her was dead. She toyed with the false notion that it had been amputated just to explore how she would react, before rolling off it and flexing her fingers. This sent sharp pins and needles through it. Tapping her fingertip against her thumb caused the nerves to buzz in a way that felt like a sound. The muscles of her waist and hip complained about their new position.

To try and see how long she had been sleeping for she dragged her hand from her good arm under the other armpit and sniffed her fingers. That twenty-four hour deodorant never did work, but she winkled her nose and guessed she'd been out for more than a day. At least the head ache had passed, only leaving her groggy. She felt queezy but wondered if it was tired hunger. She then reached under her blouse and dragged her bra down, easing the line where it had been biting into her. Soon the skin there burnt in complaint, but she knew it would be better soon. She hung her knees over the bed so that her ankles rested on the floor and pushed up into sitting position, blinking away the black spots that hovered like wraiths in the dim stone room. From there she could see the sparkling lights of the city. Traffic was sparse, but there was no light in the sky, so she guessed around 3am.

As she dragged her feet under her so that she was almost in a squat, her new shoes dragged across the stone. She blinked at them. He had let her sleep in her shoes. Was that a gesture? Shouldn't he have taken them off her her? Would that have been creepy? She considered removing them now, but decided against it. Better to get the hang of them, than to keep changing between them and confusing her muscles. Her knees complained as she stood, then she stumbled to the deep window sill and remained there looking out as her ankles explored the roll in her shoes again. Her bedroom was on the third floor by the height even though she didn't recall walking up any stairs from the entrance. She could see the hillside dropping off steeply below her and guessed that this castle was cut into the hillside.

She had seen it up on the hill above her city her whole life, the castle being the jewel in the crown of a failed amusement park from her parents' time. Dr Precarious must have bought it, obtained it, and then rebuilt if from the inside out with genuine stone replacing the original textured concrete and fibreglass. Nobody had noticed, or cared. She straightened, made a slow balanced turn and then struck out across the floor to arc around to the wall with the mirror and sink.

She stumbled and clomped in an ungainly manner, but was pleased to make it without falling. If she can learn to walk in these shoes without another one of these brain stabbing cocktails she will be satisfied. The glass by the sink was simple, but its weight indicated lead crystal. The water tasted fine and she filled the glass twice more before she was satisfied. Now the door.

There was no handle or anything to pull on. It looked much the same in this dim light as it had on the other side and she placed her palm against the same dark iron panel. Snick, the door pressed back against her hand and she allowed it, so that it swung open slightly. She brushed down her skirt, tucked her blouse back in and dragged her fingers through her bobbed black hair.

With no handle on the outside either, she opened the door a little wider, then hooked her fingers around the edge, pulling it closed with enough momentum to slip her hand back out of the gap before it clicked home with a snick. Wondering if the outside would accept her palm print or whatever it read she pressed against it. It opened and she closed it again. It must have saved it from when she opened it from inside.

There was a swirling of dim green light further up the passage in the direction of the room she had been interviewed in. The other direction was still spaced out with flickering torch flames. Even though moving had warmed her up some, she stayed close to a wall and made her way towards the closest torch.

It was a beautiful piece of technology, the mix of led light, fine optics and crystal refraction. But it was cold. She watched its random flickering for a while, then turned and headed back towards the swirling green light. She had made it most of the way there and her legs had regained their rhythm, striding down the corridor, when Dr Precarious emerged from another heavy wooden door. She noted that this one didn't groan like hers does.

Ever had a migraine like that? Was that how tunnel vision feels to you? Looking forward to your comments and thanks for voting.