Perverts Paradise
an excerpt

She woke up screaming from a deep sleep she didn't remember going into. Glass walls surrounded her so no one else could hear her, and so she could not hear the muffled screams of those around her as they began to rouse.

Slowly Mattie moved her arms, stiff from a deep cold that chilled her to the core. A feeble bang against the glass resulted in nothing more than a sore hand, and she let it fall above her head, unbeknownst hitting the internal release button above her head.

The cover slid down slowly, jolting from lack of use, just like her joints. Warm, fresh air rushed towards her face, the shock making her gasp.

"May you find peace and love from the one true God, and may his path bring you Salvation." A young woman peered over her, looking at her with compassion, yet pity for her. "Let me help you out." She took Mattie's arm, too dazed to know what was happening, her memory still back in the deep sleep she wished to return to.

"Wha.." her voice failed her, croaking out a feeble squeak.

"Save your strength. You're all very weak. We were told this would happen to you."

Again she tried to get an answer, the young woman only helping her to move her legs out of what had been her coffin. As she sat, the blood started rushing from her head and making stars appear before her eyes. She closed her eyes, trying to regain a hold of what had happened, who she was. A cup was put to her lips, and she realised her mouth, her throat, and her very being was parched.

"Where am I?" She whispered, shivering as the woman now wrapped a thin blanket around her shoulders.

"You are starting the first day of your new life. A life without sin, without the disturbances of what you were."

Screaming voices filled her distant memory, a face, the fear as the glass wall came up around her. "Jacqui? Where is she?" Panic rose in her throat, not known why, but knowing that she had to find Jacqui. Jacqui her partner. Her lover. Her life.

She stumbled off her stasis pod, falling and crashing down over the pod beneath her, and realising they were stacked against the wall like shelving. She pressed her nose against the glass of the pod, not recognising the person within it and moving on to the next nearest. She scrambled between them as fast as her sluggish limbs would allow her.

"Matilda. Calm down." The helpful woman tried to keep up with her and calm her frantic searching.

Suddenly Mattie stopped, frozen over one of the pods. She wiped at the glass, trying to be sure of what she saw beneath it.

"Not everyone survived the trip." The woman tried to comfort her, but Mattie threw her off, clamouring to open the pod.

"Get her out!" She demanded. "Jacqui! It's okay honey. Jacqui? Please be okay."

Slowly the glass of the pod pulled back, stale air hitting them in the face, as did the smell of death. Her body was not the pale sleeping bodies that filled most other pods around her, but skin taut and features sunken like that of an mummified body.

Mattie's hand wavered over her skin, afraid to touch her in case she broke but wanting to feel her in the hopes that was she saw was only a trick of her foggy mind, that Jacqui's skin would be warm to the touch, and her breath soft against her hand.

"No, don't be gone. Don't leave me. We were meant to be together, start over here." She gingerly placed her hand on Jacqui's hollow cheek, her skin dry and papery. "Nooo!" her voice echoed through the cavernous room, her grief heart wrenching as she screamed out in agony.

"Some things just weren't meant to be." The woman tried to console her, but was drowned out by wailing. "It would have been peaceful. She wouldn't have known was what happening to her as she left this life."

Mattie sobbed, ignoring the disturbed look of others around her and the attempts to console her.

*****

Russell found Mattie bent over Jacqui's pod, weeping softly to it.

"Mattie, I just heard from that little monk. Shit, I'm so sorry." He sat down besides her, putting a supportive hand on her shoulder.

She glanced up at him, eyes swollen red in a way he had never seen before. Mattie was the strong one of the four of them, and now she had crumbled before him, and her support system was gone.

"Do they know why?"

Mattie shook her head, gently stroking Jacqui's hollow cheek.

"I'm still waiting on Steve. They haven't started the reanimation cycle on his pod yet. They're doing us in lots of ten and with one hundred and fifty people to wake up, it's taking a while. Some people here have already been awake for a weak."

A woman passed by them, the doctor who had been held in the camps with them back on Earth. Russel made eye contact with her, and she came over to see what had happened.

"She died, didn't she?" she stated more than asked.

Mattie nodded, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

"I wish they had told us about this before they put us into stasis." She slowly shook her head, squatting down with them.

"What's happened? How many more have died?" Russell looked at her with surprise.

"Those Monkeys have had me looking over all the stasis pods. Neither of them have much medical knowledge, yet they were left to look after our lives on the 19 year journey." She looked at Mattie apologetically. "From what I can tell, this stasis they put us in, it doesn't freeze us at that point, but more slows our bodies down to varying degrees. Some more than others." She looked to Russ with the beard he was now sporting. "People with low level cancers, weak hearts, many men who had HIV and were on their first treatment, as well as women who were pregnant all suffered from complications during the trip."

Mattie put her hand over Jacqui's, her maternal instinct wanting to protect their twelve-week-old child she was carrying as she had been put into the deep sleep.

"Jacqui would have been a good mother. I remember her coming to see me about every little thing back in the camps." Doctor Claire reassured her.

Grief and an overwhelming sense of loss overcame Mattie, crying mournfully and inconsolably into her hands.

****

Sister Rebekah sat down with Mattie. She shoved a mug of water in her hand, encouraging her to drink it.

"Please. I don't think I have seen you have anything since you've woken up. Your body will be weak from the experience, and you've been sitting here crying. You're going to get dehydrated if you don't have something soon."

Slowly Mattie drank, realising how thirsty she had become and gulping it down, then looking for another drink. Instead Sister Rebekah put a vacuum-sealed package into her hand.

"I know it doesn't look much, but we've been told it's nutritionally complete."

She opened the wrapper, finding a large sized chocolate bar of what looked like highly compress canned pet food.

Mattie covered it back up, handing it back to Sister Rebekah.

"Please Matilda. You need to eat. These rations are the only thing we have to eat."

She turned away from her, looking at Jacqui. "We don't eat meat." She said softly.

Sister Rebekah looked at the packaging. "I don't think it has meat in it. They use to feed this to us sometimes back on Earth in the monasteries, and we were told it was okay for the Jewish and Islamic people to eat. If it wasn't kosher or halal then they would have told us."

Mattie looked at it again, sniffing it cautiously, and then putting it down by her to eat later.

"Okay, if you're not going to eat it, at least have something more to drink. I'll get you another cup, but after that you have to come out and get it for yourself." She got up, leaving Mattie along again.

"Jac, I think you got out of here the easy way. I think they have sent us here to starve to death slowly, out where no one can help us, and so they don't have to feel guilty about what they have done." She tearlessly cried, her chest aching with an overwhelming deep sadness and sense of hopelessness.