Zoo

Zoo

The Enclosure
Chronicles

Volume 1

Tara Elizabeth

Zoo

Tara Elizabeth

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2013 Tara Elizabeth

Cover Art by LMS Designs

indieebookcoversbylmsdesigns.wordpress.com

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to
real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by
the author. The author holds exclusive rights to this work.
Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

Revised Edition: May 2013

Also by Tara Elizabeth:

Exalted

Coming Soon:
DENOUNCED (EXALTED: Book 2)

Courage does not always roar.

Sometimes courage is the quiet voice

at the end of the day saying,

“I will try again tomorrow.”

- Mary Anne Radmacher

THE

PAST

BEFORE THE ZOO

Before dying, being imprisoned in a human
zoo, falling in love, being held captive by a King, and witnessing
a rebellion, I was living a pretty regular life. Like every senior,
high school was totally sucking the life out of me. I was too busy
studying than actually having a life. Fortunately, I only had three
months left before graduation. I planned on going away to college.
I applied to eight out-of-state universities, even one as far away
as Hawaii. I couldn’t wait to get away. It wasn’t that I had a bad
life or that I was ungrateful, I just wanted to see what else was
out there. I wanted to discover who I really was, away from
everything I had ever known.

But I never made it to
graduation, because I died. I died from two letters.
Two!

Yep, that’s right. I was one of the unlucky
ones that actually got into a car accident while texting.
Typical.

I was average in every way including how I
died.

This is how it happened . . .

It was a Saturday afternoon around 5:45 pm.
I was on my way to my friend Avery’s house to tutor her. And yes, I
was actually going to tutor her. I didn’t lie to my parents so I
could run off to a party like a “normal” senior. I know it’s
shocking, but like I said, I didn’t have much of a life outside of
school. Plus, physics was kicking Avery’s ass in a major way. I
wanted to help her.

She sent me a text, asking me to pick up
some fast food on the way there. “burgers fries sodas. biatch!” I
took my eyes off the road long enough to type “OK.” That’s all it
took.

Screech . . . Smack!

I had drifted to the right, hopped the curb,
and had an impromptu meeting with a telephone pole (whose name I
apparently missed).

The next thing I knew, I was upside down and
sort of twisted and wedged between the caved in roof and the
smashed dashboard. I kept slipping in and out of consciousness.
Each time I woke up, I heard gasping and gurgling. I realized the
sounds were coming from me as blood poured from my mouth into my
nose. Before my nostrils completely filled with the warm liquid, I
could tell that it smelled like pennies, and the air smelled like
gasoline.

There were people screaming, and the
emergency vehicles’ sirens were most probably wailing, but it was
all muffled to me. My own struggling was the loudest of all the
sounds.

Black.

Gasping.

Gurgling.

Blood on my favorite designer purse, which
was next to my face, the contents missing. That was a stain that
was never going to come out, and it took me forever to earn the
money to buy it.

I didn’t feel any pain, or maybe the pain
was so great that my mind didn’t let me experience it. My mind
didn’t really do much of anything. I didn’t even see my short life
pass in a movie-like montage. What a rip off.

Black.

Black.

Black.

I gained consciousness one more time, but
that time I was no longer dangling from a seatbelt in a pulverized
Honda. I was sitting in a clear, plastic chair that was hovering
over an all white floor. It was positioned across from a desk.
Behind the desk was a man wearing clothes that belonged in an old
black and white detective movie.

What is going on?
I thought to myself.

THE INTERVIEW AND WELCOME

I decided to call the man behind the
floating desk “Dick”, not only because of his lack of compassion
and answers, but because he was dressed like Dick Tracy. My Dad
loved Dick Tracy movies. They weren’t terrible, but I had a hard
time watching anything without color.

Dick casually leaned back in his clear,
legless chair and folded his arms across his broad chest. He eyed
me for several seconds before taking out a tiny notepad and pen
from inside his camel colored trench-coat pocket. That seemed
strange to me since the hovering desk and chair seemed so
futuristic, but I figured his note-taking accessory went with the
outfit.

“
Name?” he
asked.

“
Am I dead?” I asked in
return.

“
Name?” he asked
again.

“
Where am I?”

“
Answer the
question.”

“
Emma David. D-A-V-I-D.” I
spelled my last name out for him because it’s pronounced
differently than how it’s said aloud. The correct pronunciation is
Daa-veed. I’m not sure why I went through the trouble of spelling
it out for him. I guess I was just so used to doing it in my past
life. Telemarketers always got it wrong.

Dick scribbled in his infant sized notepad.
“Date of birth?” he asked next.

“
May 28, 1995.” I
frantically looked around the empty, white room, searching for a
way out. “Seriously, where am I?”

There’s no door!

“
You are at the People’s
Past Anthropological Center.” Then, he cleared his throat and
turned back to his scribbles without any further explanation. “Do
you remember dying and how you came to be that way?”

“
Car accident,” I answered
him.
Car accident
. . . I brought my hands up to my face to feel for scars or
some kind of proof that the accident had actually occurred. My skin
was smooth and perhaps even a little healthier. My body, arms, and
legs all seemed to be fine as well. “Impossible,” I whispered to
myself.

After I finished checking myself out, Dick
said, “Got you all patched up. Good as new.” He leaned forward over
the clear desk and tapped his finger on the smooth surface. An
image popped up like it would on a computer screen. With a flick of
his finger, he spun it around so I could see it.

It was a newspaper article with my
photograph and a headline that read, “Teen Girl Dies While Texting
and Driving.” I figured they had to have pulled my phone records to
know that. There was also a picture of my car. It was upside down
and wrapped around a telephone pole.

At that moment, all I could think about was
my mother and father, and how much I wanted to be at home with
them. “But I’m alive!” I cried out. “Bring me home! Why am I in
this room with you?” My voice trembled from the desperation and
fear that coursed through my body. What was happening was
unimaginable, and I wasn’t even sure what that was.

“
You would have died in
your time. We saved you. Healed you. You will have a new life now.”
Dick spewed a rehearsed line of crap to me. He looked at me with a
face full of annoyance.

“
In your time . . .” I
repeated back to him, obviously confused.

Dick ignored my comment. “Watch this.” He
tapped the desk again and a video popped up on the flat
surface.

A woman dressed in a 1920’s gold flapper
dress appeared on the screen, standing in front of what appeared to
be a zoo. She had short, black hair that was cut into a flirty bob
and bright red lipstick that exaggerated her ridiculous smile. Her
movements and gestures were comically exaggerated as well.

The female flapper said with a wave and a
flick of her heel, “Welcome to the People’s Past Anthropological
Center!”

I looked up at Dick who was flipping through
his notepad, neither paying attention to me nor the video.

The woman on the screen cheerfully continued
on, “You have been chosen and saved to be part of an exhibit. We
have a wide variety of exhibits with people of varying ages from
many different times. Our park was the first of its kind and one of
the largest in the area. It’s visited by hundreds of people
everyday.”

Images of families pointing at people under
glass domes zoomed in and out behind the spokeswoman. Everyone
looked happy and amazed by the silly humans.

My stomach started to clench, and my heart
pounded as my situation unfolded. The words “zoo”, “prisoner”, and
“captive” flashed through my mind. Well, more like slapped me in
the face.

“
Scientists worked for
many years to discover the secrets of time travel. In 2216 they
were finally successful, but the Global Government deemed it
illegal. The effects of one person going to the past or future
could be extremely damaging. But we fought hard to be able to use
this amazing, scientific discovery for good. Eventually an
amendment was made, allowing us to save people that were otherwise
going to die without our intervention. The amendment also required
that these individuals not be allowed to directly interact with the
present day public, as it could alter our futures. So we created
The People’s Past Anthropological Center, and from it many more
Centers have been built.” She smiled again, clearly pleased with
her speech.

The woman opened her arms wide and then
pointed at the camera. “We are your future and you are our past.
Let’s learn from each other.” Then she ended her speech with a
little kiss on the palm of her hand that she blew toward the
camera.

I wanted to barf.
Was that for real?

“
I don’t understand,” I
pled with him. “Why can’t I just go home? Where are my parents?
What year is this?” I reverted back to being a 5 year old and
started to cry. By that point, my arms and legs were visibly
trembling and snot was trickling out of my nostrils.

“
The year is 2282. We will
be transferring you to your new enclosure momentarily. Under no
circumstances are you to interact with the public. You are to
behave, follow orders should there be any, get along with your
enclosure-mate, and even try to be a little entertaining for the
public. If you choose not to heed my warnings, there will be
consequences. Now, please sit back in your seat so we can prepare
you for the move.”

Dick was a total dick.

I threw myself out of the hovering chair and
across the surface of the desk toward him. Dick’s chair shifted to
the right, and I slid right off the other side of the desk and onto
the floor with a loud smack. I scrambled to my feet and beat my
fists against the empty walls, searching for a way out. There were
no creases in the walls or buttons or anything, but I kept pounding
away.

That was my first unsuccessful attempt to
flee.

Eventually, I caved and sat in the chair,
which unexpectedly pricked my arm and knocked me out with some sort
of sedative.

DAY ONE – THE ENCLOSURE

When I woke up, I saw green, lots and lots
of green. There were green plants, green trees, and green moss
covered rocks. Underneath me was a cushion of green grass. I heard
rushing water coming from somewhere nearby, but the pounding in my
head dulled the pleasant sound. They drugged me, and my body did
not like whatever they gave me. I stayed stretched out on the soft
carpet of grass, trying to adjust to my surroundings.

“
Hi there! About time you
woke up,” a breezy, female voice chirped.

I slowly rolled my head in the direction of
the voice. A girl about my age was sitting on a boulder staring at
me. Her blonde hair was wild, like she took the time to tease it
but used a twig to do it. Her eyes were a cool blue like a clear
sky. Her dress was plain. It was made from what looked like burlap
or some other horrible fabric (if you could even call it fabric).
It looked completely out of place on her.

I was thinking about how awful it would be
to wear something like that while I was scratching at my own skin.
And sure enough, I had the same horrible fabric on. I was so
mortified. I was wearing a brown sack that came to about mid-thigh,
and when I checked, I discovered that I also had on tiny,
bikini-cut panties. I was more of a boy short kind of girl.