300 for 30: Day 3

This is meant for my expansion of The Raw Ghosts of Thailand, book 6 in the Laconia series, and as it originally stood by far the shortest. I have since come up with some plot developments that would lengthen it but haven't gotten past Ferdinand being put in solitary confinement by a bunch of misguided scientists studying kidnapped vampires. Here he finally wakes up with company. Note that Ferdinand found out less than three days ago that his best friend and housemate, Dr. Nat Silver, has been in unrequited love with him for several years.

Light, light, bright light...too bright...but at least his eyes were working. Ferdinand had started to think he would never see anything again. His head hurt.

“Sometimes I really hate you,” he heard a familiar voice say. Nat?

Cupping his hands around his eyes made it possible for him to get a better picture of his surroundings. They were in a little room about the size of his bedroom closet at home, cement walls and slick, wet linoleum floor, with a cracked squat toilet, a roll of paper, and a faucet that was ticking out of the wall about five feet up, facing the wooden door. Ferdinand had been propped up in a corner like a stuffed animal missing some of its filling. He realized he was still naked, and Nat was in the room too.

“Relax, I’m still a doctor. And they gave me your clothes to give to you.” Nat crouched and held out the neatly folded pile. “I had to check for concussion. They stitched you up but I don’t trust them.”

As he took the bundle Ferdinand must have been making faces, because Nat rolled his bloodshot eyes - already quite red in the irises to begin with - and turned his back to give Ferdinand some privacy.

“Sally, Taylor, and Rivki are just outside. We’re in a different cell now, but there’s the bathroom for Taylor, in a suite if you could call it that, and a pair of mattresses at least. They’ve separated us out. Taylor gets food but we don’t.”

With a throat that felt like it was coated in that chunky kosher salt, Ferdinand croaked, “Why?”

“I’m surprised you need to ask, bright lad like you, unless you gave yourself permanent brain damage with your idiocy.” Nat’s voice turned to venom for a moment, then softened again. “Are you dressed yet? You should lie down.”

“Nearly.”