Episode 7: Not Joe's World
"I wanta mouthpiece," Joe said flatly, "or let me outta here."
Lawrence Reston-Farrell said, "You are not being constrained. There are clothes for you in the closet there."
Joe gingerly tried swinging his feet to the floor and sitting up, while the other stood watching him, strangely. He came to his feet. With the exception of a faint nausea, which brought back memories of that extreme condition he'd suffered during ... during what? He hadn't the vaguest idea of what had happened.
He was dressed in a hospital-type nightgown. He looked down at it and snorted and made his way over to the closet. It opened on his approach, the door sliding back into the wall in much the same manner as the room's door had opened for Reston-Farrell.
Joe Prantera scowled and said, "These ain't my clothes."
"No, I am afraid not."
"You think I'd be seen dead wearing this stuff? What is this, some religious crackpot hospital?"
Reston-Farrell said, "I am afraid, Mr. Salviati-Prantera, that these are the only garments available. I suggest you look out the window there."
Joe gave him a long, chill look and then stepped to the window. He couldn't figure the other. Unless he was a fruitcake. Maybe he was in some kind of pressure cooker and this was one of the fruitcakes.
He looked out, however, not on the lawns and walks of a sanitarium but upon a wide boulevard of what was obviously a populous city.
And for a moment again, Joe Prantera felt the depths of nausea.
This was not his world.
He stared for a long, long moment. The cars didn't even have wheels, he noted dully. He turned slowly and faced the older man.
Reston-Farrell said compassionately, "Try this, it's excellent cognac."
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