Prompt: A Purchase Gone Wrong

He woke up in an apartment that was not his. The bed was large, the lights were bright, but none of it was his. He could not begin to remember how he had gotten here, or why he would have stayed somewhere he didn’t recognize. The clothes that adorned his body were new, and the whole place just smelled…purified. To say it just smelled clean would ignore the weirdly chemical scent that came from ozone. 

The floor was solid, like marble uninterrupted till it met the wall where the only real difference was a shade of color. It hinted of a hospital, like a sterile room, that just had to be clean. The curtains, the only splash of color against the wall, a shade of night sky, black blue and purple all at once. As he touched them they did not give way, did not shift. As he tried to pull them aside they resisted him. He was in an apartment that was not his.

Beside the bed there was a night stand, bare and smooth. Inside it a notebook and a pencil, both brand new. He realized now his phone, his watch, his keys, his wallet were all missing, along with his clothes.
 

Across the room a dresser, with nine drawers, three by three. Atop an aquarium with a single fish. The fish had room to swim and a cave to sleep. Now that he listened close he could hear the sound of a filter like the one he had at home, soft and in the background. So common to him without listening he missed it. In each drawer were clothes; socks, boxers, pants, t-shirt, long shirt, jacket, hat, mask, gloves. All the same color, all the same material, all the same smell. He was in an apartment that was not his.

He tried the door, locked and as firm as the curtains. He tried to push the dresser, the bed, the nightstand and all resisted. Time passed and he sat on the floor, surrounded by the clothes he’d thrown around from the dresser. He watched the fish circle in the aquarium, the only thing that didn’t feel wrong.

A sound like paper sliding across itself made him turn his head. A cup now on the nightstand full of water now there. Moving to pick it up, the surface rippled. He stopped. It rippled again. He backed up and then the wall moved. From where the curtains had seemed to meet it split. Beyond the wall, a pane of glass. Beyond the glass beings taller than trees. He was not in an apartment that was not his. He was in a tank.

2025 February Flash Fiction Challenge: Day 5 - Writer's Digest