Fuck this!Too terrified to even curse out loud, I toss my phone back into the bag, yank my feet free of the gloop, and take off running.
Or at least, I try. Stumbling is a more accurate description as I drag my heels through the mud, doing a weird reverse kind of Moonwalk, my heart crashing against my ribcage.
It’s getting darker and darker, as if a giant, silent fist is closing around me. I’m not making any forward progress. But what will happen if I stop fighting?
My purse still in one hand, my shoes in the other, I claw the thickening air, slipping and sliding in the general direction of home. My body is numb. The long grass slashes at my bare legs, the wind whips through my hair—but I feel nothing. Reality is slipping away, leaving only this suffocating black nothingness, enveloping me in a dark, dense fog.
I can’t escape.
My last coherent thought, as I start turning in squelchy circles, my chest heaving in terror, is:what the actual capital fuck is happening to me?
Then… nothing.
TWO
Emma
Shards of glassare piercing my skull. I squeeze my eyes shut against the pain. I draw in a deep breath and splutter. The air is like mud—thick, viscous, stinking. Like I fell asleep in a dumpster—but worse.
Where in the name of coffee am I?
With extreme reluctance, purposefully taking shallower breaths and trying to ignore the crackling headache, I lift my eyelids.
I’m dreaming—well, having a nightmare. Hallucinating, that’s it. There’s no way this is reality.
It can’t be.
I’m in a cage. An actual cage. Gloomy light reflects off the bars. The metal mesh under me cuts into my bare butt. I shift, and more spikes of pain stab my head. My eyes water as I press a hand to my forehead and whimper.
The stench of this strange place is like a wretched, damp cloth covering my face. I wave my hand in front of my nose, my movements slow. My arms ache like I’ve done a hundred push-ups. My stomach doesn’t feel too great either. Remembering I always have some meds in my bag, I look for it. It’s nowhere to be seen. Nor are my shoes. I must have lost both on the way here. Fuck.
I grasp the bars, gagging and panting. And freeze.
I’m not alone. Surrounding me are forms that could never be called human beings. Creatures? Aliens? Figments of my imagination, in any case. They’re grunting to one another in a language I couldn’t hope to pronounce, let alone understand, and I press a trembling hand to my mouth to stifle the scream that’s threatening to burst from me.
This isn’t happening. I’m just having a terrible, vivid nightmare. In a minute, I’ll wake up and find myself in my soft, fluffy bed.
After all, this is real life. There’s no way I’m really in a cage, apparently being guarded by a half dozen things that look like what you’d get if King Kong had mated with a T-rex.
Well over eight feet tall, they have huge bodies and glistening, flat snouts. Thick black fur covers their torsos and arms, while their lower halves look more… lizardly, with scales and thick, long, blunt tails. Their arms are quite short, but their fingers are tipped with claws.
I’ve never seen anything so terrifying. Not even on a movie screen.
I suck in another deep breath, and let out a cough-splutter-whimper. Damn this weird alien air. There’s a fist around my lungs, squeezing. I can’t get enough oxygen.
Great. I’m going to suffocate in a bizarre nightmare.
The creatures must have heard my noise. As one, they all turn their heads to regard me, cocking them to the side like birds.
I stare back. My imagination is pretty impressive if it can come up with so much detail in a dream. The creatures move with fluid grace, tails twitching behind them.
One of them grunts something to another. The second one heads to a table in the corner and returns holding, joy of joys, an enormous syringe.
I hate needles. Loathe and detest them. And that’s when they’re being administered by a trained, professional human in a medical setting for my own health—not when a supersize one is being brandished at me by a horrifying alien creature while I’m trapped in a cage.
My panic—already at a level previously unknown to me—kicks up another notch.
“No!” I scream, rattling the bars of the cage in a pathetic attempt to… do what, exactly? Bend them or rip them out so I can escape? Scare these huge creatures? “No, please don’t stick that in me, please… I’ll do anything… I just want to go home.”
