Chapter 1 #2
The door had a large handle twisted around and curved into a loop instead of being smooth and straight.
I pushed against it. Nothing happened, so I pulled.
It opened with a soft shift of well-oiled air, nothing creaking or groaning, and I slipped through it as quietly as I could, closing it behind me.
Cold air kissed my bare skin, and I shivered.
At least it didn't smell like meat that was going off, and I sucked in a deep breath, trying to clear the last of the foul air from my body.
Where was I?
I was on a street with a sidewalk.
It was dark, but the sidewalk was lit by dull bulbs that flickered along it.
Buildings loomed around me, the tallest of them maybe four stories tall.
I didn’t stop to look around. I just ran, jogging down the street, the ground biting cold against my bare feet, my slippery arms crossed over my breasts in an attempt to keep my flesh from bouncing.
I turned a corner.
There was a sharp stab of pain as something cut into the bottom of my foot, and I cried out, stopping to lift my foot.
I heard a door slam open behind me, back the way I’d come, and a muted bark from one of the hyenas, as if it wanted to shout but was trying not to attract attention. They finally noticed I'd slipped away.
My foot didn't matter. The cold didn't matter. My nudity didn't matter. Where I was didn't matter.
The only thing that mattered was getting away.
I ran, my legs stretching as I flew down the sidewalk, ignoring the stabbing pain in my feet, a small thought of wonder fluttering through my mind as I observed myself from the outside.
A sharp bark rang out behind me. They'd spotted me.
I always thought I'd be the type to just give up, and here I was, running on wounded feet, lost and alone and without hope.
I didn't know where I was, what those monsters were, or how I got there, and none of that was impacting me.
It was like there was a shield around my mind, keeping out the things that normally would panic or frighten me.
The sheer necessity of survival was what pushed all of that to the side.
I'd never done any activity that had put me in that mental state before, so I didn't know, and for a pure moment, I was utterly shocked and delighted at what I was capable of.
My entire sense of self-worth shifted as I saw myself for who I never knew I could be.
This was terrifying and yet...
I had wanted this, wished for this. I had spent nights lying awake, wishing to be transported to another world, to another life where I could see things beyond the realm of my imagination, where I could make a name for myself as a designer, where no one had gone before.
Pain and fear, mixed together, a chemical reaction that bubbled up.
I didn't want to die, but if I survived this, nothing could stop me.
I knew that now. All my thoughts about who I was, the kind of person I would be if the shit hit the fan, none of that could hold me back.
Life was too fragile for me to be the one holding me back.
I let out an exhilarated laugh, joy, fear, and pain, and self-realization all smashing together.
The monsters cackled behind me in response.
All I had to do was survive this.
The calmness settled back in, and I focused.
Up ahead, there was an overpass, and on the other side, I could see the bottom of some stairs leading up to the right. There were no cars on this road; maybe there would be something up there, someone to see me, someone to stop and ask if I needed help.
One of the hyenas called out behind me, a crooning tone, as if they were trying to sound non-threatening, but I didn’t stop my headlong hurtle.
They weren't going to trick me so easily.
If they were men, they would have been telling me that it was okay, that they weren't going to hurt me, but that would be a lie.
The underpass still had lights, so I could see the sidewalk as I ran, catching the small details.
There was an empty bottle of something against the side, a piece of papery trash half-stuck to the ground by its damp edges, a rancid smell of sharp ammonia, like someone had pissed against a wall.
There was a small indent on the right side of the sidewalk, with a tiny handrail separating it from the path I ran on, every step an agony.
It looked like a sidewalk for dolls, but it couldn't be.
I reached the other side of the underpass just as someone huge stepped off the stairs, directly into my path. I tried to stop, but there was still goo dripping from my body and blood coating my feet, and instead I slid, losing my balance as I careened into a huge, warm body.
Massive hands gripped my shoulders, steadying me.
I looked up.
Looking down at me was the face of another predator, but a more familiar-looking one.
He looked like the kind of elf who should have lived underground, whispering prayers to a goddess of death, if such creatures were seven feet tall and carved from muscle.
Unlike the other aliens, he had only two eyes and two arms, yet nothing about him felt safe.
He was wearing a black leather jacket over a white shirt, now smudged with damp from the coating of goo on my skin.
A mane of ice-white dreadlocked hair was pulled back from his face in a high ponytail, the edges glowing lightly and illuminating the dark rock-grey purple-tinted hue of his skin.
There was a lethal quality to his unearthly beauty, like his very features had been sharpened on a whetstone so they could better slice through fabric.
His closed lips passed for human, but an image of the hyena's sharp teeth burst into my mind, and I focused on them, waiting to see if his were the same.
Then one of his ears moved, yanking my gaze away.
One of his ears angled toward me, the other swiveling past my shoulder as if tracking prey.
They looked like long elf ears, but he could move them like a cat.
I flicked a glance at them before meeting his eyes again.
Green, unblinking, sharp as cut glass, yet edged with a strange softness that almost resembled concern.
More importantly, he was humanoid, not some eldritch leviathan rising from the depths to snatch me from its minions.
He spoke, voice low and measured, the same harsh tones as the hyenas, but with a gentler touch, but the sound barely registered once his lips parted.
All I could see were his teeth, rows of them, white and lethal, with two elongated canines on top and bottom, the thick sharpness of them screaming predator without a shadow of a doubt.
Sharp teeth were for eating meat, and his handsomeness collided with the danger held between his lips.
This was the type of monster that strolled into nightmares and turned them into wet dreams.
I stiffened, lifting my arms in between us, ready to try to push my way free from his grasp.
But I didn't have to.
He let go of my shoulders.
I looked back up to his eyes to see that he was looking down at my body.
My naked body.
His face lightened, his grey skin shifting to softer purple tones as he suddenly averted his eyes, looking over at the street as he shrugged off his black jacket.
He whipped it out, wrapping it around me and shutting the front, which clicked together like it had magnets along the edge.
It was soft on the inside, but as I slid my arms into it, I realized the outside of the jacket was plasticky.
It wasn’t made out of leather, but some sort of artificial material.
Normally, I wouldn't care what it was made out of, but my mind kept going back to that body hanging in the warehouse, the tatters of a dress draped over a form hung up to be butchered and eaten as meat.
The warmth of his jacket and its rich scent surrounded me, pulling my mind back and protecting me from the cool air and the cruel eyes of those who pursued me.
I could feel rough stitches on the back, halfway down, evenly spaced, as if vents for the lower back had been stitched together with an unpracticed hand.
There was a harsh rumble of words behind me.
I looked back over my shoulder to see the four-eyed hyena monsters standing there.
They were all baring their teeth at Mister Tall, Dark, and Blushing and gesturing at me as they snapped out the guttural tones of their language.
I looked back at the tall antagonist from my dreams, now only dressed in a form-fitting t-shirt that showed the cut muscles of his arms, a darker color on his triceps so that the subtly lighter skin of his biceps stood out even more.
I had a moment to take in the power of his muscles before I realized he was talking to me again.
He said something as he looked back down at me, and then pointed past me to the hyenas.
My eyes focused on his fingers, long and articulated, looking just like mine except for the dark, sharp talons that extended from his fingertips.
He had claws.
The claws, the teeth, they were both signs of a predator, but he had demonstrated something important in the first few moments of us meeting.
He let go of me when I tensed, responding to the no of my body without me needing to know his language to say it for his ears.
Not only that, he gave me his jacket the moment he noticed I was exposed and shivering.
This was an easy choice.