1: We Never Ask

I opened my eyes to the blanket of darkness and deafening silence of night, listening for any signs of noise. The recent string of break-ins in the area were keeping me on my toes, maybe even making me paranoid. I reached a hand under the bed and grabbed the handgun in the small cubby I had built underneath the frame of the bed. I paused when I heard a noise, a loud slam against my bedroom door, but quickly I reacted by pointing the gun towards the door, aka the giant fucking monster staring at me from where there used to be a door.

“Shit!” I shot, aiming for its head, when it disappeared in a flash of light. I shivered when I felt something breathing down my neck in the same instant. I leapt from bed, trying to get away, when two clawed hands grabbed my ankles and pulled me backwards. I fell forwards, slamming my head into the hardwood floor as I was dragged towards my attacker. Stunned, I was unable to fight back as the creature pulled me into its warm, wet embrace. I felt whatever liquid it was covered in slowly conform to my body as it pulled me closer, and nearly screamed as the liquid moved up my body and into any open space, trapping me in an inescapable cocoon.

I fought back, of course, firing every round I had into the thing’s gut, to no avail. It continued to coat me until I couldn’t move a single muscle, before flinging me backwards through my dresser and into the wall behind it. The cocoon helped cushion the blow, but it didn't mute the pain, and I bit back a cry of agony as fragments of the dresser were forced through my back. I fell forwards to the floor, only to sink through and fall into the room below, normally the living room… But now a torture chamber that looked like something from the SAW movies.

I fell perfectly on some sort of stretcher, my arms and legs being clamped down by some sort of cuffs. I noticed that, thankfully, the creature didn’t appear, and the wooden shards that had occupied my back previously were gone. Of course, I was in the perfect position to be tortured so I didn’t have the time to be happy about it.

I waited, time passing slower than I had ever seen, for it to begin… But it never came. Instead, the stretcher morphed into my bed, and the room into my old bedroom, from when I was a teenager. I noticed that the cuffs changed into rope, and I was tied to the bed by the bedposts.

Then my sister walked in, wearing something nobody wants to see their big sister wearing. I’ll just say there was a lot of leather, and it was pretty tight fitting.

“Oh hey little brother, I didn’t think you’d be ready to go again so soon.” What? “Oh, but if you insist little brother, I can’t say no to you!” She smiled oddly, and with a crazed look in her eyes she began to undo (unstrap, unchain, unzip) her leather outfit. I tried to cry out, to tell her to stop, but I found in my mouth was a ball gag.

It was happening all over again.

Then she pulled off her outfit, and I was thankful there was a gag in my mouth or I may have puked… The parts of her body previously covered in clothes (as loose a definition as those fit) were burnt, bloody, bruised and beaten. There were no traces of the body ever belonging to a human, save the basic shape. Then the parts that still looked human changed, forming into the creature I had fought before. Her face contorted, stretching forward like a horse’s, but her teeth became more like a mix between a shark and a jaguar. Her arms stretched longer than should have been possible, the fingers curling into large, sharp talons that she drove into my legs.

“Why didn’t you try to save me, why didn’t you let me drive the car? Don’t you want to have any more fun!?” She then became an it, and pounced on my defenseless form.

I woke the fuck up, covered in sweat despite cold wind blowing against my skin. Wait, why is there cold air in my room? Why is there wind in my room either, I didn’t open my windows. As it turns out, half of your house being torn to shreds tends to solve the wind blockage problem.

*--^--*

“Of all the ways to wake up…” I muttered, rolling off the bed and falling to the floor with a loud thud. A part of me hadn’t realized part of my bedroom was gone, and I was going through my normal waking up routine. A few moments later, however, a cold breeze blew against my back and I was done waking up, and I started to freak out.

I looked at the lack of a wall across from the bed, and the destroyed furniture that was perched precariously on the edge, and cried out “What is this?!” I pounded the floor with a fist, muttering, “I don’t like change.” I then looked to my right and saw, in my cubby, my handgun and the three clips I left with it. As a precaution, (if there ever was a time for it) I grabbed it, giving it a once over before trying to recover any clothes from the mess. I did so quickly, pulling on a blue shirt and jeans, as well as recovering my knife and my sunglasses.

I jumped when I heard something hit the floor behind me, and quickly turned to face it. It was a fearsome wallet, which had been on the edge of the remnants of my dresser. The wind must have knocked it down, or something.

“Damn, I could have died.” I breathed sarcastically, forcing myself to take a moment to calm myself before retrieving the leather storage device. I contemplated taking it for a moment, idly flipping through the folds as I checked for anything important. Glancing out the hole in my room and seeing only open fields ahead, I decided to bring my driver’s license. It was that piece of plastic that gave you a feeling of freedom when you got it, the key to a large world you couldn’t fathom…

And it was always one of the worse pictures you took for some reason. I glanced at the man in the picture, a photo I had taken not two weeks ago. My hair hadn’t grown past my shoulders; my eyes were a deep blue that reminded me of—

No, I can’t think of that now. Focus on the important stuff, worry about that later. I shook my head, running a hand through my hair as I stared at the plastic rectangle. My name was in bold black letters next to my picture.

My name is Cian Cleary; I’m 22 years old from Waterford, Ireland. My parents were from Ireland as well, both of them. You could probably hear it in my voice, despite having moved to Minnesota when I was eleven. My sister, Mary, was fifteen then…

I realized I had been standing in the middle of my room for several minutes and almost laughed at my carelessness, when something behind me saved me the trouble. I kicked backwards, pushing myself off whatever had laughed and rolling forwards, towards my now closed bedroom door.

I’m really out of it, huh? I turned to face the source of the laugh and saw only what looked like a mix between a bug and a small horse. Its legs were about as long, but thicker and with no apparent joints. They were littered with holes though, which made me wonder how they could even walk. It had wings too small to fly, yet it did so with ease, lifting carefully into the air, so it was eye level with me. Its face was the strangest though, as from different angles it seemed to be shaped differently, almost like it wasn’t always the same shape. It seemed to have a strange hybrid mix between a human and a horse’s face though, with bright glowing purple eyes that seemed to stare into my mind.

I watched the creature uneasily, gun trained on its forehead, under the twisted horn that jutted from its head, as the said appendage began to glow a faint lavender color.

“H-Hey!” It paused, its eyes shifting slightly in brightness for a moment. “Stop that! Whatever you’re doing, or I’ll shoot you.” I stated with authority in my voice. It, however, didn’t seem to believe me, and it continued doing whatever it was that it was doing. “Do you speak English?” It paused again, but didn’t wait as long as before. “ENGLISH MOTHERFUCKER, DO YOU SPEAK IT?”

‘I no longer speak, since my voice no longer has a weight to carry. I do, however, understand the language you are speaking. It is common Equestrian, is it not?’ A woman’s voice rang out in my head, reverberating against the walls, which I apparently had, of my mind. I shook my head, when another force pounded against them, smashing a hole through the barrier and into my thoughts.

I couldn’t form a rebuttal as all coherent thought left me, and I took to moaning in pain with my head in my hands. Another force pushed against me as the creature approached my unmoving form, and it was then I realized whatever it was trying to do, I had to stop it.

When it got within stabbing range, I drew my knife. The moment its horn met my forehead, I struck, stabbing the metal through the underside of its skull, below the chin. At the same moment, I heard the voice in my head scream, as memories flooded into my unexpected mind. Memories of darkness, of… Of…

Something I couldn’t remember. I tried to focus on the memory, but it was gone before I could figure it out. So was the voice, I noticed upon searching for the lost memories. One memory was not lost, a memory I wish had been.

The memory of death, of a knife being pushed under my chin as my life was quickly snuffed out, it was a memory I wasn’t ready to relive.