Section One
Tracy awoke, groaning softly as she ran her tongue over her broken mouth. Her teeth had been reduced to bloodied stumps. “Melllllp.” She moaned. She meant to scream for help, but her shattered jaw throbbed with the kind of root-deep agony that comes having teeth pulled by a dentist.
Her nose was clogged. Her heart thumped with fear. She opened her eyes and focused on her nose. Am I bleeding? she thought. Tracy never liked the sight of blood. She cringed even if a drop of it was on her finger-tip. Her heart skipped a few beats and a sudden chill ran through her body. She inhaled suddenly as a blaze heat struck her skull. She winced, as she waited for the pain to subside.
She inhaled again and again, but the heavy pressure of heat grew. Blood trickled down her face and into her mouth. It didn’t matter anymore. She had to figure out a way to breathe properly.
Almost there, she thought. A new scolding wave of heat grew in her skull. She forced herself to breathe through her nose for a few minutes. With one final effort she found she could breathe again.
Finally! She thought. Instead of clean, free air, her nostrils were filled with an earthy, damp stench which only enhanced her fear and confusion.
She tried moving her arms, but they were restrained to whatever she lay on.
Heat exploded through her arms as her bones shattered and punctured through her skin. She turned her head to her left, and through her blurry wince, Tracy saw her bones were sticking out of her arms.
Her v-spread legs stretched and snapped like a wishbone. Thousands of what felt like razor sharp teeth gnawed into her back. Tracy’s brittle bones cracked and shifted. She felt blood begin to run down her back.
Tracy lifted her head and looked down at her body. What was once a blonde Caucasian woman a petite was a bruised, rotting mess.
Her heart pounded faster than ever.
She was cold, and tasted metal with every pained breath. She tried to move, but the rusted metal bed-base on which she lay bounced softly and scraped its decayed springs against her skin. She tried in vain to make some kind of sense of the situation, but like her body, she too was broken. Possibly beyond repair.
A hundred, or maybe more, dim light bulbs dangled from the ceiling by long strings. They swung around in circles, occasionally clacking together, making hollow ping and tong sounds. It was as if the bulbs were alive in some way and knew what they were doing.
A massive figure, as tall and wide as a Redwood, stood with its back to Tracy across the decaying stench of the logged room. Her first thought was that this figure had covered her mouth with a chloroformed rag, or maybe she was just too drunk to remember going home with some guy. Home, to a room with one-hundred swinging bulbs, and thousands of tiny mouths that gnawed at her back.
Her blood ran cold at the thought. She screamed and tried to get free as best as she could, her bones cracking. Something combed her, and ran its long finger down her body as if she were a Barbie doll.
Tracy’s heart sank.
Her skin prickled.
Tracy whimpered.
“Don’t you move a muscle,” a soft and deep voice came from the figure at the table. “If you move, you will ruin everything. And then I will have to kill you quickly.”
She tried to speak, but could only manage a mumbled, bloodied whine.
“I pulled your teeth first.” The man at the table laughed. “Remember now, don’t move, or I’ll have to kill you quickly. And that’s never fun.”
From the figure’s direction, a soft, pained voice called out.
“Tr-Tracy, it’s—“
It was a man’s voice, one she recognized from work. Mr. John, her boss.
A hollow thud echoed through the room. The thing struck the man with something large in the head. A soft moan and gurgle followed.
Blood dripped from the direction of the massive figure.
“What—“ Her mouth burned
The figure moved slowly toward her and bent inches from her face. This thing reeked, like a dead animal. The figure lifted a long finger to its black-lined mouth. “Shhhh.” It whispered. “No talking.”
Tracy McDonald knew she wasn’t going to live to see thirty.
