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BENNETT
I knew I had royally fucked up from the moment I blinked my eyes open, hazy and disoriented, my head swimming as though I’d been spun in circles and dropped without warning. The air around me felt heavy, stifling, carrying a faint antiseptic tang that clung to the back of my throat. My vision swam, the world tilting in and out of focus until shapes slowly resolved into the dim outline of a room I didn’t recognize.
The last clear memory I had was of stumbling through the mountains somewhere in Colorado, the kind of wild, unforgiving terrain where one wrong step could leave you broken and frozen in a ditch before dawn—even in the middle of July. The air had carried a biting chill, raw and merciless, and the darkness had pressed in on all sides, suffocating and absolute. Above me, the stars had been smothered by a ceiling of low, shifting clouds, leaving only shadows and the faint outline of jagged peaks to guide me. The wind had howled down the slopes like a living thing, cutting straight through to the bone no matter how tightly I wrapped my arms around myself. My fingers had gone stiff and useless, my breath fragile and brittle as it cracked in the air, and I’d known with a sinking certainty that I couldn’t last much longer out there.
So where the hell was I now?
If I’d been rescued, then maybe I was lying in some tiny ER on the outskirts of Denver—or at least in some ranger station made to patch up idiots like me. But another, darker possibility lodged itself in my head: maybe I was dead. The thought carried a strange weight, like an echo I couldn’t shake. Still, if that were true, if this really was the afterlife, then it seemed odd that I would wake up with my tongue sandpaper-dry, a desperate thirst clawing its way down my throat.
Dead people didn’t get thirsty. Did they?
In an effort to take in my surroundings, I tried to roll into a sitting position, straining to lift myself off my back. The motion was clumsy, my limbs sluggish, but before I could make it upright, something jerked hard against my neck. Pain shot through me, sharp and immediate, and a ragged wheeze escaped my chapped, cracking lips before I could stop it.
The sudden clang of metal rang in my ears, far too loud in the stillness, and my hands flew to my throat on pure instinct. My fingertips brushed against cold iron, unyielding and thick, and a soft, broken whimper crawled out of my throat before I even realized I’d made a sound. There it was: a collar, heavy and solid, locked tight around my neck.
A short length of chain—no more than a three or four feet—trailed from the collar to an eyelet hammered into the wall just above the floor. My stomach turned as I wrapped trembling fingers around the links and pulled with everything I had, even knowing the effort was useless. The chain held fast, immovable, the tension reverberating into my arms until my muscles gave out.
I let it fall from my hands, my gaze dragging to the wall itself. It had the thickness and stubbornness of concrete, but the surface wasn’t quite right—smooth in places, strangely seamless, with none of the porous grit or jagged edges I expected. Whatever it was, it wasn’t natural stone. And whatever this place was, it wasn’t anywhere I was meant to be.
Definitely not a hospital. Which meant—dead then. I had to be. There was no other way to rationalize being chained to a wall like some medieval prisoner.
My mother—though I hardly considered her worthy of the title anymore—had finally been right, after all. I had gone to hell. Not for murder, not for treason, not for anything grand or headline-worthy, but for the petty, ordinary sins she’d warned me about since childhood. For the stack of dog-eared porno mags I thought I’d hidden well enough under my mattress. Or maybe it was for the sex before marriage, the shots of cheap liquor, the smokes bummed off strangers behind gas stations. Take your pick. Any one of them—or the sum total of twenty-five reckless years—apparently added up to eternal damnation.
The thought barely had time to settle before a sudden buzzing chirp exploded from somewhere above my head. The sound was sharp and insectile, rattling in my skull, and then—pain. White-hot, blinding pain. A burning jab seared into my side, followed by a surge of electricity that tore through every nerve ending. My fingers and toes lit up like they’d been set on fire, and a strangled cry ripped itself from my throat.
I dropped the chain without thinking, rolling instinctively away from whatever had struck me. The collar yanked tight, the too-short tether biting into my windpipe as it wrenched me to a stop. Stars burst across my vision, and for one terrible second I thought I might actually choke myself to death before I even knew what had attacked me.
And then I saw it.
Towering above me was the ugliest monster I had ever had the displeasure of dreaming up, a grotesque silhouette that eclipsed the dim light. Too tall, too wrong, with a shape that my mind scrabbled to make sense of.
Because that’s what this had to be, right? A dream. A nightmare. Proof that I hadn’t survived the mountain, that I’d finally crossed over. I had gone to hell, and this thing was waiting for me to show me the way into its depths.
Yet as I stared up at the thing looming over me—a four-foot-tall, lizard-skinned blimp of a nightmare with six beady, lightless eyes—I knew this was far too vivid to be something I’d conjured in my own head. Its greyish-purple hide looked leathery and diseased, pocked with welts that oozed a sluggish, greyish fluid, each drip leaving a sour tang in the air.
Where a nose should have been was nothing but emptiness, a flat stretch of skin, and in the center of its face yawned what I could only assume was a mouth. It ran vertically, splitting the head from brow to chin, opening and closing with a wet, sucking sound like a fish gasping at the surface. Inside, rows upon rows of needle-like teeth flexed in and out, grinding against each other with every shuddering breath it took.
Its body made even less sense, a grotesque patchwork of wrong parts. The upper half looked as though an orangutan had been twisted inside out, long arms dangling low enough for its clawed, four-fingered hands to rake the ground. Its torso sagged into a swollen potbelly, heavy and distended, the skin stretched taut and mottled. Below that, it stood on a pair of spindly birdlike legs, each ending in three hooked toes that dug into the floor with a click, click, click as it shifted its weight.
It shouldn’t have been able to exist, but there it was—breathing, dripping, watching me.
I shuddered as another harsh, buzzing chirp rattled from the leathery thing’s vertical mouth, the sound vibrating in my teeth. From an open orifice along its arm, that grey, viscous substance dripped steadily, each drop landing on the ground with a wet spat that made my stomach turn. In its other hand, four clawed fingers curled around a long black rod, sleek and alien, tipped with two prongs at one end and a trigger at the other.
Before I could brace myself, the creature jabbed the prongs at me again. White-hot pain jolted through my body, tearing a strangled cry from my raw throat. Then its grip shifted. The monster seized the chain attached to my collar and yanked with such brutal force that I was certain my neck had snapped. A choked scream clawed out of me as the monkey-chicken abomination detached the chain from the wall’s eyelet. Without hesitation, it lifted me by the collar, the edges of cold metal biting mercilessly into my skin, and dragged me out of the room as though I weighed nothing.
I thrashed, kicking and clawing at the air, every flail useless. The collar cut deeper each time I fought, choking me with every tug. My vision blurred, tears streaking hot down my face, as the hallway passed in a smear of shadows and unrecognizable shapes.
Then the corridor opened into a much larger chamber.
My eyes widened, the tears forgotten as dread swallowed me whole. Lined up against the far wall were creatures—dozens of them—each bound by the same chain threaded through the collars at their throats. They stood in grim, silent submission, shackled in a grotesque parade.
And they weren’t like me.
Some bore gills that pulsed faintly, others wings that drooped heavy and useless at their sides. There were claws sharper than knives, scales glistened, and some even had skin that looked like an alligator, long tails that twitched restlessly, and tentacles that writhed weakly against the stone floor. Some bodies were painted in colors so unnatural they hurt to look at; others were all sharp angles and blades, their very forms radiating violence.
But none of them looked at me. Not a single one lifted their head. They stood with faces bowed, eyes downcast, cowed into submission as if even daring to glance sideways was too dangerous.
And in that instant, I realized with a sick twist in my gut: I wasn’t special. I was just the newest addition to the collection.
Once I was shoved into place along the wall, the chain clinking as it was threaded through my collar, more of the chicken-monkey things descended on us. They moved with brutish efficiency, yanking at collars and jerking heads forward, stripping every captive of whatever semblance of clothes or belongings they had left. It was a process—systematic, humiliating, mechanical.
When one of them turned its six black eyes on me, my stomach dropped. I lashed out before I could think better of it, clawing at leathery skin, kicking, spitting, screaming as it reached for my shirt. My voice cracked with fury and fear, but the creature didn’t even flinch. Its four-fingered hand gripped that black rod with the prongs at the end, and one squeeze of the trigger was all it took.
The pain was instant and absolute.
A jolt ripped through me, short-circuiting every nerve. My body convulsed, seizing so violently I slammed against the wall and dropped like dead weight to the floor. My chest heaved in shallow gasps, but the collar bit so tight I could barely drag air in at all. Every muscle twitched helplessly, my fingers curling and uncurled in rapid, jerky spasms, my legs kicking against stone like they belonged to someone else.
By the time the current faded, I was nothing but a shuddering, breathless heap, tears and spit stringing down my chin. I wanted to scream, to curse, to fight again—but all I could do was lie there, body betraying me, while leathery hands stripped away what little dignity I had left.
Once our clothes were fully stripped away, every creature in line—myself included—was forced forward by the chains tethered to our collars. We were dragged into another room, packed so tightly with cages that some were barely large enough to fit into. The air was thick, hot and metallic, carrying the faint tang of fear and something foul I didn’t want to identify.
I fought every step, muscles trembling with exhaustion, jerking and pulling at my chain, teeth clenched, desperate to stay free. But that damned black rod—a instrument I had begun calling the “cattle prod from hell”—found me again, and the world exploded in white-hot pain. Every nerve screamed, my muscles convulsed violently, and my vision blurred with tears and sweat. A sick thought cut through the haze: could my heart survive another shock like that, or would I just keel over and die right here, broken and helpless?
Hands gripped me by my hair, hauling me forward. My fingers scraped and clawed at the cold, unforgiving floor as I was shoved toward the cage, my body slamming against the metal with a hollow clang. My feet slid across the slick surface, legs trembling under the strain, as the creature jerked me hard again, shoving me headfirst inside. The impact drove the wind from my lungs, the low ceiling pressing down, walls biting into my shoulders and back.
I crumpled to the floor, body spasming from the lingering shock, curling instinctively into the farthest corner I could reach. My sobs were small, choked, barely audible over the chorus around me. From the cages beside me came the sickening symphony of suffering: low, guttural groans that vibrated in the metal floor; high-pitched screeches of creatures trapped too tightly in their cages; the wet, squelching sounds of bodies pressed against cold steel; claws scraping, chains rattling, teeth gnashing. Every sound stabbed at my nerves, a relentless reminder that I was not alone in my misery, but was also surrounded by terrors only a nightmare could explain.
The grey monsters moved methodically between cages, cattle prods flashing and crackling in their hands, but the noise of the creatures themselves—whimpers, cries, and suppressed howls—filled the room far more terrifyingly than the prods ever could. I curled tighter into my corner, hugging my knees to my chest, the cold metal walls pressing against me, the low ceiling crushing my lungs with every shallow breath. Each second stretched on, merciless and sharp, and a sick, sinking helplessness settled into my bones.
If this was a nightmare, I prayed silently, desperately, that I would wake up soon. But deep down, a cold, sinking certainty told me what I didn’t want to admit aloud: this was no dream.
Time seemed to stretch endlessly in the dim, windowless warehouse-like room, every second filled with the maddening jumble of noises the creatures around me made—chirps, gurgles, rattles, and hisses blending into a chaotic, alien symphony. Amid the sensory chaos, my mind drifted—inevitably—to memories I hadn’t touched in years.
The Banty’s—that’s what I’d started calling them, thanks to their vile personalities, strange chirping language, and those creepy three-toed chicken feet—reminded me all too well of the Banty roosters that had tormented me during one awful summer at my grandfather’s farm in Texas. I hadn’t been close to the man—still wasn’t—but I could remember those birds chasing me across the yard like it had happened yesterday, their spurs scraping my legs, their wings battering my face. That memory clung to me now, bitter and unwelcome, every time I looked at those awful creatures. They, just like my grandfather that summer, had hardly paid me—or anything else—any mind. For what I guessed had to have been a day or two now, they’d left their new captives alone.
I wasn’t sure how much longer I could go without food and water, but hunger wasn’t even the worst of it. The cold was. With no clothes or anything to cover myself with sleep was impossible—I shivered so hard it felt like my bones might crack. Nothing I shouted, nothing I tried, ever drew the Banty’s back into that windowless warehouse of a room—not even to punish me. And even if they had, what would I have said? They were more likely to eat me than help me.
I tried to accept the idea of just waiting, to hold still and endure, but fear has a way of unraveling logic. And I had never been good at handling being afraid.
So when a door suddenly shimmered into existence on the far wall—just far enough out of my line of sight through the bars that I couldn’t see it clearly—I felt a twisted rush of relief. Movement meant something was happening, and anything was better than the silence. Three Banty’s waddled in, chirping and oozing in that grotesque way I knew I’d never get used to, their vertical mouths snapping open and shut in a maddening, insectile rhythm that chilled me more than the metal on my bare skin. They worked their way down the line with mechanical indifference, popping cages open just long enough to hurl in buckets and containers sloshing with some kind of liquid.
When they reached my cage, I pressed toward the door. The space wasn’t tall enough for me to stand—only crouch or kneel—but desperation drove me forward, hoping for even the smallest chance to slip past. The Banty didn’t so much as blink. Its gaping mouth clattered shut as it drove the cattle prod hard into my ribs.
The shock tore through me like molten fire, fiercer than any strike I’d endured before. My vision went white. Ears rang. My body convulsed helplessly, every muscle betraying me as the current ripped control away. Time stretched into agony; it felt like minutes before I could draw a ragged breath, before the spasms eased and the world snapped back into place.
When the last of the tremors finally drained from my limbs, I sagged into a slumped sitting position, chest heaving, dragging air back into my lungs. That’s when I noticed what had been left in my cage.
The first was a grey bucket, similar to any 5-gallon bucket you would find at a hardware store or in a garage. Empty, but rimmed with yellow stains and carrying a stench so foul it made my stomach flip. The reek of stale feces clung to the air, heavy and sour. Gagging, I shoved it away with my foot until it rattled against the farthest corner of the tiny cage.
The second item was stranger: a short, cylinder-shaped canister, shaped almost like a thermos but oddly uneven, with no flat surface to set it upright and no twist-off lid. Instead, near the top sat a small black button—like something you’d see on the side of a flashlight. When I pressed it, the lid spiraled upward, breaking the seal with a sharp hiss and releasing a thin curl of vapor into the air.
Inside was an almost iridescent grey substance, shimmering faintly in the dim light. At first glance it reminded me uncomfortably of the ooze that seeped from the Banty’s skin, but the smell was different. Fresh. Clean. Something caught between cucumbers and roses, though not quite either.
Tentatively, I lifted it to my lips and took a cautious sip, praying it was food—and not something inedible that would leave me retching. The liquid was thick and slimy, sliding over my tongue like aloe vera gel. Its taste was almost nonexistent, bland with just the faintest trace of sweetness—like a piece of hard candy that had sat too long in its wrapper.
I waited, braced for cramps, dizziness, anything that might signal I’d just poisoned myself. But instead, warmth spread slowly through my chest and stomach. My thirst dulled. My gut felt faintly full. Even the shivering eased, just a little.
“What the hell is this? Three-in-one survival goo... or something?” I muttered with a soft, shaky laugh. The sound felt alien in my throat, but it was better than silence.
Clutching the canister, I tried to steady my breathing, letting the faint warmth from the strange liquid spread through my chest. My muscles still twitched, and my mind was foggy from exhaustion, but curiosity—and the need to gauge danger—pulled my attention outward. I forced myself to scan the cages around me, reminding myself that staying aware might be the only thing keeping me alive.
The creature directly to my left could only be described as aquatic. The very air around it seemed to roll and sway, as if it carried its own bubble of water. Its skin shimmered impossibly bright in the dim light, opalescent along the torso, deepening to a near-black blue along its arms and legs. The color and pattern reminded me of some exotic fish. Thin, almost reptilian eyes sat high on its face, flanking a ridged nose with two vertical slits for nostrils that looked oddly like gills. The ridges were arrowhead-shaped, growing larger as they jutted upward into a Mohawk running down the center of its head and continuing straight along its back, ending in a sharp, deep-blue tail.
The tail flicked irritably whenever my gaze drifted toward it, and when I finally met the creature’s ghostly white eyes, a chill ran straight up my spine. I forced a nervous smile—the same kind I used to plaster on for my mother when I was trying to appease her—and, to my surprise, it returned one of its own: a dangerously sharp, hungry grin. Teeth flashed in the low light, long and needlelike, and a snake-like tongue flicked out to taste the air in my direction. My heart hammered in my chest, and I was suddenly grateful for the thick metal bars separating us.
With a weary shiver, I decided that I’d done enough reconnaissance for one sitting. I edged toward the center and back of my cage, putting myself at an even, “safe” distance from both of my potentially dangerous neighbors—the other of which I was too even look to hard at—and curled my knees to my chest, drawing into myself as best I could.
I didn’t exactly feel happy—despite my earlier, shaky laughter—but I did feel a little better after taking a few more cautious sips of the strange drink the Banty’s had left me. I didn’t know how long it would be before my bizarre, chicken-monkey captors returned, so I had to ration it carefully, even though I was far from full. Otherwise, I’d likely go hungry. I didn’t trust aliens to know the first thing about keeping a human alive—even if they seemed to have perfected the art of trafficking people. Or exotic creatures, judging by my “Siren”-like neighbor in the cage next to me.
Better safe than sorry.
If only I’d remembered that before I’d stranded myself on a mountain in Colorado... all in a bid to clear my head after another long, frustrating day dragging myself through the woods, patching worn trails and dodging prickly coworkers. A few of the people I worked with weren’t exactly friendly, though I knew I could be difficult to get along with. My lack of friends in high school hadn’t helped my confidence either, with my gloomy disposition and my general inability to read a social situation. Still, some days the solitude of the forest had been the only thing keeping me sane. But chasing that view, that fleeting moment of peace... somehow, I’d walked myself straight into disaster.
