A DARKNESS PALE

TRAP

…Margot thought if she killed the doubles of her former friends in the other world they would also die in this one… And then find their secret lab and ultimate freedom… But, she was wrong. It seems she was wrong about everything…

Trap

Margot gulped and remained where she was. Warm water, competing with the icy rain.

She whipped around and there was a hazmat suit, spraying her with a hose attached to a backpack tank. The water was some kind of brine.

Someone else started also spraying her, coming at her from the opposite direction. She was completely glazed with brine. Margot tore off her clothes and tried to release the invaders and just like trying to escape to the other world, nothing happened. That was exactly why they were spraying her.

She began to scream.

“Easy,” one of the figures said. “Easy…” Slurring the s. Anderson’s voice. Anderson wasn’t dead. None of them were dead.

She screamed louder. The people surrounding her didn’t care. The rain didn’t care. Toby and Tiffany were on top of her. Toby was cutting into her with scalpel. He sliced her ears off. He cut her hands off. He sawed off her tongue. What looked like eels were inserted into the wounds. Eels impregnated with cables.

Where was the white road now?

The brine made her numb. She couldn’t move. Her knees gave out, or were knocked out from under her. Gloved hands gently guided her onto a stretcher. Someone held an umbrella. Something like dirt was dumped onto her face and ground into her pores. Whatever it was stung like a thousand bumblebees.

“There you go.” Anderson’s voice, slurring some more. “Here you are. You really had us running around with our dicks in our hands today, Margie. But I think deep down inside you knew what had to happen. I always said you’d come back to us because you knew you’re the engine for the Great Oneness.”

Her legs were tied at the ankles and her arms at the wrists, and then her wrists were tied to her sternum.

She closed her eyes and heard Anderson say, “Yeah, we’re going to get you connected with what you’ve become. We’re going to fix what the kraken broke when it died. This is a place where everything can happen if you’ve got the right know how. That’s why the kraken came here. It’s right here. It’s always been here.”

He belched and retched. “Goddamn. You made me sick, girl. You made me so sick with all that booze. It’s probably going to be a week before I can make the trip and join you guys.”

Tiffani’s voice: “You sure you don’t want one of us to stay back here with you?”

“No, no. Fluids, salts and rest. Get her prepped and I’ll be there to help move and start making the connections.” He retched again and said, “Margot, we’re going back to the garden. We might need to tweak it around but we’ll get there.”

She opened her eyes and they were carrying her into the lobby the hotel.

Toby’s voice: “Marg, to make the trip I’m going to have to give you some enhancements. You just lie as still as you can.”

One of them used another scalpel to cut one of her arms free and slice a lump of flesh out of her arm pit. One of them took something out of a bucket. It flapped around, water splashing onto her face. It wasn’t a fish. It was some kind of eel. The creature was pressed into her wound and she felt either suckers or teeth digging in.

“It’s a lamprey. We all have ‘em. It’s been fermented, of course. Tif, can I have the syringe?”

The world slipped away and more lights appeared. She was in the lab. She was in the nightmare. It was real. Margot desperately tried to access her flat time line to try to understand what happened. She couldn’t, there was already too much pain. Pain blocked out everything else. She was being stretched flat, flatter than a pancake. Margot began screaming again.

…When we encounter Margot again, her pain and agony will be much worse…