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1
TYLER
Weird visions.
I’d blamed the six months of barely any sleep, working graveyard security at the plant, being around all those weird chemicals. Those were always just flashes, though, like when I put up the toilet seat and instead of a bowl of water I saw a night sky with a fiery bird streaking across it like a comet, or the one time when my kitchen cupboard became a window to what looked like a temple straight out of that one movie my boyfriend always wanted to watch. The one with the ripped-as-fuck Spartans. Ridiculously hot.
Dammit, Tyler Blackwood,I tell myself. You really ought to call them what they were—hallucinations. And you really need to stop referring to Jeff as your boyfriend.
It doesn’t matter how many times we’d fucked, or the secret kisses he gave me when none of our friends were looking. He was always “not ready” for the commitment.
It doesn’t matter anymore, though, because I’ve gone crazy. It’s the only way to explain what’s happened over the past six hours—at least, I’m guessing it’s been around that much time. I don’t have my phone, a watch, or anything on me.
I look around the dark cell, which is no bigger than the bathroom of my tiny one-bed apartment. An inch of murky water covers the mud floor. The walls are made of thickly woven branches, with tiny spots of light poking through. It smells like a swamp—because it is a swamp. A swamp populated by frogmen.
Yeah. Frogmen. Huge walking, talking frogs wearing clothes and swords.
The door is made of heavy wooden bars, and I slop my way through the mud to peer outside. It’s afternoon, and though the cell is tucked in the back of a large structure, I have a view of the middle of the frogmen’s village. A few of them are gathered there around a huge pile of wood. I don’t have a very good feeling about what it’s going to be used for. It reminds me of when I used to go camping with my uncle back when I was a kid, and the huge bonfire we would cook s’mores over. I feel likeI’mabout to become the marshmallow in this situation.
Frogmen, the swamp village, this cell… All of it feels so real.
A thought begins to fill my head, and I look down and see the nervous sweaton my arms.
Maybe I’m dead?
Is this the afterlife?
The last thing I can remember from before I found myself standing alone in the middle of a forest was stepping off the bus to get to work. The doors had opened, and again I was greeted by that wild hallucination of the fire bird coming straight at me in a starry night sky. It felt like I was being picked up, yanked into the atmosphere like a fish being plucked from a lake by an eagle. Maybe I was hit by a car or something. It’d been the usual sound of traffic, of music being blasted from the guy on the corner’s stereo, of car horns and a plane passing overhead, and then, quiet. The wind blowing through trees, the gurgle of water, the whirring buzz of insects, and a moment later, the frogmen surrounding me with nets and ropes like something out of a Halloween horror show.
I slip my hand through the bars and feel around for the lock. It’s a strangely cut block of wood with a round keyhole. Maybe I can pick it. I’d once spent a night shift binge-watching eight hours’ worth of lockpicking videos on YouTube. The things you can learn at a low-risk security guard job.
There’s nothing in my pockets I can use, though. I’d had a backpack with me when I’d left the house, and it’d been on me when I’d stepped off the bus. All my shit was in that bag—keys, a pen, my phone, hand sanitizer, even a lighter. If I had been run down by a car, maybe it’d been separatedin the impact. Or maybe you don’t get to bring your belongings to heaven.
But this isn’t heaven, is it?
A centipede writhing across the woven stick wall is a sure sign that it isn’t.
It makes no sense, but something in my mind is telling me that I’m not dead, that this isn’t the afterlife, and that I’m not hallucinating. I’ve been taken, just like those airplanes that disappear in the Bermuda Triangle. I’ve been transported to another world.
“You aren’t gonna have much luck trying to finesse that lock if that’s what you’re thinking,” says a voice from somewhere.
I jump and somehow manage to bang my forehead against the door. “Ow, shit!”
The voice chuckles from the darkness, and I realize that there’s another cell next to mine. I hadn’t noticed it when the frogmen locked me up—I’d been too busy trying to figure out what the fuck was going on.
“Who’s there?” I say.
“Just another idiot who managed to get themselves trapped by the Erpetosi.”
“The urpay-what?” I bring my face close to the gaps in the weave to try and see into the neighboring cell, and I canjust make out a figure sitting in the darkness of the opposite wall.
“Erpetosi,” he says again like it’s something I should know.
“The frog guys?” I ask.
There’s a pause.
“Yes,” he says. “You’re not from Circeana.”
