Chapter 1 - Part 1
Lucy Welsh hadn’t asked to be spiritually yeeted across dimensions on her walk home from the late shift at the warehouse.
Nor had she asked for the freezing Melbourne rain that soaked her high-vis shirt so thoroughly she could see the black singlet underneath it. Nor had she asked for the customer returns she’d spent the entire evening unpacking – three of which contained adult toys that were clearly unwashed, or to have her knee slammed into three years ago by a guy twice her size during a friendly game of footy on base that resulted in a full reco and a medical discharge from the Army and landed her in that job in the first place.
And she’d definitely not asked for the gut-deep pull she felt the moment she’d stepped off the curb near the Mcdonald’s on Leakes Road.
One minute she was catching up on her group discord chat discussing that weekend’s session of Storm King’s Thunder with Parkway Drive screaming through her earbuds, the next, there was no ground beneath her, and her wet phone slipped from her hand as she braced for her leg to twist into the bottom of a foot-deep pothole full of water.
Her breath whooshed out of her as she landed not on the road, but something damp and springy. No puddles, no asphalt, not even gravel. This was grass and mulch and rotting leaves.
She sat up, gasping. Her earbuds were still in her ears, but the heavy guitarline of In Glitch was no longer playing. Instead, they chimed a cold little no connection tone that somehow made everything seem worse.
Her hands scrambled through the wet leaves, searching. Phone. Phone. Where the fuck was it?
“Fuck,” she muttered, desperately, “fuck fuck fuck.”
It wasn’t anywhere nearby. Her lifeline, her music, her connection to the world, her outlet for all of the frustration she was feeling, hell even just to reconnect and stop this infernal tone in her ears!
“God Fuckin’ Damnit!” she yanked the earbuds out and threw them into the dark. Her brother would have laughed at her: aaand there goes the baby with the bathwater.
Her hands were shaking now, and mud streaked the reflective strips on her pants and the front of her shirt.
She blinked, looking around.
No lights. No road.
No Macca’s.
This wasn’t Leakes Road. This wasn’t even Tarneit.
“What the fuck,” she whispered.
She turned, expecting to see the glow of traffic lights, the golden arches promising her comfort food. Nothing. Just trees. Dark, old trees, clawing up at a sky that looked… wrong.
Lucy was in the middle of a forest that looked like The Witcher had fucked Skyrim and left her in the wet patch. She looked up. Moments ago, the moon had been hidden behind a thick curtain of fast-moving clouds. Now, two moons stared down at her from a clear sky one slightly green, the other much, much larger than what she remembered.
Her throat tightened. She was one step away from crying. She’d lost her phone. And now she’d apparently lost Melbourne.
“No.” Her voice cracked. “No, no, no...”
She scrambled to her feet.
A low sound stopped her. It sounded like the purring growl of a big cat. It wasn’t as much a growl as it was just a vibration that she felt in the marrow of her bones; low and ominous.
Then another. Deeper, almost like a chittering. That one sounded like the Yautja from Predator. And another. And another.
She spun, looking for headlights, for anything human, but the sound came again, longer this time. Not from one place, but everywhere.
“What…”
Shadows detached from the trees. Towering, unnatural, joints bending the wrong way, limbs too long, too dense, gleaming eyes.
Lucy didn’t think. She didn't stay around to see what those shadows became in the moonlight.
She ran.
