Where am I? It's so dark...

That was the first thing I heard myself think as I awoke to nothing all around me. Nothing was everywhere, stretching as far as the eye could see. My hand moved through a terrible inky blackness that was easy to move through, but impossible to see in. The most horrifying aspect of it was that I wasn't just in a darkened room. I was literally nowhere. My feet were touching the ground, that much was certain. I had always been terrified of the dark, because generally with the dark came confined spaces, and I was scared of that just as much as the dark. Those phobias stemmed mostly from a traumatizing incident a long time ago when I was a little boy, when I had been shut into a locker at grade school by some gang of bullies. I was in there all night, cramped and afraid. I felt the same now.

I felt the first pangs of horror tug at my heart, and my chest tightened. With a screeching yell, I hurtled forwards and tried running, but to no avail. I wasn't going anywhere, because there was nowhere to go to! Where was I?! I wracked my brain for answers, but kept coming to the same conclusion. I was nowhere. That couldn't be, but it was! I stopped at once, hyperventilating in a desperate attempt to keep calm. I had to remember how I got here! But how? What had happened?

Interstate 42. Yes, that was it. That was where I had been! Arizona. The desert near the mountains. I remembered a vague cough as the engine had run out of gas. Sleeping under the stars… something… something had struck me. But what? A bandit? Had I been kidnapped, locked in some cellar by a psychotic murderer? The very thought made my stomach grow heavy with dread, but at least it was a more realistic solution than simply being nowhere.

Nobody could be nowhere. It was impossible. Maybe I was having a nightmare, still sleeping in the back of my car? How did I wake up? Yes. It was just a nightmare. Hit yourself, I thought. I struck myself hard across the face, and yelped into the black. Nothing. Again! In the stomach this time!

I found myself out of breath and heaving on the… floor? Well, it certainly wasn't a dream. No, it was, said the last bit of my rational mind, clinging to explainable phenomena. This is just some sort of horrific memory resurfacing. Just sit and stay calm, and you'll wake up in your car, in the peace of the desert… a policeman will come and find you in the morning… stay calm…

Calm…

Calm?

Calm?!

I marveled at myself. How was I supposed to be calm at a time like this? I finally felt myself snap. I had to run. I had to do something to save myself instead of sit here and reason it out. Just run. Run away, hurry! There must be an end to all this!

I ran. Was something behind me? Air rushed by my face, giving the dreadful feeling I was being chased by some dread force. More childhood night terrors. I never dreamed of actual monsters, I remember. I couldn't put a face on something truly terrifying and still think of it as scary. Buggy eyes, tentacles, proboscis… that was typical monster glib from little children. You could fight off something like that. No… the real monsters were the shadows in the corner of the room, the dark thing waiting beyond your door, the flitting shadow outside the window, the insane, imagined howl from downstairs… monstrous, indescribable, and incomprehensible in its base desire to utterly annihilate you and consume you in your entirety. A force of nature, a feeling of dark, pure, unadulterated evil that simply was there, that simply wanted nothing but sheer pain for you and you alone.

Real monsters didn't have faces, because they didn't need one. Suddenly, as if God Himself found my plight amusing and wanted to add insult to injury, I heard a groan immediately to my right. There was something there!

I screamed at that, loud and long. I shrieked in self-defense, waving my arms around in a frantic attempt to reassure myself I still had weapons to combat the nothing that wanted to kill me, even if they were just my limbs.

Then I ran into something, very hard and unyielding, cutting my gibberish off immediately. With a loud "Oof!" I felt my head crack against a wooden surface, and my back end up on the cold floor, if you could call it that. The terror was gone in place of surprise at smashing into a wooden door in the middle of nowhere. My eyes bulged, and suddenly I wasn't afraid anymore. I didn't know why, and didn't care. More than likely the stress of all this had driven me temporarily insane. I lay there for a moment.

"Ow," I said quietly, my voice echoing into the black. I slowly pulled myself up and felt forwards. The door was still there, and didn't go away as I slid my hands along it. How big was it? Was it an exit? Yes! My rational side flared up once more. Find the handle!

I walked up and down that door for a full minute, feeling nothing but more door. Then, a crack was discovered. Huzzah! But wait… it was only a millimeter wide, and more wood beyond that. Two doors. Not doors…

Gate? What was a gate doing here? Perhaps someone was behind it who could help me! My mind gave up on reality again and settled for this insane solution. I started banging on it as hard as I could.

"Help me!" I yelled as loud as I could. "Please, help! I'm lost! Let me in, I have to get out of here! Please, there's something out here with me! Please, just let me in, I'm begging you! I need to get out! In! I don't care, help me!" I started sobbing as no answer came, and my yelling devolved into one continuous, wailing, desperate scream that was never answered. My voice went hoarse after a few minutes of screaming that went up and down in pitch, and I simply sat there, leaning on the gate, on my knees, waiting for whatever death that was out in this terrible Nothingness to come and claim me. I was still banging softly on the gate with my hand. I was too absorbed in this insanity to notice I couldn't see it.

"Well you're not getting in that way," said a voice to my right. I whirled in a panic and beheld the oddest sight I ever saw, and ever will see, in my life.

There was a mouse. In a medieval tunic (I remembered the look of it, being something of an aficionado on medieval history) and a red scarf, blue eyes twinkling, in some sort of spotlight, the light playing off his amber fur, sitting calmly on a tree stump like he saw people like me everyday. He seemed he would be about a head shorter than I was if he was standing up. His voice said he was a he.

Well, I thought, I've finally gone insane.

"And… who are you?" I said, my voice shaky. Despite the light illuminating the mouse, I still could see nothing of myself.

"That's probably a good thing," said the mouse. "You're pretty messed up at the moment." I could only imagine.

"What?" I said. No direct answer came. The mouse went on, with me staring with eyes larger than dinner plates, and there is no exaggeration there.

"You, my friend, have ended up in the oddest of places, depending on your viewpoint. That," and here he pointed at the gates before us, suddenly visible, and I marveled at their titanic size, "is the entrance to Dark Forest, as you may well know."

"That doesn't sound like a fun place," I said with the levelness of a mental patient.

"Depends on who and what you are," replied the mouse with a shrug. A sudden smile lit up his furry face. "Oh, by the way, my name's Garrety Lasham. But you can call me Garret. Or Gary. Or even Lashy," he said with a distinctly Scottish accent on the last name. "Martin let me guard the gates today," he said, his smile growing three times larger to where it was positively glowing. He was obviously very proud about getting to sit in the dark on a tree stump in the middle of nowhere.

"Um… okay… Gary?" I said with a twisted smile of my own. Maybe now a flying saucer would come and mercifully vaporize me to end this madness. I was talking to a mouse in a red scarf! How hilarious was that? I tried to laugh, but it sounded like another scream. The mouse lifted an eyebrow.

"Are you all right? Well, I expect you wouldn't be. Most beasts aren't when they come through here."

"B…Beasts?"

"Well of course! That's what we are! You, me, the ones inside Dark Forest." He peered at me curiously.

"I mean… that is what you are, right?" Could he see me, even if I couldn't' see myself? Surely he must be able to! Enough weird things were happening as they were. I stood up slowly, leaning on the Gate for support.

"Right, um… why am I here?"

"Well, you're dead, of course, unless there's been some sort of mix-up."

I fainted.

---- --- --- --- --- - ---

Ten minutes later, I was still in the middle of nothing, with that mouse looking down at me, very concerned. How could I see him without any light?

"Hey," he said quietly. "You all right?"

"I'm not dead, Gary," was the first thing I said, and I sounded so serious when I said his name I figured I must have become a complete lunatic.

"Well," said the mouse, apparently unwilling to argue the point further, "if you aren't, something weird's going on. Because nobeast comes here if they aren't dead."

"…Obviously," I said cautiously, just happy enough with the fact that the mouse had confirmed I wasn't dead.

"So, um… if Dark Forest is over there," I ventured, pointing at the gate, "then what's out there?" I pointed at the terrible void from which I had come. Gary looked at it and shivered. "Nobeast is allowed out there what's coming in through here. That way is…" A paleness seemed to come over him. "Well, let's just say it's the flip side of the coin. But between it and us is… well, that," he said at the blackness. "Out there are the Guardians."

"…The what?"

"Guardians. They keep the two places separate and do a good job of it, thank the Fates. I just wish they didn't have to be so creepy about it."

"What… what do they look like? I heard something coming here…"

"Well, you need to concentrate real hard… just stand there, relaxed." I did so, not bothering to reflect on that I was following directions from a mouse. "Now let your eyes go limp, like you're trying to fall down." I did that, too. Gary went silent, and my mind went into a relaxed trance.

And I could see them. Just for an instant, but it was enough to send me reeling with shock. Gary shook his head with sympathy. "Told you. They're weird. They've always been there, apparently." His voice was lost too me. I was too busy working on what I had seen… and heard. Oh, the sounds! Moans, and knells, mingled with ghastly whispers. Undulating shapes, always moving, too freakish to understand! How could I sum it up in words? Terrible groans, like a thing in agony, twisting forms too weird for human eyes to see! It was horrible, simply too alien for me to want to look upon again. Gary watched me for a moment.

"Uh… yeah. Well, to remove you of the creeping horrors, I guess I'll let you in now." Gary walked over to the gate, but my voice stopped him.

"Wait."

"Hmm?" Gary turned back and fixed his cerulean eyes on me.

"I'm not going in there," I said, pointing at the gate with an invisible finger. Gary scoffed at my defiance.

"Well of course you are! Can't just let you sit out here!"

"I thought you said I wasn't dead!"

"And I suppose that's simply just good enough a reason to pass up some good old fashioned woodlander hospitality? Come on!"

"No! Keep your freakish woodlander… whatever! I'm not getting in that thing!" I said with an anger that shocked even me.

Gary looked up at nothing suddenly, concentrating on some unknown thought.

"Oh boy," he said with trepidation. I got up and shook my head despairingly.

"No," I said, the anger still festering within me. "No 'oh boys.' That means something bad. Enough bad's happened already! Why 'Oh boy?'"

Gary looked back at me like he had first noticed I was there. "Oh… well, there has been a mix-up! You're not quite dead yet. We thought you were, you even had old Brocktree fooled, and not much gets by him! Your infection seems to have um… gone away?"

I felt a sudden anger well up in my chest, but the names Martin and Brocktree stirred something in the back of my mind.

"What the hell is going on here?!" Gary seemed miffed.

"Well calm down now, no need to be testy. You're just going back, now be happy about it! Not many get to have this sort of experience, brushes with death and all that."

Oh good, I thought. That means I'll wake up in my car, and everything will be just fine and dandy, and this will just be some weird dream to tell my friends back in San Francisco when I'm done with this mess of a vacation.

"Oh, one last thing…" said Gary, but I wasn't really listening. "If you need me, just fall asleep and call my name. Make sure you don't dream though, it's a mess trying to find beasts in that stuff, even for Martin."

Yep, I thought. Everything was going to be normal now. I was finally going to wake up and go ho-

Wait a minute, I thought as I lifted my head.

How did the back of my car get grass on it? Fluffy, green, verdant grass…

I lifted myself up with my, um... my, uh... my... paws...? And found myself in a sunlit field of low, gently rolling hills. The sun shone merrily. A bird sang from a nearby tree grove. Fluffy clouds trundled by overhead. This wasn't my car. It wasn't home.

I was nowhere again.

Oh, sh-