The ground was cold and smooth beneath her, and there was a faint ringing sound in her ears. Liza cracked open her eyes, but all she could see was a strange golden-white film that she couldn't seem to bring into focus. The bright light stung, giving her the beginnings of a pounding headache, and she had to fight to keep from squeezing her eyes shut once again.
Slowly, painfully, she became aware of her body again. She was lying on her side, curled in on herself, and something hard was digging into her ribs. An involuntary groan escaped her lips, and she began to roll lethargically over. Unexpectedly, the golden film slid away to reveal a shiny wooden floor that stretched out to meet a rich purple fabric. With a twinge of embarrassment, Liza realized her hair had come loose from her ponytail and had flopped over her face-that was why she couldn't see.
She sat up, even though her muscles ached, and stared around. She was sitting at the very center of a huge, circular room. All around her, the walls were hidden by heavy purple curtains that stretched up and up. They rippled and billowed with barely a sound, like children whispering to one another just out of sight, though there was no wind. The air was still as death.
iWhat is this place? What happened?/i Reaching up to brush her hair out of her face, Liza felt an unexpected weight attached to her wrist. She looked down and blinked. Blinked again-then gasped. "iMy camera!/i"
Hanging from her wrist was an object that only loosely resembled what it had been before. It seemed to be encased in a solid black shell, with gaps for the screen and all the buttons, and covered evenly with an array of little spikes. Half horrified, half flat-out bewildered, Liza searched frantically all over the case for some way to get it off but found nothing. There wasn't even a hint of a seam. In a hesitant effort to make sure it really was her beloved camera, Liza snapped a picture of a random portion of floor and breathed a sigh of relief when she found it still worked.
She glanced around. Her wig was lying nearby, along with her wig cap and scrunchie. Liza grabbed the hairband and expertly tied up her long, smooth hair in a messy ponytail that swung across her back. Then she whipped her cell phone out from her cosplay pocket, where it had been digging into her side, and prepared to make sense out of this bizarre mess-but it was dead.
She jammed the button with increasing impatience, the thoughts swirling in her head growing more and more frenzied, until finally she had to admit that there was nothing she could do. She dropped the cell phone in her lap with a frustrated sigh.
Well, there was only one thing to do, then; she would have to go through the big double doors at the front of the room and search for her friends herself. There was probably no hope of making it to the panel, anyway. Not like she was in any state to participate, with this headache that was building more and more every minute, especially since she'd unexpectedly blacked out… She grimaced, not wanting to think about what ithat/i might mean. Scooping up the spiky blond wig from the ground, Liza started to get to her feet.
Something slimy and goopy green dripped from above and landed on top of her hand.
Liza stared at the drop of slime, revulsion building inside her, until she shook it off fiercely with a sound of disgust. Blinking, her eyes followed the rolling purple curtains up...up...until she reached the ceiling.
Hanging from the chandelier by its obscenely long arms was the most grotesque, bizarre thing Liza had ever seen. It had slimy, leathery skin the exact color of green-tinged vomit. Its gangly arms and stunted legs each ended in a large clawed hand, and its bald head was shaped like a lumpy, rotten potato. As Liza stood there, staring up at it in utter horror and disgust, it looked at her with its two big, black, expressionless eyes, and its pinched little mouth twitched open to produce a hissing, juddering roar. At the sound of that roar, Liza's mind went completely blank and her instincts kicked in. She scuttled backwards on all fours faster than she ever would have thought possible, eyes locked on the impossible creature. The chandelier shook, glass tinkling, and a few pieces fell to shatter on the floor along with the drops of greenish slime that were falling faster and faster from the creature's skin. The monster shook-its face trembled-was it imelting?/i
Liza barely had time to process this crazy thought before the creature's eyes turned to slits and it iexploded/i, plummeting to earth in a shower of glass and goo. She screamed, arms and legs tripping over each other as the entire chandelier crashed to the ground-bits of green slime and chunks of rubbery flesh showered over her face-the ground gave way beneath her, all at once, and Liza crashed screaming into darkness and solid ground.
She lay there for a moment. Breathing. Stunned. Were all her limbs still there? Her thoughts, her heartbeat? iThat/i was still there, she knew that at least, thundering away in her chest and neck and ears so powerfully she could barely hear anything else. Liza's eyes tried to adjust to the darkness, but she couldn't see a thing. It was pitch-black.
Cautiously, she got to her feet, casting around for some source of light-anything. There was a sliver of brightness somewhere above her; she couldn't tell how far. Liza's best guess was that there was some kind of trapdoor up there-maybe a trapdoor version of a swinging door?-and she had fallen through. It had looked like a section of the ballroom could also have been a stage, so she decided the trapdoor was probably normal.
She noticed right away that her skin was covered with goop. A shiver ran down her spine as she dared to think, iWhat/i was ithat?/i
But that invited so many other questions, too. Where was she? How had she gotten here? How long had she been unconscious? The uncomfortable thought invaded her mind once again that she might have seriously hurt her head. Because there was no way any of this could possibly make sense in reality…
Liza's anxious thoughts were interrupted by a sound coming from somewhere to her right. A sound that could only be described as islimy/i.
She almost stopped breathing. She was not alone.
Liza listened in absolute stillness, her breath coming faster and faster as that awful, slimy sound squelched closer. Desperately her eyes searched the dark for something to hold onto. Her racing mind churned out a hundred terrible possibilities per second, and they only got worse. iWhat if what if what if-/i She stopped herself, taking in a long, shuddering breath. iStop it, Liza. There's nothing there. It makes no sense, it can't be real…be rational, be rational, be rational-/i
Something warm and slimy brushed up against her leg.
Liza iscreamed/i. She stumbled backwards in the darkness, crashed into something metal, and fell over. Still screaming, she scuttled backwards on the dusty cement ground, sure the slimy thing was coming closer, closer…
It hit her then what an absolute wimp she was being. Just like that: iI'm being such a wimp./i For a moment, she was overwhelmed with that painful, familiar feeling of absolute disgust, so powerful it nearly took her breath away. iYou're just like a baby; you haven't changed at all-/i
iQuiet,/i Liza ordered the voice in her head. She took a deep breath, trying to push down the rising terror she felt, suffocating her. Ignoring the panic that was screaming for her to run away, Liza closed her eyes. iQuiet. What would England do?/i
Her fingers curled around the wig she held by her side. "You bloody git," she murmured. Her voice came out as little more than a whisper, shaky and entirely American. Gripping her hands into fists, she filled her lungs and yelled out in the best British accent she could muster: i"You bloody git!"/i
In response, an ugly squelch came from somewhere in front of her. Uncomfortably near. Liza climbed to her feet, gripping her deformed camera in one hand, wig in the other. Her breaths came fast and uneven in the darkness. Against all instinct, she took a step forward. "B-bloody git."
Her leg banged into some kind of dusty metal object, and she nearly shrieked but caught herself at the last moment. "Bloody git, bloody git, bloody git…" She knew it was silly, but something about that British accent made Liza feel safe. Strong. Like nothing could knock her down-because she wasn't Liza anymore, she was England, she was Arthur Kirkland, and she wasn't going to give in without a-
iSquelch./i
"Bloody git! Bloody git bloody git bloody git-" Before she even knew what she was doing she was bashing the slimy thing with the heavy camera, over and over and over. "Bloody git! Bloody igit/i! Bloody git bloody git gluddy bit gluddy-"
The chant dissolved into a wordless scream, garbled words streaming from her mouth as she attacked the thing with all her might. Finally, after an interminable time, the haze of panic lifted and she realized that the thing was not moving anymore-had not moved for a long time.
Liza stepped back, the scream dying in her throat. She stood there, panting, slime-covered camera dangling from her wrist as the creature lay limp and massive before her.
She couldn't be sure that it was dead. It probably was dead, but there was just a ichance/i, and who knew how many other monsters may be lurking in the darkness…
Shivering, Liza scanned the pitch-black ceiling until she found the line of light that she had noticed before. As carefully as she could, she made her way toward it, listening intently for any more ominous squelching sounds from the darkness. She managed to bump into another noisy metal object, which turned out to be a rusty folding chair-she pulled it over and used it to climb on top of and push the swinging trapdoor open.
Light flooded in, blinding her for the second time in under an hour. Liza blinked in the brightness, oddly relieved to find that she could still see. She put her hands on either side of the opening, preparing to pull herself out from that horrid place, but paused.
Cautiously, Liza bent down and dared a look at the creature. She found it lying several feet away, oozing among fallen chairs and scattered music stands: a giant, pale worm, at least six feet long and swelling up to the height of her waist in the middle. Liza could only stare for another moment before she shuddered and looked away.
She heaved herself out of the trapdoor. Liza clambered onto the stage and sat there for a moment, trying to make sense of this strange new world she seemed to have woken into. Glass and green goo from the first monster was scattered everywhere, reaching even as far as the back wall. Slime from the second covered her cosplay and camera. Speaking of which-Liza examined the strange black covering once again. Was it just her imagination, or had the little spikes grown just a bit longer?
She wanted to reject the idea as impossible right away, but this time, she stopped herself. iObviously things don't work the same in this weird new reality. Maybe it's time to accept that being realistic isn't the most logical option anymore./i She swallowed down the uncomfortable idea as if it were a pill, getting to her feet as she did so. She'd been in this ballroom long enough. No matter how scared she might be of what lay beyond those doors, she needed to leave.
Liza's attention was caught by the curtains on the side of the room, which suddenly seemed to be billowing more than usual. She watched, heart in her throat, as the lump moved toward the top. A long, spindly, hairy leg poked out-
iOh, hell./i Liza backed away, trying to make it to the door while staying as far away as possible from whatever that ithing/i was. But more and more legs were poking out, more than she wanted to count, and a great dark head appeared from the top of the curtains-eight giant eyes blinked at her above a set of vicious-looking pincers, and the giant spider began to crawl down the curtains straight toward her.
Liza stood paralyzed, too terrified to breathe. A scream was building in her throat but stayed locked behind her jaws, because the spider was moving terrifyingly fast. Legs jerking pincers clicking feet crawling. She blinked and it was on the wall. Blinked again and it had found the floor. Blinked again, and it had reached the chandelier, was crawling toward her-
Too terrified to think, Liza swung her camera at its face. It didn't even flinch. Still, she hit it again, and again, even as it loomed over her, ihissing/i. Oh, god, those empty black eyes, that hairy, evil face-it was like something out of a nightmare. She shuddered and clenched her teeth, swinging her camera desperately at its eyes, missing half the time in her fog of fear. As the spider lunged for her, she caught a glimpse of dripping fangs and screamed, stumbling out of the way. Pain slashed through her leg and her back as she crashed into the wall, but she barely registered it.
With one last, desperate effort, she swung her camera at its face. Missed. Her leg buckled beneath her and she collapsed to the floor. The acromantula was crawling toward her, its jittering legs making her want to throw up. She could feel its hair scratching against her skin.
She closed her eyes.