Lonely Among Us

'Being Taylor Hebert is suffering,' said teenage girl thought to herself, cursing her own naivety as she desperately tried to both catch her breath and not breath in the copper scent of the rotting waste of her prison. She had been forced violently into the confined space of her locker, the first day back after winter break, to the laughter of her tormentors, the bitches three, and her fellow classmates, left alone in the dark with only their mocking to keep her company along with her ragged breathing.

She had lost track of how long she had been in the dark, the concussion from her head being rammed into the back of her locker didn't help nor did the agony from her broken left arm. The putrid smell of the rotten used pads and other garbage was causing her stomach to roll again, she would have regurgitated again but Taylor had already lost that battle when she had first opened the locker door.

The very little light coming through a small crack in the door was swiftly beginning to dim, her lungs burning even as black spots began to dance across Taylor's vision. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Taylor was recalling that seeing black spots was a symptom of asphyxia, or at least she thought it was. Her eyes felt heavy, the spiders that were crawling over her face were ignored as Taylor fought a losing battle against fatigue.

Taylor never felt when the spiders began to bite her.

Taylor felt herself floating on an ethereal stream, existing only for that moment and no other. Noises she couldn't comprehend intruded on her peaceful slumber, awakened her from the coma like state she had been in, to her displeasure. Opening what she thought were her eyes, Taylor gasped for air, if air existed in this astral state, as she beheld the universe laid before her. All the knowledge in the galaxy, the meaning to the balance of life, the necessity of death, the serenity of just being. It was the perfect place, a haven for the soul, a heaven for the spirit. A perfect place to be… if it wasn't for the two giant ass slugs dancing around and upsetting the balance of the universe.

A tear came to her eye, as Taylor watched the universe rip itself apart.

[Destination?]

"Wh-what was that?"

[Trajectory?]

"What does that mean?"

[Agreement.]

"What!" Nerves began firing off in Taylor's brain, as the destructive slugs began to shed their scales, one of which headed for her!

"Oh hell, no!" Taylor exclaimed, as one of those scales began to head in her direction. As the slug's scale drew closer, a pale glow growing brighter as it neared, Taylor desperately tried to flee from it, knowing that something horrifying would happen if she allow it to touch her. Throwing her metaphysical weight around, Taylor was able to force her astral body to move away from the scale that was growing larger by the second.

Unfortunately, Taylor only seemed to move at a slow walk, and the scale was gaining rapidly, it's surface bubbling with tentacles that began to unravel from it and start to stretch for her. An increasingly panicking Taylor, desperately sought an escape from the eldritch horror that was rapidly gaining on her. A shifting planetoid caught her attention as she drifted pass, hidden within it's orbiting rocks a pinprick of light shone that all but screamed at her, salvation. At that moment another slug scale passed right in front her, dragging Taylor into its wake, and away from safety.

Taylor's astral self tumbled after the falling scale, it's strong current bringing her closer to her escape, but leaving her moving out of control. As she got closer, Taylor struggled for release, fear gripping her as the tentacles from the other scale drew ever closer and the wake this one started to drag her away from the portal she could see was nearly in reach.

Thoughts raced in circles across Taylor's brain, she had to get out of this wake in order to escape this place, but how? Maybe…. Maybe if she reduced whatever it was, that created her mass here, it would reduce the drag of the wake and with a enough of a boost she could get out of the slipstream. Taylor concentrated on compacting herself, trying to make herself smaller while still hopefully having enough to power her out of the wake.

Nothing happened, and Taylor felt panic begin to creep into her thoughts again, despair and hopelessness egged her to give up and accept her fate. It strangely enough, sounded a lot like Emma, her former best friend and sister by all but blood. The one who had betrayed their bonds and put her in this situation in the first place. Emma could not win! Emma will not win! Anger sparked through Taylor's consciousness, from deep within her, she felt a welling of power surge forth and Taylor moved.

Far quicker than she imagined, Taylor found herself speeding towards the door of light, which she could see was rapidly closing. Shedding more weight, she pushed herself just a little more faster, a cheer went through her being as she reached the doorway and began to pull herself through. That cheer became a rictus of pain as a tentacle from the slug scale, finally caught up to her and began to wrap around her being.

"Wha… No!"

Taylor screamed in defiance and with a mighty push, escaped momentarily from it's grip and fled into the doorway in a desperate gamble. She could feel the thing trying to latch onto her once again, even as she felt herself tumble through the brightness of the doorway as it quickly collapsed behind her.

As an exhausted Taylor fell through this corridor of light that now surrounded her, wisps of a dark miasma remained clinging to her body where the slug thing's tentacles had momentarily gripped her, she fell unconscious and let herself drift into oblivion. Her last thoughts before succumbing to a deep sleep were, "Free. I'm free…"