The frail log cabin shivers, vibrating eccentrically. I peel my face from Azure's chest, and my eye twitches as I do so. The walls are drumming like an earthquake has begun, like a god returning to its creation.

        "Azure," I say over the buzz. Amid the confusion. "Can you hear me?" I'm taking every precaution to distract the dread wrangled in my lungs and let my mind zero in on the negative. "Azure—"

        Alexandria bursts into the room—my soul nearly leaving my body—with Crow hot on her tail. She's panting, out of breath, and grasping at her knees. "Get under the bed." She demands, yanking me by the hand. As I resisted, there was a nervous pop as my shoulder dislocated.

        "Ow, ow, ow!" I yelp, gnashing my teeth. I smack Alex's crushing forearm, but it bounces off like I have the attack power of a worm. "My effing shoulder—" 

        She jerks it up and in, one a smooth transition, and I collapse when the aftershock finally wears off. "You're okay," she roughly spouts, like a leaking faucet that hasn't been refurbished or repaired. "Now roll under the bed; they're here." 

        "Who's here?!" I trifle apprehensively with the air, "Alex!"

        "Feet Dwellers." Alex purrs, helping me contort my form and fit under. It's not comfortable, and my nine-month pregnant belly, well on its way to giving birth, does me no added good—as if I'm attempting to force a beach ball to decompress. "They prey on humans, and they prey on ominous smells since they're blind." She sinks her bony knuckles into my taunt midsection, and I fit in, stuck between a pole and a saggy base. 

        "I'll stay with her," Azure pipes up arrogantly. "You go be with the humans; let Crow deal with the outsiders."

        "When did you become the boss?" Alex questions, "This is my house. You're just a guest."

        Azure hesitates, "If you're the boss, start acting like one. The children need someone to protect them. I'm sure someone as ill-fit for motherhood as you can handle that simple task."

        Alex scoffs like this is the funniest thing someone's ever said. "Whatever," she nods at Crow, who exits. "If any get passed, don't move, and, if possible, don't breathe." That's the only advice she grants us, and then, like the wind, she's dispersed. 

        "Sorry about that," Azure apologizes, wiggling in behind me. Her hands form a shield around my stomach as best she can since I've grown tremendously. "Xandria's like a cold dinner sitting next to the microwave," she pauses, then resumes with elegance, an eloquent fluency and potency that stops the essence of life itself. "When it's cold, it's like talking to a brick wall; likewise, when it's warm, it's like a sister.

        I try my best to relax, "I get that," I stare out into the room from the floor's perspective. The whole room has gone upside down and, based on the tiny view I'm provided with, utterly creepy. Which is similar to a mansion in a horror movie that gets scarier the more you stare at it. The checkered boards decay while your eyes linger, the mold multiplies like a rampaging virus, and everything deteriorates.  

        Azure's finger digs into my side, "Shush, something's outside." And I do just that. I remove her slender, uniform fingers from me. The last thing on my mind is having an adult girl ogling my love handles—gorging herself on the softness I've accumulated, feeding on my insecurity.

        Out of the corner of my eye, I spot something unthinkable. A creature so detestable, so alien-like that my eyes widen. 

        How could something like this exist? It had to be the failure of some mundane doctor, a frothing madman. Whatever roamed must be something from the pages of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or at least an excerpt—a scrutinous, scrutinized husk with appallingly deformed skin. 

        I'm holding a hand over my mouth. And as it walks in, giving me a better look—despite the numbing veil of darkness, I taste the vomit on my tongue. The stale food from earlier, the decomposing tidbits of a liquid soup, something that doesn't dare exist on earth.

        It stops, sniffing the air. Wide, thick nose taking in every scent available. It stalks, like an endless looping YouTube video, around and around.

        Closer, the low quality of its breath finds its way into my nostrils, and I hold. Hold my breath; so the Foot Dweller can't make me their dinner; hold my breath so Azure stays safe; hold my breath so I live to see Minerva; hold my breath so I don't screw up. Closer, it prances beside the bed, long, crinkled fingertips touching the edges of the wooden frame. 

        My eyes close. 

        It screams. It hisses with the pitch and duration of a dying child, the intense fierceness of a raging alcoholic, and the peacefulness, the saneness of a deer staring into the alcoholic's headlights. They convey a serene knowingness, one who's come to terms with death. Death doesn't eat away at them, hollow their bones, or chip at the iron curtain of their tenacity. While the man inside the truck veers and swerves like they've never been behind the wheel, the deer smiles. Smiles, shaking hands with the grim reaper, smiles in regards that it can finally rest. 

        Their grave voice rises, rises, rises! They condemn me in sound alone, without once laying a mutilated pupil on me. Their lightless spheres, with upturned eyebrows, resemble humans but reject defining features. They're upside down; only the face is anatomically correct. Lips, cheeks, and the overall structure are punctual. But their arms, slithery, slippery, and too long for their body, sit at an obtuse angle. To make things worse, they have no feet, only hands, four pairs. 

        A hand picks at the wood, peeling back the layers like a potato. 

        Steady.

        Steady.

        Steeeeaaaaaaaaadddddddddddy. 

        Futile. It's all a futile effort; I can't calm down; my nerves are scorched, agitated, ignited. I burst! My lungs cry out—and my mouth reciprocates those hostile feelings, discards whatever Alexandria told me, discharging like an explosive bolt of lightning. 

        Azure kicks my back, flying out of the bed. She rushes the Foot Dweller. Azure jumps on it, moving her hands to its neck swiftly. In the blink of an eye, no longer than it takes to draw a breath, she's wrestling with it on the ground—wrestling a Foot Dweller. 

        "Go find Alex!" She says, binding their hands and feet. "Don't stay there curled up, go!" 

        But I'm paralyzed. My body refutes my brain, the neurons blocked by a stable source, an unfamiliar foe. Me, I'm blocking myself. "What about you...?" I say, dumbfounded, unable to understand this concept of escaping, of being an escapee. 

        "Don't question my authority!" The Foot Dweller pins her to the ground, "I'm not going anywhere! JUST GO." 

        It's against everything I believe in. The idea of leaving one behind—Azure behind—dismantles me and tears apart the tiny fabrics of who I am—shredded like paper going through the grinder. 

        "No." I get on my hands and knees, crawling to her, "If it's me it wants, then so be it." I hang onto the wooden beam, using it to bring me up. "You're not going to be hurt, I won't—"

        A pair of massive arms slam into my body, and I tumble through the air. I soar out the window and hear my foot crunch as it bears all my weight when I land. 

        I can't move. I struggle for a way, struggle to aid my friend—but it's useless, a heartless act of gratitude. So I lay there and lay there, and lay there. 

        Help me, but nobody's here. Help, but what helpfulness do I pose? Help, but who am I to demand and slide my needs a notch above the rest? Help, but I'm an ill, soft-hearted death wish. Help, but maybe getting help isn't worth it; am I not worth it?

        My eyes absorb the disrespectful sky with its luminous swirls of crimson reds and deep, flawless blacks. It's a shapeless, endless expanse of red—a dreadful foreboding of depravity and a calm sense of misunderstanding. 

        I'm nothing: not a gnat, boar, bird, centipede, frog, or pig. They don't want me. They believe themselves to be some higher being than I, a human female, and reject me with the speed and directness of an unkind artist refusing to paint a picture of an earthworm. They spat in my face, rolled me in the mud, stripped me of all my clothes, begged to remove my humanity, and imbued me with a shameful persona. "Ssh," they whisper, "Shh, you shouldn't make a noise, you shouldn't be anything, you're beneath us, and we'll crush you with the sole of our feet, like how you treated us all these loathsome years." The pig will smile, the boar will gloat, the bird will fly off into the night laughing my name to its friends, the frog will hop back to the rainforest to take a nap, forgetting everything about me, the centipede will rush off to find food, and the gnat will buzz off to transfer it's potent disease to some other unknowing offspring. 

        So that raises the question of what I am. Am I a human? Am I an animal that scutters on four legs? The answer, unsurprisingly, is none. I'm an anonymous sacrifice that fled from the gods, a disgrace disregarded by celestials and all life. 

        And as I lay on the hard ground, with a cold breeze encasing my entire body, I cursed myself. Everything was my fault, everything is my fault, I'm the problem. 

        "Violet, you're awake." 

        I couldn't pair the voice with a face at first. And I didn't even try. I knew it would be a waste of my efforts—whoever was speaking my name would eventually reveal themselves, remove the potion of confusion, and enlighten me. 

        "Do you know where you are?" 

        It was a different tone, a different embodiment, a different composure. The varied stages of progression of the people talking made my head hurt. Why couldn't they shut up? Why couldn't they accept that I was shaken, beaten, bruised, scarred?

        "Violet, I need you to squeeze my hand, okay?" 

        A third. Lower this time, more refined, like a master talking to his apprentice. Again, my mind is fuzzy, and putting two and two together is a burden, a dire task. So, I refuse. I stay still, I rest. I become a physically encumbered queen bee, requiring help from her subordinates. Sooner or later, their defenses will fall. 

        ╔═══════ ೋღ 🌸 ღೋ ═══════╗

        "She's not moving an inch; is she awake?" The first voice beckons, echoing inside my mind like a foggy replaying of a memory. 

        There's a hefty pause, then the third replies. "Well... Violet was..." In an exaggerated whisper, they add. "Did she die?" 

        "Well, she broke her leg; has that overwhelmed her and caused her to pass out?" The first murmurs, making a popping noise with their mouth—which sounds uncomfortable, awkward. "Azure, pinch her." 

        At least one of them is someone I know. 

        I feel a sharp pain in my side; it steadily increases, like a meter slowly rising. "Stop." I retort, frustrated. I'm awake now, looking around at the many faces looming over me like a ritual as if I'm the scapegoat in a seance, about to be incapacitated and my blood drunk. 

        Taking a relaxing breath, I see we're in the cabin, in Azure's bedroom. Lights gleam down upon me. I'm under the covers, the thick blankets, the miniature heat incubators. For the first time, I notice a walk-in closet straight ahead, with ivory doorknobs pattered into crows and a staggered design to the twin doors, allowing you to see slightly inside. 

        How had I not seen it before? 

        Crow is there, along with Noah, Azure, and Alexandria. Or Xandria, or Alex, or whatever she enjoys. Why are people missing? Why aren't their faces where I can see them? Am I tripping, or are they somewhere else? 

        "Is Anthony here?" I inquire, hugging Noah. "Is he somewhere thinking about Minerva?" Something meant to be a joke seemed to agitate them. 

        "Sis, we thought you died; stop treating life so easygoingly!" Noah flips the hair in his eye back, as it's getting rather long. "This is no time for joking." 

        I cringe, pulling the cover-up until only my eyes and forehead are visible. "Sorry," I say, tippy-toeing around the subject with care. "There's just hardly any joy in my life nowadays." 

        "Just take it easy for a while," Azure precautionarily grimaces as if to say: we screwed up. "Anyway, are you feeling alright?" She tugs at the scarf, concealing her identity. "We have to move today..." strangely, her voice trails off. It disperses, the fire extinguishing itself. 

        I drop my gaze to her and how her fingers tremble eerily. She's hiding something. She's staring at me with vacant eyes, like she'd rather die. "Are you okay...?" I ask squeamishly. 

        This silence is stuffy—like an oven with leftover pieces of last night's dinner. It burns with a flamboyant ego, glowing orange, polluting the air with the smell of petrifying toxins.

        "Violet, I—" Crow squeezes her arm so tightly she timidly takes a step backward. That's when I realized she was not showing her back. She walks out of the room with a sad look on her face. I've never seen such a tired expression. It resembled a drooping, wilting flower. "Will talk to you later..." 

        Now, Crow shoos the others out of the room. Softly, as Noah exits, eyes glued to me, eyelashes saddened, he closes the door with a click. It leaves just us. 

        He leans against the wall, arms crossed, legs in a similar fashion. "You've got two questions." 

        I frown, "what does that mean?" 

        "It means you have two questions." His indigo curls droop, heavy, poignant, luscious. "What do you not understand?" 

        My face shrivels, "Fine, what's happening here? What the hell am I missing?" My shortsighted patience is waning, and I'm desperately questioning how depleted my sanity levels are. "But before that, can I steer the conversation?" 

        "Did you have a topic in mind?" He says gently, running a hand through the clumps of hair. 

        "Are you okay?" I've never formally met Crow, nor did I ever regret not doing so, but that doesn't mean I can't feel sympathy for him. Sympathy that he has to take care of a tiresome muppet like Alex. 

        Crow scoffs, deep voice booming, reverberating in my bones. "Yeah," he swallows, "just a lot on my plate, thanks for asking. I'll grant you an extra question." 

        "Did I black out?" 

        "Yes," he plays with his chin, "you were delirious after getting thrown through the window." He moves to the tableside stand, picking up the French fry doll that belonged to Azure. "You kept whispering things, and we thought you had some head trauma; we got in contact with Apollo and Minerva, but they said to wait until you wake up."

        "Weird, 'cause I don't remember any of that." But I waste no time asking the next one, "Did something happen outside these doors?" 

        Crow nods, "can you walk?" 

        "No," I shake my head. Judging from the steep amount of pain in my lower right leg, I'm guessing it's broken, shattered, in a billion pieces inside the skin, swimming around in a pool of blood, laughing their asses off that they're free. 

        "Alright, then I'll tell you." He slumps down the side of the wall, squeaking. 

        I hold my breath, count my lucky stars, and pray to an unknown god that it has nothing to do with my friends.  

        Crow's voice cracks, then he growls and restarts, "Lucas and Anthony are dead—punctured by shards of the front door as it exploded." 

        No. No. No. No. 

        "Don't effing screw with me," No, no, no. It's a prank, a bad dream, a knee-slapper. "DON'T PLAY GAMES!" 

        But I knew he wasn't. I knew this was the truth.

        And I screamed, slamming my fist into the cedar wood table. I screamed and screamed and screamed. And when my lungs were out of steam, I buried myself in the covers and rocked myself to sleep.