04: Bright-Eyed And…?

What the hell?! Did it just… push me?! Through a window?! Who does that?!

I did my best to keep my face shielded, squeezing my eyes shut tight as possible to protect them. Glass shards swirled around me, tearing at fabric and flesh alike without prejudice. Fresh cuts stung all over. For half a second, I hung in the air before gravity finally caught up with me and yanked me back down to where I belonged with a thud.

The bumpy landing wasn't the end I hoped for. Like a rag doll, I kept going—rolling, somersaulting, tumbling—dragged along the ground by momentum. Any sharp debris I rolled over dug in deep.

Thwack!

"Oof!" My back slammed into something hard and abruptly stopped me. My head hit the same thing half a second later.

I woke up shivering. Slumped over, I struggled to sit upright. My body was numb from the cold, and hard to move. When I straightened myself out a bit, sharp stabbing pains made me think twice about getting up. Pain radiated from a few places: my arms, back, and head primarily. The sudden impact that knocked me out left me with a throbbing headache. I didn't want to move any more than I had to. The pain was easier to manage as long as I remained still.

There wasn't much to see. The world was covered in shadow. Great. This again. There was barely enough light to check myself for injuries. I was wet. Minor blood stains soaked through my ripped pajamas, but not enough to make me worry about bleeding out. I was thankful it wasn't worse. Wait. Is… Is that… stuck… in me? Some light caught the edge of a large piece of colored glass. A shard in my forearm was deeper than most. What can I even do about—? I don't have any bandages, or… I left it untouched.

More light shone down from the moon as a cloud crept by. Huh? Am I… outside? There were walls around me, but most of them looked crumbled by the wrecking ball of time. Calling my current location 'inside' felt wrong. The world of shadows stretched out in front of me, continuing into a forest. The idea of exploring an ongoing darkness didn't appeal to me, especially not in my condition. I considered calling out for help, but my throat was too sore. I only managed a hoarse whisper. I was a mess; a less than ideal start to whatever game that damn voice threw me into.

I leaned back to prop myself up against the hard stone I'd collided with. It was sturdy enough to stop me, so that made it good enough to rest on. I closed my eyes and hoped to sleep. There were no other real options to consider. Besides, I already stopped shivering, and the pain was almost gone.

A howl cut through the silence of the night from somewhere deep in the dark. I tensed up, and received another wave of pain throughout my body.

Was that a… wolf? No. It didn't sound… normal. Really, dumbass? What are you, an expert now? Whatever. I don't really care. Things can't actually get worse, can they? Just… let it… come.

Maybe I'd wake up and the whole thing would be over—nothing more than a vivid nightmare caused by too much gaming, energy drinks, and late night snacks. If that wasn't it, well, future Skyler could worry about the problem. When the howling eventually died down, I drifted off.

Morning arrived with the sun's warmth and took away the biting cold of the night before. Fresh, clean air filled my lungs, brisker than usual. Even the birds sang loud and clear. Somebody must have opened my window to air out the stale smell I no longer seemed to notice.

"Why can't they just leave me alone?"

My voice was harsh. I had a scratchy throat and ached from head to toe, probably from the early stages of a cold. Thanks for making me sick, Jess. It had to be her fault. She always barged into my room without asking, and I rarely went anywhere. I left my eyes closed and kept still. If I didn't stir awake too much, I hoped to slip back into a slumbering world of peace. Maybe then the pounding in my head would go away. A simple excuse to just drift through a lazy day of nothing; exactly what I needed.

It didn't last long. Something disturbed me, tickling my palm. It hurt to move, but I still forced a heavy arm to swat at whatever interrupted my sleep.

"N-not funny, Jess. I…" Yawn. "I swear… if you don't get out of my room…" The tickling stopped for a moment, only to return, now at the sole of my foot. "Nooo… Stop it." I pulled away, but my foot dragged across a rough stone ground instead of my bed sheets. "What—?!" My eyes shot open.

Everything was blurry in the light of the new day, but things slowly came into focus. I was sitting on a hard, yet familiar, floor of stone. Blades of grass and weeds peeked through cracks and between each piece. Chunks of stone wall, both on the ground and standing, had patches of moss on them. The roof was practically non-existent. A muted, gray sky peeked through a ceiling of foliage above me that left the area mottled with rays of sunlight. Any barrier between nature and whatever the building used to be was gone.

After examining my surroundings, I looked down to my feet.

It stared back at me.

Giant… Mutant… Squirrel?!

The animal was bigger than one of those small, yappy dogs my sister loved to fawn over. It had a fox-like face and large ears pointing upwards. The creature recoiled, sat on its hind legs, and tilted its head before sniffing in my direction. A large, bushy tail swayed behind it.

"W-what…? What are you looking at, huh? G-go away!" I scolded. It ignored my command, watching me and licking its chops. The thing crouched down low, crept closer, and kept sniffing with its nose and twitching whiskers to identify me. That had to be what I felt. "Go away, p-please?" I whispered.

Tell me this thing doesn't want to eat me for breakfast.

I tried to shoo it away, but my groggy body moved like I was under water. I dropped my arm after the futile attempt. When it hit the ground, the glass shards pushed in deeper. I winced and jerked my body. That must have startled the animal. It barked at me and dashed up the broken wall. It looked back my way once more, then leapt towards the trees. Surprisingly, it glided upward on the breeze with outstretched limbs until reaching the treetops above to vanish from my sight. Leaves and branches rustled as birds scattered from the freaky invader.

A… flying… squirrel-fox… thing?

The renewed pain pulsing in my arm snapped me out of the confused daze and brought my attention back to my injuries. Most of my wounds were shallow cuts, dry and already healing, but several larger chunks of colored glass stuck out of me. I winced and inhaled sharply, picking out the little pieces first. My arms took the longest to clean up. Every time I moved to pull out the next piece, searing pain shot through them. I knew the deeper shards had to come out, or I'd regret it later, but the thought of actually doing it made me dizzy. Treating wounds like those wasn't something I'd ever done before. My stomach was in knots.

I did my best. I moved quickly, with my jaw clenched the entire time. Thankfully, every larger shard I removed made moving my arms easier. Most of my injuries turned out to be bruises, scrapes, and scratches that weren't even half as bad as they looked. If only I had something to clean myself up with. I tore off strips of fabric from my shredded pajamas to use on the bigger wounds.

Scattered pieces of stained-glass were all around, yet nothing significant of the windows themselves remained. Even more perplexing was how the direction I came from the night before had nothing but trees. The church was nowhere in sight. I didn't understand how something could vanish so completely.

When I figured I regained enough strength to stand and explore, I used the piece of stone, some kind of smooth slab, I rested against for the night to pull myself up. It was more than solid enough to hold my weight. Back on my feet, a sickening sense of déjà vu struck me.

The building wasn't exactly the same, but enough time and exposure to the elements would probably change pretty much anything. Still, considering how I arrived, I didn't understand what I was looking at or where I came from.

"This… This place is… No. It can’t—The church? B-but it pushed me through the… That's not possible, is it? Out and in… at the same time?"

The rubble was a twisted mirror-world of where I’d just come from. Somehow, I was still in that voice's church. The whole thing made me feel like Alice on one of her adventures. Was my bushy-tailed visitor some kind of Wonderland resident? I wished for an answer or explanation, something that would make sense of what happened, but things stopped making sense when I turned down that alley and met the NPC, the voice that pushed me into this supposed game.

"What kind of shitty game is this, huh? Am I supposed to… Do you just want to see me… fail? Do you?!"

Trying to yell at the missing, unseen focus of my frustration made my voice fail and peter out. I couldn't help but blame myself, too.

Thump. Thump. Thump…

I struck my forehead with my fists over and over, drilling the frustration in more with each strike, for the stupid decision of playing Wonder Saga instead of hunting for a job.

Idiot!

Each thump felt like another mistake. My head continued to throb from what might've been a concussion for all I knew. It really wasn't the smartest idea, but I didn't care. Hit after hit, my headache worsened until I stopped and had to brace myself on the stone slab from a sudden wave of dizziness. I suppose it was just another terrible decision.

It's not like I knew… this… would happen.

A tear ran down my cheek. Whether it was from the pain or trying to process everything else, I broke down and fell to my knees. When I stopped sulking, I looked to the front of the church where the door had been. A bell, from what must have been a tower above it, peeked out from some of the rubble. Beyond that were other ruined buildings overtaken by time and the elements just as much, if not more, than the church I was standing in. They were only traces, impressions, of a civilization littering an area being reclaimed by nature.

I thought about the safety of the ruins, of staying put in until somebody could find, or help me. Another wolf-like howl sounded from the forest—louder and closer than the night before. I wanted to run, but I had nowhere to go. I was stuck. The treetops around the ruins, however, came alive. Something ripped through them, making branches sway and rustle. Barking similar to my morning visitor's odd goodbye called out, and a flock of birds took to the sky in a flurry of feathers.

A daunting silence filled the void of missing birdsong.