Chapter 3: Chapter 3 : What is this place and… What are those?

I’d stepped out into a bluebird day onto a grassy hill with thick beautiful grass so rich it reminded me of a horse farm we’d been to when I was a kid before Lucas had gone missing. There was also a beautiful blue river cutting through the field below me. The section of the river that we always swam in was brown and muddy.   I wondered how it changed so quickly in such a short amount of time. I couldn’t be that much further downriver.

I looked around. There were no houses, roads, cars, or people anywhere to be seen. There was nothing but beautiful land.

But even more shocking and concerning, when I turned around, there was no tunnel. 

No one had ever considered me to be a genius, a few of my teachers even insisted that I wasn’t, but I knew I had climbed out of a tunnel that had led to a set of stairs. 

Behind me, there was just… space. What the fuck had happened to it? 

In the distance, there was… more space. More undulating, grassy hills. No opening whatsoever. 

I started to panic. I looked around frantically. Where was the tunnel? I knew I had just come out of it. It had to be right here. 

But it wasn’t. There was just… nothing. 

I started to panic even more. I looked up. I looked down. I ran around in circles hoping the light was just playing tricks on me. I still didn’t see anything. No tunnel, no place for me to make my way back through to. 

Now I was in full-blown hysteria. I ran around, searched desperately, and reached out and felt the empty air with my hands, hoping I just couldn’t see the opening that would lead me back. 

Nothing. Nada. Zilch. 

I caught my breath. Thought for a second. It was fine. It was all fine. I had no idea where the tunnel was or how I had gotten away from it, but I was out of the tunnel now. I hadn’t had much cell phone service in the woods and absolutely none in the tunnel, but now that I was out, I could call Charlie and tell him just to meet me at my house, and we’d tell my parents together. There was no need to worry. 

I looked at my phone. It was completely dead.  The screen was black.  I tried to turn it back on, but nothing happened. That was weird. I had been using the camera flash as a flashlight in the tunnel, and now it was completely dead.  I knew I’d had more battery than that.

I held the button down and counted to thirty as slowly as I could make myself, giving it time to restart.  Nothing happened. That usually worked.  Something was up with it. 

I wasn’t that far from town. I couldn’t have been. 

My phone was useless, so I’d just have to start walking and hope I could find him before everyone started freaking out. I didn’t need him telling my parents I went down some stairs in those woods. They’d be worried sick if I didn’t come home that night. They’d ground me until I turned twenty-one, then have me committed to a mental institution in order to keep tabs on me.

I had to hurry. I started walking toward the top of the next hill.   

Maybe all of this wasn’t a big deal. I had to be just down the river.  There was absolutely no other explanation. I had come out of the tunnel and somehow lost track of the entrance, and now I just had to follow the river back to town. No big deal. 

The fact that this place looked nothing like home, well, that could be explained. I was just a few more miles downriver than I thought. That was all. I just needed to walk home.

I started walking in the direction that the river was flowing. I’d follow it and run into my classmates having skip day, get some bars on my phone, call Charlie and tell him I wasn’t dead, and we’d tell someone what we found. Easy peasy.

As I got to the hill, I could smell barbeque. Someone was having a cookout. I wasn’t that far from town, and I’d just make my way home. I climbed the hill and what I saw stopped me dead in my tracks.

There were three enormous creatures, and they were eating something. 

The three of them were bald and had gray skin and thick short arms and legs. They had ugly yellow teeth sticking out between their cracked lips. They were sitting around a campfire, and something was roasting on a spit over it. That’s what I had smelled, and it had smelled delicious. But now that I was closer, I could see that it wasn’t a pig or a cow. It was burned and charred, but it had a man’s face, and that face was frozen in horror. 

I can’t overstate how shocking this was. I was expecting to see houses and cars and even a road to walk down, quietly waiting for me to make my way back to them. 

Nope. Definitely didn’t see any of that. What I was not expecting to see was someone getting eaten. 

It was all too much. I stared down and saw one of the creatures gnawing on a leg like it was a chicken bone. I threw up in the grass. 

The three creatures looked over at the sound of me unloading. Not good.

Two of the creatures were eating the man’s arms, and one had a leg. I don’t think I need to describe how a man who’s been roasted over a fire and had one leg and two arms ripped off looks. Use your imagination.

One of the creatures groaned and stood, then chomped down on the rest of what was left of the arm it was eating. It had to have been ten feet tall. The other two made quick work of the limbs they were eating and stood as well. They were a little shorter than the first, maybe by a foot, but still as gray and ugly. 

“Another morsel for us to eat,” the big one said. 

I was in shock. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything. What was going on here? What was happening? Where was the town? Where was everyone? What the fuck were these? The big one stomped towards me, and I felt the earth shake with every step. 

Suddenly my brain snapped out of its stupor, and I turned to run. But it was too late. The gray creature reached down and grabbed me up with one hand like I was a small child. 

It held me up to its face, its rotten breath hitting me in the nose like a sledgehammer. 

“Bigger than the other man,” it said. “We eat him, and he fill us up.” 

I could see the creature had yellow eyes and puss-filled boils covering its skin. I’m not sure if it was its breath, the boils, the fact that it could talk, or that it had said it was going to eat me - maybe it was everything all at once - but my head swam, and my stomach clenched so hard I thought I was going to pass out. I puked. Again.  What can I say… stress makes me nauseous. 

The creature growled but didn’t seem to care much that I had spewed chunks all over it. It carried me toward the fire. 

“Yes, Keurok,” one of the shorter ones said as we got closer. “He make good meal for us.” 

I saw the two shorter ones better now. They were smaller in every way than the bigger one but still much bigger than any human could ever be. They were also female. 

How did I know this, you ask? Through my cloud of confusion, it dawned on me that none of them were wearing clothes. A fact that had eluded me earlier since I had been focused on the fact that they were fucking frying a guy! So sue me. 

Even without clothes, what made me think they were female, and the one carrying me was male? Well, the two smaller ones had big, saggy gray tits that hung down and flopped when they jumped for joy over the thought of eating me. 

I looked down and saw that Keurok, the big guy carrying me, had all the tackle needed to make him a male. So no more description will be forthcoming on that. 

The two females jumped up and down, and then one of them kicked the spit that held the roasting man out of the way. She grabbed the stick he’d been impaled on and pulled it from the roasting corpse. It made a sick noise as she wrenched it from the dead man’s charred body. 

“Here,” Keurok said, holding my feet with one hand and my body with the other. “Shove it up his ass, and we cook him.” 

I clenched my cheeks. This wasn’t happening. I wasn’t about to be roasted alive since getting a spear shoved up my ass would probably kill me. 

“Wait,” I yelled. “Wait.” 

They did not wait. They completely ignored me. I tried to thrash around and break free of the hold the thing had me in, but its grip was too tight. It clamped down on me so hard I thought it was going to break my legs and arms. I couldn’t move. The female creature moved to jam the spear up my butt. 

There were only two of my muscles that the creature didn’t have control over. I clinched them harder. I knew it wasn’t going to be enough to save me. That big spit was going to go up my ass. I’d read about Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Dracula, and how he’d have his enemies impaled on poles shoved through their asses and out their mouths. I saw the roasted guy lying off to the side where he’d landed after the creature had kicked him - his burned face still twisted in agony, either from being burned alive or having a big stick shoved up his ass – I didn’t know which.  I was pretty sure I was crying. I was going to end up just like that, or worse, and in the end, these things would be shitting me out. 

I may have yelled out for my mommy, but no one else was there, so I can say I just clenched my teeth and my cheeks as tightly as I could and waited for my inevitable death.  

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But it didn’t come. Instead, I felt a low rumble, like a train slowly approaching. The ugly creatures heard it too. They stopped. The one who was about to use the stick was holding it just inches from my ass.

“Damn,” Keurok yelled. “Centaurs find us.”

The roar got louder, and Keurok dropped me. I fell to the ground and landed hard, pain shooting through my shoulders and legs. 

I ignored it, though, as best I could. I had to move. I had to run. I had to get away. I jumped up and, hyped up on adrenaline, started to run away from the creatures. 

The rumble got louder, so loud I thought a train would surely run me over. It was everywhere and all around me. Finally, as I got to the top of the hill, running as fast as possible, the train exploded around me, surrounding me with thundering noise.   

But it wasn’t a train. It was horsemen. Horse people, I guess, is the proper term. No, not people that were riding horses. I mean, these people were horses. There lower halves were anyway. Their upper bodies were completely human. They were centaurs. 

I’d seen centaurs in movies, video games, and stuff, but those representations hadn’t done them justice. They were amazing and running all around me, barely missing me, the wind from their hooves whipping against me, dirt flying up all around me.

Their upper bodies were the bodies of humans, men, and women, and their lower bodies were the bodies of horses. The lower halves of their bodies were various colors, brown and white and grey and black; some were even spotted. The men were shirtless and had long hair, muscular chests, powerful-looking arms, and six-pack abs. I wondered how they did ab workouts with the bottom half of their bodies shaped like a horse. 

The women wore leather tops that covered their breasts and had flat, smooth stomachs. They all had long hair that flowed behind them as they ran.   

They also all had a weapon of some sort – bows and arrows, spears, short swords, axes, or maces. Some shot at the ugly giants while others rode in close and sliced or poked at them.   

Where the fuck was I? Had I fallen and hit my head? Had the tunnel caved in on me and killed me, and I was in heaven or some kind of hell?

I’d already been almost eaten and was seconds away from having a huge stick shoved up my ass, and now there were centaurs. I wanted to get out of here. I didn’t want to wait around and see what happened next. 

As I ran, a female centaur galloped beside me, keeping up with me easily. She had thick dark red hair and was wearing nothing but a leather bikini top to cover her breasts. I couldn’t help but notice that they jiggled as she ran. They were pretty big. She was waving a shiny scimitar covered in green blood. She was going to swing it at me and chop my head off, I just knew it. 

Instead, she reached down with her free hand, grabbed my shirt, and lifted me onto her back without breaking stride. The back of the horse part, that is. 

“Hang on,” she called, and I hesitated. There was no saddle, no reins, nothing to hang on to. I’d never ridden a horse before, remember that sheltered life I talked about, but I’d seen enough in movies to know you probably needed a saddle. 

When I didn’t hold on fast enough, she reached back with her free hand, the one that wasn’t holding her bloody blade, grabbed my hand, and wrapped it around her waist. 

Holy hell. Her skin was smooth and warm, and soft. I held on to her body gently, not wanting to be rude. 

“The other one, too,” she called over her shoulder, her beautiful red hair whipping in my face as she ran. It smelled flowery and clean like those girly shampoos always do.

I timidly wrapped my other hand loosely around her. 

“Tighter,” she yelled. 

I increased my pressure but not by much. She laughed. “Tighter human, or you’ll fall under my hooves.”  She grabbed my hands and placed them over the top of her leather-covered boobs. “Hold on to these,” she said with a laugh. 

She galloped faster, and I had no choice but to grip them tightly. I really didn’t want to be rude, but I also didn’t want to fall off and die. So given a choice between the two, I squeezed her tits.

She didn’t seem to mind. 

She ran towards her herd where they had encircled the creatures. One of the female creatures that had tried to eat me lay in the grass, I presumed dead, since she had arrows and spears sticking out of her almost everywhere. The herd had the other two surrounded. They were both lashing out at the horsemen as they rode close, but neither had a weapon, and they weren’t in much of a position to defend themselves. I can’t say I felt bad for them. They were going to stick a spear up my ass and eat me, after all. 

Keurok, the male, was making it a fight, and once he slashed out, his thick, sharp fingernails caught one of the centaurs on the arm and sent him tumbling away. The horseman flew and tumbled, his legs flying spastically around, and I thought he would be seriously hurt. But he jumped to his four feet and rode close, and stabbed Keurok in the stomach with a sword. 

The centaurs rode in and hacked and slashed and stabbed the two creatures to death. Keurok went to his knees and tried to lash out again, but the centaurs were too fast for him now that he was wounded and dodged his claws easily. A very big male centaur swung his sword as Keurok swiped and chopped a few of the nasty beasts' fingers off. Keurok roared in pain and lost all sense of self-preservation and swung his other hand. The centaur chopped that hand off at the wrist with one swipe of his sword. 

It was pretty bloody and disgusting after that, but again, I didn’t have much sympathy.

My fear now was the centaurs. What were they going to do to me? Were they going to kill me? Surely the pretty girl - if you can call her a girl since only half of her was one – I was ‘riding’ – another term I’m not sure is appropriate here – wouldn’t have let me grope her just to chop off my head or something. Would she? We were stopped, watching the centaurs ride circles around their dead foes, and I realized I was still holding onto her tits. I pulled my hands away quickly. 

“Sorry about that,” I said. “I think I’ll just go now.”  I threw my leg over to slide off of her back. 

“Wait,” she said, turning her head to look at me. “Stay on my back.” 

I didn’t know what to do. She seemed nice, and she was fantastically beautiful, with that dark red hair and skin the color of cream, perfectly smooth and blemish-free. As she looked at me over her shoulder, I could see she had green eyes that sparkled. She looked like she could have been an Insta model or something, except for that whole being half-horse thing. 

“Are you gonna kill me?”  I just blurted it out. 

She laughed, and it sounded like music. “No, silly human. We aren’t going to kill you.”  She shook her head and winked at me. “We’re just going to make you our pet. You know, put you in a cage and only feed you when we feel like it.” 

I could feel my jaw drop. 

She laughed louder this time, and if I wouldn’t have thought it was such an incredible sound and been mesmerized by her beauty as her red hair cascaded down her shoulders, I would have jumped off and run away. Except she would have easily caught me.

“I’m joking,” she said. “You’re a naïve human, aren’t you?” 

Was I? I didn’t think so, but I had no idea what the fuck was going on here.

“What were those things,” I said, pointing to the gigantic, human-eating monsters that wanted to shove a stick up my ass and who were lying on the ground dead now. I knew they were really dead because the centaurs were cutting their heads off. You mostly didn’t live through that. 

“Ogres,” she said. “Filthy creatures. Sometimes they follow the river down and raid the farms. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.” 

Yes, me too. Of course, I should have known that. How did I miss that growing up in middle America and all? “Where am I?” I asked.

She seemed confused by the question. “Are you mad? You don’t know where you are?” 

“I have no idea,” I said. 

She shook her head sympathetically. “The ogre must have dropped you on your head. Don’t worry, little handsome one. We’ll get you back to your farm.” 

I had no idea what she was talking about. “Yeah, but until that happens, remind me where we are again.” 

“We are in The Glowing Grasslands,” she said. 

The Glowing Grasslands?  I’d never heard of them.  Or seen a centaur.  Or an ogre.  Which pretty much meant I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.  Or on Earth.  Oh boy. 

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