I realize I’m no longer in my soft, warm sheets the second I open my eyes and snap them shut before I can process where I am. The cold, hard metal beneath me sends a shiver down my spine. I try to sit upright but my brain doesn’t sent the signal to my muscles. I’m paralyzed, but I don’t feel any restraints on my arms or legs. A cold sweat runs down my forehead and my lower back, as goosebumps rise on my skin. I need to open my eyes. I need to see where I am. The vision from last night floods my brain as I work through the events in my head. It wasn’t a nightmare.

I had been looking over my shoulder for months, constantly feeling their eyes on my back. I convinced myself I was crazy. There was never anyone there. But last night, as I let my eyelids flutter into unsettled sleep, I felt a slimy tentacle caress my cheek. I put my hand to my face and the sticky goo coated my fingers. I yanked the sheet over my head and trembled, willing silence from my heavy breathing. 

The last thing I remembered before slipping into darkness was the prick of something sharp on my thigh followed by a pain that spread from the injection site throughout my body. Then, as if a boa constrictor had wrapped its body around mine, I let out a final breath and my head fell backward. 

Now, I will my eyes to snap open and I’m blinded. A single light hangs over my body, dangling from a wire. I can hear their murmuring echoes and I can’t tell if they are far away or right at my side. Wherever they are, I know I need to get out of here. 

Move your big toe, I silently challenge myself – thinking of Uma Thurman’s scene in Kill Bill. My toe moves on command and I practice moving the other toes, then my fingers, and finally my joints. A painful tingling erupts through my body like my limbs have been asleep for one hundred years. Has it been one hundred years? A day? An hour? 

A shadow casts darkness on my single ray of light and I stiffen. The bulbous figure walks – no, it’s slithering – to my side and I feel the familiar cold, slimy wetness of a tentacle as it’s touched my arm. 

“What are you going to do to me?” I ask, trying to sound brave, but noticing the tremble in my own voice. 

Two eyes pop open, then two more. My breath is caught in my chest as it’s giant round head becomes a globe of eyes, blinking intermittently and then in unison. I want to scream, but the sound only comes out dry and choked. I feel the sharp prick of a needle on my thigh again and the searing tingle spread through my body. 

Before I slip back into the black, I hear the echoing voices – more than one, but all at the same time.

Then, darkness.