“Let go of her arm!” he cried as his last words…so I did...
. . .
Whispers, side-long looks, frowns, angry eyes and nervous smiles... --- but I should back up a bit.

The extreme contours of the valley were both majestic and deadly. For the former and not the latter, the price for a parcel of land was astronomical. The houses were magnificent and the people haughty. Not much can be said of our arrival. The air was crisp the land interesting and my girlfriend beautiful. The sun cast a surreal tint, bright and overexposed. No shortage of friends for her and I was naturally only acquainted with most. Rather quickly we were segregated to ourselves as our sexes have been doing for ages --- her being pulled into a gaggle of gossip, I into a match of men. The rest was quite uninteresting...

Until I found myself to be twisting my cheek between my forefinger and thumb staring wide-eyed into a mirror. I was in a bathroom? Not sure how I came to be there. I believe I had some type of hood on and maybe a sweatband, perhaps a bandana? Both were black. Both came to haphazardly shape themselves upon my head. It is also my belief that somewhere between my arrival and my moment of awakening I took something. I tried in vain to verify to myself that I had in fact taken something, yet every recollection I had of it seemed contrived by my own mind. I gave up and began wandering. Whispers, side-long looks, frowns, angry eyes and nervous smiles...the party seemed to continue and sun still overexposed the peculiar landscape. Not everyone kept distance safely between me and those, some venturing to talk to me made me feel smallish, as if they were speaking to a child. I didn’t understand it. The words were comprehensible enough, but the intent did not fit. I went back to the bathroom? Though no mirror this time, I, eyes half open, produced spam like rounded-rectangular substances from my mouth into an oblong white dish, a toilet? Perhaps. The spam, more like dog food in its’ coloring and consistency must have come mysteriously through a trap-door in the side of my neck as it completely bypassed most major areas of my stomach and throat without feeling. Broken rounded-rectangular chunks were excavated by my tongue from my mouth for a few mouthfuls. I rinsed my mouth and wandered around some more, felt smallish some more.

Back in the bathroom, which I had given up questioning and just accepted. I found a good friend and partner of mine checking himself out in the mirror. I was around when I arrived, he wasn’t --- when did I arrive? Yet he seemed more there than me. We exchanged little words and a few I ejaculated I understood just microseconds before he did to sound a bit too questionable, a bit too edgy with a tinge of insanity. The words I did not hear, they just felt that way --- when had I last spoken? With little surprise to me I did hear him say it sounded as if I was a little cracked out, this he said just glancing at me nonchalantly in between peerings into his reflection. At this I sobered up a bit I think and looked into the mirror myself. Stuck upon my forehead, which I instinctively knew at that moment to be there but hadn’t till that point found, a handful of compressed bright red spheres arranged in no particular pattern. Candy? I picked the candy off my brow and rinsed the area with some water from some unknown source. No headband or bandana. The hood had fallen down upon the backside of my head, it was still black. “I am aware that this appears a bit crazy,” I said “but it’s alright, because I have been aware of it this whole time.” He was gone, not sure when he left.

Wandering again I came across a woman older than the rest seeming very much the mother and parental unit of the crowd. A chaperone? No interaction with her. Bodies were scattered across the defunct valley overexposed and engaged in conversation, play and general mischief as seemed normal for a party in this locale. I wandered into a kitchen well endowed with both window and extreme views of the valley --- even here all seemed overexposed by the sun pouring through the vast transparent wall ahead of me. A large crowd had formed here as well, engaged normally but waiting. I saw the parental unit again; very similar in appearance to the first, perhaps one in the same, commanding what appeared to be the makings of a meal --- explaining the expectancy of the crowd. Still in the kitchen, just beyond the parental unit, I saw my girlfriend entering the kitchen from the odd outside through a door of glass which could easily be missed for its’ surrounding. Enroot in direction closely behind her I saw my partner, too close? At her sight, I immediately moved to lessen the distance between us but the random formation and movement of the crowd was difficult to traverse. As she noticed me, her face contorted into a rather meek expression unknown to me before that moment, fear? She did not necessarily stop but it was if she did not necessarily move either --- eyes locked, I believe I still continued toward her.

Then the heads began to turn away and the insistent chatter ceased, one-by-one each turned and then my partner’s...and then hers...and then mine. Everyone knew what I didn’t and yet the clues began stringing themselves upon my mind --- nothing could immediately be seen beyond the vast transparent wall where all the heads were pointed and eyes fixed, yet that’s were they immediately went. The first clue was the vibration, the second was the fear I suddenly felt swell upon the room of motionless bodies, the third was the contrast of overexposed light to shadow sweeping the valley and the final, in which it all clicked in my head moments before I caught sight first, the valley I remembered was in fact a bastard of an island. The first sight registered all wrong --- like a sudden appearance of something in a film missing the transitional frames --- it was already there, entwined within the architecture of the upper lip of the valley and just hung there menacingly confirming what I knew it to be only a sliver of a time before it appeared. I ran, disregarding the still motionless crowd towards my girlfriend. My partner was the first to come around as he saw me vaulting toward her and him, I think I yelled a wordless cry to evacuate which could only be understood in times such as this --- he reacted, quickly. I was just behind him by the time he turned out through the camouflaged door, my girlfriend between us, her right forearm within his left hand, her left forearm within my right hand forming a caravan careening down the sickening contours of the valley’s floor until there was no more. Standing, the three of us at the rounded bottom of the u-shaped valley island, there was no where else to run. The monster was consuming all north-ends, haughty houses and haughtier people could be seen disappearing into the ice blue wall of its body, hunger never ceasing, it approached us. Bracing our squat human caravan, I simultaneously realized that my hold upon my girlfriend’s arm was incorrect and would harm her once the force was upon us and that the beast had finished making a meal of the upper lip of the semi-valley and was at once both in front of and behind...us. My partner knowing our fate braced his end accordingly and noticing the configuration of my grip upon my girlfriend knew it was wrong as well --- “It’s okay baby...I won’t let go...I love you” I spoke as confidently as I could over chaos’ roar into the desperate face of my love...the beast hanging silently behind her.

“Let go of her arm!” he cried as his last words…so I did for exchange of my arms tightly around her...I missed? Then at once all was white-blank.