Panic rose like bile up from my stomach and into my throat. I dropped prone to the riverbank and hoped that it hadn’t seen me.

The monster lurched towards the river upstream, stumbling against rocks and divots as much as I had been earlier. The congruence stirred up sympathy from the parts of me that wouldn’t recognize death if it were staring them in the face.

The panic came back and I flattened myself further into the wet, sandy bank, my eyes peeking up just over the few mounds separating us.

My ceramic slice had apparently done more damage than I thought. Vicious deep red lines split the monsters face horizontally where its eyes used to be. Red and black liquid poured from enflamed sockets.

Despite the obvious blindness, the monster made it to the bank and dropped down to all fours, dunking its head in the river. Red filled the water and brushed past me downstream, leaving an acrid smell in the air.

Belatedly, I noticed that the monster held a long rope in its hands, as if dragging something behind it. And indeed, as it pulled on the rope I could hear the sound of something heavy being dragged up the river bank, just low enough to the ground to escape my vision.

The suspense did not last long, however, and after a couple seconds of supernatural tugging the contents came into view.

It was a goat. The goat.

The rope was tied across the goat’s four legs, trussing it together like a pig to be roasted. Panicked bleats of a livestock animal approaching its doom filled the air.

What doom that might be, I had no idea. Nor did I particularly want to find out.

Unfortunately, my body was broken, and I didn’t trust my movement to not immediately alert the monster to my presence. The best, or more realistically the only choice of action was to remain still and observe.

And so, I did. Wondering if the goat’s fate would soon be my own.

The monster dragged the goat closer to the water and the bleats grew more desperate.

I felt sympathy again, this time directed to my once guide down the mountain. If I were a vengeful man, I would have reveled in the goat getting its comeuppance.

But I was not, at least not to this goat. Maybe to its captor.

Guttural sounds belched out from the red monster and I flinched in surprise.

“Dralae la skarok, lyska mek pravra”

It lifted the goat into the air above the water.

“Avadon”

The air pulsed with sudden heat and the ground shivered against me. The monsters’ hands found the neck of goat and began to squeeze.

“AVADON”

The goats’ bleats turned to strangled gasps.

“A…VA…DON”

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The monster veritably roared the word as the goat’s neck snapped with a disgusting crunch of bone and flesh. Its limp body fell from outstretched hands and into the gluttonous river. It sank beneath the white rapids instantly.

The air pulsed again, and I watched in paralyzed horror as black liquid coalesced out of the air and onto the monster’s face. It squirmed against red gore before congealing into unmarred skin and—

Oh fuck.

The monster was looking at me with newly forged eyes of black. A familiar fear arose from my chest and into my head. Cold, crippling, dread, gripping my body and holding me to the ground.

The monster grinned at me with shark like teeth.

Ironically, it was exhaustion that freed me. Fear just doesn’t have the same power when I had no energy to enforce it. My body was already broken and I was probably dying from internal bleeding.

The panic washed away like water against sand.

Inspired, I rolled into the river and let the rapids carry me away.

***

Ice cold numb pain scraped against my skin as the river consumed me. It was one thing to apply a handful of water to my face. It was quite another to feel its grip against my entire body.

In another life I had been a decent swimmer. I remembered the chlorine smell of pools and the thrill of winning childhood competitions.

In this life I was a ragdoll. Even if my body hadn’t been broken, I doubted I could maintain any semblance of control in the violent water. I could only ration the small breath I had left and pray that my head didn’t meet rock.

My head didn’t, but the river was not deep enough to promise safety to my entire body. Legs and arms flung themselves out uncontrollably into the white water and struck rocky outcroppings underneath.

It was a muted kind of agony, with rough stone hammering against numb skin and bone.

Until, blessedly, it stopped. The river calmed around me, and I managed to struggle paralytically to the surface for a breath of air.

I was, serendipitously, at the joining of the brook that had led me to this river. The addition of water deepened and spread the river, calming the white water temporarily before spraying out into air ahead.

I swiveled my head, looking for red.

And found it, straight ahead – standing on the rocky bridge and grinning at me with black and white cruelty.

The paralysis in my chest tried competing against the freezing cold water and lost. I was too cold to be scared.

The river pulled me closer to the rocky bridge and my demise.

The inevitability brought a focused clarity I was used to experiencing right before a project deadline. The time for wasted thought was over, I needed a solution.

I looked at the bridge and the red giant atop it.

With grueling effort I angled my body to the left, aiming towards the spot I remember slipping on previously. The monster mirrored my movement, its cruel grin widening in sadistic anticipation.

Time slowed down as I neared the bridge and my certain doom.

I breathed out precious air and felt the water close over my mouth. Cold stung at my still open eyes.

The chill of the river flowed over me like local anesthetic, a promise of peace if only I were to stop struggling. Through the refracted light of the surface I saw red kneel against the rock shelf – arms extending deep into the water like oversized fisherman lures.

Nerves throbbed in my deadened hands and arms.

I gripped something in my hands that I hoped was ceramic.

I kicked my legs and flipped myself, hands forward.

I slashed against red.

The water exploded around me as hands harder than rock lifted me violently out of the water.

Mountain breeze brushed past wet human skin, and I trembled uncontrollably.

The monster held me up at arm’s length with one red hand around my chest. I batted limply against it with what I realized was my phone, not the ceramic shard.

With my luck, the phone had probably died in the river too.

The ogre shook me once and grabbed my flailing arm, crushing it beneath iron muscle. I whimpered in numb pain.

My phone fell from lifeless fingers and into a red palm.

I kicked my legs weakly. Fingers of steel squeezed, and something cracked in my chest.

The ogre examined the glossy black metal with open curiosity.

Of course the supernatural monster couldn’t be satisfied with just killing me, it also had to steal my tech.

A weak battery sign flashed on the screen facing me. I felt warmth in my chest. If it could survive, so could I.

“Hey Google.”

The ogre ignored me.

My phone did not.

“Flashlight.”

The ogre roared in surprise as light from another world pierced into shark like eyes.

It stepped back against slippery shale.

And then we were falling.

Ten pounds heavier indeed.