It was a most bizarre experience, a first time for Abrar and the others. Inside the vortex they could not feel anything except for the bone chilling cold and an extreme pressure bearing down on them. Before their disbelieving eyes, the elderly MRI patient got crushed into bloody pulp. This made the survivors grit their teeth and bear with the pain, praying it would end before they too followed the old lady to a most unpleasant demise.
However the dangers of the wormhole were certainly not confined to the cold and pressure, one of the abductees suddenly screamed as a deep gash appeared on his torso; another doctor fell into two pieces without even realizing what had happened to him.
Abrar was not untouched by these unseen assailants, a shallow but long gash appeared on his left bicep giving the impression something had brushed past him, grazing his bicep. ‘Rips in the fabric of space?’ Abrar thought back to the numerous science fiction novels he had loved to read as a child. The pain he felt from the cut, the cold permeating into his body via the cut and the blood that froze instantly leaving his body via the injury kept Abrar from thinking any further. However it was clear he had been a lot luckier than many of his collegues, he could see a couple chopped into pieces while nearly everyone had injuries of varying degree.
Thankfully it seemed the portal had reached its destination and the trail was to an end as the occupants got flung out of the portal.
Abrar flew out and slammed into the grassy ground in a clearing next to a stream. He lay on the ground shivering and panting in memory of the ordeal he had just been through. After a few minutes of rest, he struggled to his feet, brushing off dirt rather unsuccessfully from his white doctor overalls which was rather tattered attesting to the conditions it had been through recently.
Abrar took a look at his surroundings and was amazed at the amount of vitality this forest appeared to possess. Tall towering trees spread their leafy arms high in the sky, long vines wrapped all around the tree trunks, small bushes and shrubs covering the forest floor. He could hear the chirping of birds and the grunts of animals in the distance. ‘Is this the Amazon?’ Abrar wondered, ‘No, this is no rainforest. More like a woodland.’ He had been unaware there was such a place left on earth; it was a most welcome surprise to know Earth wasn’t completely screwed yet.
Abrar suddenly felt a sharp piercing pain on his forehead which was making it difficult for him to think, had he been stung by a bee? He stumbled to the small stream and washed his face a few times, the cool water alleviating some of the pain. Sighing with relief Abrar attempted to rub his temples only to encounter a hard obstruction on his forehead. He rushed to the stream and scooped up a handful of water to try to observe his reflection. He could make out some sort of stone on the middle of his forehead in the poor reflection offered by the water.
Panic stricken, his two hands probed the stone attempting to find some perchance to pull it off. However this action resulted in a most terrible pain which made him vary of interfering with the stone for now. ‘Where had this stone come from?’ wondered Abrar, ‘Did it pierce my forehead in the crash landing earlier?’ Whatever the reason, the stone was problematic and could cause dreadful infections. He had to find civilization soon and visit a hospital to get the stone out before he died of gangrene.
Abrar emptied his pockets to take account of what he possessed; his cellphone which refused to turn on, his trusty lighter which was running on fumes and prayers, his car keys and finally the bottle of antibiotics he had picked up from the pharmacy earlier this morning for his cousin. All in all, nothing that was particularly useful to him at the moment.
When Abrar was engrossed with his inventory the ground trembled, “Earthquake!” gasped Abrar rushing to his feet. The earthquake wasn’t really a very strong one, a single tremor and it was gone leaving no evidence other than the vibrating tree branches.
After waiting a short while for any more unwanted and unexpected surprises Abrar decided to get a move on. Maybe he could try finding civilization on his on or maybe run into his colleagues who had gotten separated exiting the portal.
Abrar wandered in a random direction, struggling through the thick shrubbery until he heard a scream not very far from his current location. “Nadia!” Abrar instantly recognized the voice of one of the prettier of his batch mates in the medical college. Abrar tore his way past the bushes and sped towards the place Nadia’s scream had come. Finally he arrived in a small clearing only to be witness to a most grisly sight. Nadia lay slump on the forest floor with blood pooling out of an injury on her neck. Her unseeing eyes held a grievance for having lost her life while she had so much to live for.
Abrar noticed something perched on Nadia’s back with its jaws clenching her throat, it appeared to be a wild cat the size of a German shepherd dog. Enraged at the death of his one time crush at the hands of an oversized tabby cat, Abrar rushed at the feline kicking hard at it. The cat leapt back hissing at the intruder keeping it from its kill. For a moment Man and Cat glared a one another, each vary of the other. The cat then suddenly lunged at Abrar with all claws bared.
Lucky for Abrar some deeply suppressed survival instincts kicked in and with the precision of someone used to kicking stray dogs, Abrar brandished his foot kicking the little cat a few meters away. The cat yowled in rage and pain, a strange white gem on its forehead started to glow and it spat a gray blob of something at Abrar.
Every sense in Abrar’s body screamed this blob was nothing he wanted to be in contact with. He dropped towards the floor dodging the blob with experience gained from years of playing cricket. However his otherwise perfect dodge maneuver had a massive flaw, he had managed to drop towards the ground but that had left his back exposed to the mercy of the cat and mercy the critter did not possess.
“Get off, you little bastard,” Abrar swore as he frantically tried to dislocate the pest off his back before it tore into his throat. Luckily the creature was rather light and had managed to get its claws entangled in the multiple layers of clothing so he didn’t suffer any deep gashes.
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Abrar finally succeeded in pulling the feline off his back, turning the tables round by grabbing it by the throat and yanking it off. He swung the cat held tightly in his fists, smashing it into the tree right next to him. After a dozen smashes, the cat’s struggles weakened until finally with a sharp snap its spine broke under the duress, making it go limp. He kicked the feline a few times to make sure it wasn’t faking its demise before being finally convinced of his victory.
Abrar gasped in relief, sucking in sweet air as adrenaline surged through his veins. He had escaped more or less unscathed bare a few shallow injuries on his back and arms but nothing that risked his bleeding out to death. After tearing apart a few strips of cloth from his overall Abrar crudely bandaged the deeper injuries.
Having tended to his own dire needs, Abrar recalled the reason he had been pushed into this mess. He struggled to the gory mess that was once a beauty that turned heads where she went. ‘Strange,’ Abrar pondered, ‘I don’t recall her being in the MRI procedure room with us. She wasnt assigned to the Butcher’ Pushing the random thought to the back of his mind, Abrar knelt down to examine her corpse. Even though he was used to blood having been a trainee doctor in the final year of his bachelors and having seen his fair share of surgeries and cadavers, he did feel a bit ill seeing the gruesome remains of someone he had known, albeit not very closely.
Noting something in Nadia’s hand, he pried it open to reveal a scalpel; Abrar turned it in his hand examining its sharp blade, ‘What was Nadia doing with it? Where did she get her hands on it? You don’t exactly carry a scalpel around for giggles.’
The scalpel reminded him that Nadia may be carrying something else useful to him. After some hesitation and an intense moral debate with his conscience, he flipped over Nadia to check her pockets. He had, after all, almost lost his life trying to selflessly save the girl so she shouldn’t begrudge him some junk no longer of use to her dead soul. However it seemed he had been too optimistic, he did obtain some items but none particularly useful in his situation such as a few bank notes, credit cards, car keys, a dead cell phone, a diamond ring and a bracelet seemingly made of gold, not that he was an expert appraiser or something. Still he pocketed everything as it wasnt going to add a lot of weight or something.
Abrar noticed something on the forehead of his plundered target, a white stone that was remarkably similar to what he had on his forehead too. After fished out his new scalpel and attempted to surgically remove the stone. However he soon realized the stone was not something as simple as a rock fragment embedded in the skin by some accident. He could see blood vessels connected to the stone, something that blew his mind apart; this defied everything he knew of modern anatomy and science. ‘Why would an inorganic chunk of rock need blood provided to it? It doesn’t seem like it entered the body but rather it grew there. But that’s impossible, right?’
Looking at the smooth but bloody oval stone in his palm, he was suddenly reminded of something, the cat! It too had something on its forehead, was it a stone too? Abrar walked towards his kill, lost in the implications of the connection he had made. He crouched before the corpse of the feline and after fiddling with the scalpel for a couple of minutes managed to remove his trophy, noting similar blood vessels attached to the rock. Abrar compared the two stones in his palm, noting that the stone from the cat was indeed larger and deeper in color as compared to Nadia’s stone.
However he did not have time to study his gains any further as he saw something exit the shrubbery, prowling towards Nadia’s corpse. Abrar barely held in a scream at the bizarre creature before him; it could be only described as an abomination. An ugly hairless body with four feet topped with wicked looking claws, a long tail tipped with black spikes, a pair of small bat like wing folded on its back and finally a horrifying face that seemed human, with a brown gem on its forehead. Was this a manticore? Whatever the creature called itself, it was clearly not the friendly sort judging by the throaty growl rippling through the air. Abrar knew the creature was not content with the corpses on its feet and appeared to want his blood instead. He slowly bent his knees to pick up a rock the size of his palm, careful not to spook the hunter before him.
Suddenly he burst into action, throwing the rock with precision earned from hurling cricket balls at wickets for years. The rock nailed the beast between its eyes making it yowl with pain. Abrar capitalized on the opportunity before him, turning tail and sprinting into the jungle before the predator came to its senses.
Abrar ran faster than he had ever run in his life with the vengeful manticore screeching after him while jumping from tree branch to tree branch using its bat like wings. Abrar however had the advantage of maneuverability, it was clear the manticore did not specialize in long pursuits like this but a quick end with the long poisonous spikes on its tail.
After a frantic chase Abrar reached a creek and after a moment of hesitation, he jumped in and swam downstream for a while before struggling past the rapid water to the other side of the bank. Utterly exhausted, he climbed the nearest tree and slumped on it, unable to go any further. He sat panting, awaiting his untimely demise at the claws of the utterly infuriated manticore.
Speaking of the devil, the manticore finally appeared on the other side of the bank. It launched a couple of tail spikes at Abrar who rested on the tree top. Luckily the distance coupled with the dense branches kept the venomous spikes from impaling the tired youth. Screeching with fury at the failure, the manticore overcame its hesitation of crossing the creek and leapt into the air, attempting to clear the creek in one massive glide. Abrar could see the man-faced creature soaring towards him like an ugly bestial angel of death. However suddenly massive jaws clamped around the abdomen of the manticore nearly earing it into two! A huge snake residing at the bottom of the creek had claimed this land as its territory. Having fed not long ago, it had permitted the passage of Abrar which it had deemed as prey but the trespassing manticore which was clearly competiition was immediately dealt with extreme prejudice.
Abrar saw this scene with horror filled eyes; the powerful manticore had perished in a single attack by the humungous serpent. It was scary that he had swam past this monster not long ago, unaware of the horrors the creek had held. This forest was a most dangerous place to be and he had to be extremely careful if he did not want to end up like Nadia or the late manticore.
Thud! The ground trembled once more as a brief earthquake passed, just like the one that had happened a while ago. Abrar sat on the tree trying to recover his strength and burn off the lactic acid filling his muscles. Hours passed and he noted that roughly every hour, a tremor would take place. Soon daylight started fading away and Abrar noticed something extremely odd, the sun hung in the middle of the sky instead of setting like it should. After a few hours and earth shaking beats, what he saw made his blood run cold; the ‘sun’ in the sky had dimmed to a pleasant moon like glow revealing its real identity. A massive crystal hung in the middle of the sky by unknown means replicating sun and moon. ‘This is no earth…’ Abrar thought in dismay, finally gaining confirmation of what he had been suspecting for a while now.