The lights raced by in his blurry vision as he slumped over the wheel, tired. Mark had been driving for close to 17 hours and was almost to his destination. Reflecting back on the day he knew he wasn’t making the best decisions but someone needed to help his little cousin out of this jam.  That asshole, Dan, what a prick.  He was always getting into some sort of trouble, seldom able to get out of it on his own. Dan had burned most of his bridges already but Mark never failed to pick up the call. Whether it was to bail him out of jail or to pick up his drunk and coked out ass from random nightclubs after he had been kicked out for causing some sort of absurdity. 

Last week he had climbed on stage with a fucking banana and started licking it suggestively while making eye contact with the biggest bouncer Mark had ever seen.  What the literal fuck was wrong with Dan.  Mark was just thankful that the bouncer remembered Mark from his own slightly outside the law early years and knew Dan was his problem so instead of beating the shit out of Dan and sending him to the hospital, Frank, the bouncer, was kind enough to just pull Dan off the stage by the ear, take the banana, and beat him about the face and neck with it until he was left with a mushy, leaking, banana in his hand.  He dragged Dan behind the bar, looped some duck tape around his mouth, wrists, and ankles and texted Mark to come pick up his garbage.

Dan had called me the next day, from jail, and told me that there was something in his hotel room that needed to be brought back to his shitty little room that he refused to clean despite me not charging him for rent.  I figured it was some shenanigans but he was insistent that I would THANK him for it, I just had to see it for myself and needed to get down there in the next two days before his check out time to grab a duffle bag.  Apparently the little fucker had slapped a high ranking police officials son, supposedly over some misunderstanding at the club, and they were refusing him bail due to him being a “threat to himself and society at large.” This was laughable if you ever saw Dan. Little fucker was 120 pounds soaking wet, barely tall enough to reach Mark’s chest. 

Despite knowing it was a bad idea, Dan had sounded strangely desperate. The truth came out when I saw him in jail and he told me the story over a picnic table where the conversation wasn’t noticeably being recorded.

This time Dan was really in over his head. He had been down in Miami over spring break and apparently ran into some nice Latino fellas dripping with gold chains and couldn’t help but to ingratiate himself with them, talked up a big game, and ended up getting fronted 10 fucking kilos of Peruvian cocaine. “So that was what was in my duffel bag in the trunk…in my car that I drove 17 hours down from south Illinois to help this dumb fucking blood relative of mine,” Mark thought to himself at the time.

Almost home, he thought as he saw his exit on the sign signifying only 1 mile left in this risky trip.

Suddenly, out of the darkness to the left comes the biggest fucking deer Mark had ever seen in his god damn life.  There was a moment of clarity and calm as the deer seemed to freeze right in his path as he approached at precisely 75 miles per hour. The deer looked down at him, it was truly magnificent. The eyes peered into his soul and in that moment they both knew they were absolutely fucked.  Time sped up, the deer crashed through the windshield on the driver’s side and Mark screamed before his vision faded to black.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

***

Beep…..beep…..beep… 

Mark cracked open his eyes and was instantly blinded by the clean, cold lights of a hospital room. He tried to raise his head but he couldn’t move it.  He felt something cold around his wrist and when he was able to creak his neck downwards an inch he saw that he was cuffed to the bed.

Even more surprisingly, considering that he DID remember what was in his trunk before he thought he died, there was Dan talking to a tan, muscular man.  Dan was mumbling under his breath about how Mark and him would make it up to the man and his friends, anything, no matter what… The tan man looked at Mark coldly…appraisingly…. Then he nodded and left the room.  Dan came up to him squeezed his hand and whispered, “I’m so so so sorry Mark, I know I’m always fucking up but don’t worry, I’ll fix it this time I promise.”

Mark looked into Dan’s eyes, saw them filling with tears and wondered how bad of fucking shape he really was in.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep…..

Darkness enveloped Mark and he drifted away on clouds made of the morphine coursing through his broken limbs.

***

Mark woke up and looked down, he couldn’t see his body.  He started to panic but couldn’t feel anything, not his breath speeding up, not his limbs, he was just…floating in a dark expanse. Fuck.  This is great he thought.

Welcome to Groggo’s Expanse

What the fuck, he thought to himself as the words floated in front of his eyes. He tried to move and suddenly found himself seeing the words from any and every angle, almost too fast to comprehend. Then a light appeared in the distance and as he thought about it, it rushed towards him and he emerged into a grassy plain where his view was obstructed by a grid of pictures, with countless races, species, whatever the fuck.. God damn they must have him on a lot of goddamn painkillers he thought to himself as he started to browse the pictures. Suddenly he noticed a clock ticking down in the upper right corner and it was already at ten seconds. Not knowing what would happen he just started trying to select anything and everything in a panic.  One screen flashed by, then there were pictures of weapons but he didn’t have time for this shit and just keep mentally clicking…the timer reached zero and suddenly the light started to fade and he was once again pulled into an eerie black expanse.

***

Mark opened his eyes.  He looked around. Every direction was gently rolling hills with large stones scattered up and down their sides. He looked down and this time he saw a body! Rejoice!  He was back among the corporeal!! Now he just needed to figure out what the fuck was going on and how to get back home so he could sort out his issues with Dan, Dan’s tan friend, and his pending drug charges. Mark was not unaware of the penalties that went along with such things these days considering in his own past he had done some drug and gun running for some kids he grew up with in their bumfuck rural town.

But his body…was not his body. It was a fucking grayish blue…what the fuck is going on? He thought.

It was also much bulkier than the body he left in the hospital bed, he didn’t know about height as he’d always been rather tall but in real life he had been a lanky motherfucker, wiry and strong sure but never able to put on actual bulk or muscle.

He stretched his arms above his head and then slowly stood up and scanned the horizon. There were….3 suns? All at varying points in the sky…off in the distance he saw a small trail of smoke coming up in a small snaking column. 

Not knowing what else to do with himself, Mark set off in that direction.