I was back in the Rockies, seeing images I had not seen in years. My cousin was by my side. We were running terrified through the woods, darting between trees, scrambling over rocks and around boulders surrounded by tall pine trees. I could hear the raspy sound of air being sucked down a dry throat. It drove us through the wood to a small cave opening on our left. My stomach flipped as I heard myself, surprisingly calm, yell to my cousin, “Cave! It can’t fit!” I wanted to scream, ‘No! Keep running! Don’t go down there!’ But I watched as he scrambled in, and I followed. We crawled frantically. I could feel a massive hand close around my leg.

I woke to my face being slapped. I could taste blood. The sound of jet engines powering down entered my subconscious. “He quit screaming. Is he awake?” asked a gruff voice.

“I don’t know, but if he starts again, I’m going to put a ball gag in his mouth,” answered a second.

“He was screaming the whole flight?” Asked the first.

“Yes, it didn’t matter how much I hit him. He wouldn’t shut up,” grumbled the second. I stayed limp, not wanting them to know I was awake, though I couldn’t stop my body from quivering. I did not have many memories from my trip to the Rockies. I had been pretty messed up. Whatever they had injected me with had brought one back. I was not a fan.

They dragged me out of a small jet and laid me on a cement floor. The jet engines trailed off as bags were tossed down next to me. I would have tried running if I was not hog tied. Two men picked me up, dragged me down a flight of stairs, set me on a rolling table, then pulled me into an elevator. One of the men pushed a button labeled “the Jungle,” and the elevator started to descend. It was a long minute before the door opened, and they rolled me out into a large, empty room. By now, I had gotten my wits mostly back and opened my eyes. The two men were dressed in black uniforms with helmets, not an inch of skin was visible.

The room they were pushing me through was dotted with hatches, much like manholes you see in the middle of a street, but they were fastened to the floor with massive bolts. The men weaved through until they reached one that was extra-large, in comparison to the others, set in the center of the room. One of the men began unbolting the trapdoor with a massive air drill. The bolts were easily as thick as my arm and about three feet long. He pulled each bolt out with a winch attached to some sort of rail system running over each trapdoor. Once the bolts were removed, he clipped the winch to the massive lid. The winch’s motor whined as it slowly lifted the impressive two-foot-thick steel lid up and out of the way.

“Come on. Let’s get him in.” The two men pulled me from the rolling table and over to the hole. One shoved something in my jeans’ back pocket before they dropped me. I couldn’t do anything to stop them. I expected to hit the ground hard but landed on something soft. I could feel it deflating. The metal lid shut with a resounding shunk. Well, I wasn’t getting out that way.

I reached in my back pocket and found a pair of handcuff keys. As the stunt pad deflated beneath me, I fumbled with the handcuffs, freeing my hands then feet. A light illuminated a hall in front of me. I took the handcuffs in my right hand. They were not a good weapon, but it was better than nothing. I walked down the hall into a massive, staged exhibit. Five-foot thick Plexiglass ran around my enclosure. It was large, about the size of three trailer homes slapped together. The ceiling was a good twenty feet high; fake pine trees were placed upright, reaching the very top. A stream ran through the middle. I walked around, looking for whatever else they were holding here. I could see other smaller exhibits were placed around this one.

“What do you think monster hunter? Will it hold a grendel?” The man from my cabin asked through a speaker set in the roof. I found the man standing on the far side of the enclosure looking through the five-foot thick glass. He smiled at me, tapping the glass from the other side. I could barely hear it. He spoke again, the microphone in his lapel picking up his every word. “Well, what do you think?”

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I shook my head. “You will never get it down here. I think it will claw its way through the glass eventually, if you did.”

“I find that highly doubtful, but we have precautions for that,” he pressed a button, and a thick wall of steel began to rise from the floor and lower from the ceiling. I took a step back. He stopped the wall with another press of the button, and they retracted. He smiled at me. His eyes were abnormally large. I still was having trouble categorizing him. Vampire? Wolf? A fae? He healed too quickly from a bullet to the head, so probably fae.

“I may have underestimated you,” I said stiffly.

His smile widened. “Have you come around, then?”

I looked around the encloser and let out a long breath. “No, but it would be better for it to be here than roaming free.”

“Go back, and I will have my men escort you to my sitting room.”

His men pulled me up on the winch and lead me through a maze of tunnels. They brought me out on to a balcony suspended off the side of a cliff. Was I in Wyoming? The land around was very desolate. I was definitely somewhere in the Rockies. The man sat at a glass table, a glass of wine in front of him. He didn’t turn from looking out over the barren landscape until I sat down across from him. He let out a long sigh, turning to me. He studied me a long time before taking a drink. “My men say you screamed uncontrollably the entire flight over the mountain. I didn’t believe them until they sent a video.” He placed a tablet on the table and clicked play. I watched myself, laying bound in the back of the jet, and listened as I screamed bloody murder and moaned, rocking from side to side. “You are a completely different person in your dreams, it appears,” he smiled at me.

I didn’t take my eye from my quivering form until he pulled the tablet away, pausing the video. “You are a monster hunter? How is that possible? You seem so terrified.” He was trying to get under my skin, and it was working. My brain was warming up, starting to cycle through those lost images. I couldn’t keep from moving, so I let my foot start tapping.

“Monster hunter. I don’t hunt horrors.”

“Please. Aren’t they the same?” He leaned back in his chair. “It’s all a matter of perspective don’t you think, Anthony?” He said my name as if we were life long friends. I hadn’t known he knew it.

“Dare I ask your name?”

“You may call me Mr. Edgewood.”

“Well, Mr. Edgewood, what do you want to know that I haven’t already told you, and what will you be paying for it?”

He laughed out loud. “You are quite the conniver, Anthony, but you are right. You need to know where we stand. You are mine now—part of my collection. A monster hunter just seemed fitting to add to the collection of beasts. Oh, you don’t like the idea?” He smirked at my scowl. “But don’t worry, I am a good master. You behave, and your life will be better than most who consider themselves free. So, name what you want, and it will be provided as long as you jump and sit at my every command.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, really anything. You seem to like having that little vampire around. She, or someone like her, could be yours if you want, depending on your obedience. The sky really is the limit, seeing as you will be spending most of your time under the earth,” He chuckled.

“You caught up with her then.”

“Soon. You’re interested?”

“Not nearly as I am in my own freedom.”

“That is not on the table,” Mr. Edgewood replied.

“Not even if I brought you the grendel?”

“You are going to share what you know one way or another, so no.”

“You misunderstand. I said I will go and get it. Hunt it down and bring it back to you.”

“Oh interesting, it’s suddenly possible to catch it? Go on; I’m listening.”

I took a long deep breath. “I stick by what I said, but I am willing to try if it means that I am a free man.”

“That’s just not good enough, Anthony. It’s time you tell me what else you know. Then you can settle comfortably into your exhibit, and I will collect my prize.”

“Well, it seems we’re back to you putting a cap in my head.”

He frowned. “Well, that is unfortunate, but you will learn to bend to my wishes in time.” He walked over to the railing, absently tapping the tablet, and resuming the sounds of my own screaming. “I wonder how long it will take for you to break. It will be good fun for the Doc; he seemed to want to watch you live.” Chills rain though my body at the sound of my own screaming.

His men grabbed me roughly and dragged me back through the metal door and rough cut stone hallways to a clean operating room. They strapped me down to a table, and the same fat man as before appeared, smiling as he injected me with another syringe and began setting up a camera as the waves of fire started to run over my body.