Everything hurts. That's the first conscious thought I can remember having.

"Ughh.."

A groan escaped my lips as I tried to move and the pain seemed to redouble. My tongue was slick and tasted of copper. The hard rocky soil beneath me poked and prodded my bruised body. I put a hand to the ground to lift myself in an effort to relieve the piercing pressure on my abdomen.

"Agh fuuuuck," the words escaped my lips, a stone doing its level best to become one with my palm making me lose my balance

I rolled and fell on my side, knocking my head against the bumpy wall behind me in the process. Wait..what? A wall? Wasn't I just driving? A memory flashed in my mind of an oncoming truck a moment of blinding pain and then....

My heart dropped.

Images of my car, obliterated into a heap of glass and steel, flickered through my mind.

I opened my eyes and began frantically searching for the wreckage but froze only a moment later.

I was not looking upon an intersection, strewn with debris. No, this looked more like a cave.

The fact that I could even see was attributable to a soft orange glow of what seemed to be moss. I could hear an irregular staccato, water dripping and echoing from some shadowed place. I couldn't see much farther than a few meters away from myself but I seemed to be in a natural tunnel. Craggy walls bled into darkness on either side of me, and I could spot a familiar orange glow of cave moss lighting up patches of the tunnel, like tiny islands of reality floating in a abyss. Most notably, the cave floor and walls immediately around me seemed to be splattered with dried blood....my blood. My clothes were in tatters, my skin covered in bruises and long fresh scabs on my arms and torso. Any one of these observations might be explained away, rationalized as from my recent accident or part of some convoluted, if unlikely, chain of events that had deposited me in this cave. I might have even begun constructing one of these scenarios if it weren't for one simple fact that I could not deny.

This was not my body.

"Wha-wha...wha..." I was having trouble processing this revelation.

I was losing my grip on reality. I had to be. I was in a coma from the accident or hallucinating in the final moments before brain death. Thoughts like these flashed through my mind, each crashing into the other without stop.

I might've stayed there panicking until I passed out if not for one thing. DANGER. The lizard part of my brain practically screamed at me. The panic was gone, replaced by a placid surety. Death was near. My hairs stood on end and a cold sweat crept down my back. I was being watched, this I KNEW. I slowly turned my gaze towards the darkness. It felt like the shadows were moving as the feeling of dread grew, causing my spine to go rigid.

'Move'....I slowly rose to my feet, now trembling all over. My legs felt like lead as I tried to back away slowly.

'Move damnit!' The fear had overridden my logical thought and taken control of my actions. I was frozen, completely unable to act.

That's when I saw it for the briefest moment. A gleam of light. It could have been just my imagination but I saw it again. There was something there in the dark. It's eyes watching me, unblinking.

'MOVE NOW!!'

I turned and ran, headless of the patches of darkness between the alcoves of light before me. Whatever dangers might exist there were irrelevant next to the animalistic terror I felt bearing down on me from behind.

Stolen novel; please report.

I sprinted through the rocky tunnel, moving faster than I'd ever ran before, the sickle of Death it self hanging over my neck. Distantly I observed I had one boot on over my left foot, my right sole being cut and torn in my desperate flight. Before the pain could even begin to slow me I heard it. An alien, bestial roar. It was determined, desperate..hungry. I somehow pushed myself faster as I could now hear the smack of flesh and the scraping of claws against stone. It was getting closer. My heart pounded in my chest, my lungs heaving, burning with exertion. I dared to look back, an action which saved me in that instant, as all I could see was a massive forelimb hurtling towards my face before stumbling.

My head barely dropped low enough to avoid the powerful blow, though not enough to avoid it's claws raking my face. I collapsed in a heap, slamming into a wall I hadn't realized was ahead of me. My head swam as stars danced in my eyes. I could feel the weight of the creature on my chest. I could feel muscle, sinew, bone and mangey fur pressing into my ribs. It wasn't tearing me apart, but it was beginning to stir. I blindly reached out and my hand alighted upon a craggy stone. In desperation I clenched my fist around and swung it at the beast above me. I could feel and hear the wet, squelch of torn flesh and the crunch of rock against bone. The predator above began to thrash, its claws wildly tearing at whatever they could reach, old and fresh wounds opening on my arms as i desperately swung my crude weapon over and over. Warm blood ran freely all over my face and body as burning lines of pain erupted across my flesh. I kept swinging.

At some point the creatures growls went silent and it body became still. I don't know how long I had been bludgeoning it before I realized this fact. My rational mind slowly came back to me as I lied there, soaked in viscera, the weight of my would be predator slumped atop me. My body screamed in protest as I pushed the animal off of me.

I could barely see in the darkness I had collapsed in but I saw enough to realize this creature looked to be starving. It was obviously emaciated, it's skeletal structure clearly defined against skin and muscle. It looked to be some sort of mange ridden rat like creature, if rats were 4 feet long and crossbred with panthers.

As i stood there bleeding and wounded, I began to wonder if this was the only predator in these tunnels. If there were more, staying next to the body of a freshly killed and bloodied beast may not be the smartest thing to do. I tore at my ragged clothes, doing my best to bind the deepest wounds on my arms as I limped away.

What the hell was going on? Why was this happening to me? Was I really just going crazy?

The pain that was steadily rising to the forefront of my mind began to crowd out these thoughts. Soon it was all I could do just to keep moving much less think about the nature of my current reality.

That's when I noticed a change in the mostly uniformly dark tunnel. A glow coming from a recess ahead. Not the now familiar orange light of the cave moss. This was a soft blue ambience, that seemed strangely comforting. I struggled forward towards the emanation, turning at a T junction that broke up the otherwise featureless space. A barrier of stalactites and stalagmites occluded this comforting blue light, but there's was enough space to squeeze myself through before seeing what lied beyond.

A clear shimmering pool of water with a glimmering stalactite hanging above. It was covered in shimmering crystals of sapphire light, refracted in the waters below, the color dancing across the walls of this small alcove.

I absent mindedly noted this as I fell to my knees and guzzled the cool water. My dry ragged throat squeezed in shock at the coldness of the liquid rushing down and I coughed and hacked before once more gulping down mouthful after mouthful. When I finally felt satisfied I lied down next to the pools edge. My pain and weariness enveloped me all at once as my eyes shut and darkness took me.