Chapter 1

Intergalactic Planetary

I had been asleep. Had being the keyword in that sentence. My girlfriend made sure of that when she moved in her sleep and smacked me hard across the face. Now, I was massaging my jaw and debating whether or not to check my phone. I had work in the morning and had been up late playing video games. I didn't usually play many video games, but everyone at work had been raving about this new shooter, and I knew I had to check it out. The game turned out to be a blast, and I had stayed up way too late. 

I grabbed my phone and saw it was 3:45 A.M. I sighed in frustration before drinking some water from the glass on my nightstand, closed my eyes, and tried to fall back asleep. I had been lying there for what felt like five minutes and was about to pass out when a low woosh followed by a deep hum dragged me back to reality. I was pissed. I had been about to pass out, and my girlfriend turned her damn music on. I was so close. So fucking close, and now I’ve lost that sleep. It’s gone, and it's never coming back, fuck! I sat up, opened my eyes, and turned to yell at my girlfriend, Lily. However, before the words left my mouth, I noticed a light lit the room like the TV was on. The only problem there was we didn’t have a TV in our room. 

I turned slowly towards the light, and my mouth fell open in shock. There was, and I kid you fucking not, a portal or window or, I don't fucking know, something sitting about four feet off the ground at the end of the bed. I was about to turn and wake Lilly, but as I started to do just that, I saw something begin to make its way out of the floaty thing. As I watched, what looked like an octopus tentacle broke the surface of the floating thing. 

The tentacle poked about a bit, left then right as if smelling the air or something. At that point, I was frozen. This was wrong. I should wake Lilly, and we should be getting the fuck out of here, but what the actual fuck was going on. The tentacle moved further into our room after its initial tentative inspection of the space as if a child full of innocent curiosity. I was still watching the tentacle, on the verge of a full-on freakout. When the tentacle reached the foot of the comforter. Something snapped in my head at that moment. A subconscious boundary line had been crossed, and I moved.

I was out of bed and across the room holding the door nob, ready to run, screaming if the tentacle made any sudden moves. Now, I slept across the bed from the door, so when I had booked it to the door, I had pretty much straight up stepped on Lily. Maybe a couple of times. Lily had obviously woken up from the barrage of feet slamming into her, and she was not happy. 

“Ow, Tom, what the fuck! Are you kidding me? That fucking hurt. You’re such an asshole. Ow, dam it, you stepped right on my arm. That really hurt… what?” Lily stopped speaking, clearly confused. I had been waving my hands up and down at her and shooshing her the entire time she had been berating me. Because Lily had been half asleep and couldn’t really see until she had her glasses on, she hadn’t noticed my actions at first. Now that she had her face was turning purple with rage.

I had been franticly looking between Lilly and the tentacle, but Lily hadn’t noticed the tentacle or the magical portal thing hanging in mid-air at the foot of our bed. She was completely focused on me and how fucking pissed off she was at me.

“Are you seriously telling me to shut up right now? Are you fucking kidding me? You stupid, childish.” 

“Lily, move now. Come on!” I yelled.

“What are you…”  That was all Lilly got out in confusion before the situation got so much worse. I tried to tell her. I tried. She didn’t move in time, and the tentacle, that until moments before had looked shocked into immobility, I think, by Lilly yelling, started looking back and forth between Lily and myself until a decision was made.

Lily was screaming. I didn’t think I just ran to her. I started trying to pull Lily free from the tentacle, rapidly entangling itself around her body. Lily was in full freakout mode, and I was right there with her. The tentacle was slimy and cold. It was awful and disgusting. As I was trying to pull the thing off, Lily, I was actively trying not to vomit or let go of the thing in disgust. Shivers were rippling down my spine, but there was no time for that. The tentacle started pulling Lily towards the portal as it continued to wrap Lily up. 

Lily squirmed and wriggled to break free of the creepy tentacle, but neither Lily nor I gained much ground. Lilly was beginning to truly enter a new stage of panic and had begun to smack the tentacle wildly while screaming profanities at it. The hits seemed to be stunning the tentacle a bit, slowing the progress of Lily's encapsulation. 

Seeing this small ray of hope. I grabbed the closest thing. Something off the nightstand and began to beat the living shit out of the tentacle. At one point, as I was laying some beat down on the tentacle, I heard Lily scream after I gave the tentacle one particularly hard smack, and I realized when I was whacking the tentacle, I had been whacking Lily as well. 

I was fucking stupid, such a dumb ass. However much of an idiot I was, we finally had Lily almost free. Then, with one last push, she was, and Lily was off the bed and headed towards the door. 

That’s when Lily did something that both shocked and dumbfounded me. When she finally broke free, she jumped off the bed, and then before running to the door, Lily actually took the time to push me at the tentacle as if saying, "Take him instead." I was so shocked I didn’t realize it when I hit the mattress and was almost immediately grabbed by the now definitely pissed-off tentacle. 

That fucking bitch, was all I could think as panic overtook me. I was slamming away with the… What the fuck, Lily's fucking dildo? I had grabbed Lily’s fucking dildo as a weapon? That was just great, pink rabbit to the rescue. Dildo or not, I was still going to whack away at the thing. The tentacle was pissed off now, and no matter how much I hit the fucking tentacle, it just kept wrapping me up. Then, It began to pull me into the portal. At that point, I could only move my arms and best believe it. I kept swinging away. 

Every attempt I made to break free was met with futility, and as I felt my feet passing into the portal, all I could do was scream in fear and frustration. The fact I couldn’t do a dam thing about it was maddening. I felt the bone-chilling cold and the dry air of the other side of the portal as my feet went through, and the atmosphere on the other side hit my flesh. When my neck began to pass through the event horizon of the portal, I think I passed out, lost in terror. 

Only moments must have passed when I woke up, but I had passed through the portal and was now suspended in a void held aloft in the tentacle's grip. The world I had entered was darker than the void of space and almost as cold. Well, at least it felt that cold. The only light came from other portals that flickered in and out of existence in the distance as far as the eye could see. 

The tentacle that held me was pulling me through the void space and into another portal that was close by. When I say close, it was probably more than a mile away from me, but it was still closer than any other portal. If I had been in my right mind, I’m sure I would have been in awe of the void or worried about breathing, maybe? But all I could think about was that I had to break free, no matter the cost. All that mattered was not being trapped.   

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At some point in my fight to break free, the vibrator clicked on, and the thing started vibrating. I continued to wack the tentacle, and that's when something strange happened. The vibration of the dildo seemed to freak the tentacle out. Eventually, instead of hitting the tentacle with the dildo, I began to drive the dildo into the tentacle. 

It was working. The vibration was working. I was almost free, and then I was falling. That roller coaster falling feeling hit me, and then my stomach was in my throat, and I was screaming. My fall was briefly and abruptly halted as the tentacle grabbed for me, but I quickly slipped from its grip, and then I was falling again. I definitely pissed myself, and I screamed until I lost my voice, but a little while after that, I realized something. I was falling, but where was the landing?

Falling was only scary because falling always ended with a sudden stop that mostly resulted in death, but if nothing was waiting at the end of the fall, was it something to worry about? That made me feel a bit better for a second. Then I started thinking about all the things I could still die from and would now probably be the cause of my death. There was starvation, dehydration, or maybe a portal would open in my exact location and cut me in half or behead me. That was panic-inducing for a while. So much fun.

When I had given everything I had in me to panic, I felt exhausted, but that's when I finally calmed down enough to think a bit about what I was actually going through at that moment. I had been kidnapped from my bed by a creepy tentacle thing, dragged through a portal into a void space, and then broken free, and now I was falling with no end in sight.

So, there was gravity or some other phenomenon that mimics gravity in this place I was in. Maybe I wasn’t even moving at all. Did I feel any wind? Okay, that was a no. There was no wind, my hair wasn’t fluttering, and my clothes weren't dancing about, but it felt like I was falling.

It might have been the portals. I definitely was falling in relation to all the portals I could see. Then, that line of thought went out the window when I realized I could breathe in this void space. So there was an atmosphere? What the fuck? Now, I was truly confused, and that’s when I kind of gave up trying to figure out the physics of this void space. 

Then, the boredom started to kick in. I had been falling for what must have been hours by now, and if this kept up, I might actually die. Then that started the whole what would kill me first line of thought. That lasted another hour, at least. Interrupted by a few good cries.

Shortly after that freakout session, my mindset changed. I was trying to pull myself together after my most recent cry when a portal opened near me, and I almost slammed into it. I twisted my body to avoid it, then realized one of these portals was probably my only way out of this fucking void. So, I reached out to grab the portal's edge. I partially succeeded and got my hand on the edge, but the momentum of my passing ripped my hand free. 

“Fuck!”  So, I guess I am falling? This is so confusing. Ah, but I was so close. I got a hand on it. That’s when I decided I was going through a portal. It was the best plan I had, but it brought up a bunch of anxiety about popping through a portal onto, say, a water planet. The portal opens thousands of feet under the sea, and I either instantly get crushed to death from the pressure or drowned before I make it to the surface. That was just one scenario I ran through and not even the worst. 

However, it was still my only plan, so I had to go through a portal for good or bad. I either died in the void, and my body was left falling forever, or at least until my body passed through a portal and ruined somebody’s day. Or I make it into a portal and find a way out of this place. I could make a new life for myself and then maybe find a way home. Okay, maybe just not dying would be good enough. That would be good enough. 

I spent the next what felt like 24 hours falling with no portals in sight except the ones far off in the distance. I had gone through the whole freakout to the point of exhaustion thing again until I passed out. When I woke up, I was basically a bit numb all over, and that was another thing I had to feed my mania. I had been awake for about an hour after my panic-induced slumber when portals finally began to appear more frequently. 

At first, it was only a few flickering into existence here and there, but they were closer than ever. After another what felt like twenty minutes, it was like I was in the center of a holiday parade, and portals were popping open all around me. At first, I couldn’t believe my luck, but then, at one point, a portal opened right next to me, scaring the shit out of me and slicing a piece of my PJs right off. That left me frozen in fear for a few minutes until I decided this was my chance to live, and I couldn’t let it slip away from me. 

My first hurdle was to figure out how to change my trajectory. If I wanted to collide with a portal, because, let's be honest, that's what I was trying to do. I needed the ability to control my movements through space. I was in a void-like vacuum space, but there was an atmosphere or some kind of magic that allowed me to exist and live. So, could I swim? Or could I take my shirt off and try to use it as a sail? These were all things I needed to test and test now before the portals decided to stop appearing in such numbers. 

I decided to do a few things. The first was the swim. That didn’t work out great. It did feel like it kind of worked, but there wasn’t, for lack of a better word, enough air to push against. So, I gave up on that quickly. The next thing I tried was using my shirt as a sail. That also didn’t work basically at all. So, I then did a few other things but eventually ended up back at the swimming thing.

After my testing period, which was rather short, to be honest, I decided it was time to pick a portal to aim for. The next ten minutes or so were spent picking the right portal, and when I had finally found what I thought would be a good target, I got ready to start swimming.

The portal was about four hundred feet below me and slightly to my left. I felt I could make it, but plans were all good until implemented, as I found out when a portal popped into existence underneath me. It was only twenty feet away from me when it appeared, and I had to decide fast if I was going to go for it. 

My indecisiveness fucked me, and I ended up going for the portal too late. I managed to get a hand on the edge again like last time, but my hand was ripped free from the edge, again, like last time. 

“Fuck!” I couldn’t help it. I yelled in frustration, and that hurt so bad with my soar throat. I teared up for a bit from the pain. Then I realized I probably had missed the portal I had been aiming for from the beginning. Apparently, grabbing and then losing grip of the portal's edge had changed my trajectory more than anything I had done in my testing. On a positive note, I was now perfectly on course to go straight through another portal. It was a miracle, and in a minute, I would finally be out of this fucking void space. 

That’s, of course, when things went to shit again. I was almost at the portal, and I just had to hold my trajectory. That was when a portal appeared right in front of my face. I smacked my face on the portal, and I was actually able to get a glimpse of the other side. It was a magical, glorious world of floating mountains and flying machines. Green grass and rolling hills with what looked like a wondrous, utopian city, a true paradise off in the distance. 

I tried to reach up and pull myself in, but my neck hit the edge of the portal and choked the shit out of me before I could grab it. Then, my view was ripped from paradise and back into the void. I wanted to scream as it all slipped away. The cold, dry grip of the void sucked me back in, and I was falling through portal Mardi Gras once more. 

I was now definitely off course of the portal I had been aiming for. You know, before the other portal appeared and smacked me in the face. This situation occurred several more times. Well, not exactly the same. Sometimes, I would get an arm or a leg hooked onto a portal, but I could never pull myself in. I was starting to think that the portals were actively trying to stop me from making it through one.  

Finally, I was on course to slam directly into a portal once more, and I was highly aware and on guard for any portal that might appear to try and fuck me. My face was bruised, my mouth was bleeding, and I had a couple of deep cuts as well as numerous little cuts all over my body. I was only ten feet away from my destination when the portal appeared. 

It popped open right in front of my face, and I had to pull the clutches matrix-style duck you ever saw to avoid it disrupting my path. As I passed the portal, I turned and flicked the void off with both hands. Then, I fell backward through the portal I had been aiming for. As I felt my back hit the portal, the pure joy and relief that filled me was amazing, that I couldn’t help but croak out see you never, mother fucker as I entered into a new world. 

When I passed through the portal, I thought I was going to, maybe, slam into the ground or any of the other numerous scenarios I had thought about during my fall would happen, but instead, I found myself lying on a soft bed of thick grass. As I lay on the ground, I gazed up at the night sky and the portal that had brought me to this strange land. After a few moments, the portal snapped out of existence, and I was left alone.