The world returned slowly, bathed in darkness and searing pain. His face felt wet. Hot and sticky wet. His chest felt tight, shot through with stabbing agony. It was nearly impossible to breath, and he thought he might have a collapsed lung.

His legs.... It was as though someone were hammering on his bones with a sledge. His right arm wouldn’t move so he tried to reach down with his left hand. The attempt only resulted in more pain. Strangely, he wasn’t frightened. Not yet. For now, he was just angry and confused.

What was happening? He tried to remember, but it was difficult through the sawing torment washing through his body. This had already happened, hadn’t it? Years ago. Hadn’t it? Or had the past several years just been a dream to keep his mind occupied while he lay here in the wreckage of the MRAP bleeding out?

No, he thought as his wits began to return. That had been different. The smell had been different. The pain had been different. That was in the past. He’d been out of the military for years. He wasn’t a grunt anymore. He wasn’t in the desert anymore. He was home. In the States. He had a normal job. A normal life.

The only thing Uncle paid him for these days was going to school and physical therapy. Or, at least he helped. And the meds, of course. Mustn’t forget the meds. They kept the ends from fraying... mostly.

So, concentrate. Remember. He’d been sitting in his living room, hadn’t he? Yeah. Kicked back in his easy chair after a hard day’s work, followed by a night class and a couple of hours of homework in the school’s shop. Unwinding with a video game while he waited for the latest episode of one of his animes to air. He’d been waiting weeks for the dub to finally release, and he’d been looking forward to it.

Steam and Chaos, it was called. The game, not the anime. It had been on sale through one of the online clearinghouses for stupid cheap, considering its breadth of content. A godawful western/JRPG hybrid with greedy graphics and ludicrously complex controls, but a deceptively broad and compelling story.

Just something to kill time at this point, though. After all, he’d beaten it, what, ten times now? Or was it eleven? Each time taking a slightly different path? Always good, though. No surprise. There were evil paths available, but he just couldn’t seem to work up any enthusiasm for them. The choices tasted sour in his mouth.

So how did that—? Wait! Something else had happened. It was coming back. He’d looked up from a boss fight at a horrible screeching, squalling, ululating wail coming from outside the house to the sight of bright, strobing lights racing through his front yard. Almost as he’d realized what he was seeing, his front wall had come crashing in, smashing glass, bowling over furniture and hurling the TV across the room dead at him. He’d had time to start his leap sideways from the chair, but he couldn’t remember finishing it.

He lay there on his back, the world fading in and out with the waves of pain, wondering if these were real memories or some weird dream. Had he really been run over by a chicken bus, in his own house, in the middle of the United States? Eleven hundred miles north of the Mexican border, let alone anywhere near Guatemala or points south?

The last thing that went through his mind as his consciousness faded back to persistent blackness was the surreal image of the bus as it had struck him. Of the lighted destination bar that had adorned the area above the windshield of the garishly neon clad vehicle. Twin magical girls with fairy wings flanking the screen, waving sparkling wands at the text separating them in some foreign script he couldn’t recognize. They’d almost seemed alive, winking at him and waving.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Then, as the hood of the speeding bus had begun to occlude his vision, their skin had begun to darken, their wings become bat-like. Horns sprouted from their foreheads, and tails slid out from beneath the rear hems of their short skirts. The one on the right had blown him a kiss, and then everything had gone dark, echoing with the blaring cacophony of what sounded like bad mariachi overlain with Mongolian throat metal.

The next time he swam to awareness, the pain remained as fresh as the first. Or was it the third time? He was losing track. How long had he been lying here? What the hell was going on? Shouldn’t the fire department be showing up pretty soon? Or at least the cops? Hell, the neighbors ought to be wondering why there was a freaking circus bus sticking out the front of his house, shouldn’t they? Even at this time of night? Come to that, where the hell was that goofy bus driver? You’d think he’d at least glance out the windshield to survey the damage.

Something else was wrong. He still couldn’t open his eyes, but his ears worked. Or at least he thought they did. Except they weren’t hearing sirens. No bus sounds, either. Not even settling rubble. No television, no traffic noise, not even that idiot dog of Ferguson’s who never shut up. Instead, he was hearing birdsong and running water. How was that even possible? At some point during these musings, despite the pain, he faded again to black.

Light. His eyes were still glued shut, but he could see a glow through the lids. The pain wasn’t so bad, either. Like the crazy with the sledge had switched to a rubber mallet. It was even a little bit easier to breathe.

He was still flat on his back for sufficient values of, although maybe not so flat as before. As though he were lying on a slight incline. His arms and legs, if anything, felt more paralyzed than ever. He felt as though he were moving, although any ‘about time’ notions were quickly quelled by the manner of movement.

Far from the racing vibration of an ambulance at speed, he felt instead, the slow thump, thump of wood dragged along stones. He could swear he heard hooves. Even smell the horse, along with dust and hay. The hell was happening to him, and how did he make it stop?

The journey went on for quite some while, during which he stayed awake for a change. He grew convinced that there was someone else nearby. A single someone, whose plodding progress matched the leisurely pace of the horse. Yes, he admitted to himself, there was a horse. Somehow, there was a horse.

The sounds of hoof and foot falls were close. Combined with the sound of the sticks dragging, he came to the conclusion that he was probably strapped into some kind of travois, being conveyed down a stone paved road from somewhere he couldn’t possibly have been to somewhere he knew he probably didn’t want to go.

Now he was starting to be a little bit afraid.

The sun felt hot on his face. A soft breeze blew steadily over him. He could hear the sounds of late spring or early summer all around him. At least, such sounds as he’d hear if he didn’t live in a city. Also, it was supposed to be early February. The longer he bumped along, the more convinced he became that he’d somehow gotten himself a long, long way from home. And the longer the day dragged, the more convinced he was that this was no dream.

It was almost like one of those goofy isekais he was always watching online. Except that he couldn’t remember a single one where the hero arrived crippled, blind, and tied to a sled. Not one of the dozens he’d watched, the scores he’d read, nor the hundreds he’d heard about. Still.... isekai translated out to, another place, and this was definitely that.

They’d left the road at some point and were now traveling on grass, he thought. It smelled like grass, and radiated up less heat than the road had.

Some long while after, as the light was waning, the horse finally eased to a halt. A moment later, the front end of the travois let go and he hit the ground with a thump and a yelp. He heard the horse moving away, and for awhile he was alone.