I was cramped into the tiny airplane seat, in coach, my iPod and bag of peanuts on the tray table, peoples’ elbows on either side of me. There was the white airplane noise and my neighbors on each side were dozing. I looked over at the center aisle and there was a giant ant sitting in one of the seats- larger than a person, head with trembling antennae rising up over the tops of the seats. I couldn’t keep my eyes off him and wanted to say something to the other passengers but I couldn’t find the words. The ant appeared to be eating something and I saw it was the in-flight magazine. He bit at it like a regular sized ant might bite a leaf. I opened my mouth but no words came out and found myself pressing the attendant button until my finger got white.

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Yellow, viscous sludge dripped down the rough stone bricks and forming a seeping pool in the hallway. The mess attracted flies and gave off a burning, repulsive odor. The hallway was mostly dark but beams of white light shone blindingly through several openings in the rock, making the shadows that much darker. Sebathan moved down the hallway, in and out of the light, his head a mangy skull with only small patches of skin and hair. His eyes were piercing however and his ivory teeth gleamed. He led the girl by her wrist down the putrid hall. The girl, Darcy, had been working at a coffee shop in Dallas until 10 this morning and still wore her apron. Somewhere along the line she had lost her shoes and she now dragged her bare feet through the yellow sticky fluid that spread across the stone tiles. “This way,” Sebathan hissed but she resisted when she saw the sludge flowing down the stairs and all the flies. “I ain’t goin up there, no way,” she said.

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The stone steps of the fortress were oily and filthy and worn with age. Rats ran up and down along the walls as gunfire and shouting erupted in the distance. The tank clanked and rumbled to a stop in front of a stone archway beside the steps. Muffin and Prankster, tykes with messy hair from sleeping, popped open the round door and hopped out of the tank, scampering quickly down the stone steps in their dirty pastel pajamas. In a deafening explosion of gunfire, both were shot down by a hidden sniper. Now the rats were forced to run over their lifeless bodies to get up and down the stairs, and left little bloody rat tracks leading to cracks and holes in the stone.

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