Chapter 1: Try Again - A Dream of Waking Life

Viscous heaviness coursed through Matt, numbing his awareness with cloying, sluggish satisfaction. His mind was empty, but behind that emptiness lingered some great urgency. No, Matt demanded, wanting only the emptiness forever. The emptiness tasted sweet, even familiar somehow. Maybe he could linger...maybe, he thought. But Matt’s senses were already pulsing with life again. The emptiness was filled by vividly lucid sensation.

Matt rolled over and pressed the naked skin of his back against a cold, steely floor. He let it sting with an icy pinch and absorbed his surroundings, forcing himself to remain calm for the sake of caution despite franticness stabbing his mind’s periphery from every direction.

A handful of people moved about casually like hulking shadows, towering over Matt within a dimly lit, ten-by-ten-foot cubic cell. He let them loom, savoring the cold, metal floor sucking at his heat as if for sustenance.

Something warm wrapped itself around Matt’s shoulder. He turned and was met by the unreasonably serene grin of a slender, naked woman. As she pulled her hand away and nodded sweetly at him, Matt instinctually tried to place her sharp Eastern features to a specific country, but he came up blank. Her lips were pleasant curves asking to be kissed, and Matt was suddenly taken aback by his overwhelming attraction to this woman he’d never met before. There was something else too – a familiarity about her that filled his heart with a heaviness not unlike sorrow.

With jarring abruptness, the reality of his situation injected itself into Matt’s awareness. “Where the fuck are we?” he heard himself say, his heart quickening with appropriate rapidity for finding oneself locked naked in a tiny, dark cell with strangers. “Who –”

Before Matt could ask more questions, the woman knelt and put a hand on his shoulder again. She displayed her open body as casually and innocently as a toddler. She didn’t seem to take notice of Matt consciously covering his genitals with both hands.

“Everything’ll be all right,” she said with enrapturing warmth, stealing Matt’s breath. She had a slight accent, but at least she spoke his language. He hoped the others did too.

Why don’t they seem worried? Matt wondered anxiously. Are they the ones that brought me here?

The woman’s lips were so close to his own, and in response, Matt felt his body and mind galvanize against the shock and confusion of the present moment. Just by staring deeply into Matt’s eyes, the woman somehow steadied his heart rate and slowed his breath to a pace that filled him with overwhelming calm.

What did she do to me? Matt wondered nervously. Her cherry lips widened, and he couldn’t help an intense craving for her.

I don’t even know this woman or what the hell is happening! Matt scolded himself harshly, feeling even more lost for experiencing such misplaced lust given his predicament. Yet the feeling would not relent. Her every feature was like a siren song beckoning him to breathe her very presence.

Stop it! Matt demanded of his mind. With jarring terror, he realized in that moment that he had no concrete recollection of his past. He racked his brain, desperately trying to recall something about himself other than his name, but his mind could provide nothing outside of racing confusion and the constant threat of his heart exploding out of his chest. It was the woman’s presence, somehow, that kept Matt’s fear from overwhelming him.

Who is she? Matt pleaded, certain that he must know her somehow. But she was a stranger like the others.

It’s like I’m a stranger even to myself.

The woman rose and walked to the others, all of them naked and preoccupied. They were illuminated by a single dim light source at the base of the far wall. Matt watched with cautious intrigue as a well-built man with flowing, black curls cascading over an intricate, dazzling peacock tattooed across his entire back stretched at the hips and flexed his wrists in tight circles. In awe of the man’s nearly tangible aura of strength, Matt turned and was even more impressed by an olive-skinned, giant of a woman seemingly made of pure muscle and covered in scars and patches of burnt skin, squatting up and down, up and down, breathing rhythmically and forcefully like the exhaust of an overworked furnace. Beside her, a colossal man with skin as dark as the shadows of the cell performed slow, methodical pull-ups, one after another, using only his fingertips and a small steel ledge jutting from a high portion of the wall that Matt couldn’t have jumped to even if he tried.

“Loki’s awake. He seems...weird though,” Matt heard the lithe yet delicate Asian woman say to the others.

“That’s just Loki,” the peacock-tattooed man explained casually with a thick Indian accent. The others nodded in agreement as if those three words explained the entire situation.

“What the fuck is going on!?” Matt demanded. He pulled himself up but kept a hand over his genitals in a futile attempt to retain some dignity. The others took no such actions, appearing to fully accept their predicament.

The serene woman offered a gentle smile and walked toward Matt. She cupped a hand around his shoulder and said, “Everything will be all –”

“– No!” Matt interrupted and waved her hand away. The overwhelming attraction he felt for her was replaced by a measure of disgust.

Is she toying with me? Matt wondered seriously. He analyzed the others with equally grim suspicion. Is this all their doing?

“What the hell do you want!?” Matt barked, backing away until his back finally hit the wall behind him. He desperately attempted to place these people, but he was certain he didn’t recognize any of them. The single light was pointed directly at Matt, and he stood agape, shivering in the darkness as silhouettes stared back at him, a naked and horrified spotlit man.

“Tell me!” Matt ordered, balling his fists with mounting fear that not even the beautiful woman’s smile could totally assuage.

“Shut the fuck up!” the large black man growled back. His accent was African of some sort, though Matt had no idea which country or tribe. These people are from all over the world. They all speak English, though, Matt noted, unsure how that might help him.

The monstrous, scarred woman smirked. The tattooed man openly chuckled. But the Asian woman looked concerned for Matt.

“No, something’s not right, Igwe,” she said to the large man. “He’s...strange, don’t you think?”

Igwe shrugged his boulder-sized shoulders and went back to his methodical pull-ups. As he lifted his great mass, his arms exploded with vein-popping musculature. Each of the minor connective muscles was bigger than both of Matt’s biceps combined. He was almost cartoonishly hulkish.

“What do you think, Putch?” Igwe said, offering a nod to the scarred woman who was nearly as massive as him.

Putch grunted neutrally, never breaking from her squats.

“What about you, Kartikeya?” Igwe asked with an obvious air of jest.

The tattooed man pulled at a tip of his finely sculpted mustache and yawned obnoxiously. “He’s probably toying with us,” Kartikeya concluded simply. “Mu can’t help worrying about us. He knows that.” Kartikeya turned his attention to Matt. “Why you messing with Xiwangmu? Huh, Loki?”

Matt shook his head. “You’re all confused. My name is Matt,” he urged, certain only of his name and the ominous, misplaced attraction to Mu that he was forcing himself to ignore for the sake of surviving this nightmare. “I’m...I’m not supposed to be here.” A moment of silence, then the others burst into laughter.

But Mu wasn’t laughing. She looked at Matt disappointedly. “I hope you’re not messing with me,” she lamented.

Matt gawked at these naked people, like anachronistic warriors stripped of their time and clothing and then tossed into a fathomless bin. He tried desperately to recollect how he got here, but his mind kept coming up blank.

“I need to get out of here,” Matt ruminated aloud.

The wall to Matt’s left and the group’s right began to hum with activity, and a small red light at each end of the wall popped to life.

“Damn, Loki, right on cue,” Kartikeya purred, rolling his R’s with captivated amusement. “The show’s about to start.”

Igwe, Kartikeya, and Putch turned to face the wall. Igwe pushed to the front while the other two took a synchronized step back. A second red light was illuminated at each end of the wall directly after the first, moving toward the center.

Mu offered Matt her hand. “Come on, we should take our positions behind the others.”

Matt pulled back like a scared field mouse. “What’s going to happen?”

Mu offered a half-smile. “Something really is wrong, isn’t it, Loki? I can tell when you’re just joking around, even if the others can’t.”

A third red light was added to each side.

What happens when the lights reach the center?

“Please,” Matt pleaded. “I have a terrible feeling. We need to get out of here. You understand me?”

It was as if Mu was totally accepting of whatever fate might befall her. “We’ll do our best,” she offered sweetly.

Matt lunged and grabbed her shoulders in desperation. “Please!” he tried, unsure what else to say. There were too many questions and too many unknown variables. And they think I’m toying with them?

“We have to stay positive. Okay, Loki?” She calmly grabbed his hands with hers and whispered something in a language unknown to Matt, filling him with tranquility inside and out. Suddenly the shadows of the room felt comforting rather than menacing. Another pair of lights appeared at either end of the wall, nearly at the center now, but his panic had totally subsided. Worry threatened to rear its ugly head but was immediately subdued by Mu’s voice resounding in his mind like a songbird’s dulcet mating melody.

“What did you do to me?” Matt whispered through a fog of calm.

She smiled wide and kissed him with her eyes. “Everything will be all right, Loki.”

An ominous, single bellow like a blood-filled war horn shook the room from all sides, and a pair of yellow lights appeared instead of red.

Matt wanted to demand more answers, but Mu’s intoxicating calm kept him debilitatingly fulfilled.

Mu turned while still holding Matt’s right hand with her left, leading him to a position behind the others. It was clear she was intending to use their massive, powerfully built bodies as a shield for...something, and Matt was meant to do the same.

Another pair of yellow lights jumped in front of the last.

“Come on!” Igwe roared, and he slammed his fists like iron war hammers against the humming wall.

“There is time enough for death, Igwe,” the normally silent Putch announced playfully.

“Fuck death. Life is my mistress,” Kartikeya practically sang.

Death. Death. Death. Matt repeated to himself with a feeling of dread in the distant background of his mind.

“Death is coming,” Matt whispered, uncertain if it was better or worse that Mu’s words allowed him to experience only a fraction of the overwhelming fear bubbling in his brainstem.

The other four nodded in placid agreement. “It always is,” Mu confirmed softly, and her sweet smile forced Matt to look away.

Is she a psychopath?

“You’re all insane!” Matt yelped as a spurt of internal dread escaped his lips. “This is insane!”

Again, the bellow resounded through the cell, threatening to consume them.

“Here we go,” Kartikeya said, flashing his teeth with excitement.

Putch licked her lips. Mu breathed deep. Igwe rumbled with impatience.

A single green light appeared at the center of the row of lights, and in a flash the wall lifted to reveal a towering figure twice the size of Igwe and a whole story larger than Matt. Its featureless, matte black skin shone sinisterly in the single light of their cell. Its limbs were long and wrapped around its torso like braided rope around a neck, and each hand held a perceptibly sharpened blade.

“Fuck!” Kartikeya cried, his excitement suddenly replaced by contagious fear.

Behind the figure, Matt saw a giant room the size of a hollowed out skyscraper. Endless cells lined the walls of the dark hollow, some of them open and others still closed.

Matt gritted his teeth and fell against the wall, his legs giving out completely.

Igwe roared and charged at the giant figure, battering his fists against its body, but his sledgehammer fists bounced uselessly against what might as well be thick titanium. Putch and Kartikeya dove in to help, but their jabs and kicks and punches looked to be hurting them more than the towering figure.

The figure’s red eyes opened, and in an instant its blades swung round and eviscerated the three warriors’ flesh, vaporizing them like a gale through fog. Matt felt his bladder empty down his legs. He moaned, unable to actually form words.

Why? Please! Why? His mind fluttered erratically.

Mu closed her eyes and uttered the first few syllables of a chant before the figure removed her head cleanly from her body. Her body slumped, and her head rolled directly into the light. She stared pleadingly at Matt as blood drained from her severed skull, lips still chanting their enveloping warmth.

Wait! Matt thought just as a blade pierced his forehead.