Chapter Text
This was not how Anne Boonchuy expected her thirteenth birthday to go. At all.
She had been sitting on a bench at her favorite park at dusk. The sounds of distant rumbling engines filled the air, the bitter scent of car exhaust carried on the breeze. Her two closest - only, in fact - friends in the world standing beside her: strong and confident Sasha Waybright on her left, smart and creative Marcy Wu on her right.
And in Anne’s lap, an ornate music box marked with stylized frogs, three gemstones - blue, purple, green - shining on top. A birthday gift from Marcy. One that she and Sasha insisted Anne steal from its pawn shop home, but a gift nonetheless. And sure, this whole diversion was making Anne late for her own birthday party, but Sasha and Marcy insisted it wouldn't be a big deal.
So it was fine.
Curious, Anne had turned the key. Casually popped open the lid.
A flash of light. Brilliant. Blinding. Forcing Anne to shield her eyes.
And the next thing Anne knew, she was lying face down in the mud.
Anne pushed herself up on instinct, sputtering foul-tasting dirt from her mouth. That fact alone set off alarm bells in Anne’s head; it hadn’t rained in over two weeks, and the ground should have been bone-dry. Groaning, Anne wiped the mud away from her face, blinking rapidly as her vision recovered from the sudden flash of light.
But it wasn’t an old playground in downtown LA that greeted her. Instead, Anne found herself staring at a forest. The buildings had been replaced by trees all around with branches swaying in the breeze, vines crawling up the trunks. No skyscrapers in the distance, just mountains. A chilly white mist coalesced below her, hovering over the ground. And while the city sky was a featureless void from all of the light pollution, this night sky was full of brilliantly shining stars, clouds drifting lazily in front of a dim red moon.
It would have been a breathtaking sight, had Anne’s brain not still been reeling from the fact that there was a whole city all around her literally just seconds ago.
A groaning sound snapped Anne out of her stupor. She looked to her left to see Sasha on her back, pushing herself up into a sitting position, eyes still shut tight. Anne quickly looked right; yup, there was Marcy all right. She’d also landed face down and was in the process of spitting out blades of grass.
“Blech! Oh that’s nasty,” Marcy said, wiping her mouth with her sweater sleeve as she pushed herself up, slowly opening her eyes.
“Ugh, what was that?” Sasha asked, rubbing her temple as she tentatively opened her eyes. “God that was like staring into the sun, what even-”
Sasha stopped short as she beheld her new surroundings. Marcy fully sat up, and her eyes nearly popped out of her skull.
Wordlessly, all three girls looked at each other. Then towards the forest. They sat and stared, eyes darting every which way, thoughts racing behind dumbfounded gazes. The sounds and smells of the city were gone; the rustling of branches and chirping of insects filled their ears, the earthy scent of dirt and foliage tickled their nostrils.
After what felt like an eternity, Sasha finally spoke.
“... What.”
At the park, the girls' backpacks had been sitting on the ground beside the bench. They found their backpacks resting on the damp forest floor not far from where they'd landed. The music box had been sitting on a rock that jutted out of the mist like an iceberg in the ocean, its once-colorful gems now a dull gray.
The first thing Anne did when she grabbed the box was turn the key and pop the lid open, eager to get back to LA from… wherever it was they were.
But there was no flash. Inside the box was a plain velvet interior and nothing more.
"So Sasha, Marcy," Anne said hesitantly, turning to face her friends as she stored the music box away in her backpack. "Is this like, some kind of birthday prank or something? Don't get me wrong I love a good prank, but uh… I don't get it."
Sasha finished wiping the mud off her backpack as best she could and slung it over her shoulders. "Anne, I'm just as confused as you are," Sasha said. She looked at her surroundings with a furrowed brow. "Marcy, you're smart; any idea what the hell is happening here?"
Marcy, who'd been looking through her backpack to make sure her Bintendo Swap and everything else was present and accounted for, looked up sharply at Sasha's question. She looked around slowly, lips pursed.
"Maybe… that music box contained some kind of hallucinogen?" She offered. "Like we inhaled some weird gas that was inside and this is all just an extremely vivid hallucination? That's possible."
Sasha raised an eyebrow. "So we're all hallucinating the exact same thing at the same time? And we can somehow see and hear each other perfectly fine?"
Marcy shrugged. "I said it was possible, not probable."
"I don't think this is a hallucination," Anne said. She cautiously approached the nearest tree and ran her fingers across the trunk. The bark was rough beneath her touch. "This feels way too real for us to just be seeing things."
A large brown spider darted out of a knothole, scurrying across the bark less than an inch from Anne's hand. She jumped back with a startled yelp.
"Okay, then what if…" Marcy began, but paused. Her eyes darted back and forth, and she fiddled with the cuff of her jacket sleeve. "Just hear me out. What if that box was some kind of… magic portal? And that light was zapping us somewhere else?"
Sasha scoffed. "What, like something out of one of your video games? Yeah that makes total sense."
"Hey you're the one who asked me for ideas," Marcy shot back. "Besides, I don't see you coming up with a reason for…" She gestured wildly at their surroundings. "Whatever all of this is."
A silence settled over the girls as Anne and Sasha considered Marcy's words. The idea of an old music box that could teleport you was ridiculous to be sure, like something out of a cartoon or a fantasy novel. But how else could any of them explain one of the biggest cities in the world just vanishing around them in an instant?
Anne frowned. None of this was getting them any closer to figuring out where they were, and she had already been running late to her own birthday party by the time she and Sasha had met up with Marcy outside the pawn shop. Anne was honestly surprised she hadn't received another text from her mom by now asking where she-
Wait.
"Our phones!" Anne said suddenly, making Sasha and Marcy jump. She was already digging through her backpack. "Let's just call our parents or 911 or something and let them know we're lost."
Sasha blinked, then brought a hand to her forehead, the other going to her jacket pocket. "Can't believe I didn't think of that sooner! Good call Anne."
All three girls quickly brought out their smartphones, screens illuminating hopeful faces. But hope soon turned to disappointment.
"You girls getting any bars?" Anne asked.
"Nope," Sasha said, shaking her head. "No bars, no internet, nothing."
"And the time says it's only been like fifteen minutes since Anne even grabbed the box from that pawn shop," Marcy added. She looked around again, gripping her phone tight. "What the hell is going on here…?"
Anne saw the time as well, and her heart sank. She opened up her messaging app, tapping on her mom's name. After getting a text asking why she wasn't home for her party, Anne had texted back saying she'd lost track of time hanging out with Sasha and Marcy and that they'd all be there soon.
Ok sweetie. Get home soon, everyone's waiting for the birthday girl. Love you!
Anne felt a pang of guilt shoot through her like lightning.
“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do,” Sasha said. There was a familiar air of authority to her voice that had been absent for the last several minutes. “I don't know how we ended up out in the woods but Los Angeles is huge, so there’s no way we’re that far from the city. All we have to do is find the nearest road and follow it to the closest town or gas station or wherever. We’ll get reception once we get close to civilization, then we can call someone to pick us up and everything will be a-okay.”
Anne raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you supposed to stay where you are if you get lost?”
“That’s only if you were with someone that actually knows you’re missing, Anne.” Sasha fiddled with her phone, opening the compass app.
“And we still don’t know how we ended up here in the first place,” Marcy added. “I mean, none of this makes any sense!”
“We can worry about the ‘how’ later,” Sasha said bluntly. “Right now the important thing is getting out of this forest as soon as possible.”
“But-”
“End. Of. Discussion.”
Marcy’s mouth snapped closed. She and Anne glanced at each other, then nodded at Sasha.
“Good. Now, north is this way so…” Sasha turned around, tapping her screen to turn on her flashlight app. A beam of light shone from the back of the phone, revealing a narrow gap in the trees. “Perfect! Flashlights on, girls. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
The other girls both turned on their flashlight apps, beams cutting through the darkness. Sasha nodded and started down the trail, Anne and Marcy following close behind.
The girls walked in silence, wet ground squelching beneath their feet. The forest was alive with sounds: leaves rustling in the trees and bushes, insects buzzing and chittering as they flew every which way. Branches reached out into the narrow confines of the path to poke and prod at the trio. In sharp contrast to the warmth of late autumn in southern California, the air here carried with it a bitter chill. Anne soon found herself shivering, goosebumps racing up her arms and legs. She wrapped one arm around herself while still holding her phone up with the other, feeling her teeth start to chatter.
"You okay, Anna-Banana?" Marcy asked.
"F-fine," Anne replied. "J-just a little ch-chilly is all."
Sasha looked back at Anne, frowning at the sight of her friend in just a short-sleeved shirt and skirt. Her first thought was to offer Anne her jacket, or tell Marcy to give Anne her sweater, but that would just leave either of them cold as well.
So she slowed down her pace until she was side by side with Anne, then reached out to wrap an arm around Anne’s shoulders and pull her close.
“Uh, what are you doing?” Anne asked, a faint blush on her cheeks.
“Keeping you from freezing your butt off, duh,” Sasha said with a chuckle. She threw a quick glance over her shoulder. “You gonna get in on this, Marbles?”
Marcy smiled and quickened her pace, coming up on the other side of Anne and moving in close.
Anne smiled softly, the warmth generated by the close proximity of her two friends providing a welcome relief from the chill. “Thanks guys, this really helps.”
“Anything for the birthday girl,” Marcy said.
That brought Anne’s smile crashing down. Marcy winced, immediately recognizing her gaffe, while Sasha rolled her eyes and quickly plastered on a smile.
“Hey come on, we can still salvage this,” she said brightly. “Sure we may have been… briefly inconvenienced. And yeah, this whole situation is weird. Like… really weird.” She paused as an enormous blue dragonfly through the sky darted overhead. Maybe it was just perspective, but it looked far bigger than any dragonfly Sasha had seen before. “But I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for everything. Once we find civilization everything will become clear. Then we just get a hold of someone to give us a ride, and we can get back home in time for Anne’s party.”
“Kinda already late for that,” Anne said. She glanced at the time on her phone again and cringed. “Really late. God my parents are gonna be pissed...”
“It’s fine, there were extenuating circumstances,” Sasha said with a wave of her hand. “Once we figure out how we actually wound up out here-”
“Which still defies all logic and common sense,” Marcy interjected. She flinched as Sasha shot her a glare. “I’m just saying.”
“And I’m saying there’s a rational explanation for all of this,” Sasha said, her voice firm. “And when we figure that out, we’ll have a perfectly valid reason for being late. Your folks will understand, Anne.”
Anne sighed. “I hope so.”
A silence settled over the trio as they walked onward. The mist grew deeper the further they went, rising up to their knees as it swirled around them. Sharp branches reached out like skeletal fingers. The wind grew stronger, almost howling as it blew through the trees. Countless insects hidden just out of sight made their presence known with buzzing wings and clicking mandibles, a cacophony of creepy crawlies. Anne, Sasha and Marcy found themselves huddling even closer together, instinctively clutching their phones tighter as if the light was the only thing keeping whatever might be lurking in the shadows at bay.
Finally after several more minutes of hiking across rough terrain, the trees parted ahead to reveal an opening, a wide space beyond.
“Finally,” Sasha said with a relieved sigh. “See, what’d I tell you? There’s a road right here, and we'll be home in nooookay what the hell is this?”
It was a road, or sorts. But instead of a paved concrete road with a painted division line down the middle, this was more of an extra-wide dirt trail that cut through the forest. Curious, Marcy leaned down to examine the deep grooves that had been worn into the dirt, noting their relative positions from each other.
“These almost look like trails from a wagon,” Marcy said. She prodded at the soft mud with her foot. “Pretty fresh, too.”
“You think this’ll lead us anywhere?” Anne asked Sasha, who shrugged.
“Right now it’s our only option. Let’s go.”
Anne, Sasha and Marcy set off down the new trail. This new path was much wider, giving the girls more room to walk without getting scratched by trees, and the ground was much more even. They still kept huddled together though, the closeness giving much-needed emotional support in this increasingly-bizarre situation the girls had found themselves in.
After a few more minutes of walking Anne came to a sudden stop, jostling Sasha and Marcy.
"Do you girls smell that?" Anne asked, standing perfectly still. She sniffed and wrinkled her nose, frowning.
"Uh, smell what?" Sasha asked.
Before Anne could answer, a powerful gust of wind came blowing from straight ahead, carrying with it a scent that made all three of the girls throw their hands over their noses.
"Never mind there it is!" Sasha said, gagging. "Oh God what is that?"
Marcy had her nose pinched shut tight, a tint of green spreading across her cheeks. "Ugh, it smells like roadkill!"
Anne tentatively uncovered her nose for another sniff. Marcy was right, it smelled like rotting meat that had been left on hot asphalt to bake in the sun for several days.
But there was another scent too, much fainter but still noticeable. A sharp, wet odor. Almost metallic.
It smelled like… blood.
Up ahead, the path curved to the left. Anne and Marcy looked to Sasha, concerned. She steeled her resolve, gave her friends a firm look and started forward. Anne and Marcy followed shortly. The awful smell only grew stronger the further they walked.
The three girls rounded the bend, and stopped dead in their tracks.
There was a man on the trail ahead.
He sat crouched in the middle of the trail with his back to the girls, dressed in ratty brown clothes full of rips and tears. That awful rotting meat smell radiated from him in waves. From his direction came a wet tearing sound, followed by heavy smacking, as though he were in the middle of a messy meal.
The girls stood frozen in place, feeling like they had stumbled upon something they shouldn’t be seeing. Despite their phone flashlights shining directly on the strange man, he gave no indication that he was aware of their presence.
“What do we do?” Anne whispered, feeling her heart hammer in her ribcage.
“Shh, quiet!” Sasha whispered sharply. “Just stay calm and slowly back away.”
Anne and Marcy nodded. Together the three girls began to move backwards away from the bizarre man, who stayed crouched over his unseen meal.
No one noticed the stray branch lying on the ground until Marcy stepped directly on it, the sharp crack echoing like a gunshot.
The girls froze.
The man looked up. Slowly turned.
His head was bulbous and misshapen. His skin was an unnaturally pale shade of bluish-green. Patches of skin were missing from his face, exposing pale red muscle and sinew. His wide mouth hung open to expose rotting yellow teeth, the skin around it covered in blood. A pair of bulging cloudy gray eyes stared at the three girls.
And in his hands he clutched a severed bright green arm covered in bite marks, crimson dripping from the ragged stump at the end.
Anne, Sasha and Marcy stared in horror at the grotesque abomination of a man, paralyzed by fear. All around them, the forest had gone deathly quiet.
“Um, hello?” Sasha offered with a nervous smile.
The man raised a hand to point, his mouth opening wider. From his gaping gullet there came a low and raspy moan, like rusty nails being dragged across a glass table, a sound that turned the girls’ blood to ice in their veins.
In the darkness beyond the man, a dozen more shapes with deformed heads and pale skin seemed to melt out of the shadows, tombstone-colored eyes fixed on the three intruders.
“Oh shit,” Anne muttered.
Sasha whirled around, face deathly pale and eyes wide with fear. “Run!”
Anne and Marcy didn’t need to be told twice. The three girls took off back the way they came as fast as their legs could carry them, a chorus of haggard moans rising up behind them. Their flashlight beams danced wildly as the girls held their phones up while they ran to see what was ahead.
“What are those things?!” Marcy asked, tears of fear welling up in her eyes.
“I don’t know and I don’t wanna find out!” Sasha yelled back. Neither Anne nor Marcy had ever heard Sasha that scared before.
“Where are we even going?” Anne shouted, stealing a quick glance over her shoulder. In the pale red moonlight she could just make out the shadowy forms of the crowd of monsters, chasing after them with surprising speed.
“Anywhere that’s not here!”
Up ahead, the trail split. On the left, the main road curved off deeper into the woods. On the right, the trees opened up into a narrow path not unlike the one the girls had walked several minutes before. The three stopped, waving their phones wildly as they tried to figure out which way to go.
Behind them, the roar of the advancing horde grew louder by the second.
“I see something!” Marcy said, shining her flashlight down the path on the right.
The trail led up a short but steep hill. At the top, the silhouette of a small house was visible against the backdrop of the starry sky.
“Let’s go!” Sasha said and bolted down the rightward path, Marcy following close behind with Anne bringing up the rear.
As they sprinted up the incline, Anne looked over her shoulder again. The horde was stumbling up after them, struggling to move through the thicket of trees but still far too close for comfort. The rotting-roadkill smell wafted up from the monsters, their hungry howls assaulting Anne’s eardrums.
“Gah!”
Without warning Anne found her foot caught on something, the ground rushing up to meet her. Anne landed hard on the muddy ground, pain shooting up from her arms and knees. She looked down; her foot and caught on a tree root that was now pulled up from the dirt and tangled around her ankle.
Sensing downed prey the creatures surged forward, so close that Anne could see the grays of their eyes.
“Anne!” She heard Sasha and Marcy cry out in unison. Before she knew what was happening she felt two pairs of hands grab her arms, pulling hard. Anne kicked wildly, managing to pull her foot free but losing her shoe in the process.
“Come on let’s go go go!” Sasha yelled as she and Marcy hauled Anne to her feet. The three took off without a moment to spare, the foul beasts swarming the spot where Anne had fallen just seconds later.
Up ahead there stood a ramshackle house; more of a shack, really. The windows had been boarded up from the inside, the thatched roof was full of holes, and vines crept up the walls. Sasha was the first to reach the door, praying to whatever god might be listening that it was unlocked.
The knob turned, and the door swung open with a loud creak.
“Inside quick!” Sasha said. Anne and Marcy barreled into the house, Sasha following behind and slamming the door shut behind her.
The cabin was a single-room affair: bed in one corner, a table with overturned chairs sitting in front of a fireplace, and a tiny kitchenette to round things out. The cobwebs hanging in the corners and thick layer of dust on every surface indicated that no one had lived here for a long time.
Sasha whirled around, eyes scanning the front door. There was no lock that she could see, but there was a set of metal arms sticking out from either side of the door, a heavy wooden board leaning against the wall. No sooner than Sasha dropped the crossguard into place did something slam against the door, making her jump back with a yelp of fright. The slamming continued with enough force to rattle the walls, muffled moans coming from directly outside.
“What do we do?” Marcy asked helplessly. The tears were falling freely now, and she flinched with every blow against the walls. “What do we do what do we do what do we do?!”
“Shut up, I’m thinking!” Sasha snapped, eyes frantic as she waved her flashlight around in search of something, anything that could possibly help them.
Anne did likewise, and her beam landed on a small hatch in the ceiling, a short length of rope dangling from it. “Up there!” She said, pointing.
As the pounding from the beasts outside increased in violence and intensity, Anne grabbed one of the chairs and climbed on top. She stretched up to grab the rope, pulling hard. The hatch popped open, dust raining down as a rotting wood ladder slid down with a clatter.
“Everybody up!” Sasha ordered. The words had barely passed her lips and Marcy was already scrambling up the ladder, Sasha right on her tail. Anne leaped down from the chair and kicked it away before rushing up the ladder, splinters from the old wood digging into her palms. As she pulled herself into the attic, Anne reached down to pull the ladder up behind her with a grunt, the hatch beneath it swinging shut.
The attic was small, the angled ceiling leaving the girls with just barely enough room to stand. Wooden boxes were piled everywhere, covered in dust and mold. The single window was so caked with grime that it was impossible to see out of. Moonlight filtered in through the holes in the roof, dust particles dancing on the moonbeams.
Anne, Sasha and Marcy collapsed against the wall, panting heavily. They quickly shut off their phones and stowed them away, lest the glow of their flashlights give away their location. Down below, the pounding and moaning continued as the monsters tried to force their way inside.
“Okay, we should be safe,” Sasha said quietly after several long minutes. Her hair was a dishellved mess, pupils shrunk in the sea of her sclera. “All we have to do is hide up here until those… things go away. Then everything will be fine.
“Right,” Anne said, nodding frantically. She didn’t even want to think about what would happen if they didn’t go away. “Right, yeah. Fine. We’re safe now and everything’s fine.”
Marcy had pulled her legs up to her torso, wrapping her arms around them. “Guys?” She asked softly. “I don’t think we’re in LA anymore.”
Sasha could only nod numbly. “No. No, I don’t think we are.”
She and Anne scooted close to Marcy, the girls taking what little comfort they could in each other’s presence. As Anne sat with her terrified friends in some dirty attic in an abandoned house in the middle of a forest full of monsters, missing a shoe and covered in dirt, she found her thoughts drifting to home.
Her warm, safe home, where her parents and family were probably still waiting for Anne to walk through the front door.
Anne smiled a joyless smile.
Happy birthday to me.