I was sitting in the bar by myself. I was surrounded by people, but I wasn’t actually talking to anyone. I had just spent ten hours working at my job at Finnegan’s as a waiter. Usually I would spend the end of my long double shifts drinking at the bar with my friends from work, but tonight was a little different. I usually enjoyed acting like an idiot with my friends after a long shift, but we would normally go during the weekend, and this night was a Tuesday; my friends all go to school and they all had class in the morning. So a night of heavy drinking didn’t sound appealing to any of them. But I didn’t go to school; I had no idea what I was doing with my life. I had a dream to be a chemist a while ago, but after my freshman year of college I decided that an educated life was too much work. My parents didn’t enjoy that too much, so we stopped talking the last couple of years. And now I have been stuck in the same rut day after day, working whenever I was told, trying to exercise whenever I could, and had spent my nights after a long day of work in the bar that stayed open until one in the morning.

I was getting fat now. My gut is starting to show from drinking almost every night. I’m still kind of thin, but I’m not looking too healthy. My hair is thinning slightly, but not enough for people to notice. But I have lost interest in trying to impress anybody now. I gave up on that since my last girlfriend who destroyed any interest in being involved in a relationship. So now I just spend my days working hard and plastering on a fake smile to make everyone else think that every day that I work is the best day of my life.

This day had been rough for me. I had to deal with several uncooperative tables that left me subpar tips if even a tip at all. I also had incompetent cooks making my food taste terrible and take longer than it should have, as well as having dropped two trays full of empty glasses and plates. So, my only answer was to try to have a good time with my friends so I could forget the things that had stressed me out earlier. But my friends were all at their house’s trying to get some sleep so they could all be up bright and early for class in the morning, so I was stuck dealing with my thoughts as I drowned myself in pitchers of beer.

As I looked around, I found how uninteresting everybody seemed. Everybody seemed to be a twenty-something that was trying a little too hard to be funny in front of their friends, or, there were people just like me that looked as though they have given up for the next ten years of their life. I looked up and stared at myself in the mirror across the bar from me, and noticed how depressing I looked. My drunk, tired face staring right back at me with glazed eyes that hung less emotion the more I stared into them.

My eyes wandered to my right where I noticed a skinny, pale man sitting right next to me. The man was smiling as he looked directly into my eyes in the mirror. I turned to the man with a feeling of surprise that I hadn’t noticed the guy looking at me earlier, and the small man turned to meet my eyes.

“You seem down buddy.” The man with glasses said to me.


“Well, not really,” I replied, “I’ve just had a long day.”


“Well that’s a shame, here let me buy you a drink.” The man suggested.


“Okay, sure, that’s pretty kind of you.” I said.
“Of course, anything for a hard worker like you. Hey bartender, get this man a drink on me.” The man held up his hand to ensure the bartender got his attention.


The man and I exchanged a deal of small talk until the drinks showed up. In that moment, a man and a woman fought over something that I would not have been able to understand unless I had been listening to the conversation before. Everyone in the bar had turned their heads to take in the moment of excitement until the couple left the bar continuing to shout and curse each other. When everything died down and regular conversation began again, I turned back to the man. But the man was getting out from his seat when I turned and he started to walk out.


I yelled out to him, “thanks for the beer!” as he walked out the door, but he paid no attention to me. I drank the rest of my beer and then drank the one he got me. I stayed at the bar for another half hour before I walked out.


The air was cold and the night was dark, but my apartment was only a few blocks away and I had left my car at home before walking over to the bar. So my only option was to walk home since getting a ride was too risky and calling a cab was too much work. My head felt fuzzy as I started down the long road back to my house.


The road wasn’t a super busy main road. But even for this time of night, it was pretty dead. I hadn’t seen a car the whole walk home, but I also noticed that the street lights seemed a little bit brighter, and the darkness just a little darker, the air just a little heavier, and the quiet just a little harsher. I could hear my footsteps and my heartbeat grow louder the more I walked forward. But what I hadn’t noticed was the man from the bar standing at the end of the street.


The man from the bar stood at the street corner staring at me. He was waiting for me. I stood there for a moment before stumbling over my own feet to walk to him. I found it strange that he was there but my drunken state pushed me forward before yelling out to him.


“Hey buddy, where did you go? I hoping we were going to hit it off so I could give you my number and go on a few dates.” I joked to him from far away. But there was no answer. He might not have heard me but I yelled to him again, “Come on, don’t be shy, we could just be friends! We don’t have to move too quickly!” Still, no answer. I stumbled more as the man stared back and I started to get upset that he wasn’t responding to me. So I tried as hard as I could to run over to him so I could get some sort of response from him, but it was like I was running in water. My feet felt heavy, and if I went too fast I would fall over.


I looked down at my feet to scold them and I noticed they had been tied down by ropes. How did that happen? I bet that guy tied me down. He seemed like the kind of creepy guy to do that anyways. I looked back to see where the rope lead but it just disappeared into darkness, the street lights behind me had gone out. I turned to the man who was now right in front of me. I mean, he had been less than a hundred feet away from me, but damn that guy was quick. The man’s face was dark with blank eyes that pierced like needles.


“Welcome to my experiment.” He said to me. “Tonight we are going to be testing out my new drug. It essentially acts on the victim much like Rohypnol, but keeps them walking, and the victim tends to experience vivid hallucinations. So think of this experience as a bad acid trip. This is a drug that I developed myself behind the lingering eyes of the United States authority. I just can’t have them involved with their ‘licenses’ and ‘regulations.’ This is more like a field test, and you seem like the correct subject. I have been following you around and asking about you with your coworkers, and I learned that you don’t talk to your family and you don’t have any friends that care. So you’re the perfect person to test this for me.” I stood there, frozen and shocked, trying to stare into the man’s eyes, but my vision was too hazy. “But I’m doing this without your consent, because no mentally stable person like yourself would willingly give consent to some person that is testing a new drug that could kill an eighteen year-old with a heart attack. I just want to see where this drug takes you and how you react to it.”

I finally managed to squeak out a small question. “Why?”

“Why not?” He responded with a malicious grin. “Good luck, my friend. I hope this brings some excitement to your life.”

I opened my mouth to curse at him, but I stopped as I felt the drug kick in. My heart pounded in my chest like a thousand people trying to break through a wall with sledgehammers. The man disappeared and the light flaked away. I knelt down in an attempt to calm myself, but my heart felt as if it were to burst from my chest and run away from me. I felt a lot of things. Most of it was pain. Tears and sweat began to wash my cheeks as I panicked and cried out. I felt my stomach gurgle and something rise to my throat, my heart still pounding away giving me a headache that made me feel like my head was being compressed by a trash compactor. I felt something rise to my throat but all I could think of was the pain in my chest and my skull. I released the substance in my throat and in an instant my pain went away.

My head stopped hurting and my heart slowed, but what was more amazing was what came out of my mouth. When I heaved, a swarm of luminescent butterflies escaped from my mouth. It was amazing. I felt another substance rise to my throat and again I heaved, and out flew another swarm of these butterflies.

Greens, yellows, blues, and whites all shimmering above my head. My awe now controlled me. Any pain or anxiety that I had was gone as I looked up at the wonderful creation of what escaped from my throat. I stared at the butterflies for at least half an hour before realizing they were trying to lead me somewhere. The entire swarm always stayed an entire six feet in front of me as I walked forward. And I blindly followed wherever they led me because… I vomited butterflies, what else was I going to do?

They led me on for what seemed like a few hours until I reached the entrance to a tunnel. Then, they all dispersed. They had done their job, which was to lead me to the entrance of this tunnel with a strange rust colored glow emitting from inside. The path had become so clear now, and I decided that the only thing that could lead me somewhere safe was to just follow my single, straight path.
I took the first step through and followed the course. The walls were all made of cement, and there were ladders that led to a concrete ceiling with no opening. The tunnel’s floor was covered in sand and mud, but there was no sign of any other person, or any other living thing for that matter. But no wonder, the place smelled like someone farted in my face, I don’t think there would be anything to worry about down here.

I continued to follow the one path through the tunnel, wading through mud. My foot, now and then, had dipped into a sunken puddle in the mud. The tunnel must have gone on for miles with only a few turns here and there. Nothing stood out though, it was like I was going in a circle that never turned like a circle should have; everything was the same. But just then I had seen a shadow run by in the distance. There was a maniacal laugh and a scutter of feet. Then behind me, there was another shadow with a similar laugh. I was scared again. There was nothing in these tunnels but dried cement for miles and now somethings here approaching me from the only two sides. The scutters of feet grew louder from both sides, but it didn’t sound like there were only two, there were dozens. The laughs and footsteps grew louder as I saw them approach from around the corners. Short, orange-red men with pointed ears and pointed noses were running at me from both sides. They were bald on the tops of their heads, but their chests and feet were thick like wool. The ran faster when they caught sight of me and the only thing I could do was brace myself.

When they got to me, their hands began to touch me, scratch me, grope me, and punch me. These little goblins were after something, whether they wanted to just hurt me or wanted the clothes off my back, I don’t know, but their tiny hands continued.
“Get off me you little bastards!” I yelled at them. “Leave me alone, I have anything to give you and I don’t want any trouble.”
“Gold, gold is all we want friend.” One said with a voice of powerhunger. “Just give us your gold and we may just eat you raw rather than cook you first.”
“I don’t have any gold!” I replied. “Please just leave me alone, I have nothing you could ever want.”

“Yeah nothing but gold and food for us, Human!” Said another one that stood far above the rest, almost up to my chest.
He was thin, almost no muscle, but his teeth were rigged and shard, and his fingers were long and his palms and feet were wide. They looked awkward in comparison to his broomstick-like arms and legs. He stared me down, grabbed me by my hair and pulled me close. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.” He said, his breath holding a stench of old fish.
“I got it!” A small one yelled as he held up my wallet.
The tall one let go of me and they all scuttle off to the end of the tunnel behind me.

I dropped to my hands and knees, my legs felt weak and beaten. I stared at the ground before looking up to a new, green glow. The concrete walls were the same still, the mud never looked different, and the only other thing that I noticed different was a colossal man standing in the middle of the tunnel.

The man almost filled in the entire space of the tunnel. His neck was short, and his shoulders were too broad, his belly was wide, but flat, and his legs and arms were bigger than my waist. The only space he didn’t fill in was the area between his legs and the wall. He was hairless and his skin was a light grey. He didn’t seem to notice me however. He stared back into the tunnel without ever blinking once.
“Hello?” I asked.

No response. Great another silent creep probably going to ruin the rest of my night. I touched his belly with my palm. He was cold and felt hard as a rock. I pushed against him with all my might, but he wouldn’t budge. I tried to step around his legs, but he would shift his entire body to block me from getting past. The most I could muster was trying to fit my arm through his legs, but I could not reach through much further than that. I looked back up to his face and he still stared blanker than a sheet of paper back at the tunnel.
I decided at that moment that I was exhausted. I sat down against the wall next to the colossus and accepted my defeat. I closed my eyes and had no dreams at all. I fell blank for several hours before waking up.

The sun was beating down on me now, and I couldn’t see anything until my eyes had finally adjusted. I was in a ditch. Concrete walls surrounded me on both sides with one wall next to me, and a metal grate underneath it. I was in a rain water runoff ditch. I noticed right away that I was thirsty, and I felt dehydrated. My head hurt, and I was starving. It had to have already been two in the afternoon and I was supposed to be at work at twelve. I looked at my shoes and notice that some vomit had covered the tips of them and one pant leg was soaking wet and smelled beyond horrible. I grabbed my phone from my pocket. It was dead. I sat there for another hour before I decided to go look for some water and something to eat. But my wallet and my keys were gone.