The vision of their yellow eyes and bared fangs clouded my thoughts. Surely they hadn’t left such an easy meal passed out at the bottom of the staircase, and even if they had, that didn’t explain how I’d ended up in this bed.
I leaned forward, my body aching all over as I scanned the room for danger. Not that I would be able to defend myself should anything pop up. My head was spinning, my vision blurred, and worse than that, my phone was nowhere in sight. Embarrassingly, my stomach rumbled, as though food should be the most of my concerns.
Flinging the sheets back revealed a cut red rose lying beside me on the bed. It had been pruned, too, free of thorns.
Okay, things just went from weird to weirder.
I still had no idea whose house I was in, but it was pretty clear someone had been here. Maybe the owner of this place, the one responsib1le for the burning light on the second floor window, had saved me. Maybe he had beat back those animals, and when he was done with that, scooped me up Rhett Butler style, put me to bed, and sat a rose beside me for good measure.
Thinking it over, I couldn’t decide whether that was cute or pervy.
“H-hello?” The word scraped my throat.
No answer came.
I threw my legs over the side of the bed and stood, taking the rose in my hand. I cleared my throat. “Is anybody there?”
For the first time, I had a chance to really look at the house I had broken into. It was plain, the walls free of picture or painting and the furniture sparse and nondescript.
A pair of slippers waited at the bedside beside my high heels, which were now cleaner than they had been before I took my unplanned trip through the forest.
At the thought, I froze.
I hadn’t worn those shoes in the woods. I had thrown them off the instant I saw the first creature. That meant whoever put me in this bed went all the way to my car, got my shoes, and brought them back here.
All that, but they clearly hadn’t called the police …
Suddenly, a new dread—a more human one—seeped into my soul. I grabbed my heels and made a beeline out the door.
I was on the first floor. Evidence of the fight lay strewn all around me; chairs and tables had been smashed in a way that reminded me of The Castle after the looting.
I had never met this person, and he had just saved my life, but I wasn’t about to take a chance on dodging a wolf-shaped monster bullet just to end up like Clemp’s backwoods bride.
I shoved my feet into my heels, wincing against the pain, and darted toward the front door, chancing only the slightest glare in either direction. When I got to my exit, though, I found a note hanging from the handle.
Leave this place. Don’t tell anyone about it or anything you saw here, and don’t ever come back.
Of course, I took the advice.
***
It took me an hour to find my way back to the main road, stumbling over hills and valleys on my heels so hard that I soon wished I had reached for the slippers instead. Lord knew the damage from running barefoot last night was enough on its own to slow me down.
I must have come out of the woods at a very different spot than I left it, because my car was nowhere to be seen.
Sighing, I brushed the hair out of my eyes and started the long trek back to New Haven.
I had been gone all night, and I didn’t even have any furniture to show for it. How would I explain all this? Something told me the truth wouldn’t go over so well.
So, a monster chased me into a weird house where another monster attacked it. I hit my head, and then I woke up with turn-down service.
Yeah, not so much.
A mile of hot asphalt later, I had my heels in my hands and two throbbing, bloody feet. But nothing was worse than the head full of questions I would never get the answers to.
New Haven appeared before me, as quaint as ever. Still, even a hick town like that was a beautiful sight for eyes that had witnessed what mine just had.
I looked down, instinctively primping myself. Just because I had been through hell didn’t mean I had to look like it. But there was no way I was putting those heels back on.
“Hey!” a voice called out from behind me.
I jerked, my entire body trembling. The whole experience must have shaken me up worse than I thought.
“Hey, you!” A kid, maybe seventeen years old, came darting out of the woods toward me. “Get over here!”
Panicking, I flung my shoe at him. My Gucci knocked him in head.
“Goddamn it!” he shrieked, grabbing his skull. “What’s your problem, lady? I’m trying to help you.”
“W-what?” I asked, suddenly feeling pretty ridiculous. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You’re the model, right?” He looked me up and down. “Dude! The whole town’s looking for you!”
“Did you just call me dude?” I asked before registering the rest of what he had said.