May's anthology

Time of Change

As the troll's ax hit my head, I startled awake.

The reality was slightly better than the dream since there was no troll present and no immediate danger of decapitation, but my head was pulsating in pain. I felt as if the troll had succeeded in its task, and I was just a very confused ghost.

Those thoughts were dispersed upon noticing the utter chaos that surrounded me. The horrible smell of alcohol and vomit that saturated the air was too familiar to be anything but real. It was clear that we had partied hard, and now there was a price to pay.

The fact that I couldn't remember everything that happened the previous night made it crystal clear that I shouldn't have drunk as much as I did. My fuzzy mind thought it was pure luck that I didn't drown in the lake as I was a lousy swimmer. Besides, I am known for having terrible ideas while drunk.

I thanked my lucky stars that I was alive, promptly promising myself I would never get that hammered ever again.

"Jake, you are up!" Veronica squealed in my ear.

I wasn't sure what annoyed me more, the fact that she was making my headache worse or the fact that she didn't have one of her own although she drank as much as I did.

"Yeah, what's up?" I asked, trying not to look at the bright light that entered the room through the curtains she opened.

"We need to go. Remember, I told you that I needed to get back earlier," Veronica said.

"Why don't you wake up the others, and I'll be there in a sec," I said.

"They're already up. We need to clean this place up before we leave, or my friends won't allow us to stay here ever again," she said.

Looking around through my barely opened eyes, I could see why. We outdid ourselves this time. It was worse than ever.

After drinking a strong cup of coffee, I was willing to help as much as possible. Veronica was right. We couldn't leave that mess behind, so I figured the sooner we finished, the sooner I'd be able to go back home and sleep off the terrible hangover.

Only two hours later, we were done. All of us were all too eager to get it done with, though none of us were worker bees. There were some things we weren't ready to risk, such as Veronica's wrath.

Usually, she was a kind ball of energy that could always brighten up our days. However, if we made her mad, she could turn into a fury.

As we were packing up our things to go home, I noticed a peculiar jar filled with what looked like a few giant orbeezes. Though we often ended up with weird stuff, this one was stranger than usual, so I decided to satisfy my curiosity.

"Guys, what's this?" I asked.

"Oh, it's just some cool stuff I found while exploring the lakeshore. It looked pretty, so I decided to take it with me." Elisa, another friend of mine, said.

"Well, it's better than what you got the last time," I said.

"Hey, how was I supposed to know that brown rock wasn't a rock at all," she said defensively.

I shrugged my shoulders with a smile, and she relaxed. It was as easy as that to get in Elisa's good books.

Elisa was always the 'collector' of our group. In the past few years, she had collected a lot of random souvenirs, but at least this one looked pretty.

After that, we piled up in the two cars we used to reach the lake and headed home, not knowing that it would be the last time we were all together.

One never knows when a monumental change would enter one's life, and that was even more true for me.

A week after our wonderful trip, the horrible news reached me. Elisa was found dead.

That would have been a shock enough for all of us, even without all the weird details that surrounded her death that no one could explain.

The fact that she was covered in strange greenish goo made things even worse since no one could tell us what happened to our friend.

Not only was she dead, but no one knew how or why. There were no answers to be given, and the police started questioning us one by one. Yet, we had no more information than they did. Still, they didn't let us grieve in peace.

They were worried about the possibility of a biological attack, so they gave themselves the right to dissect our lives and asked the same questions million times over.

During one of those sessions, I remembered the strange jar and got rebuked for not recalling it sooner.

I lost one of my best friends, and they expected me to remember every insignificant little second of that trip. I couldn't fathom how that could have had anything to do with her death.

That night, when I went home, I had the strangest nightmare. Elisa was there, covered in green goo that was slithering all over her body as if it was alive.

I couldn't stop myself from gagging when it slithered into her beautiful blue eyes, turning them bright green.

"Come join me. I need you." Elisa's voice said.

Yet, I was sure that it wasn't her speaking. Something else was controlling her soft mouth, and I was enraged. How could it use her like that?

"Get out of her! Leave her alone!" I screamed at the top of my lungs.

Next thing I knew, I woke up behind the wheel in the middle of nowhere. I had no idea how I could drive while asleep, but it was clear I did.

I quickly pulled over to the side of the road to get some semblance of normalcy back, but it wasn't working.

Looking around, I realized that I was almost back at the lake.

As creeped out as I was by the revelation, I decided to go on. The answers I needed seemed to be waiting there, and I was always the type of person who couldn't leave any questions unanswered.

Once I pulled over next to the lake, I could see a silhouette of a woman walking in the moonlight.

My heart started pounding in my chest, and I started questioning my choices.

The figure turned, and I no longer had a choice, I was led to her, to the being that once was Elisa.

"Who are you?" I said when I reached it.

"We are ancient. We have been asleep for centuries at the bottom of the lake. Now, we emerge from the water and conquer the land. Time of change is upon us," the voice said.

"What about Elisa?" I asked.

"We needed a vessel for our young. Elisa was a match. Now, we live on. We are the young ones with the memories of our elders now. We are the young and the old at the same time," it said.

"What do you want from me?" I asked.

"We take the gender of the being we nest in. To reproduce, we need both genders," it said.

Before I could do anything, Elisa's lips were on mine. The touch was not a gentle kiss that I expected. The lips that closed over mine were colder than ice, and they weren't kissing me. They were feeding me, like a mother bird feeding its young. As the round objects went down my throat, I realized those were the strange items Elisa found.

Then, I felt a strange presence spreading through my whole body, chasing away the essence of who I was.

After a few moments of futile struggle, I was no more.

The End