The sun had gone down several hours ago, and the life of the night was in full swing. The men and women of Kansas City had worked hard all day, and with their paychecks cashed, they went to go and party the night away into the next morning. In an alleyway outside a bar near the Power and Light district lay a homeless man, semi-conscious in an alcoholic stupor from the cheap beer he had bought with what little money he had. The man’s name was Daryl, and he had made this alleyway his home for the past couple of months. It was ideally placed between the nearby liquor store and a soup kitchen that wasn’t too far away, and that was all he really cared about. The inebriated man muttered to himself as he continued to down the alcohol, one large, overflowing swig at a time. A cat entered Daryl’s alleyway, sauntering perhaps to its own home somewhere among the trash, or to find its next meal.
“Hey, le-le’ me tellya somethin’,” he slurred at the cat, as it began to walk towards the dumpster he was resting against. “I’ve heard some weeeeeeird stuff ‘bout these..peeople! People who take-ya-away, and they sacrifice ya to the moon men.” The cat stopped in front of the garbage bin and looked at the drunkard, as if it were interested in what he had to say, which made Daryl talk all the more, “Oh yeah! Yeah, yeah, see..they snatchya like they’re dogcatchers. Annafter they’re through doing their magic with ya, they take ya and launch ya into outer space. You’d like that, wouldn’ya? One less dog on the street..to make life bad for you and yer friends?”
The cat suddenly turned to look further down into the alley and its ears began to twitch as it looked for whatever was fascinating it. After a while, its ears laid back onto its head, it tail became puffed up, and it momentarily hissed before it ran out of the alley.
“Wait! Come back!” Daryl tried to get up and stumble after his one listener, “I haven’t told you about the aglets! They’re evil!”
A flashing burst of light brought Daryl’s attention toward the back of the alleyway’s end. A gathering cloud hung unnaturally low in the alleyway, suspended around some unseen point a few feet off of the ground. Light and distorted sounds came from within the dark boiling cloud, and from out of its dense fog sprang forth a golden mist. Baffled beyond all sense by both his drink and his surprise, Daryl managed to say, “What the hell,” before the golden particles enveloped him. As the light pass over him, his senses were completely and fully returned to him, and the cirrhosis he did not know he had had been cured. Daryl looked down to the bottle in his right hand with a new set of eyes, and in disgust threw it into a nearby dumpster. “Never needed the stuff anyway,” he muttered before he left the alley to start a newly invigorated life for himself, without ever returning to alcohol ever again.
The golden cloud, having healed the sick man, was carried further towards the neck of the alley by the currents of the wind. In time, the particles began to grow brighter as they gathered together, as if they were excited, perhaps even terrified, for what was to come next for them. Sinking towards the ground, the now dense golden mist began to swirl as it landed on the paved but dirty street. A bright shining light of all sorts of colors temporarily filled the entire alleyway as the beautiful lights began to form the outline of a human being lying on the ground. As the lights faded, a naked woman lay on the still, warm, broken asphalt from the hot afternoon’s sun, and as each moment passed, her form became clearer, and her substance more material.
With the process now completed, she gasped for air with a sudden start as she awoke from a dark isolated place that she could not remember, and she hyperventilated for several minutes. Her violet eyes looked to the skies up above to see no stars, but only the lights of a city colored in faded yellow by the lamps and security lights near the street. She had never seen this place before, and she did not know how she had gotten here. She sat up from where she had been lying, wincing as the sand and hot rock of the paved alley ground into her skin. She felt strange all over, like she was a hoof that had been placed in an oddly shaped sock; not quite conforming to the shape of the unusually shaped garment. Why had she thought of hooves? She brought her forelimbs up and saw she had hands, just like she should. She touched her face with those hands, leaving small pieces of grit stuck to her face. It was becoming too much for her; the new sights and sounds seemed to be bearing down on her from every side, never stopping and offering no mercy to her. She got up and ran down the alley like a gazelle, but stopped short when she realized that the sounds and sights were even more concentrated at that open end of the brick hallway. Turning and running back the way she had come, she huddled next to a large green container full of black bags. She covered her ears with her hands and sat in a fetal position, and when she felt she was almost completely overwhelmed, she began to sob in anguish and confusion.
“Please, someone. Make it stop. Make it stop! It hurts; all of it hurts! Someone help me.”
“Hello?” a voice called down the alley to the distraught woman.
Having not heard the sound because of her ears being clasped shut, the poor woman continued to sob, “I don’t know where I am. What is this place? Where have I been?”
Tentative steps made their way slowly toward her, until a figure stood before. The naked woman cringed as the figure gasped, “Oh my god. Are you ok? Who did this to you?”
Crying, the women looked up from where she was sitting and through her tears she asked, “Help me, please.”
The figure was also a woman. She had straightened blonde hair, and she was wearing a white buttoned up shirt with jeans. She reached into a bag suspended from her shoulder and pulled out some kind of small brick like object, and she said in as soothing of a tone as she could manage, “I’m gonna help you. Everything’s going to be alright, okay?” The stranger began tapping the brick with her shaking hand, and then she placed it next to her ear.
“911, what is your emergency?”
“Please come quick! I just found a woman in an alleyway outside of a bar in the Power and Light district. She’s naked and scared; I think she might have been raped.”
“What is your name, ma’am?”
“Serana. Serana Pryce.”
“Serana, give me your exact location and stay on the line; help is on the way right now. If you need to touch the victim, ask permission first; it will help her to feel in control. Be as supportive and unobtrusive as possible.”
After she stopped talking to the black brick, Serana took it away from her ear and slowly squatted down in front of the naked woman, who backed as far into the wall as she could.
“May I hold your hand?” Serana asked as compassionately as she could to the stranger cowering in front of her.
Timidly, the woman reached her left hand out to take Serana’s outstretched hand.
“Help is coming right now. My name is Serana. What’s your name?”
The woman looked past Serana’s shoulder, and her eyes misted over. She sat for a while in a state of being shell-shocked, as she tried to sift through garbled snippets of words and pictures. She looked back into Serana’s eyes with confusion and anguish, and she finally said through more tears, “I don’t remember.”