Spoiler! :
My friends suck. I invited them to my apartment last week and they started criticizing everything. Then they wanted to play monopoly, which is the most boring game in the world. We made some popcorn and turned on some stupid background music and started playing. I had fun.
Then Sarah took her turn and moved her little dog to Park Place, which was one of my properties. I was about to ask her to fork over the thousands of dollars she owed me when I noticed something weird; my pants were wet.
“Dang it!” I shouted, thinking I might have spilled some of my drink. When I looked at the floor, though, I decided that was not the case. The floor was translucent. I thought that was a bit weird, since I had never seen such a thing before, but I didn't make a big deal about it because it was my turn anyway and I was a couple hundred dollars richer, which meant I was buying another house. One without translucent flooring.
A couple turns later, I had to reposition because my floor had become mostly insubstantial and I had to sit on the sloped roof of a gazebo.
“Hey, move it, Dem, there's not a lot of space on this thing.” Sarah said, “And I really don't appreciate you trying to cozy up to me; I told you it's over between us.”
“Fine,” I said, “I'll just drown!”
Sarah stuck her tongue out at me and scooched away.
“Are you two done?” Asked Tim, dice in hand. “'Cause, you know, I'm gonna roll now.” He made a few tentative tosses and some annoying, “Ya done? Ya done?” before tossing the dice and moving his top hat.
Then the whole world changed. The floor disappeared completely and the game board fell through the hole in the middle of the gazebo. I almost lost my balance and fell into the water.
“What the—” Said Fred, right before falling off the roof. He hit the water, which was pretty close, and came up sputtering.
“Fred! Are you alright?” Said Janine, his new wife. They'd both been pretty good friends 'til they got married, after which point they became smooching newlyweds and made everything really awkward; like the world was their honeymoon.
“I'm okay, where are we?” Asked Fred.
“Beats me, but it's awesome!” I said, surveying my surroundings briefly. It looked like someone had taken a small city and put it in a bathtub and filled it with water. There were some buildings sticking above the water, but most were covered. I think the gazebo must have been on a hill, since it was only mostly covered with water. My lower extremities itched.
“It's not awesome, Dem, it's horrible!” said Sarah, “How do we get back?”
“Oh, lighten up, Sarah; it was your idea to play monopoly in the first place.” I said.
“Shut up!”
I could tell she was going into hysterics; she was hyperventilating like a little chihuahua with a new chew toy, only without the happiness part. She even yipped about allergies and pollen and stuff like that. I rolled my eyes.
Fred decided that since he was already in the water, he'd retrieve the game board. Tim postulated that perhaps playing the game would get us back home, Sarah interjected that perhaps we should play it backwards and I said, “I like it here.”
Nobody noticed, instead choosing to argue over what the game would or wouldn't do. They eventually settled on playing it backwards. I told them I was going to swim to a tree, largely because I was getting bored with the conversation. Nobody noticed until I hopped in the water and started for a nearby elm.
“Dem!” Said Fred, “What are you doing?”
“I'm going to that tree over there.” I said, when I had managed to stop. I'm not a good swimmer, so it all came out in gasps as I tried unsuccessfully to tread water. A good deal of the water went in my mouth, but I managed to stay afloat.
“Dem, we have to get back. You need to come as well. There's no one else here! It's a sunken city, there are no survivors!”
“How do you know?”
“You're being really immature, Demitri. Get back here. Now.”
At that point I stopped listening to Fred, mainly because he was sounding vaguely like my mother and I didn't see why I was being immature by wanting to explore the world before I left it.
I made it to the tree and started climbing. There wasn't a lot to climb, though, and I soon found that the tree was very unstable. I was pretty cold, so I decided to go back in the water and swim for something more stable. I spotted a roof a ways away and decided to strike out for it.
At that point, I was far enough away from the gazebo that I couldn't hear their shouting. I looked back at one point and saw that Fred was going to leap in the water after me, so I started swimming faster.
Before I could get to the roof, however, something happened to my leg. It did not feel good, to say the least. One could even say it hurt. A lot.
I was pulled under, where I promptly released all the air in my lungs while screaming. There was a huge, monstrous monster in the water. I'm not sure quite how to describe it, since I didn't actually see much of it, but what I saw of it was nasty tentacles and teeth. Actually, I felt the teeth. I didn't actually see them since, well, there was lots of blood and I was blacking out and—
I woke up on a stone rooftop.
I lay there for a good five minutes before noticing that I was in pain. A strangled cry escaped my throat as I tried to sit up. My left leg was missing the entire calf. It was bloody and gory but had been neatly bandaged with a fanciful bow.
My situation took a little while to process, so I lay there thinking, My leg is gone. This is not good. This is the end of the world. This is not the end of the world, I'm still alive. Why am I not becoming intimately involved in the digestive system of that horrible monster? My leg is gone. I will deal with it. It hurts like the dickens, but I will cope. Where am I?
And then, as if I had suddenly appeared on the roof with absolutely no warning, a woman's voice said, “Oh, hi, hello.”
I turned my head in order to examine this voice and discovered that that side of the roof was largely deserted. The exception to this was one woman standing near the edge. Under normal circumstances, I would've been concerned that she might jump, but there was water at the edge of the roof and she was indeed wading in it.
She wore only a pink nightie, which fluttered in the light breeze. She didn't look like she'd come straight from bed, though, since she looked pretty awake. In hindsight, she could've just been a morning person, but I never thought of that.
I realized I had been staring at her stupidly for a good thirty seconds, so I stuttered and said, “Hi, who are you?”
“I'm Zaraeiatian, but,” she blushed and ducked her head, “you can call me Zar.”
For a minute I forgot I lost my leg. When I remembered again I figured it didn't matter in the scheme of things.
“My name's Demitri, but,” I tried not to mimic her, for fear she'd think I was mocking her, and I succeeded in gulping slightly before finishing, “you can call me Dem, if you like.”
“Oh!” She said, “That is a very pretty name.”
She had an endearing little accent that I couldn't place, which made me not mind so much that she'd said my name was “pretty.”
“What is this place?” I asked, “Did you live here?”
“Yes,” she said, her eyes darkening in the fading sunlight, “and no. I did not live above the ground, but I have lived here.”
“Really?” I asked, squinting into the last rays of sun as it drifted under the horizon, “Explain.”
And so, with little further fluttering of her eyelashes, she strode up to me, sat beside me and told me her tale.
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