The Hole

Tanya had forced herself not to move. She thought playing dead might buy her some time before possibly having to delve into her dark past. Now she realized that it might have been a mistake to wait this long, but taking on two men at once was never a sure thing and the opportune moment to take them one at a time never came.

"All this time, and I still wonder who would put a rabbit hole here in the middle of no where?"

"Never-mind it's just the right size to drop the body in, then we can get out of here."

"What if she wakes up?"

"Throw her in before she does."

Despite her appearing to be dead they had tied her up, in case it was a ruse. Even her skills at killing would be hard pressed if she had to free herself quickly. Her only hope was that she might be able to get free before she hit the bottom of the hole.

That's going to leave a mark, asshole! she thought as her hip hit the edge of the hole before she felt herself sliding down what seemed like an endless chute, and despite getting free of her bonds, her best efforts couldn't stop her until she found herself rolling over a gray surface. Gray skies, gray as far as the eye could see, and even the soft sandy surface she had landed on was on was gray. She rubbed the bruise on her left hip and looked around trying to clear her vision as she rolled to a stop.

"Sorry lass, but unless you see different than most humans you'll only see gray."

"So where am I?"

"On a tiny rock in the great subspace sea with no way off," the man with only half a face and a hook for his right arm said.

Tanya felt a chill race through her as she noticed a few bones scattered near what she assumed was the shore of the tiny rock they were on. She knew that trying to see the subtle difference between land and sea would drive her insane if she let it, and that man was the real threat she had to deal with. Mangled as he was, she could still read treachery in his body language.

"No, you are not the first to be shoved down that rabbit hole, and no, I don't know if they even know where it leads, just that so far it's the same two thugs that sent me here years ago that sent the others." He took a deep raspy breath. "No, you can't jump back through it."

"How do you know about the thugs?" Tanya said making sure she was free of the bonds the two men had put on her. If there had been others, she realized that she could easily find herself in a battle for her life.

"I asked the others that came before they tried to kill me."

"Why would they do that?

"They would rather try to kill me than starve to death."

The chill in Tanya's chest turned to an icy dagger. The old man was lying. Her dark past would be her only hope to survive the next few minutes, but then what? "How did you survive after the meat ran out?"

"There are enough grubs just under the surface of the sand here that one person can subsist till the next body comes down the chute," the old man said as he stepped forward.

Tanya heard voices in a language that was familiar, but had to focus as the old man swung his hook at her. Without thinking she ran her hand deep into the man's chest and pulled his heart out so that he could see it beat one last time before he fell toward her, dead.

Tanya quickly moved to the side and pushed the body over so that she could drop the heart on the opening where it had come from. The old man had obviously been a cannibal, but that was one thing she could not bring herself to do. It was not part of that dark past that she had been running from for years, nor was it something she would embrace now, even if it did mean subsisting for the rest of her life on grubs from the gray ground. Then she recognized the language that the voices she had been hearing were speaking.

"I can help you."

Tanya had learned sea creature language while on a water world where she had hid out after a particularly nasty assignment from the dark past that she suspected had landed her here. She looked at the body in front of her. Had he been sent here as an executioner for people like her that could kill without weapons?

"How?" she chittered in the sea creature language.

"I can take you across the sea to others like you," the voice responded.

"And how can I trust you?" Tanya had heard horror stories about subspace and the liquid that surrounded the rock she'd landed on. Drowning in a liquid you could not float in was bad enough, but she'd read about creatures like the one she was talking to that would eat a human alive.

"Count the body in front of you as my fee for a ride to someplace safer."

In Tanya's dark past she had learned to read humanoid body language really well, but she couldn't even see the sea creature she was talking to, and wouldn't be able to read its body language even if she could see it. She nodded toward the body. "Why didn't he take your offer?"

"He didn't speak our language, and no one else survived long enough for us to find out if they did."

Tanya took a deep breath, and looked around her. Her dark past had almost caught up to her, and had landed her here with a choice. Face eventual madness, or take a chance on an unseen voice in the gray mists. She kicked the old man's body to the edge of the island.

The darker gray whale like creature emerged, scooped the body up in its wide jaw, and closed its mouth.

Tanya had never got used to the sound of crunching bones when that happened to a victim, but she forced herself not to flinch. This was her only hope at escaping the eventual insanity of the desolate gray landscape that surrounded her.

"Climb aboard," the creature said as the crunching of bones stopped.

Tanya gingerly climbed onto the creature's back. "Do you have a name?"

The equivalent of a chuckle issued from the creature as it swam away from the tiny rock. "You couldn't pronounce it if you tried, so just call me Ishmael."

Tanya couldn't help but smile the rest of the way to the distant land where she would be able to find her way out of this world. Her ride had a sense of humor.

qed.