***

  There is no specific moment heralding the transition. No indication of when precisely the jump from one place to the next occurs. The changeover doesn’t feel like anything, at least not anything with salience enough to mask the sensations of the rapidly approaching limits of her exertion. Every kick, every paddle, cutting deeper into her dwindling reserve of energy.

  The water had been warm when she’d set off, and now it was ever so slightly less warm. That’s all she can say. The sky is the same cloudless azure as when she set off from the dock, perhaps hued the subtlest of ambers by the light of a different—and she prays more familiar—sun.

  She had thought about trying to cling to the hull of the catamaran, like a barnacle, hitching a ride back somewhere on its underside. She had remembered them motoring at a leisurely pace, and seen them approach slowly that last time: if only I can find something to grab onto, she’d thought, surely I could manage to hold on.

  But to what? What exactly would she have held to? The railings or mooring posts? So far above the waterline, those would’ve left her plainly visible, leaving aside the sheer infeasibility of hanging from them for at least tens of minutes with at most eight functioning fingers.

  Some lower hiding spot between the crafts hulls? No, that would’ve seen her promptly drowned—or shredded by propellers.

  Somewhere on the boat itself? Somewhere in the cabin? No, that would be walking to her own grave. A rat backing itself into a corner, waiting to be found. And she would be found, that she was sure of. The tourniquets of shredded dress insufficient to stem the red-tinged flow from the mangled half-stump of her right hand.

  No, there simply wasn’t any way to manage it, especially not with the three having remained so close to the boat. So she’d waited there, hugging the leg of the peer, trying to keep her wound dry and elevated, keeping her breath calm and level. Listening. Watching.

  She’d worried they might linger, or call for backup, assemble a search party to scour the jungle, wise to her ruse, eventually tracking her back to that spot right under their noses.

  She had, or course, entertained the idea of making a run for it, imagined herself dashing along the beach until she could wave down a coast guard patrol or stumble into some friendly beach goers. She’d had to remind herself that there were no friendly beach goers, no fucking coast guard, in this place. Her only way out was through whatever that thing was out in the water, so she would have to hide until they returned and then left again, lest she be greeted by a yacht full of eyes halfway out in the middle of some alien ocean.

  And, having seen just one of the beach’s floral specimens, there was no way she was going to venture there to hide, into that jungle of horrors. So she’d hid in the water under the pier, telling herself that if there was any sea-life, it couldn’t possibly be anything like those things on the beach. Whatever thrill all this was ticking for those elderly voyeurs, risk of death via the fucking Kraken definitely wouldn’t be a part of it—she had tried not to think about what might lurk farther from shore.

  But they’d taken her bait, far quicker than she’d expected even. She’d heard a few of them walk down the dock and return not five minutes later. Evidently her deception had worked. Tearing her dress and wrapping her hand had proved somewhat difficult, and she’d been tempted to foot it directly to the pier, but she’d known that a trail of blood would be too easy to follow on the white sand.

  Once Assured that she had been beyond reach of those quivering stalks, she’d knotted the fabric over her hand and wadded an extra bunch around the wound to absorb any would be drips.

  It had been a last minute insight to throw her chain into the creature’s maw. At the foot of the pier, just as she was preparing to submerge herself, the idea had struck her. Sticking to the confused mess of shoe prints leading from the pier to Allison’s creature, she had approached. Seeing that gold plated chain cast inwards toward the creature had confirmed it: if Allison’s chain sat in a tangle near the base of that thing, then hers ought do the same. Suspicions might arise if she left it as it was lain, cast out along the beach.

  Hurrying back to her terror—obscuring the few crimson blots she’d left in transit—she’d stood before it. It seemed to have calmed some, stalks undulating high like those of Allison’s, and the rectum-for-a-throat having mostly retracted. She’d told herself it would be nothing more than a quick sprint, like the shuttle run she’d excelled at during grade school fitness testing. Yes, just like the shuttle run—except on the sand with some carnivorous tentacle monster lying in wait.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  She’d made a mad dash, scooping the end of chain as she passed, and again its middle as she ran, stumbling once, screaming, scrambling to her feet, hurling her binds at the thing, pivoting and clawing at the sand, scrambling frantically back out of reach, where she’d sat trembling and crying. The creature hadn’t moved.

  When the tumult in her mind had subsided and again coalesced into something approximating thought, she had looked to the spot out on the water. Had she seen it change just now? Was something coming through?

  She’d hurried to the pier, reversing the prints left by Ethan the night before, thankful that the bleeding seemed to have been stoppered for the time being.

  She hadn’t waited for long. Mere moments after she’d anchored herself to the pier leg, they’d come through. They’d moored at the dock while she’d floated in the shadows, listening, wondering if she’d learn anything useful at all besides the names of more men to put on her kill list.

  She’d had to suppress the sigh of relief when they’d climbed back into the boat, and she’d waited until they were far off before daring to peak her head around the dock. And then she’d watched, focusing so intently for that point of disappearance, that strange half submerged mirrored sphere some appreciable fraction of a nautical mile distant.

  And once they’d gone, disappeared into nothingness, she’d made her final preparations and set off. There’d been a handful of life rings hanging on the pier end, small, white, like something out of a magazine ad. She’d taken one, hoping its absence wouldn’t be noticed—at least long enough for her to make it out of wherever the hell she was. Really, she knew, she’d had no choice. She’d lost enough blood, and gone long enough without water, that she would’ve cramped two minutes into any swim unaided.

  And now she clings to the ring, staring up at a sky over an ocean unknown. For a brief moment she witnesses a 360° panorama of her surroundings compressed into her visual field, and then she is receding from the mirage. She’s too disoriented to say with any certainty whether she’s passed through successfully. She doesn’t even know what she should be looking for. Maybe this… portal leads to the middle of the Atlantic, in which case she’s as good as dead anyways. Maybe it some other alien ocean, in which case she might soon wish she was dead.

  When originally devising her plan, she’d considered that the other side might be under surveillance. She’d told herself that she would somehow swim through the portal—without the life ring, lest it expose her to any watching eyes—evaluate the environment, and then swim back to retrieve the ring if she determined it safe to do so.

  Whether she ever had the resolve or strength for such a maneuver to begin with, by now her hands don’t leave the safety of her aid. Without it, she’s certain she wouldn’t last more than a few minutes.

  In the distance she can just make out what appears to be a beach, far farther than the one she just came from should be, and though she can’t say with certainty, it looks like the sun is poised to move behind it, in which case she’s arrived elsewhere.

  Might not be home, but at least I’m out of that fucking place.

  She drifts cautiously nearer—reassuring herself with the fact that, in lieu of a GPS tag, she’s a pin in a stack of hay, a tiny white speck in an endless expanse of blue—there aren’t any immediate signs of settlement that she can see from here, but there is also no pier that she can see. She feels the glimmer of hope tug at her.

  Chill on it, Sasha, maybe the currents just pulled you to the next monster’s beachfront lot.

  But the closer she gets, the more relief threatens to wash over her. She doesn’t let it. She’s not where she was, that’s for sure, but she still doesn’t know where she is. Nevertheless, things feel familiar. Not for any particular reason she could name at first, but then she sees it: contrails, lots of them.

  Fuckyesfuckyesfuckyesfuckyesfuckyes

  About the same time, she notices a distant glinting out of the corner of her eye—a ship she assumes. What ship exactly she doesn’t know, but she paddles away from it and the mirage both, staying parallel with the shoreline.

  Soon she recognizes it: the catamaran, and that fucking yacht following it. They are headed toward that smudge on the horizon.

  Fuckers! You fucking fucks!

  Watching the vessels pass through and disappear, on their way to some macabre exhibition. She thinks of Allison and sobs for a time.

  When she dries her eyes it is early evening, an early evening she actually recognizes. The sun is drawing nearer that horizon obscured by tree- and coast-line. She sees homes, nice ones, on the passing shore. She’s hungry and exhausted, but she also doesn’t know how extensive a networks her shadowy abductors might have, and she is rather unkeen to find herself drugged and drug back to some alien beach after swimming ashore and asking well-to-do strangers for help.

  Best to go just a little farther, she tells herself. Once she makes it around the next bend. And the next.

  Can’t be too cautious. Don’t know what you’re dealing with yet.

  She finds that she’s slim enough to wedge the ring—with fumbling effort—around her waist. Relaxing into it, it slides up her torso, settling somewhere around her lowest ribs. It’s an awkward fit, uncomfortable—or it would have been a few days prior, now she finds it not at all unpleasant.

  She finds herself nodding off. She’s long since stopped paddling anywhere in particular, besides the current seems to be helping, pulling her in the direction of… in some direction. She doesn’t care anymore. Her eyelids sag, head dipping forward before jolting back up.

  Just a little farther, Sasha, almost there…

  Her head falls again, raises briefly, dips back down. Blackness.

  ***