Your Turn to Suffer by Tim Waggoner (free romance novels .TXT) 📗

no longer interested in it. Partially because she wanted to avoid another serious injury, but also because she had a new passion. After going through physical therapy and experiencing firsthand what it could do to help someone heal, she’d decided to enter the profession. She eventually graduated with her bachelor’s in PT, then went on to get her master’s in the discipline. As for Aashrita…. She didn’t want to think about her right then, and so she turned her mind back to the problem at hand.

She had dreamed about her soccer injury, but that dream had ended with her lying on her back on the grass, knee hurting like a motherfucker. Now she was here, with no apparent transition between. That meant this was a dream. She’d simply transitioned from one scenario – a realistic one drawn from her own life – to a more unrealistic one, where a man with no eyes chauffeured her down a black road in a sunless, starless world. And where she was wearing a see-through robe to boot. This scenario had all the hallmarks of a dream that was rapidly sliding into nightmare territory. So why didn’t it feel like a dream?

She rubbed her right hand across the leather of the seat to test its reality. She jerked her hand back when she felt the leather ripple beneath her fingers, as if her touch excited it. Her bare ass was on this leather, or whatever it was, separated only by sheer cloth. She imagined the seat rippling beneath her butt, as if caressing her, and the thought turned her stomach. She resolved to sit very, very still. Aside from the radio, the car was quiet, and she wondered if the vehicle had an engine or was propelled by other means. The ride was smooth, too, as if the obsidian surface of the Nightway was perfectly flat and highly polished.

She began to tremble, as much from fear as from cold. She wanted to ask the driver to stop and let her out, but she said nothing. Not only did she think the eyeless man would refuse her request, if he did allow her to leave the vehicle, where could she go? The car’s lights were the only source of illumination she’d seen in this place so far. Once she was standing on the side of the road alone, and the driver had put enough distance between them, she would be swallowed by darkness as complete as that in a cavern far beneath the surface of the earth or at the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean; places light had never touched and never would. Where could she go? How would she find her way? And what if there were other things out there in the darkness with her, things she couldn’t see, but which could detect her by sound or smell, things that were hungry?

No, better to remain where she was. If this was a dream, it didn’t matter what she did. Nothing could harm her here. And if this was real – even if only partially – the longer she remained inside the car, the safer she’d be. She hoped.

She sat back and felt a wave of revulsion as the leather behind her shuddered upon her contact with it. She told herself to keep still, ignore the obscene sensation, and focus on the world outside the window, but that didn’t help. There were no landmarks to see, nothing to indicate the passage of time or the vehicle’s movement. The blackness was eerie and absolute, but sometimes she had the impression of things moving on either side of the road, shadows within shadows, and more than moving – they were watching as well. Watching and waiting and hoping that the car edged a little too close to the side of the road, close enough to reach out and grab it.

Occasionally they passed vehicles going in the opposite direction. Some were four-wheeled machines that more or less resembled cars she was familiar with, but others looked like nothing she’d ever seen before. One looked as if it had been built from the hollowed-out exoskeleton of a praying mantis the size of a semi-truck. Another was an amorphous mass of sparkling fog, in the center of which crouched the silhouette of a figure that held only the most rudimentary resemblance to a human form. The strangest was something that resembled a carriage made from raw meat, pulled by a pair of creatures that resembled horses that had been turned inside out.

She wasn’t certain how much time passed. It could’ve been minutes, it could’ve been hours. But eventually she became aware of a faint red glow in the distance ahead of them. She fixed her gaze upon it and watched it grow larger as they approached. Eventually, they were close enough for her to begin to make out details. It was a gigantic spire, although without any objects around it for comparison, its size was difficult to judge. It felt big, though. Skyscraper-big. A curling organic-looking spiral, it reminded her of a narwhal’s jutting horn, only it was wider at the bottom and continued getting narrower until it came to a point at the top. It was clear to see how the Vermilion Tower had gotten its name. The spiral gave off its own crimson light, which seemed to smolder amidst the darkness, like the coals of a fire that hadn’t quite burned out yet. The light pulsed slowly, as if in time to the beat of an enormous heart. She wondered then if the spiral truly was a horn, and if so, if it was attached to some unfathomably large creature buried vertically beneath the ground. Maybe the behemoth was long dead and only its skeleton remained, or perhaps it still lived and was only slumbering, waiting for the right moment to wake and burst free from the ground that imprisoned it.

The driver slowed as they approached the tower. He activated his right turn signal