A Whole New World

"Go to college," they said. "It'll be fun." They said. What a crock of bullshit. As Dog sat there, staring at the blank Word document, she wondered why she bothered. Did she really need to take Anatomy and Physiology just to do Beauty Therapy? It didn't make much sense. She understood why she needed some of it. The skin was important. Same with the muscular and, to an extent, skeletal systems. A little light knowledge on the nervous system probably wouldn't do her any harm. But why, in the name of arse, did she need the digestive system? Or the reproductive system? She was going to be an aesthetician, not a gynecologist. This essay she was supposed to be writing on the digestive system did not relate to the rest of her course in any way. Yet here she was, staring at a blank Word document saved as "A&P essay draft 1" She groaned aloud and sat back, rolling her head around in slow circles. Gods, she was tired. She let herself flop forward again, propping her head up on one hand while the other clicked out of the empty document, opening another window. Maybe a few minutes of Dragon Age would clear her mind, and she could get back to the essay in a little bit. Just a few minutes. . . Three hours later she had freed the mages from a horde of demons, thus recruiting them to her army, helped to exorcise a demon from a kid who made a pact with said demon to cure his father of mystery illness, and was en route to a mountain that contained an actual cure for the kid's father. She had also flirted shamelessly with one of her party members and he was now in love with her. Her essay was still unwritten. Maybe she'd do it tomorrow. She still had a couple of weeks before she needed to hand it in. She shut her computer, shaking the stiffness from her muscles, and nearly shat herself at the sound that shattered the silence of her apartment. What the actual f**k was that?! It sounded like a bag of angry cats dragging their collective claws down a chalkboard. She stumbled out of her bedroom clutching the first object that came to hand as if it were a weapon. Not that a hot pink umbrella would be much good in a fight, but it was better than nothing, given the fact that her experience in fighting extended to "kick 'em and run away". Her knuckles turned white around the cheap plastic as she shuffled towards the source of the noise, groping for the light switch when she reached the kitchen. The harsh yellow light made her blink as she peered owlishly around the room. Nothing. The noise had dulled to a hum, and she slowly looked up like the tragic side character of a cheap horror movie. The one that screams a lot and dies first. There was a hole in the ceiling. Not a hole that opened to the apartment above hers. It almost looked like it wasn't really there, a gaping s***h in the lumpy plaster that seemed to open up to a void, that made her eyes feel weird to look at. Dog averted her eyes to let them settle again, then looked back at it. Either she was having a very vivid hallucination, or there was a portal to absolute nothingness in the ceiling of her kitchen. She decided that standing directly underneath it might be a Bad Idea, and slowly took a step further into the kitchen, glancing up at it every few minutes as if to check it was still there. It didn't seem to be going anywhere any time soon. Now that she was in the kitchen, looking at the source of the noise, she wasn't sure what to do with herself. Calling the police seemed like a bad idea. She could almost imagine the conversation: "999, what's your emergency?" "There's a hole in my ceiling." "Has anyone fallen through it?" "No, it doesn't even open up to the apartment upstairs. There's nothing in there." "What do you mean" "Uhhhhhh. . ." No, that definitely wasn't a good idea. They'd probably hand her a fine for prank calling emergency services. Or after doing a drugs test, gently guide her towards the nearest mental hospital. She couldn't afford the former, and the latter didn't sound like a good time. She didn't want to find out what her mother would do to her if she had to take a drug test and got herself sectioned. She wasn't given much time to ponder the hole in her ceiling when something fell through it, screaming incoherently and landing heavily on the floor. The figure seemed to appear from nowhere inside the void, and Dog stared at it, wide-eyed. Humanoid, with long, dirty blonde hair. Male. Groaning, because he landed on his face. He slowly lurched upwards, and Dog did the only thing a self-respecting twenty-something year old girl would do when home alone and faced with a strange man in her apartment. She screamed.