Her fingertips grip around the cap and pull. Her skin pulls with it, but the nail doesn’t slip out. She pulls harder and harder, but her skin only stretches farther out, spurting blood in reaction. She stops, watching a red snake drip down her heel and dive off its precipice, droplets falling onto the top of her standing foot. Her pale, wet skin, a sharp contrast to the now diluted pink liquid. It smells sweet but only scarcely so, a sour tang that threatens to ruin the appetite.

She sucks on her bottom lip and twists the cap, the tips of her fingers turning white from their pressure around the metal. The nail gradually unscrews from her skin. With one last twist, it pops out, leaving a gaping hole in her flesh.

She whines and hops off the street in search of a small dark corner. Her senses are overwhelmed; she just wants to get away and return to quiet comfort. Return to the enclosed elements of her room. To end the pitter-patter in her brain that prods at her so revoltingly. She limps down an alleyway shrouded in reassuring darkness, but her mind remains cluttered with noise. Against the deep wall is a big plastic box covered in drenched paper. She rests upon it and crosses her skewered foot over her leg. She looks underneath to reassess the damage, but her skin is bare. The wound is . . . gone. Somehow healed. Only blood remains, smudged across her sole as evidence.

“How?” she questions aloud to herself.

The distinct sound of footsteps finds her senses.

She sits up, alert. “Daddy?” she calls out in a hopeful whisper.

Metal smacks into stone, a nasty clank diving down her ear canal and splitting her skull. She whips around to find the source.

“Now, what’s a pretty young thing like yourself doing out so late at night? Isn’t it a little too cold for you to be dressed like that?”

A group of four approaches her. The leader—male, based on the masculinity of his voice—holds a metal rod. He continues smashing it against the wall, emitting more nasty clanks.

Creatures from the Outside.

But they look just like her. The same build, but no skin. Only layers of loose black canvas across their forms and shadows over their faces that breathe out white smoke.

“Boys,” the leader speaks again. “What do we do when we see a poor, helpless girl all alone by herself?”

“We ’elp ’er,” replies one of the creatures in a strange tongue.

They all grin, ivory teeth visible beneath a dark surface. Their grins turn into chuckles; soon they’re cackling like a pack of hungry monsters in disbelief of their starving luck.

She stands and faces them, every muscle in her body tense.

“Um, hello,” she whispers, her voice cracking under her nerves.

The laughter stops.