Rick pulled up into the driveway as the garage door opened for him. He slowly drove the Santa Fe into the garage. Once this was done, he parked the SUV, shut it off, and stepped out of the car. He walked around the back and down the driveway to check on the mail. Rick lived on a dead end street where there were only eight houses including his. The dead end street of the small Illinois town that was named Bisaillon Avenue was barren of life forms other than him as he walked down the driveway. This made sense though, because the kids were still in school. It was noon after all. Though, he knew the punk kids would become rowdy after school and cause racquet. The only reason he was at home was because he was a college student and his classes were done for the day.

        Rick made it only halfway down the driveway when the quiet was ended. The neighbor's Chiwawa came barreling out of their open garage and into Rick's front yard. He sighed as the small dog yapped continually. His neighbors were retired and the husband spent a lot of time sitting in the garage in a lawn chair. The dog joined his owner while he sat in the lawn chair, usually only wearing boxers to show off his glutinous body. They never had the little brown Taco Bell dog on a leash and it ran up and barked at anything that moved, especially people and other dogs.

        Why is it that the little dogs are the insane ones and always try picking fights with things much larger than them? Rick wondered, Must have Napoleon Complex or something.

        Rick just ignored the dog for now and opened the mailbox. The dog was annoying, but it never bit anyone that Rick knew of. So, there was nothing to be threatened by the yipping creature near his ankles. There was no mail and Rick closed it up again. He turned his attention to the barking dog again and crouched down in front of it. The dog jumped back by his sudden movement. Rick smiled and said, "I guess you're all bark and no action. Isn't that right, big guy?"

     Rick walked back in the garage, pulling out his cell phone. He called his mother's work number, because she was always a worry wart and wanted Rick and Candice, Rick's sister, to call her when they were home from wherever they came from, whether it was school, work, or from a friend's house. As the phone rang, Rick grabbed his black backpack from the passenger seat and walked into the house while closing the garage door. His mom's answering machine came on and he left a message to say he was home. Once he did that, he set his pack on the living room floor and started up his Playstation 3 with the intention of playing Modern Warfare 2. It was a Friday and he had no work that night or any school the next day.

        Rick was just an average and seemingly ordinary nineteen year old who went to the Community Collage closest to him. There wasn't anything abnormal or unique about him except that he had a bit of a macro and micro fetish, but he never let that run his life or let that interfere with making stories with an actual plot. He was about average height for his age even though a lot of his friends just so happened to be taller or shorter than him. He was a little skinny when it came to muscle, but he wasn't a weakling either. Karate classes helped that out. He also had brown medium length hair that was parted in the middle and sky blue eyes.
    
        

        Eventually, Rick's sister came home from school. Candice was a pretty fourteen year old with brown hair that reached her shoulder blades and hazel eyes. She was slightly tall for her age, and her height reached the shoulders of her brother who was about 5'11". Candice was very thin for her age, but she was still a healthy girl. Rick and Candice had a normal brother and sister relationship. They fought and argued with each other, but deep down, since they were family, they loved each other and would do almost anything for each other.

        It was just a normal day, and nothing out of the ordinary happened except for their mom calling them to tell them she'd be late coming home from work. So, Rick fixed them some dinner. Nothing fancy, just mac and cheese. After dinner, Rick asked, "You want to watch a movie together?"

        "Sure," Candice answered. When Candice had been younger and Rick had to watch her alone, Candice didn't like to sleep without their mom being around. So, when Rick had to watch her, they popped in a movie and they watched it together to help her fall asleep. She was older now and didn't need her mom to fall asleep, but Rick and Candice still watched a movie together when they were home alone. It had become a tradition. They both fell asleep while watching the movie, Rick on the armchair and Candice on the couch. Little did they know, their lives would change forever.

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        Rick slowly started to wake up and very quickly realized something was wrong. Why am I lying on the floor? Did I move from the chair to the floor in my sleep? Rick was lying on the floor with his eyes still closed and his arms at his sides flat against the ground. Rick rubbed his hands against the ground, but he didn't feel the carpet under his palms. No, he felt something longer between his fingers. Rick grabbed what he was feeling and pulled it out of the ground. He brought his hand to his face and opened his eyes. He saw green grass in his hand and the canopies of large trees high above past his hand with blue sky and some white clouds beyond those trees could be seen through the spaces the canopy couldn't cover. Sunlight also cascaded down from those empty spaces in the canopy like ribbons of light reaching for the Earth.

        Rick shot up in a sitting position with his hands supporting him from behind and his legs still straight out. He looked around, but he still had troubles believing what he was seeing. He closed his eyes and opened them after counting to three, but the scenery around him did not change. He was in the middle of a large forest, but it was nothing like the one near his hometown. This was a different forest he had never been to. "What the hell?" Rick asked aloud as he stood up and continued to examine the sights around him.

        He had no idea where he was or how he had gotten there. Believing this might be a dream, Rick touched the nearest tree trunk, half expecting to not feel it at all or maybe pass through it. However, the tree trunk was solid and felt like bark. Plus, Rick felt awake and the world around him didn't look like the world of a dream. Things looked too realistic oppose to the surreal surroundings of a dream. However, there was still something very strange about the forest. The forest looked very old and wild as if it had not yet been tamed by man. Nowadays, very few forests on Earth seemed untamed. It was a rare thing on this modern age to come by. Because of this, the forest seemed foreign and unreal to Rick. If this isn't a dream, where am I? Rick thought to himself, If this is real, than someone bought me here and they might still be around.

        "Hello? Anyone out there?" Rick called out, but no one answered. Rick continued to call out to anybody as he walked through the forest, but not a single human showed up. "At least I fell asleep in my normal clothes or I'd be in my pajamas right now," Rick muttered to himself as he continued to walk with a pair of blue jeans and a plain white t-shirt. Rick had no shoes on, however, and only wore socks, but that's what happened when you have carpeted floors and had to take your shoes off when you walked into the house.
    
       

        Rick didn't know it, but he had somehow been sent into another dimension. He also didn't know that he wasn't the only one who was sent into that same dimension.

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        Candice could hear whispers all around her which caused Candice to start walking up. "Quiet down," Candice whined as she turned onto her side, "It's Saturday, let me sleep a little longer." As she began to become more aware of her senses, she noticed something odd. The surface beneath her didn't feel like the soft and comfortably large couch. Also, the back of the couch that she expected to bury her face into when she turned to her other side could not be found. Her covers were gone and the pillow was no longer between her head and hands. The surface beneath her felt like hard and worn dirt. None of it made sense to Candice and she wondered if she was still dreaming or her mind was somewhere between dream and reality.

        The whispers all around her never stopped and Candice opened her eyes, expecting to see her brother and mother, but instead she saw many pairs of old brown and black leather shoes that had pointed toes. Legs stalked from all of those shoes which were either covered in dirty and tattered pants or old ugly dresses, well old and ugly in Candice's opinion. The women wore dresses that were green, brown, or dark and dirty versions of other colors. The men wore a tunic of similar colors.

        Candice shrieked and jumped to a sitting position. Candice propped herself up with her hands behind her and she kept both knees bent upwards. She was ready to jump to her feet and run if she had to. She was as frightened as a trapped rabbit among hunters. Her sudden movement caused fear in the crowd and they jumped back a bit, but still surrounded her. Candice darted her eyes around and saw that she was not in her room, but in a small village that looked like something out of a medieval movie where the houses looked like huts.  The whole village was crowded around Candice because she was in the center of their main dirt road. None of the dirty peasant looking people looked at all happy that she was there.

        Candice looked at herself and saw that she was still wearing her pajamas. She had pajama bottoms that were completely pink and she wore a black "New Moon" t-shirt on that had the three main characters on the front. She was not wearing any socks and the bottoms of her feet were already getting dirty from the dusty dirt that made up the road. Candice took in deep breaths and she tried to remember how she got here and what was happening, but the last thing she remembered was watching a movie on the couch and falling asleep. 

        "I told you we should have killed her!" a man from the crowd yelled, "Now the witch is awake!"

        "W-witch?" Candice quivered.

        "You appeared out of thin air in our village. What else could you be?" the same man argued.

        A women then questioned, "Why are you tormenting our village with your presence, witch?"

        "I'm not a witch. I don't know how I got here. Please, I just want to go home."

        "We should burn her now!" another lady shrieked, "Before she turns us all into newts." The crowd cheered at this suggestion and closed in on Candice.

        "No, Please," Candice begged. She tried to fend off the crowd, but it was no use. No matter how much she screamed, kicked, or tried to pull free from their grimy hands, she could not escape. There were far too many of them.

        The crowd forced her to a wooden cart that had a pole on it. They tied Candice to the pole as Candice cried and pleaded to the crowd. A man lit a torch and the crowd cheered with joy, even the crazed children. Candice closed her eyes tight with tears rolling down her cheeks. She feared that there was no hope. She waited for the wood beneath her to be lit, but a man screamed, "Wait!"

        Candice opened her eyes to look at the man who had the attention of everyone else. She had also noticed how close the torch had been to the wood beneath her bare feet. She stared at the man who appeared to be a mayor or maybe the leader of the village because his clothes didn't seem as dirty or old. She was relieved and thought that someone was going to save her. She believed that this man realized she was not a witch.

        "We can feed her to the monster that lives near our town," the man suggested. All of Candice's hopes were dashed away with that single uttered sentence. "We give it sacrifices every few months to keep it from attacking our homes. We can feed it the witch so that we don't have to give it one of our own."

        The crowd cheered like an angry mob again and Candice was doomed once more. The crowd threw the logs off the cart and put out the torch before pushing the cart away from the village with Candice still tied tightly to the wooden pole. Candice tried to break free from the ropes, but she couldn't.  As they pushed, Candice had no doubt in her mind that she was getting closer to her death and there would be nothing she could do about it.

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        Soon, Rick heard water in the distance. If there is a river or something, I can follow it and it might lead to a town, Rick thought. Rick walked in the direction of the sound and soon found it, but there was a problem. He was on a cliff and the river was below. It wasn't that big of a cliff, but big enough to harm him if he just jumped down.

        Rick looked around and saw there was a part of the cliff where it seemed to have broken down and it created a ramp of rocks. Rick knew he could try and go down those rocks, but if he stepped on a loose rock, he could seriously get hurt. "I have no choice. I have to do it," Rick told himself.

        Rick walked to the rocks and tried walking down. He was doing fine till he was about halfway down. Rick stepped on a really loose rock. The rock rolled out from under him and he stumbled. Rick tried to correct his balance, but he fell and rolled down the rocks. He hit his head hard and when he fell onto the grassy ground, he was loosing consciousness. Before his eyes closed all the way, he could see a large shadow cast over him. Before he could see what it was, he lost consciousness.

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        The crowd had already pushed Candice into position and left her to her fate. Candice could only wait for the monster to arrive and devour her. Tears fell freely from her eyes and she thought about not ever seeing her mother, her brother, or the rest of her family and friends ever again. They wouldn't know what happened to her. She'd be eaten by a monster and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

        The cart she was on was near the edge of a large forest. She could hear trees moving as if something large was pushing them to make room for it. Oh God, this monster must be massive, Candice thought as she shivered in complete fear and sadness, waiting for the monster to emerge from the dark forest before her.