“Dude that was a sick move you did back there.  Totally turned him!”

“Ya, ya.  It’s what I do,” Derrick shrugged off the compliment.  

He had just finished water polo practice and was walking to his car with his best friend Ryan.  The two had played together since 8th grade, and now their senior year was approaching.  Both were excited to see how the team would play this season.

“Bro, we totally got it this year.  Los Alisos is going down!  There’s no way they can stop you in set,” Ryan continued to talk as he and Derrick walked out to their cars past the construction.  

“I guess, I don’t know though, they have a few big guys man.  It’s going to be rough.”

“Not as rough as your lonely nights!” Ryan joked.  Derrick immediately shot him a glare.

“Bud, I’m only joking.  You know me bro.  Anyways, you should come out tonight.  We
are having a party at this chick’s place.  There’s going to be plenty of drunk girls to hook up with!”

Derrick never liked going to parties.  It wasn’t that he couldn’t talk to girls or drink; he was more than capable of holding his own against other guys.  In fact, he was actually quite the popular guy at parties, but he just didn’t enjoy it.  Something about the whole interacting and forcing mundane conversations with people he didn’t know just seemed pointless to him.  

“I don’t know man.  I got a lot on my mind.  Plus we have that calculus test tomorrow.”

“Ya, like YOU need to study for that test.  C’mon bro, there are going to be tons of hot girls at this party.  And you need to let one loose more than any guy I know.  It’s probably why you’re so angry in the pool,” Ryan glibly remarked.

“I don’t need to ‘let one loose’ Ryan.  I just got a lot on my mind,” Derrick deflected the accusation.

“Ya, like staring at girls’ feet?  I know you love em, but if you ever want to actually, you know, ‘play’ with a girl’s feet...you have to...you know...talk to one.”

“Shut up man, you know I hate it when you bring that up.  God, I can’t believe my mom let you in without telling me that day.  Doesn’t that make you gay for walking in on a guy jackin’ it?”

“Not as gay as you are for skipping a party with a bunch of girls,” Ryan laughed.  “Hey, yo, check it out, it’s the girl that's throwing the party!”  Ryan pointed over at a silver Jetta with a girl getting into it.  

Derrick looked in the direction that Ryan was staring, and his jaw dropped.  There, in all her blonde glory, was Ashley getting into her Jetta.  She was wearing aviator glasses and singing to the radio.  The guys continued walking towards their cars as she pulled out of her spot and began driving towards them.  She rolled down her passenger window and bent over the center console to yell something at them.

“Hey you losers coming to my party tonight?”

“Hell ya.  I wouldn’t miss you drunk for the world.  Who you gonna’ ride tonight?” Ryan immediately responded.

Ashley rolled her eyes, “Well certainly not you.  I only sleep with real men.”

“Woah, woah, can you back up that bark with a little bite, cutie?  I can take pain,”  Ryan smiled suggestively at her.

“Yeah, yeah whatever.  So Derrick you coming too?  Or are you going to be MIA as usual?”

Derrick immediately responded, “Oh I’ll be there.”

“What?!  This bitch asks you and you respond like a little wuss?  But when I ask you, it’s all ‘oh no man I’d rather sit at home brooding like Edward’?”  Ryan shoved Derrick playfully.

“Whatever, you two can take that bromance elsewhere.  Just make sure to bring a bottle tonight.  Derrick ask your older sister to buy for you.  Ciao!”  Ashley turned up her radio station and sped away.  

“So you getting Karen to buy you booze man?  Doesn’t she get pissed whenever you ask?”

“Yeah, but I’ll make it happen this time,” Derrick grinned to himself.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Derrick arrived home and immediately walked to his room in the back.  His mother was still at work, and it looked like his sister would be home soon.  He flopped onto his bed and began thinking about the night.  The sun was setting and he felt a cool breeze coming in through the window.  He briefly closed his eyes to rest and drifted off to sleep.

He suddenly found himself on a large field and barely able to see.  He couldn’t make out much with the lights nearly out.  All he could see were huge structures in the far off distance with the exception of the titanic monolith that stood about a hundred yards away from him.  The ground was extremely bouncy and pure black, and it was covered in small dents about the size of his foot.  He bent down to examine the dents and noticed that the terrain sloped downwards.  He followed the slope down into what seemed like a dried up lake.  He noticed a smell emanating all around him, but he couldn’t quite place it.  However, it wasn’t terrible by any means, it reminded him of a musky cheese.  He looked at the ground below him and noticed that it seemed like it had been almost polished, or it was at least smoothed over in comparison to the surface outside of the lake bed.  

His examination of the lake bed was interrupted by a blinding light that came suddenly in front of him.  He shielded his eyes from the light and fell back onto the floor behind him; his body bounced a bit as the ground absorbed his weight.  All he could make out was a blinding light that came out of a titanic, rectangular opening.  It was as of someone had opened the horizon and let in the sun at twilight.  Before he could even begin to understand what was going on, he was surprised when a humongous object blocked out part of the light.  He couldn't see much other than the structure was set on two pillars that stretched high up to hold a structure.  He was then interrupted by a deafening sound.

“... GRAB...FLIP FLOPS ... PARTY....WENT...SHOWER...YOUR PLACE,” the structure spoke as Derrick covered his ears instinctively.  He sat there and began to think about what he had just heard.  The structure continued to speak, but Derrick’s mind was racing as he tried to understand what was going on.  

He didn’t get much time to react as he suddenly saw the being lift one of its supporting pillars and begin to fiddle with the bottom portion.  It seemed to remove part of its supporting structure and cast it aside, then it grabbed another portion that seemed to peel off.

“Oh my god.  Holy shit!” Derrick exclaimed to himself.  His mind was slowly piecing together exactly what was going on as he began to stand back up in the lake bed.  He quickly glanced down at the ground and back at the monolith he had seen when he first arrived on this alien wasteland.  He glanced back and forth between the two for a couple seconds before being knocked down by a shock wave.

He looked to his right and marveled at the sight before him.  It was a gigantic opening; larger than anything he’d ever seen.  The opening was colored faded white and had large pink stripes running intermittently on it.  He looked a couple hundred yards past the opening and saw a series of intertwined pillars that covered the structure.  He was then hit with a pungent odor that smelled of a locker room and garbage combined in a concentrated cocktail, and he quickly covered his nose to stop from gagging.  

He began to get up, and he turned to his left to look back at the structure.  However, all he was greeted with was a mammoth wall of tan and blue.  The ground below him began to violently shake, and the wall was quickly moving in on him.  As he watched in terror, he could see car-sized black boulders on the tan colored portion of the wall.  He tried to make out what it was, but was brought back to reality as four other titanic objects came into view aligned with this blue covered barrier.  He rapidly began running up the slope of the lake bed and towards the monolith about a hundred yards away.  He was constantly jostled by the tremors as he attempted to make his way.

Derrick didn’t make it far as the block of flesh hit him at what seemed like high speed.  He was knocked into the air and flew towards another tan colored wall that had taken up residence on the opposing side of the large pillar to which he had hoped would provide sanctuary from the cataclysm occurring all around him.  

He closed his eyes in in order to shield himself from the impact, but he never felt any pain.  Instead he suddenly felt himself fall into a fuzzy, damp bed.  He could feel his arms and legs had been trapped in the mesh around him, and the awful smell was permeating the air.  He strained to open his eyes as he felt his stomach churn as if he were on a roller coaster.  The feeling of weightlessness ended after a few seconds, and he shifted about in the sweaty web.  He looked around and could see that the structure to which he was attached was moving up and down in unison with the opposing structure that had originally knocked him into the air.  

As he helplessly stared, he felt his body churn as the two structures around him pushed together and his face was mashed into the damp, rough surface of the opposing side.  He tried to keep his mouth shut but the friction forced it open, and he inadvertently began gulping down what tasted like sludge seasoned with large amounts of salt.  This went on for several seconds as his body was mercilessly ground against the fleshy structure before he was pulled away.  Derrick attempted to spit out the taste, but it had been forced down his throat.  He was unable to move his arms or legs as he was firmly stuck in a black, fuzzy web.  Frantically he looked around for any sort of salvation.

All he could see above him was a long, smooth walkway about a mile in width and several in length that extended up to the sky.  Far above it, he saw a tan colored sun covered in black flowing hair.  He squinted to make it out and was suddenly shocked.

“Jessica?!  Jessica, help me!  It’s Derrick!  I’m down here!” He called out.  The being above him paid no attention to him, and continued to bark out indecipherable sounds.  Derrick began frantically attempting to escape from his smelly prison, but succeeded in only wedging himself farther into the trap.  He now found his entire mouth covered in the black fuzz, and his mouth tasted of a salty, putrid mixture.  He kept glancing upwards towards what he thought to be his savior, and he did in fact see the being look down in his direction.

“Yesh...Jeshica...I’ Here...” he tried to yell through the damp gag covering his mouth.  His heart jumped as the face of his friend Jessica began to move towards him.  He felt his entire body move as the toe he was attached to moved upwards towards the incoming face.  “Yesh!  Yesh!  Hel’ E!” he tried to state.

However, his heart sank as he suddenly saw a gigantic, blue-painted finger move towards him.  It impacted behind him on the toe to which he was attached, and it slowly made its way towards him.  Derrick felt his entire body scooped up by the motion of the enormous finger, and watched in horror as he was quickly sliding towards the area between the two toes in which he was wedged.  

Jessica was playing with her toe lint as she talked on the phone.

“No Jessica!” He screeched as he spit out the lint from his mouth.  “I’m not lint!  Help me!”  But it was to no avail.  He quickly impacted with the large area between her toes and collided with several other boulder sized pieces of black lint.  He would have tried to move but suddenly felt a tremendous amount of pressure on his back from the finger behind him.

“Jessica....Stop!” He tried to scream as the pressure behind him began to build.  He could feel the immense finger scraping back and forth between him as Jessica rubbed the area between her two toes.  He felt her wiggle her toes again playfully as if she was enjoying the sensation of grinding him between her toes like a worthless piece of lint.  

Derrick could no longer feel anything as the pressure built past anything that he could imagine.  He began to black out as he felt his body begin to give and absorb into the area between the mammoth toes.  

“I’m not...lint...”  He let out one last scream as he blacked out.

Derrick awoke in his bed to the sound of the front door slamming.  He looked around him and saw his room still in the same condition.  He wiped his tongue with his hand and found no remnants of lint.  

“Twerp, you around?” he heard his sister’s voice coming from down the hallway.

Derrick jumped to his feet and brought himself back to reality.  After composing himself for a few seconds, he walked out into the hallway and saw his 25 year old sister taking off her pumps.  Her stocking covered foot slid out of the footwear and into her awaiting hands.

“God,  my feet are killing me,” she complained to him.  “What’s up?”

“Oh, Karen.  I need you to do me a favor.”

“Oh, what’s that?” she said as she released her foot from the massage and stood at full height.  Her brown hair swung down, and her green eyes stared back at Derrick.

“I need you to buy me some booz.”