The sky was dark but for the weird alien planets. Within seconds, a shiver ran down my arms. It was cold. The red text repeated over and over in front of my eyes.

  [This is an automated warning message. Please remain calm. Stay indoors. Do not make prolonged eye contact with celestial phenomena. Unknown entities may be hostile. Please remain calm.]

  What? This was… what? Did someone spike my drink? Not likely, unless somehow the vending machine’s whole supply was contaminated. Maybe I really was just going crazy and this was the final mental break that was showing I’d snapped in the real world.

  I closed my eyes, counted to ten, and nope, it was still half-dark out, at quarter to twelve AM. The text floating in front of my AR glasses was real. Was everybody else seeing this too?

  There weren’t many people with AR glasses, but judging by how the spectators were oscillating between looking at their phones and the sky, they probably received a similar message.

  Celestial phenomena. Unknown entities. I was getting a really bad feeling about this. People weren’t panicking per se, but they weren’t relaxing anymore either, milling about in groups, pointing and squinting and holding their heads. Someone scored a touchdown, but nobody was paying attention.

  The sky?

  It hurt to look at. Maybe there was some solar radiation bullcrap going on. Someone’s dad was shading his eyes with one hand, as if that would work better now than during a normal eclipse.

  Was it an invasion? An interdimensional accident? The rapture? A really big, really stupid practical joke? Planets didn’t parallel park right outside our atmosphere for no good reason. And there, when I looked up just enough to keep the edge of the rift in the sky out of my field of view I could see it: streaks of bright light were trailing down towards the earth in reds and oranges. They looked so far away as they disappeared above the evergreens abutting the sports field.

  “Heeey!”

  When I looked back down, I could see Adelaide, jumping and waving and trying to get everyone’s attention.

  “Everyone, take shelter. Get inside. Stop looking at the — no, don’t stop to take pictures. Move, please!”

  Most of the onlookers were starting to realize that looking up wasn’t a good idea. Against her pleas, they didn’t move towards where she was pointing, instead trailing in packs towards their pickups and SUVs. She latched onto one football-dad, yelled something while pointing at the Asian restaurant. He watched her for a moment, then shook her hands off and loaded his three sons into his cabriolet.

  Whatever she was selling, he wasn’t buying it, and in a sad way I could understand him. She looked twenty years younger than him, she was practically hiding her head inside her hoody, what could she possibly know? She was dressed differently too, her clothes practically screaming that she wasn’t also upper-middle class. And then she was an outsider as well.

  Convergence event. I remember something mentioning that. I need to get dad’s old laptop. It’s under the front seat next to Clem’s old teddy bear.

  I’d taken it together with the heart badge, the usb stick, and some snacks in case I encountered more gnomes, as well as dad’s pistol in case I had the bad kind of unnatural encounter. The pistol was locked away in the glove compartment. Hopefully I wouldn’t need to use it.

  Getting down there was nigh impossible. The streams of people were turning into a tide. Cars began pulling out all at once making for the saddest traffic jam this parking lot had ever seen, and all the while Addy ran from car to car, waving and trying to get them to listen. The frantic, almost panicked way she moved made rocks settle in my gut.

  Clem’s Toyota was somewhere in the middle of that honking chaos. The red alert message said to stay indoors. Getting run over wasn’t on my agenda for the day, and following the message’s advice seemed pertinent. I made my way up the stairs to the restaurant when an orange light above me flared and spread out.

  Moments later, I was airborne.

  Fuck!

  I was thrown off my legs and straight through the front windows. The rest shattered at the sound of a massive boom.

  Ow. Everything’s spinning. I’m… on the floor?

  I tried to push myself up, but just managed to jam some glass into my hand.

  Ow, ow. Careful. Think before you move.

  The explosion — I assumed it was one — had shattered the windows and slammed me right on through into the restaurant. Everywhere I moved was glass and it didn’t help to notice that the lens of my smart glasses was also smashed.

  “I just got those. Shit.” My ears were ringing. I tried to push myself up again. There was blood on my hands, and cuts all across my shirt and pants. “Ow. Crap. Crap, oh, crap.”

  The willow tree outside was on fire, half its branches missing or bent to the point of breaking. I could see a smoking crater right where all the players had been playing moments ago, and inside it… was that a pink meteorite? It looked like something that belonged in a coral reef, made of a nest of tubes and snowflake-like protrusions, a fractal repetition of polyps covering every inch.

  The meteorite — as tall as two SUVs stacked on top of each other — shuddered, twitched, and suddenly cracked apart. Little pieces of it wiggled and vibrated on the ground. They were… growing legs? Oh god, what the hell? What the absolute freaking hell—

  There was a thump on the roof of the restaurant, then another. Something was walking on it, something heavy. The ceiling lights shook as it let out a warbling electric screech like a crackling speaker.

  I need to hide.

  I pulled myself under a table and around the side of a cheaply upholstered bench that reeked of thirty year old plastic. The shards of glass didn’t reach this far. I was safe.

  Just as I got myself nestled in, there was a whump, as a polar-bear-sized mass of dripping ink and swirling barnacle distortions fell down right where I’d been standing a couple moments ago.

  Its skin was pink and constantly shifting like water in a boiling pot, except every bubble was a barnacle, a mouth, or a screaming face. It was barely quadrupedal, the bottom of its crab-like abdomen splitting into a cross of teeth and tongues and tar-covered tendrils. The more I looked at it the more I could hear voices, whispers in the wind that I could maybe understand if I moved just a little bit closer…

  [Do not make prolonged eye contact with unknown entities. Unknown entities may be hostile. Please remain calm.]

  The red lettering flashed on my cracked AR glasses. I tore my eyes away. They hurt, as if something had given them a yank and squeeze. When I wiped my face my hand came back bloody. Was I bleeding from my eyes or was that just because of the glass?

  The creature pulsed, contorted, and twisted in on itself like it was trying to leave reality. And then it was gone, a cloud of black particulate all that was left of it. It left me under the table, shaking, glass still stuck in my everything. This place wasn’t safe. Nowhere was, when there were things like that roaming around.

  Then the honking started, and the screaming, and for the first time in my life I felt like I was sure of one single thing.

  Up. I needed to get up and as far away from here as possible. This was the stuff a full Custodian handled, or a wizard, or anyone with a load of firepower. I wasn’t any of the above. I was a level 1 associate. I was explicitly not supposed to help with extradimensional incursions.

  There was one problem. Glass cut surprisingly deep when you were unlucky like me. There was a piece stuck a couple inches deep into my left forearm since I’d used that to brace my fall. It hurt to take out, but went surprisingly easily. All that left was the blood and ooh was there a lot of it.

  “Idiot,” I berated myself.

  You took two years of med school, you had an orientation — half an orientation — with some paramedics. Don’t take the irritant out until you can bind the wound.

  Counterpoint: It’s glass. Broken glass is as sharp as a scalpel. Leaving it inside inevitably risks widening the wound or cutting a nerve. And I can’t damn well put it back inside now, right!?

  You’re panicking. Stop panicking. You need stitches or you’ll bleed out. If you can’t find a medkit, there’s one in the car. You just need to get there.

  I didn’t find a medkit.

  I swore again, looking around for something to turn into a tourniquet. My shirt was just about ruined so I almost used that when my eyes fell on the kitchen doors.

  There has to be something better in there, I told myself as I stumbled through the double swing-doors. Until now, standing in this place after-hours, I didn’t know a kitchen could get this clean. And here I was, about to bleed all over it.

  With a bit of guilt and a whole lot more adrenaline-fueled fervor, I tore through cupboards until I found the towel-drawer, then used one of the new looking ones to make a quick pressure bandage. The rubbing alcohol burned like absolute hell, as if someone was digging around in that injury with gloves made of needles. But then it was done and I was immediately left sitting on the floor, breathing heavily, and thinking on what to do next.

  Outside, cars were smashing together, or being smashed, it was hard to tell just by the noise. The creatures, plural, were roaring and chittering and making sounds no animal on earth ever has made, or would make in the future.

  I need a weapon.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Luckily, a kitchen had many sharp edges. In one corner, I found a fat kitchen knife. Then, I discarded that for a longer one, thin and sharp. It said Takamura on the wooden knife rack, so it was probably something Korean, or maybe Japanese. Chinese? Crap, was this thing expensive?

  Whatever, it was a nice sharp fish-knife.

  Next, I found a blowtorch. It wasn’t like I was actively looking for something to set things on fire with; it was just kinda lying there on the table. The attached gas canister was as long as my forearm. Even if I didn’t get to torch something with it, I could probably use it as a bludgeon.

  A loud warble sent me back on the ground, clutching my ears in pain. The entire kitchen shook.

  A bludgeon. Against something that big? Yeah, as if. What a fantastic way to get myself killed.

  I took it anyway, for moral support. I sure as hell needed that. The red spot on the towel wrapped around my arm was expanding at a steady rate.

  Alright Sam, plan: You just have to get out there, get to the car, drive away, and then stitch your arm back up. Don’t get in Addy’s way. Make sure nobody else is getting in her way either. The Toyota has space for maybe ten people if we squeeze people on the truck bed. Once you’re safe, return the car to Clem’s garage, kowtow ten times and apologize profusely, and then figure things out from there, assuming you haven’t succumbed to blood loss.

  I was only going to be a bad friend over my dead body.

  … maybe not the best way to phrase it.

  Through the shattered glass facade I could see some cars that were overturned and on fire. The parking lot was half empty. I didn’t see any bodies. So far, so good.

  The detail of the carnage grew as I made my way down the grass-overgrown hill. It looked like half of the cars managed to get away, with another half strewn across the parking lot in a huge pileup. Massive rents and claw-shaped tears ran through the tarmac and car hoods. A silver SUV had its front window smashed in, and a wooden telephone pole was cracked at the base, sparking periodically. Lying next to it was the dark headache-inducing form of one of the two larger creatures surrounded by pink chunks and a pool of tar-like liquid. It was the size of an SUV, and judging by how it was cut in two, hopefully dead. There was blood there too, human, red blood, splattered against a crater next to a discarded katana.

  Shit. Addy. Where are you?

  I steeled myself and looked down at a vaguely human-shaped lump of clothes and dead meat. Yep, that was a dead body alright. Not Addy’s, thankfully.

  Time to puke.

  I threw up. It took a moment to get everything out. My hands were shaking. I forced myself to hurry past a blood-smeared car door and around the left side of the parking lot, keeping far away from the impact site. I could almost see Clem’s Toyota, when a hissed whisper of something caught my ears. Behind an old Benz, I caught the top of a brown ponytail peeking out. I saw a woman, someone from mom’s friend group, maybe, and Kyle, a guy who worked at the gas station, were hiding there.

  Our eyes met. She had her hands full with her three kids, all below six. And Kyle did not look enthusiastic about leaving their small island of safety.

  I wanted to cry. The Toyota was right there, but the walls on the back were torn clean off, which meant there was no place to hold on, which meant my plan was useless since it couldn’t fit all five of them.

  “Where. Is. Your. Car?” I mouthed in silence, then again because they were too shocked to understand me.

  “Over there,” one of the kids mouthed back.

  I peeked over the cars. Still no sign of anything. Then I walked ahead, repeating the action again for the next three clusters of parked cars before returning.

  “It’s ok. The coast is clear,” I said, then after a moment’s deliberation: “Follow me.”

  I must’ve looked ridiculous: I was bloody with a torn-up shirt, cracked AR glasses on my face, and a knife and a blowtorch in hand. But not ridiculous enough. Soon I saw five heads bobbing up and down behind the other row of cars.

  Things were going well, if a bit slow. The signs of violence had disappeared into the forest. Something was tearing through it, but the sound was mostly covered up by the willow tree crackling in the flames.

  We reached Clem’s Toyota, the rock-sized hole in the side of the passenger’s window giving me another avenue of anxiety, and then went a bit further. The family of four plus one reached their minivan and clambered on in. I gave the kids a thumbs up and then doubled back.

  Which of course was when I heard something scream, or yell-scratch-warble. The huge shifter-teleporter was somewhere in the forest, but it wouldn’t take long to get to the minivan, or the Toyota. Another howl rang out, this one entirely different, much more earth-like.

  I didn’t fumble my keys since my keys were still broken. The door opened and closed shut behind me and I breathed the largest sigh of relief. Mission accomplished. I was safe. It was just me, my laptop, and the two teddy bears in the passenger seat.

  “Looks like we both lucked out, huh?” I said with a quivering smile.

  Wait, Clem only has one teddy bear.

  The second bear slowly turned its head towards me.

  [Entities may change shape and attempt to imitate familiar objects. Remain wary of out-of-place or suspiciously mobile belongings. Please remain calm.]

  Shit.

  The teddy bear — once a creature of fluff and soft stitchings — unfurled into a horrible mess of pink fractal polyps and dark tentacle limbs. It leapt, and with nowhere to dodge it landed right on my face, hard tendrils tearing at my hair, forcing themselves painfully up my nose, growing tighter around my neck. The little… thing was light, but its limbs had turned into hooks that painfully tightened around my head. Slamming my head against the window only made my pain worse as it clamped over my nose and mouth and I finally realized that I couldn’t breathe.

  I screamed. Terror overtook me and the headache turned ten times worse than before, like a buzzing inside my head that drowned every sound and thought out. My knife, I still had my knife, but which hand, which damn hand had the knife?

  I used my right, whacking the thing with the blowtorch. It didn’t help one bit.

  My breath was running short and then there were the worries about stabbing myself in the face, maybe nicking an eyeball or running it through. But no, no thoughts, just action.

  Stab, cut, retrieve, stab, cut, retrieve.

  Something shivered. Something screeched. I kept stabbing, stabbing, stabbing at that hard shell, because some part of me knew that the moment I stopped doing that was when I stopped for good.

  Gone, finito, dead.

  Something popped. The teddy bear convulsed around the knife that finally stabbed right through its center. I tore it off, flung it against the dashboard, then aimed the blowtorch at it and incinerated the little fucker, part of the seat, and the plastic dashboard, all while crying and gasping for air.

  “Facehugging… son of a… bitch.”

  The thing convulsed one final time, then curled up like a bug. I gasped, laughed a little, drew a messy hand through messier hair. How did I look? The rearview mirror said I looked like I had gone through a blender. My haircut was ruined, one of my eyeballs was bloodshot, and my nose was half torn off. Every piece of exposed skin that touched the tarry blood felt like it was on fire.

  “Oh god.” I touched my nose and it peeled back, revealing bone. “Oh god.”

  But I was alive and at that moment, I wanted nothing more.

  With the headache easing off, I finally got a good look at the little crapper. It was dead, a dark black-ish mass oozing out of a pink and coarse-bodied teddy bear that was just a skin, a fake, like a tarp put over a water balloon. It was terrible, it was ugly, it was staining Clem’s car and that was my signal to rearrange the rearview mirror and get the heck out of here. Dad’s pistol was still locked in the glove compartment; some of the plastic had melted and there was gooey black blood in the keyhole and I couldn’t care less.

  It was all a little much for a level 1 associate.

  I hit the ignition, wiped the copious blood flowing from my nose on my good arm, then set the car in reverse.

  A figure slammed right into my front window, cracking it. I screamed like a little girl, fumbling clutch, brakes, and gas all at once, stalling the car out. The figure groaned, a smear of blood staying on the window as it tried to sit back up.

  “A-Addy?” I asked and the weretanuki’s ears twitched. Two yellow eyes stared directly into my soul. “It is you. Holy crap.”

  “Idiot.” Her voice rumbled through the car hood, pained and heavy. There was a trickle of blood at the side of her mouth. “Leave. Now.”

  “You, you’re fighting these things.” The engine stuttered to a start. “You killed one. I can’t believe it — what about the other one?”

  I was stumbling through my words, babbling as the terror suffusing me finally found an outlet. Whatever she tried to say to me was lost in a deafening crash as some large thing landed right in front of us. It looked like an eldritch spider-slash-crab as large as a hippo, standing on five legs that simply ended in blunt spearheads. It disappeared, then reappeared ten feet in the air.

  I slammed the reverse, gunned the engine until I crashed right into a roadster in the back.

  Shit, Clem’s going to kill me I thought, and then: Shit, this thing is going to kill me.

  As I tried to get the car into first gear the whole thing notably tilted forwards. The creature was leaning on it with one leg, the other stabbing again and again as it tried to puncture Were-Addy.

  She was unarmed. She rolled, tearing the hood off, using it like a makeshift shield. It didn’t help much as the creature just punched right through, missing her head by inches. It was pressing down on her, trying to squish her against the engine block, and she was not winning.

  The hood groaned. The front window gained a few new cracks. I tried to reverse away again, but it was holding on with too much of its weight.

  “Crap. Crap crap.”

  Addy jolted and let out a wheezing grunt. The creature pulled back a spike-shaped limb from her torso, dripping with blood.

  “Run,” she muttered before the next spike went right through her head.

  Brain splattered everywhere. All I could do was look on in shock as the monster seemed to look down at its target, not with malice, but with curiosity. Then it pivoted up, a stubby faceless head forming with a wide-stretched cavity leaking black ink.

  “Ru…n? Runnn. Rrrrr…un?”

  Some part of me knew right then and there that I was going to die, that we all were. These things were giant fucking shapeshifters, and they were raining down on us by the truckload. Humanity was fucked, magical girls or not. I didn’t want that. Not any more or less than I wanted to see my friends and family die around me. And this creature, this monster, was going to do just that: It killed Addy, then I was next, then everyone else.

  Looking at it still hurt. Driving in reverse didn’t do a thing. There was only one way forward.

  I put the car in first gear and floored it. The monster wasn’t bracing in that direction, and so just this little bit was enough to lift it off of its stilts. The entire car creaked, roof denting inwards with a crunch as I drifted around the parking lot.

  It was too heavy. I couldn’t shake it off. I was just pushing it around. What next, what now?

  The entrance tunnel, leading to the lockers. It looked perfectly car sized. Maybe I was a bit too concussed, but a sudden idea bubbled to the front of my mind, an idea that would kill it and maybe allow me to limp away, alive.

  I swallowed heavily.

  Belatedly, I realized that I was already flooring it, not thinking too hard about how fast we were going. We hit the tunnel head-on, crunching it against the roof, denting the Toyota down right on top of me so hard I was pushed back into my seat. An eldritch shriek filled the air.

  Then we hit the end of the tunnel, the airbags didn’t activate (those things are one-time use), and my head was smashed straight against the steering wheel with a blinding amount of pain.

  The last things I remembered before my eyes fell shut were the smell of gasoline, the heat surrounding the long spider leg punched through my chest, and the red script repeating over and over on the heads-up-display.

  [You have killed: 1.5 ton Elite Coral Huntsman x1]

  [Congratulations! Your remarkable feat of self sacrifice has made you eligible for Custodian status. Custodian status comes with: Tax exemption, delivery priority, digital packet priority, extended privacy protocols, the right to bear unusual arms, the responsibility to assist in the survival of earth-based lifeforms during convergence events, health benefits (physical, mental & metaphysical), and more!]

  [Due to Custodian status, you have gained: Extra life x1]

  [You have died.]

  [Your sacrifice has been noted. Please remain calm.]