Razors ripped at her. It was the grass. It tore her shirt to taters that slipped free from her body. Her jeans came next and her underwear. Blood sluiced across her skin as the giant pulled her through this immense forrest. Freezing air bit at her like millions of tiny mouths full of serrated teeth.
This was a hallucination, brought on by a beer laced with something.
No, the pain was too intense, the visions too real.
How much blood could she lose before death finally granted her peace?
You're already dead, a voice inside her said. The voice was the sound of a cancer patient taking his final breath. There is no peace. This is forever.
She wanted to scream and cry and fight but the voice was right. This was it. Her final existence. Please, please, please just let it be all darkness. Cut me, tear me apart, but please don't let me see any more.
The giant trees parted in an amazing doorway of blinding red light. It pulsed and throbbed with life. The giant--a god (most certainly a devil)--dragged her toward that light. It wasn't light, no, it was a river. A river of blood. She was going to drown there, again and again for all eternity.
When the light took her, her body filled with an immense heat that engorged every inch of her body, every hair on her head, every cell inside her. This was Hudson House. A place of evil. But also a place of power. She was an offering to that power. The house would feed on her for all time and beyond.
The shadowed figure pulled her ever closer to her destiny.
"Are you Hox Grent?" The words floated out of her and into another plane of being.