You awake, your head pounding.

It is dark.

You remember nothing.

Listen to your surroundings

You are dressed in dark robes.You are wearing a tank top and a miniskirt.

You are spattered with blood.

It is still dark.

You remember very little.

You are very cold.

Listen to your surroundings

You realize you are incredibly hungry and thirsty.

Check your pockets.

You grope for a bucket. Maybe there's water—

Your shaking hand finds the bucket and it spills violently. You feel a thick liquid splash against your skin. You smell—

Blood.

Your clothes and skin and splattered with blood.

You stumble backwards

You fumble for your pockets. You prod at unyielding fabric for a moment before realizing you're still wearing your miniskirt with the fake pocke—

—still—

You begin to remember.

It's difficult, like the memories don't want to come back. When they do, they come in flashes. They don't feel like yours.

A party.

A jet-black sky.

Snarling.

Focus on what's around you

It was a police raid.

A press of bodies, huddled against the wall. A roar as the packs filled the street like an endless tide of teeth and claws.

The relief.

They didn't want you.

A few unlucky people who had stepped out for a smoke were taken. A few neighbors, out staring at the sky, ignoring the warnings bleating out from the radio. Some children, out past curfew. Their blood streaked the streets.

The police are never clean, but they've been especially vicious since the mating season started.

But they weren't here for the party. They were after someone else.

Who?

Nothing.

You know you knew once. Your memories point at it, the links are all still there, but the thing they're pointing at isn't. Like there's a hole in the middle of your memory, a hole as dark and wrong as the jet-black sky.

It feels like something was ripped out of your head.

Messily.

Your heart begins racing.

You don't want to think about this anymore.

"Do not look at the sky."

Somewhere a radio was tuned to Approved News 6. For two hours it broadcast the same advisory. "Do not look at the sky." The ever-shifting voice of the announcer had taken on unusual tones of urgency. "Loyal citizens are urgently advised to avoid observing the sky."

You looked.

There were no stars. There was no moon. There was only emptiness—

No.

There was something else.

You can hear your heart thumping in your chest.

You don't want to keep thinking about this.

People shouting, laughing, dancing, kissing. A cute girl you laid your eyes on longingly, but turned away because...

Nothing.

There was music.

It was someone's house.

It was small. The walls were tan.

Could have been any house.

Except for that thing.

The thought is physically painful. You struggle not to vomit.

There wasn't anything right about that party, not with that thing and that sky.

Who was she?

You remember her face, her body. Freckled, slim, sexy, ruthless—

The way she danced was almost inhuman.

she knew she knew SHE KNEW

...nothing.

The spark of memory fades quicker than it flared.