“How many times do you want me to tell you I’m sorry?” Mal said, walking a little unsteadily towards the kitchen, doing his utmost not to bump into any of the furniture. Over time, Tee and Ellis had stopped being overtly angry with him for his earlier behaviour, which he had mentally reframed as ‘antics’ because ‘self-destructive behaviour’ had such a downer sound to it, and he had vibes to leave unharshed. But that didn’t mean they weren’t still giving him shit, especially after food and even the dip and snacks had run out and they’d been forced to resort to an exclusively liquid diet. 

He opened the fridge and retrieved another bottle of wine, which was their third? Fourth? Of the night? Once upon a time, in another life, he’d been able to drink his weight in liquor, but after college his tolerance had slowly tumbled down and now a bottle each was enough to make them all talk funny. He grinned at the margarine. He’d become such a lightweight, but he was okay with that. 

“I’ll forgive you if you turn that cute ass of yours around,” Tee said with a little bit of a lisp, “and bring us that bottle.” Mal twirled around and in one swift movement, closed the fridge with his foot. He didn’t look as cool as he thought he did, but cool enough for the others, and waddled back to the living room. 

“I’ll ha-- have you know,” he said, trying to sound intellectual, “that my ass is spectacular.” He grinned and failed to uncork the bottle twice, and succeeded on the third try. He had long given up on trying to actually look suave. Ellis and Tee had known him far too long. Ellis mumbled something Mal didn’t hear, and Tee smiled little bubbles into their glass. Mal offered both of them the bottle, and with exaggerated grace they accepted, both managing to almost shatter their glass against the other’s. This was, Mal considered, a pretty good night. 

He looked over at the guest of honor, who was still asleep on a pillow. It had received a little bit of charcuterie after dinner, which it had devoured with gusto and small grateful beeps. After that, it had done a little tour of the apartment, curiously exploring with a little triangle-tail pointed straight up. The three non-cats had stared at it with happy fascination, ooh-ing and aww-ing at every cute stumble and trip. It was a daring little creature, trying to jump on things that were much too high, only adding to how endearing Mal thought it was. 

Eventually it had pooped in a corner and then crawled back onto the couch to fall asleep against Mal’s leg. Now, it was happily snoring, partially covered by the softest blanket in the house. It was only right. 

“Speaking of my ass,” he added, and he thought he briefly saw Ellis’ eyes go big, “where am I parking it tonight? I d-- don’t think it’s very responsible for me to try and g-- get home tonight.” He grinned, because he knew the couch was always at his disposal, but it was only polite to ask, and he thought it was a good way to make another joke about his ass. He felt it was pretty clever. Tee, however, wasn’t smiling. 

They put the glass down, and Ellis did too. They both looked at him with an expression he couldn’t quite make out, but they were both blushing, although that might just as well have been the wine. He blinked a few times, frowning. Was this an intervention? Tee and Ellis were making a lot of eye contact, like both of them were waiting for the other to say something first. He was getting a little nervous, hoping everything was okay, fully failing to register the fact that both of his friends seemed to be a little short of breath, incapable of hearing the thumping of their hearts. 

When Tee looked at him again, Mal looked them in the eyes. They had always skirted the lines between pretty, cute and handsome, bouncing from one to the other in the blink of an eye, and Mal stopped himself from thinking inappropriate things about his friends. Tee’s blushing face was making that mighty difficult, and so was Ellis, who looked like he’d just run a mile and needed a cold shower. 

“Mal,” Tee said, their voice so soft it felt out of place in a living room, like it should be whispered between sheets, and with glacial uselessness, the rusty penny in Mal’s brain began to drop. “What…” Tee began, and then their eyes grew wide, wider, first in confusion, then fear, then abject terror. “What the Fuck is that?!”

Mal felt like he was falling backward ever so slowly, but when he looked down, he found himself remarkably stable, considering how pickled his brain was. Then why did he feel like… He turned around. That was weird. The rest of the room was inside out. It was only when small objects from the table started to fall towards the weird ball of nonsense that hung in the air that he realized that this might not be the wine talking. He started to fall towards it and threw himself backward reflexively, bruising his ribs on the table and spilling a lot of the bottle that was still in his hand. 

The kitten mewled as it roused from its slumber, largely because it had started to float above the pillow and was floating slowly in the direction of the anomaly in the living room. Ellis fell out of his chair and began to slide towards the portal, failing to get a grip on the armchair. The carpet and the living room table were beginning to slide across the floor. Mal found himself sliding forward as well, and complete confusion was starting to give way to horror, fear. Slowly, adrenalin was starting to take control of his brain, and he looked for things to grab a hold of. The table was a no-go. The objects that had touched the outer edge of the impossible sphere went ‘fwoompf’ and disappeared in a cloud of black smoke. 

Tee jumped up and immediately began to fall forward, gravity having gone completely fucky, and they just barely managed to catch themself. Ellis was getting awful close to the anomaly, and Tee wasn’t having it. They crouched forward, holding on to the couch and grabbing Ellis by the arm. It wasn’t helping much; the couch was starting to slide, too. Mal was starting to panic. Everything was moving towards the hole, popping out of existence one at a time. He was the closest to the portal now, and when he reached up, Ellis grabbed him by the wrist. He looked up at his friend. What the fuck was going on? 

A little squeak passed by his head and he had the clarity of mind to snatch the kitten out of the air, which, in an act of ingratitude, nibbled ineffectually on his fingers. There was no way Mal was going to let go, though. He felt a jolt and saw that the couch had begun to slide across the floor too, slowly accelerating. He clutched the kitten to his chest and tried to get his feet underneath himself. If he could make a jump for it, maybe he could grab a hold of something sturdier, preferably something nailed or cemented down, like a wall. He’d figure out a plan from there. 

Mal jumped. The weird gravity of the place turned his leap from a normal parabolic arc to a weird curve that spun him across the room, sailing towards the kitchen. He only barely managed to grab the door handle that whirled past him. Every loose object in the room was falling to the sphere now, and the noise, the initial small puffs of smoke, had swelled, and it was getting hard to get his bearings. He was… upside down? The impossible sphere was down. He looked and finally found Ellis and Tee. He found them just in time to see Ellis catch a desk lamp with his forehead and, horribly, as if in slow motion, he slipped out of Tee’s hand and fell into the anomaly with a pop. Just like that, he was gone. Mal looked at Tee. Tee looked at Mal. They made eye contact. Then, without hesitation, both of them let go, and fell into the curved space between spaces.

The first thing Mal noticed was that he was still in one piece. The second thing he noticed was the tiny pricks of tiny claws clamped into his chest. Good, the little creature was still with him, at least. Then, he noticed everything else, and he had to work very hard not to throw up. He was falling, he knew that. He knew the feeling of falling, he’d done it plenty of times, jumping off tall things into unadvisable water, or by stumbling off things he shouldn’t have climbed on, or just from tilting his seat back. 

But he’d never fallen in every direction before. That was new, and it was horrifying. He saw the back of his head, grabbed himself by the shoulder, turned himself around, and saw himself stretch into infinity and then fit within a single point, stretched across a sphere that was also the point itself. He felt his limbs stretch, warp, detach and reassemble in what he hoped was the right order. And then he saw them. Floating between a half-eaten tray of garlic bread and a broken glass was Ellis, spinning wildly in the technicolor void. And Tee was right behind him, their limbs tucked in like a professional skydiver. Mal copied their pose and found that the laws of physics seemed to hold up at least a little bit, accelerating him slowly towards his friends, though he kept one hand on the shivering creature that was clutched to his chest. 

Slowly, they got closer. He had to shield his head from swirling debris. Everything was noise. Silverware bounced off his skull. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the couch, barreling towards him, and he barely managed to curl up into a ball in time to dodge the brunt of it, but one of the legs caught him in the ribs. Something went snap, and his vision was white sparks for a moment. He coughed a copper taste, but he opened his eyes, determined to get back to his friends. They were close. Tee was so close to grabbing Ellis, he could see them stretching their hand to him. 

Ellis was gone. Just like that, he’d fallen into a hole that was either the size of a skyscraper or a thimble, had gone ‘fwoompf’ and disappeared. Tee spun around to look for them and saw only Mal approaching them. 

“Just take m-- No!” 

It was the last thing Mal heard them say before they, too, disappeared. Then it was just Mal and a terrified little kitten clutched to his chest. He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for reality to pop him out of existence too. What was the point, after all? A deep breath, and he felt something against the back of his mind, like a fishhook lodged in his brain, and was being pulled downside-up, outside-in, and then felt his entire existence being yanked through his own nose. 

Fwoompf.

He sailed through the air, air that felt distinctly like air, and smelled distinctly like garbage. There were other noises -- shouting, mostly -- although he wasn’t really bothered with that. Landing had his attention. He curled up into a ball again. The throbbing pain in his side reminded him that this was going to hurt -- a lot. But he couldn’t afford to protect himself more, he was still holding a kitten. 

The ground came up to greet him like an old friend with a sledgehammer, knocking the wind out of him and the ribs into him. It was excruciating, and he screamed. Pain was his whole world, and breathing was more difficult than it had ever been, pacer test included. He spat out some blood after swallowing it became tiresome. He slowly pushed himself upright. He still had a whole other lung, damn it. That was going to be enough to find his friends. 

He looked around. He was standing on a roof. Next to him was a sheer drop, hundreds of stories tall, small flying vehicles buzzing between buildings that extended in every direction. There was no sky. Just more buildings, more floors. There were moving advertisements in sickening neon in every direction. He gasped, and threw up a little bit of blood. A little squeak told him the kitten was alright, at least. 

Mal turned around, trying to take it all in, unsteady as he was. A large building floated past, a pagoda with a large golden dragon on top of it. He frowned and cocked his head. 

"So…” he said, to nobody but the kitten in particular, “a cyber-- ah, ow -- cyberpunk dystopia with Asian overtones. I've never seen that bef-- oh.” He coughed. The dragon turned to look at him, and it raised an eyebrow. "That's new."

The dragon raised itself up a bit and looked closer. “Your face is new,” it said. 

Mal screamed.

Elamimax

Things are going to get VERY strange, now.

There are 30 chapters already up on my patreon. Subscribers will get access to every single chapter right now. Other than that, I will be posting a chapter (maybe even too) every other day. If you're in the mood to catch up on my other stories, feel free to check them out. Additionally, Horns in the Library 1 is now available as an ebook! 

I also want to point people at the discord server of the ever-prolific QuietValerie (right here) where you can find her wonderful stories, like Ryn of Avonside, Falling Over and The Trouble With Horns, as well as other authors' works, and talk about them with fellow fans, and even the authors themselves! I heartily recommend joining it and reading their works! (Also check out Walls of Anamoor. It's rad as heck.) 

Thanks again for reading, and I'll see you all in the next one. 

<3