That adorable puppy from all those commercials is licking my feet. It would be painful if it weren’t so darn cute.

  At least this is a comfortable place to lay down. It’s warm, it’s dry, and relatively soft. Sometimes I can taste maybe beef broth on my tongue, warm soup flooding my belly and stifling the hunger pangs. Sometimes I open my eyes to find a bare cement ceiling or the looming, blank eyes of one of the snouted thing. My right hand keeps falling asleep and my ribs hurt from coughing.

  I feel like I’m under anesthesia. I don’t even remember when I fell into the ink and I can’t think of a single reason to be concerned when I keep seeing that snouted thing nearby. I start calling for Daveney or my mom, vaguely aware of a warm presence and leather-scented fingers running through my hair. I think my legs are tangled up in a blanket.

  Little by little, I find the darkness less deep and the moments of clarity less sporadic. I start grasping onto sensations and ideas a little better, namely the smell of beef stew wafting through the air. I open my eyes and find myself staring at a pair of shabby hiking boots before closing them again. I open my eyes and the hiking boots are still there, upright, the tongues pulled out and the ends of the laces lying neatly on the toes.

  I focus on the boots, and then move past them to the little campfire in the middle of a bare cement floor, crackling away. I don’t smell smoke, I notice, but the embers are open and loose, without a firepit. Sitting on top of the fire is a small cooking pot not too different from the kind you can get in any store anywhere, steam rising from inside.

  I move past the cooking pot to a figure leaning against a cement column, its legs stretched out in front of it. I can almost make out a hazy human shape and the rough grind of something gritty across metal.

  My eyes are burning. I bring up my left hand and wipe away the grime. I feel like I’ve been asleep for too long, my head still hurting behind my eyes and nauseas with hunger. The soles of my feet feel numb like I’ve been standing on ice, but I’m pleasantly warm under a heavy woolen blanket, a mat of something similar under me.

  I heave onto my side, trying to pull my right arm under me, but a tight pull and a metal jangle catch my attention. I’m wearing a tarnished handcuff around my right wrist, the other end connected to a rusted metal pipe running toward the ceiling, anchoring at an angle in a crumbling socket in the ceiling.

  “Oh, not happening,” I growl, tugging at the cuff and running the other one along the pipe.

  The figure on the other side of the fire has stood up, still, the sides of its longcoat hanging on either side of its legs, something long and sharp held in its left hand, which it slides into a sheath strapped to its outer left thigh. It tilts it head to one side, like some dogs do when you speak to them directly, glare from the fire in its blank, disc-shaped eyes and the hard tip of its muzzle.

  “Really not happening!” I snarl, tugging at the cuff, trying to pull my hand free. The edges of the metal scrape at the base of my thumb and wrist. My hands prickle with panic, my heart pounding again.

  The creature stands beside me, watching me struggle with the cuff, and tilts its head to the side again before settling to its knees. It reaches out with one hand and places it around my cuffed wrist, gently, shaking its head.

  My mouth works around words I can’t speak for several seconds, just feeling the leathery weight of its hand on mine, staring into the empty black eyes, framed by shaggy hair. When I can get my brain working again, I swing with my left fist, catching it almost at the side of the head, it pulling away and grabbing at my free arm to stop the blow.

  “NO, no no no!” I shriek.

  The creature scoots away in a crab-walk. I try to strike out at it again, or grab it, or something, but it’s out of reach, calmly sitting cross-legged between me and the fire. I keep watching it, while still trying to pull my hand free. I seize one of the nearby hiking boots and fling it, so the creature tries to duck, catching it half-heartedly in the side, and grabs the other one and pulls it out of the way. After that, it just sits in place, watching me.

  Eventually, it stands up again and approaches the fire, sitting on the other side and keeping me in full view. It picks up a wooden spoon and starts stirring the contents. After a few seconds, it picks up the wooden bowl the spoon was sitting in and ladles the contents of the pot inside, one scoop at a time, before hesitantly approaching me again.

  My wrist is raw and throbbing by now, along with bits and pieces everywhere else, feeling like I’ve just been walking and falling off things too much. I’ve drawn up next to the pipe, curling next to it, having kicked the blankets away. I seem to be wearing wool socks for some reason.

  The creature stands just out of reach, bowl in hand, watching me. I swallow back the nausea as my stomach growls loudly. Gently, it sets the bowl down on the ground and slides it to me with its fingertips, trying to stay out of the way, and leaves it there, watching me pointedly.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  The bowl is cracked porcelain or plastic, chipped and scuffed, and full to the brim with some kind of stew. I can barely make out some shapes in the thick, brownish stock, a lump of some kind of flesh, a bit of potato skin, a chopped carrot, something green that might be an onion or leek. It smells delightful.

  The snouted creature takes its place on the other side of the fire, settles into place, pulls out another curved knife from its right side, and begins running some kind of rock along the blade. I can’t tell if it’s looking at me or what, just…sitting there, sharpening its blade.

  I’m still a stiff ball of pain starting to get cold at the base of the pipe. I stretch out my legs and use my feet to drag the blanket up to me. Those aren’t socks, they’re more like wool strips dotted with worrisome splotches. Bandages, maybe? Funny, I can’t feel the fabric under my feet, just on top and around my ankles.

  The blanket itself is woven, scratchy, and definitely not store-bought. There’s a pattern in it, dark-colored rectangles rising from a single horizon, missing bits, or with open squares dotting the surface. Vines crisscross between them or dangle limply from leafless trees, a stick with a hexagon on top leans to one side. It’s warm enough, and the mat under me is at least keeping me off the ground.

  It’s a pretty sizable cave I’m in, dotted with the occasional column or rusty pipe, which might or might not be intact or completely upright. The wall behind the snouted creature is mostly solid with a doorway or opening just off to the right. Behind me, it’s open windows, which might have once had glass, but don’t have much more than twisted frames and chipped ledges, leading out into an empty, gray street. The wall to my left is covered with crumbling pegboard, and the boarder around the ceiling have little drawings of purses and lipstick and dresses.

  The snouted thing makes no motion to eat or move from its spot. It doesn’t speak, it doesn’t even hum to itself. The cave echoes with the scrape, scrape, scrape of the rock against the blade. I’ve seen movies start out that way.

  Tentatively, I reach out and take the bowl, sliding it closer to me, examining it, which seems to prompt a pause from the snout thing. I feel empty inside, and still that kind of nausea you get when you wake up too early and haven’t had breakfast yet. The contents are still warm, but cooling down to an agreeable temperature. I count the number of things I can identify, weighing the options between a slow starvation with a captor and the possibility it might have held me here just to poison me.

  I dip my tongue into the broth. I don’t taste anything odd, just bits of soft potato and some kind meat-based stock. It’s savory, but not exactly seasoned, as if it was made with the absolute necessity in mind and not flavor. It tastes delicious, though, since it’s the first bit of real food I’ve had in…I’ve forgotten. I can’t stop myself from devouring it, picking out lumps of carrot and potato, and what I think might be chicken.

  When I’m finished, I set the bowl down next to me and start looking over my wrist. It’s red and swollen, and the skin split in places. Red patches smear across my skin and the metal from the cuff. My thumb has the worst of it, where I keep trying to fold it across my palm and wiggle it free.

  The snouted thing stands again, taking slow, direct steps toward me. It kneels by me and pulls the bowl away, moving it out of my reach, before reaching for my cuffed wrist with both hands.

  “What are you doing?” I screech. “Don’t touch me!”

  I lash out with my free hand again, colliding hard with its chest. It pulls away from the blow, but grabs my free wrist, holding it away from itself, silently shaking its head and its free index finger. It holds onto me for a little longer, releasing me one finger at a time, pinky first, before turning its attention back to my cuff. I kick it hard in the knees, which is a mistake, sending waves of pain up to my knee and burning in my feet, causing me to cry out.

  The snouted thing sits back from me, watching, glancing towards my feet and up to my wrist, but says nothing. Cross-legged, it rests its hands on its knees, a little closer this time than it was last time. Its shoes are some kind of hiking boot, the metal eyes that would have held the laces in place around the ankle long gone or worn away, so the laces tie around the ankle instead. Its gloves cling to its fingers, and seem to have patches over the palms and in between the finger joints. A series of spikes on a strip are tied to the back of its hands.

  It stands again, picking up the bowl in one motion, turning its back on me and scooping another bowl. I can’t directly see what it’s doing, so I wiggle back and forth, trying to find a better view.

  It doesn’t have a tail, I realize, thinking back to the other ones. And it’s wearing hiking boots, like a person. I don’t think those handlike things the other one had would fit comfortably in a shoe, let alone be able to walk.

  When it brings me the bowl, it comes a little closer before setting the bowl on the ground and sliding it to me. It lingers a little longer, too, before getting back up and returning to its spot on the other side.

  As before, I wait and give it some thought before taking the bowl again, but I’m quicker to eat my fill. My stomach growls and rumbles pleasantly, warm inside from a real, hot meal. I take a carrot into my teeth with my tongue, enjoying it in spite of myself, when I realize my tongue feels a bit numb, like I’m eating ice cream.

  “You…you…” I growl, heaving the bowl across the room. It lands beside the snouted figure, who jumps as it clatters and splatters, watching me tensely for a moment or two before retrieving it and putting it next to the fire.

  I draw back up next to the pipe, feeling tired, yawning. It watches me, edgily, apparently waiting. When my eyes start getting hard to keep open, it approaches again, fishing a glass jar with a gasket lid held down my thin wire, and setting it down in front of me. The jar is filled with a white paste, which doesn’t shift when the jar is moved. The snout thing reaches for my cuffed hand, so I try to push it away with my free hand.

  “Don’t touch me!” I growl.

  “Shh,” it whispers, the noise causing me to hold my head up. It clasps my cuffed hand with one of its own and uses the other to pop open the seal on the glass jar and remove a glob of the white stuff.

  “No,” I hiss, kicking at it. “No, no, no.”

  It sticks out one leg to block my blows, sliding closer on its other knee. I can’t pull away, but it can’t get at me comfortably, either. It makes a mad lunge for my cuffed wrist, me beating at its shoulder. The cold glob makes contact about halfway between my wrist and my elbow, smelling sweet and feeling a lot like mint toothpaste on the skin. It twists on its side to get away from my blows, pulling its hand down to smear the white paste toward me injuries, which immediately stop hurting. When it looks up and sees it hit the target, it drops my hand and scuttles away, taking the jar with it.

  It sits again, facing me, holding up one hand and rubbing the wrist with the other in a circular motion, like someone rubbing under a bracelet or watch worn too tight. I start trying to wipe the stuff away, but all I can do is smear it, making my other hand numb.

  I yawn, fighting to stay awake. I find myself closing my eyes for longer and longer periods of time, but not quite falling asleep. The snout creature says nothing, but after a few minutes pulls a backpack from the side of the column and takes out a bundled scroll, spreading it across its lap and surveying it, occasionally glancing up at me.

  I slip along the pipe, snuggling down into the mat and the wool blanket, still trying to stay awake. The sun seems to be coming up outside, a little brighter than it was a while ago. The building across the street is boarded up. Minute by minute, I lose the battle.