“Contestants will run the obstacle course and meet in the middle, where they will begin their due! And just to keep things interesting…”

  An enormous crane turns, revealing a struggling, wiggling great white—the kind of behemoth that only exist in movies. The crane releases, and right as I’m about to fret about shark-infested waters, a giant hand, pale and covered in raw red sores, bursts from the water and snatches the shark midair, pulling it beneath the crystalline water, leaving nothing but ripples.

  Make him work for it, she says.

  “You don’t expect me to…” I start, but the unseen host is counting our marks and Rhian is already gone, leaving behind nothing but a swaying curtain.

  You know what? I’m just not doing it.

  “Uh-oh, looks like our dear friend has some stage fright! Let’s give him some motivation, shall we?”

  Beneath me, the water starts to rapidly rise. There are white shapes beneath, still but hungry, motionless, yet giving the impression of circling sharks.

  Gulping, I take my first step and the water recedes.

  “Give him a hand for his bravery, folks!”

  The crowd applauds. I take another hesitant step toward the first obstacle: a balance beam. Beneath me, white shapes wait, motionless but hungry.

  Take it one step at a time. Don’t look down.

  The new appendage seems to know where to place itself for balance. That’s how animals use it, right? It’s still having muscle spasms, though, often more of a hindrance than a help, pulling me in contradictory directions.

  Don’t look down. Don’t look down.

  The ice is burning cold against my bare feet. I leave red tracks on the pristine ice, wet and slippery. My glasses are loose, sliding down my nose, and my chest feels tight. Dimly, I can hear the voice of the announcer giving play by play and the sounds of the crowd reacting.

  Don’t.

  Look.

  Down.

  My glasses slip away, off my face. Acting on reflex, I grab at them and find myself unbalanced, halfway across the frozen balance beam, the ice slamming into my chest hard enough to knock the wind out of me, new appendage wrapped tightly around the beam as my only lifeline. My glasses fall away until I can’t see them anymore, snatched up by something white that smells like seawater and rot.

  I’m still dreaming, right? I…I fell asleep reading stories about a weird, cheesy public access game show whose gimmick was audience involvement and stupid costumes. I’m dreaming…

  The ice is cold against my cheek.

  I cling to the pole, shivering and bloody, watching the water below.

  Wake up, wake up, wake up…

  “The longer Erik has to wait for you, the more of your points he’s awarded, dear friend. Better get up!”

  You can’t die in your dreams, right? If those hands, shapeless blurs beneath the crystalline blue water, get me, I’ll wake up…right?

  The ice is burning my tail.

  I drop to my knees, feeling forward, trembling all over. The blackened nubs that my replaced my fingernails make hoof-like tapping against the blue path in front of me.

  “Learn, adapt, and overcome! What a clever boy!”

  My head sways. The pit drops out of my stomach. The water is coming up so fast, those eager, rotten hands lying in wait, but—it hurts, like being jerked up by a rope but the rope is at the end of my spine. The new thing, raw and new, has me by the support structure under the obstacle course, paper-like skin tearing from the effort.

  “And look at that! Lucky catch by Darwin! Can he get back up?”

  I reach up for the support structure. There’s a gap between it and the course, just tall enough for me to fit in. Wheezing, I pull as hard as I can until I can get my hands around it. The new thing at the base of my spine coils around it tightly, and I can scrunch along, more or less.

  “Look at him go! Ladies and gentleman, why, I don’t believe I’ve seen cheese like this since Georges Méliès made his first trip to the moon!”

  The pole supporting the platform above is in the way, but provides something else to brace my weight on. I can climb back on from here, hopefully having avoided most of the—

  A blow to the face from a padded rod almost sends me back off the structure. I can sort of make out Erik’s outline, just a dark, blurry shadow with what looks like a giant red ear swab raised above his head.

  Erik savagely lashes at my shoulders with his heavy boots.

  “Hey!” I shout, almost falling off the beam in effort to cover my head, not sure whether to stay on the beam and let him kick me or cover myself and fall.

  “Looks like Erik got tired of waiting!”

  “Nothing personal, товарищ,” he says in a strangely flat tone, the kind of delivery of one explaining an immutable fact. “It’s just the game.”

  Erik has little trouble balancing on the icy beam, even on one foot to kick me. Blindly, I reach out and make contact with something leathery and supple—his boot. I grip it as tightly as I can, and then with my other hand.

  “Let go!” he barks, axe-handled tail swinging to keep his balance.

  The slippery ice betrays him, and I fall, too. Somehow in the scuffle I manage to get his arm, his wrist, the sleeve of his buttoned-up winter coat.

  “I’ve got you!” I shout, gripping the beam with my tail and my thighs, hanging upside-down. “I’ve got you!”

  “Just drop me,” he says, looking tired, dangling like a pendulum. “’S the game, товарищ. No shame in it.”

  “I’ve…got you…”

  The hands look like ice flows beneath the water, fuzzy white blotches past my nearsightedness. Are the fingers tightening into apprehensive fists, or is that just my imagination?

  “Well, wasn’t that something, folks! We’ll be right back with your votes, after these messages!”

  There’s a roof. Weren’t we just outside? And a floor forming beneath Erik, high enough for him to sit and take the pressure off my shoulder. I can’t let go, not of him and not of the padded balance beam twined between my limbs.

  Rhian’s voice is soft as she puts a hand on my shoulder, whispering in my ear. The fur at the tips of her goat-like ears tickle my cheek.

  “It’s okay, you can let him down now.”

  Her hand slides gently along my arm, her warm, blue fingers working under mine, helping me let go. Erik lies against the floor, rubbing his shoulder, Rhian helping me dismount from the blue vinyl that I swear had been ice a moment ago.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Everyone okay?” she asks, looking from him to me.

  Erik has gotten to his feet, adjusting his furred coat with a huff.

  “Should ‘ave dropped me, товарищ,” he growls as he storms away.

  “Rhian, my lovely?” asks a voice that is everywhere and nowhere.

  “Yes, sir?” she asks weakly, a shy smile playing at her fanged mouth, ears tilted back and low as she rubs my aching shoulders.

  “The crowd seemed to like the fire-forged-friends who can’t bear to see the other fail angle,” he explains. “It’s a good one, but see to it that it doesn’t get stale.”

  “Of course, sir,” she attests, giving me a “you just got me in trouble with my boss” death glare.

  Rhian lets me hold on to her until I can remember how to stand on my own, and walk on my own. There’s someone applying cold rubbing alcohol to the tears in my skin.

  “You really stumbled into something there,” she tells me kindly, directing me to a folding chair near the snack table. “Keep it up and your points will show for it.”

  “I don’t want to play,” I tell her, leaning on the chair for strength, the creature with the first aid kit having trailed after me to keep at it.

  Ignoring me, Rhian walks over to a woman with a biomechanical body and a television screen for a face, holding a pair if headphones. Smaller than her male counterpart, she still stands over a head taller than the petite stage manager. Rhian places the headphones on and then after a few seconds of watching what appears to be a replay of some of what just happened, shakes her head tersely.

  “No, ‘товарищ’ is too formal and native speakers might think he’s being sarcastic…use ‘лиллеброр’ instead and, include text explaining the literal definition and drae family bonds…”

  She’s not listening, but…I can leave. She’s not paying attention…I can sneak out, before this gets any worse.

  I take a few steps away. The creature tending to the splits in my skin sighs in frustration and disgust, then packs up his medical kit and storms off. There is no one paying attention to me.

  I casually walk down the nearest hallway, anywhere but here. Sooner or later I’m bound to find an exit, a window, even.

  I limp down the hallway, still trailing blood. I can’t tell what rooms I’m passing, everything blurry and hazy in my narrow field of vision. It opens back up into another room just up ahead.

  “Calling all the monsters, calling all the monsters…”

  I’m back on the soundstage, Rhian’s hazy blue form turning in my direction. I turn around and look over my shoulder.

  “But…I walked in a straight line…”

  Didn’t I?

  I couldn’t see…but I didn’t make any turns. It was a straight line.

  “He’s ready for you,” Rhian says kindly, taking me by the shoulders and leading me back toward the curtain.

  “No, I…” I protest, trying to turn around.

  “It’s alright, we recalibrated the Monsterizer. It’ll work this time.”

  She thrusts me back out onto the set, once more under the bright, unfiltered light of an arctic ice flow. There is an ice cave to my left, roughly the size and shape of the box from before, but with an overlay for the most recent challenge.

  I can barely make out Erik’s form, distinguished in black and his waving toward the crowd against the stagehands in their brightly-colored parkas.

  “Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen! I hope you spent your contestants’ points wisely. Are you ready to see what they’ve won?”

  “I don’t…”

  The nearest stagehand opens the stylized mineshaft door to the box, beckoning me inside. A pit drops out of my stomach.

  No.

  Not again.

  I back up into something large and hard, a massive four-armed stagehand in a black “CREW” shirt, ushering me toward the door. I shrink back from him. He must be at least eight feet tall.

  Panic grows in my heart, pulse hammering against my ribs. I drop to my knees, trembling, dragged standing again by the stagehand, pushed toward the box. A cold breeze wraps around my ankles, blocked by the door. He shoves me inside and then she slams the door, leaving me in darkness.

  “No, no, no!” I whimper. “I don’t want this! I don’t want to do this!”

  I back into a corner, shaking, sinking against the floor. The box begins to hum, and I brace for pain, squeezing my eyes shut, clinging to my blood-soaked shirt as if to hold my skin on.

  There is no pain. My heart rate slows. The tension in my shoulders eases. This isn’t…scary. There’s nothing to this, really. It’s just a box, an empty box. I could laugh at myself for how silly I’m being.

  In fact, I think I like it in here. It’s a safe place, a good place. Everything about this is good, happy.

  It’s so much fun watching the twisted, black nubs at the tips of my fingers fall out and proper, glossy black claws grow in. My vision clears, sharpening, which is really cool, and I’m so excited to not need my glasses anymore. The splits in my skin knit together, leaving these neat-looking gray-black stripes in intricate patterns, even along old scars, like the lichtenberg figure on my right arm that faded away years ago.

  I can’t imagine why I didn’t want to go back in here. I don’t want it to end, like all of my nerves are wrapped in my happiest childhood memories multiplied by looking up into Grace’s eyes as she held the epipen.

  When the door to the box opens, I’m so excited to walk back out again. I can’t wait to see what happens next, and I’m so hungry I could eat…I could eat a lot.

  The crowd cheers in my ears. I wave at the unseen figures as the lights go out, blowing kisses like I saw Erik do.

  Erik’s such a great guy. It was really nice of him to give me that soup earlier. I hope they have more.

  “Alright, that’s a wrap,” Rhian says, grinning her fanged smile. “You two are done for the day.”

  “Rhian!” I shout in a sing-song voice. “Your hooves are so dainty. You sound like a tap dancer! We should go dancing!”

  I grab her hands and pull her toward me in a simple box step.

  She laughs, which is a fantastically beautiful sound. “Yup, Monsterizer’s working as normal.” She frees herself from my grasp and makes a drinking motion to someone in a crew shirt near the snack table.

  “The obstacle course was so much fun!” I tell her excitedly, fists balled, bouncing on the tips of my bare, clawed toes. “Can I do it again! OH! We should go get Grace! She’d love this!”

  “Alright, alright, calm down,” she smiles, a can of onion soup thrust into her hands by he stagehand. “You’ll get your chance at another physical challenge. Here, drink this.”

  “Soup!” I cheer. “I love soup.”

  I pop the soda can-style lid and feel the can flash heat under my fingers to perfect sipping temperature.

  “And you can have all you want in your dressing room,” Rhian says in a placating tone. “You need a shower…you’ve been bleeding all over my set.”

  “I love showers!” I tell her, draining the can, looking down at the lovely red color of my blood staining my sleep clothes.

  “Well, you’ve got your own in your dressing room, and the audience voted you some clothes, too. Come on, I’ll take you there.”

  “You’re so nice,” I tell her. “Just like…the nicest hoofed lady.”