Alex in Haremland Chapter 1

Strange visions of smiling cats flashed before my mind’s eye, but they disappeared into a swirling multi-colored vortex, and I surrendered to the floating sensation overpowering my body. I floated without direction through time and space, but those concepts were meaningless at the same time.

At long last, or maybe after no time at all, I came to a stop.

The world continued to move around me, but I’d lost touch with my body long ago, or maybe a few moments prior. Numbness prevailed, and I lost myself in the blissful lack of existence. A line of percussion instruments paraded through my skull, and the numbness faded into tingles throughout all my extremities. My mouth was dry enough to resemble a desert landscape, and I swallowed hard in an effort to produce more saliva.

I didn’t know how long I laid there like that, but after a while I slowly came back to reality. Then I blinked into the bright light of day as the intense pounding in my ears slowly subsided, and vibrant reds, purples, greens, yellows, oranges, and blues met my gaze as I peered up at the sky. It was a veritable rainbow of colors, and I stared in awe for a long moment while bird song and bug noises echoed in the background.

Everything was singing, but they were all sorts of different songs, so it was hard to pick one out of the bunch. In between the songs were calls to “be quiet” and “wait your turn,” but I wasn’t sure who was speaking. I didn’t see any people anywhere within my vantage point.

Where was I?

The grass was soft beneath me, but it was damp with the early morning dew, and I wiggled my fingers into the blades as a feeling of euphoria floated through up from my gut. A giggle rose from my throat unbidden, and I glanced around to see if anyone heard me.

In the distance, I saw smiling trees, but closer to me there were laughing flowers of all kinds. Mostly daffodils, daisies, and irises, and then I spotted a stern caterpillar who munched on a leaf as it glared up at me.

Except for the royal blue caterpillar, the others didn’t seem to mind my laughter or my presence in their space. Wherever I was, it was somewhere I’d never been to before, of that I was certain. I wasn’t certain of many other things, and a few of them crossed my mind.

Who was I? And where did that cat go?

I blinked again as I tried to focus. There had been a cat, I was sure of it, but then again I wasn’t certain of much. Once my fingers began to work again, I patted down my body only to find normal gray slacks, a blue button up shirt, and shaggy black hair. Then I realized I’d worn those clothes to work, and suddenly images flashed before my mind’s eye.

I saw my boss from when he’d called me into his office the day before, and he’d sat me down across from him to insist I take my vacation hours. I could just barely make out the lights of Coors Field out the window in the distance, and I’d focused on the view until my boss was done talking. I’d tried to argue the point for a while, but then I’d surrendered to letting him lecture me about making my job my entire life.

It basically was, but I wasn’t going to argue with my boss.

I’d just moved to the city after I’d transferred to a new office, so I didn’t know any of the people I worked with. I hadn’t met any new friends in the city, either, so my life pretty much revolved around work twenty-four-seven.

I sighed as I closed my eyes, and the vision of my boss’s office faded away. Some tidbits of my life were slowly coming back to me. I was Alex Wilson. I was twenty-six, and I worked as an office assistant in a tech support department. It was a boring job, monotonous and dull, but it made me enough money to get by comfortably.

But I still didn’t understand how I’d ended up in a field of laughing flowers.

Was I dreaming?

I rolled my head to the side and blinked a few times to make sure I was seeing clearly, but sure enough, the cackling flowers leaned toward me as though thoroughly entertained by my confusion.

“What are you laughing at?” I asked without expecting a reply.

“You!” a string of daffodils giggled in unison.

“What… the… fuck?” I gasped.

I peered closer to find the little yellow flowers sported tiny faces in the center of their petals, and their lips were all stretched into wide smiles. The irises had a more mature look, and they blew me kisses every time I glanced their way, which made me think of my grandmother, but the daffodils and daisies looked more like children.

I must have lost my mind somewhere along the way, and I had the sudden urge to wake up from this dream.

I pinched my arm and slapped my cheeks lightly in an effort to rouse myself from whatever weird dream I was having, but nothing happened. I glanced over and noticed the blue caterpillar staring at me.

“What are you looking at?” I asked in a less than friendly tone.

The caterpillar continued to glare at me, but he didn’t comment. The bright royal blue bug sat under an iris with a leaf clutched in his first two hands, and to my surprise it looked like he was wearing little gloves. His eyebrows were drawn into a strict line above his small, round eyes as we stared at one another, but he never ceased his munching.

I had to be tripping balls or something because this was getting weirder by the minute.

I pushed myself up to a standing position and looked around. Flowers filled every inch of the field, but the trees created a circle around the perimeter of the clearing. Shadows lurked beneath the branches, and a chill breeze swept toward me. It was equal parts euphoric and ominous. I spun in a slow circle, and I looked around for a sign of where I was.

Or when I was.

It had to be early in the morning, but I couldn’t see the sun’s position clearly through the rainbow colored sky.

Rainbow. Not blue. Rainbow.

“I’m stoned or something,” I said to myself, even though I couldn’t really remember what I’d taken before bed.

Hell, I only really smoked pot occasionally at parties, and since I didn’t know anyone in the city yet, I hadn’t gone to any.

The air tasted sweet and refreshing, and I inhaled it greedily like I was devouring a four course meal. My stomach growled in response. It must have been a while since I’d eaten, and I tried to think of the last meal I’d enjoyed.

I’d watched a nature documentary where people ate flowers for certain medicinal properties, but I didn’t think the giggling group of blossoms would appreciate being my breakfast, so I went off in search of something to eat.

I decided to look around my trippy dream for a bacon tree, and since they were already in a good mood, I made my way over to the smiling forest.

“Anyone know where I can find a bacon tree?” I asked.

The trees did not respond.

I shook my head in disbelief. Of course they hadn’t talked to me, they were trees. Even if this was a dream, there had to be a limit to the level of ridiculous.

Right?

The flowers had talked, though, so I walked around the field asking the same question of each group of blossoms.

“Have you seen a bacon tree?” I asked like I was in some sort of twisted nursery rhyme.

The flowers cackled at me, but they didn’t seem inclined to help me find my way to some breakfast, so I went back to where I’d originally woken up. The daffodils were still there rooted in the soil, and I sat down crossed-legged in front of them.

“Hello,” I said this time, and I felt my wits had returned a little. “How are you?”

“He’s talking to you!” A daffodil tossed back its petals and let out deep belly laughs.

“No, you!” a different daffodil cackled.

“He has to be talking to one of us!” a third giggled.

“Anyone, really,” I said. “I just need a little help.”

This caused another round of uproarious giggles, and I almost gave up on talking to the flowers all together. It wasn’t very helpful to just laugh at someone in need of assistance, and I decided they were quite rude despite being in a good mood. Maybe I could talk the stern caterpillar into giving me some directions.

“Help! Please!” A scream suddenly pierced the air, followed by a deep, throaty growl, and shivers ran up my spine. “Someone help me!”

My head whipped around to face the sound of the scream, and goosebumps erupted down my arms.

What the fuck was that?

I didn’t have time to figure out where I was or where I was going. Someone needed help, and it sounded like a woman, so I took off running through the field of laughing flowers without another thought, and I headed in the direction of the sound. I wasn’t particularly a strong fighter, but I was no coward, so I pressed past the trees and jumped over roots reaching up to trip me.

The smiling trees shifted to face me as I ran by them, but I ignored the taunting grins as I ran at breakneck speed through the forest. They could smile all they wanted, nothing was going to stop me from helping the woman who’d screamed.

I heard scuffling through the undergrowth up ahead, and I burst through the tree line into another clearing to see the most ridiculous and absurd scene I’d ever witnessed before in my life.

What I could only describe as a cat-girl hissed and scratched at a large dog-like creature with fangs hanging from its gaping maw and dark spots covering its humped back. The two tumbled and rolled around the clearing like two pets arguing over a treat, but the things in the field before me were several times larger than domesticated cats and dogs. The dog thing snarled and raised its hackles, but the growl turned to a yowl of pain as the cat-girl got a good scratch in, and the two jumped back away from each other.

I stood there in shock as the two began to circle, and I got a better look at the person I assumed had screamed for help. I blinked several times to confirm what my eyes were telling me, but the scene before me never changed.

This had to be a dream. There was no way something as bizarre as what I was seeing could be reality.

Purple-blue ears stuck out from the cat girl’s jagged black hair, and she wore a white tunic cinched at the waist with a leather belt. There was a hole in the back of her skirt where a fluffy purple and blue striped tail jutted out, and my eyes widened as I took in the long claws protruding from her fingertips. Her big eyes were a deep purple, and her gaze flicked from the beast’s injured snout to its feet with a nervous energy.

Streaks of blood speckled the dog-beast’s snout, and its yellow eyes were filled with rage. The creature growled, low and menacing, and the cat-girl almost jumped out of her skin. Then the girl started to fumble with a pouch strapped to her side as the dog-creature kicked its feet in the dirt like it was about to charge.

What was she doing?

I shook my head to rid myself of the hazy feeling surrounding my brain, and then I patted down my person in search of something to use as a weapon, but my roaming fingers only found my wallet. I didn’t think I could bribe the dog monster, so I dismissed my only asset. I was unarmed, and I wasn’t sure what I would be capable of, but I had to do something, so I turned to search the nearby trees for a stick.

“Ah-ha!” the cat-girl cheered, and I turned back around to see her pull a tiny bottle from her hip pouch, stomp her feet, and pumped her arms as she spun around in a circle, but then she came face to face with me, and she gasped. Her deep purple eyes widened, and her jaw fell open, which revealed her own set of gleaming fangs.

The dog-monster chose that moment to attack, and he charged toward the cat-girl with a rumbling bark-like noise. She hissed and jumped out of the way, but she dropped her bottle in the process. Then the cat-girl dashed across the clearing to the shelter of the trees, but her eyes shot over her shoulder to the bottle laying among the strands of grass.

That was when the beast spotted me, and its hackles shivered as another baritone growl built in its throat. The dog-monster was torn between coming after me or continuing after the cat-girl, and its yellow eyes flicked back and forth between us as a snarl rose in its throat.

Then it turned toward me ever so slightly, and its muscles began to bunch like it was about to pounce. My heart hammered out a staccato beat against my rib cage, and I pictured myself being ripped to shreds by the long fangs dangling from the beast’s mouth.

Wait, this was just a dream, right?

I could do whatever the fuck I wanted to without consequence, and my fear of the big scary dog-monster dissipated. I marched toward the overgrown mutt, pulled back my foot, and kicked it square in the mouth, but the impact reverberated through my shin up to my hip, and I nearly fell over from the pain.

“Oh, shit!” I gasped out as I regained my balance.

The dog-monster snarled as its head snapped back toward me, and I watched a string of yellow saliva drip from its gaping maw before I noticed its arm muscles bunch again.

Uhhhhh… maybe this wasn’t a dream.

“Fuck,” I gasped as I turned and dashed for the treeline, and I heard the loud thud of the beasts paws in the dirt as it chased after me. The ground shook beneath my feet, and I stumbled a little, but I managed to keep my footing as I dove for cover behind a tree.

The dog-monster barrelled after me with murderous intent, and it got so close, I could smell the ripe musk radiating from its fur. I held my breath as I inched my way around the tree, and I made sure to keep the width of the bark between me and the massive canine-like creature. It was too large to easily maneuver through the trunks of the smiling trees, so at least I had that going for me.

“The potion!” the cat-girl called out. “Bring it to me!”

I glanced across the clearing to where the bottle lay in the field of laughing flowers, and I grimaced. The dog-monster could easily outrun me with that much space to spread out, so doing what she asked sounded like certain death.

The bottle was closer to me than to her, though, and her purple eyes remained locked on the container as if it were the answer to all of our problems.

Maybe it was, so I made a mad dash out into the open.

The dog-monster snarled as he swiftly swiveled to redirect his trajectory, and an instant later, he was hot on my tail again.

“Oooh, shit!” I pumped my arms as I approached the bottle in the grass, and then with one final burst of speed, I dove toward it.

The beast moved toward me at the same time, and I narrowly avoided an encounter with its reaching claws as I rolled through the laughing flowers. I wrapped my fist around the tiny bottle, but I didn’t have time to process my victory.

I managed to keep a tight grip on the potion as I came to my feet at a dead run, but then I aimed for the safety of the trees with the bottle clutched securely in my fist. I could hear the dog-monster turning around to chase me down, and my pace quickened even more. My work shoes weren’t ideal for running through a field of laughing flowers, but I was more than motivated to get across the clearing in one piece. My lungs burned from the exertion, and I was covered from head to toe in sweat, but this nightmare was far from over. I slowed down slightly once I hit the shelter of the branches with the dog-monster still charging across the field of flowers behind me, and I quickly looked around for the cat-girl, but I couldn’t see her anywhere.

Where did she go?

My ears rang as I gasped for breath, but the dog-monster was almost to the tree line, so I didn’t have a lot of time to search. The beast came crashing through the underbrush with fangs gleaming an instant later, and I inhaled sharply before I started to run in the other direction.

“Aaaah!” The cat-girl suddenly catapulted herself out of a tree above my head, and she landed on the dog-monster’s face.

“What the fuck!” I gasped as I jumped away from the collision.

The two rolled across the ground in a pile of hissing, scratching claws, but the cat-girl seemed to be holding her own. Still, I couldn’t exactly hand her the potion bottle while she was locked in a fight with a monster several times her size.

I looked down at the glass container clutched in my hand, and I realized it was filled with a glittering green mixture. There was a label on the other side, and I rolled it over to reveal the lettering.

It simply said “big” in large, bold letters.

This was some Alice in Wonderland type of shit, and I swallowed hard as the implications raced through my mind. I had no idea what was going to actually happen if I drank this mysterious potion, but the way the cat-girl had acted about it made me think it would solve all our problems.

My heartbeat resembled a drumline in my chest, but then the cat-girl’s yowl of pain brought me out of my deliberation.

I pulled the cork free from the top, and I inhaled the fumes escaping the bottle. It didn’t smell bad at all, but it held an earthy aroma like the way the ground smelled after it rained. I squeezed my nose between my fingers, put the rim to my lips, and tilted my head back to allow the sparkling green liquid to slide into my mouth.

The taste was sharp and tangy, but I swallowed the mouthful of sparkling potion, and I looked up just in time to see the dog-monster barrelling toward me through the underbrush. The cat-girl was nowhere to be seen now, but I couldn’t worry about that. Even the trees weren’t safe from whatever the fuck this beast was, so I turned around and ran in the opposite direction as fast as I could.

I ran and ran as fast as I could, but I could hear the dog-monster close behind me. I felt the heat of his breath on my lower back a couple of times, but it merely served to increase my motivation to get the fuck away from it. It could take my head off in one bite if it felt so inclined, and I wasn’t about to give it any more opportunities than it already had.

My body started to feel weird, but I didn’t have time to inspect myself for injury. Stopping meant certain death, and I was sure I’d gotten countless scratches from the bushes and vines I’d run through, so I just shoved the discomfort to the back of my mind. I didn’t spare a look behind me to check on the progress of the dog-monster, but I could hear its panting breath and feel the heat radiating from its snarling maw.

A moment later, the trees started to get shorter and shorter as I ran until suddenly I was stumbling over knee high bushes with nothing overhead. The change happened so fast I hadn’t noticed the landscape shrinking. A weird stretching sensation swept through my body, and I looked around at the shifting scenery. Snapping sounds filled my ears, but it had to be the dog-monster crashing through the underbrush behind me. The rainbow colored sky stretched above me in all directions like a tie-dye tapestry, but when I looked down, the dog-monster was nowhere to be seen. Down seemed to be really far away, and I thought about this concept briefly.

Did up and down mean less in this place?

Where exactly was I?

A panicky feeling filled my gut, but then something pinched my toe, and I winced as I peered down at my feet. There was a miniature version of the dog-monster attacking my pinky toe. It snapped and barked in a high pitched voice as it danced back and forth, and then it latched onto my foot once more. It was more annoying than painful, like the tiny rebellion of an angry thumb-sized chihuahua.

What happened to my shoes?

Had the creature spawned a smaller version of itself?

And where was the cat-girl?

My thoughts were running in circles, and the woozy feeling had returned. The air was thinner, and I struggled to inhale enough gulps of oxygen. I swatted the small dog-monster away from my bare feet, and then my gaze swept over my ruined clothes. My pants were stretched over enormous legs, and they resembled shorts more so than slacks. My shirt was unbuttoned and pulled taut across my shoulders, and the sleeves didn’t even reach my elbows.

I’d gotten big.

I was not feeling entirely myself, and besides, I was probably dreaming.

The dog-monster hadn’t spawned a smaller version of itself, and the trees hadn’t gotten shorter. Once I realized what was going on, I bent over to scoop the now-small dog-monster up into my massive hands. It would be simple enough to kill it once and for all, but then I could find the cat-girl.

Then I caught a look around at the landscape in my peripheral vision, and my breath halted in my throat.

The sky stretched endlessly, and so did the trees. There were no buildings as far as the eye could see, but I could hear the rushing sound of water and the trill of birdsong. In the distance, mountains carved into the rainbow sky, and I watched colorful beasts flying toward the sunrise. The air smelled like cotton candy ice cream, and the vibrant hues of the plant life created a masterpiece greater than any art I’d seen in a gallery.

I definitely wasn’t in Denver anymore.

But, was this all just a dream?

What if I never returned to my normal size?

A shudder went through me at the thought, but I shook my head to dispel it, and I clenched my fist tightly around the snarling, barking creature. It clawed at the palm of my hand in a desperate effort to escape, but then it latched its fangs onto my flesh, and I hissed with pain.

My hand opened instinctively, which caused me to drop my prisoner, and the dog-monster plummeted to the ground, but I didn’t bother trying to catch it since it had been about to kill the cat-girl I’d come to save. It fell through the air with a high-pitched whine, and then it crashed through the canopy of the trees to splatter against the ground below. The dog-monster didn’t move, and I poked it with my toe a couple of times to make sure it was dead. Then I let out a sigh of relief.

I’d defeated the dog-monster once and for all.

Now, I needed some answers from the mysterious cat-girl.