Strange World (Chapter 1)

    I woke with a start. Where was I? I quickly scanned the area. I was on a beach with the whitest sand I've ever seen. I sifted it through my hands. There was something about it not normal, not from earth. I jumped up, it looked exactly like earth but different. Not different enough to tell, but you could just feel it.

     I saw a glint from the corner of my eye and turned towards it. When I turned, I saw the strangest thing I have ever seen. It looked like a crab with the eyes poked out of its head and the claws, but it was was a deep shade of green and it had two giant golden spikes coming out of its underbelly. They seemed to help propel the mutant crab forward. I slowly started toward the animal getting ever closer. When I finally reached the crab, I put my hand out and put my finger on it. It immediately burst into a giant ball of white light and gave off a pungent smell. I dashed away fear of it exploding, but it didn't. I glanced back down where the crab used to be and there stood some kind of ferret type creature with long back legs and normal front legs. I was beyond shocked at the fact at how it could change from one animal to another.
 
     I had a weird thought about a book I read when I was a child. It was titled Thy Maroon Bell and it had creatures called Nomæds which were animals, who were part of one's soul, that could change their animal manifestation with the person's childhood. A Nomæd represented the wild part of the soul and could not get too far away from the other part of the soul without perishing. Keeping that thought in mind, I walked away a few more feet. I had a pinging pain in my side that got worse and worse as I walked further away. I ran farther in fear that it was what I thought it was. Fortunately, the pain subsided in my side as I continued on. Suddenly, a screeching car came upon me so fast I didn't have time to react. I closed my eyes, knowing that I was about to meet a untimely demise. By some miracle the car seemed to pass right through me, but I knew that wasn't possible. Someone was looking out the window of the car quite strangely. I wasn't sure what he was looking at but I didn't care because I just now realized it wasn't a car I had ever seen. Where the doors should have been there was two rows of beads hanging from the roof of the car. I just thought Just another hippie car that's all. But as I looked closer I saw that they weren't beads at all they were living, writhing beetles. I stepped away from the horrific sight of hundreds of beetles on a string hanging from the roof of the red station wagon. I ran down the road in the opposite direction from that terrible image.

     I was walking down the road away from the beetle truck, hopefully towards the nearest city, to try and find someone who isn't a shape-shifting otherworldly mutant. When I finally saw the start of  city, it had been many hours and my feet and legs were aching with unrelenting pain. I walked over a dip and watched with astonishment as a massive skyscraper came to loom over me. I saw behind it that many more of these buildings were lined up. I walked into the closest one and scanned the room. It was a small reception area with a kindly looking women dressed in a gray blouse and a short, gray dress behind a wraparound desk going from wall to wall. I walked up to the woman and asked,
     "Where am I?" She replied in a monotone, almost robotic voice, saying,
     "Why you are in the great Aerotopolis, the capital of Fentanion. What can I do for you young traveler?" There was a question I was dying to ask but I left it and told her,
     "Nothing at the moment,"
     "Come back whenever!" I left the building feeling somewhat unaccomplished. Sure I had found where I was, but how does that help me?

I was lost. Completely lost.
  What a Strange World.