The neon glow of Omaha's Old Market bled across the wet, grimy asphalt, in a shitty watercolor painting of reds and blues viewed through my rain-streaked windshield. For me, this was the witching hour. Not the spooky kind, but the lucrative one. 2:01 AM. Last call had come and gone, and now the streets were flooded with stumbling, shouting, and desperately-texting souls in need of a chariot home. My chariot just happened to smell faintly of stale french fries, a two-year-old pine-scented air freshener, and regret.

  My phone, mounted on its wobbly dash-nipple, chimed with a notification.

  Finally. I hope, I looked down at my phone, ‘Emily’ is a good tipper. Not that a single tip could help get me out of my impending eviction but I’d need every bit I could scrape together for a deposit on another place.

  I stabbed the 'Accept' button, the app's cheerful jingle a stark contrast to the weary sigh that escaped my lips and the distant wail of a passing siren. The pickup was just around the corner, outside 'L'Alchimiste's Repose.' A name far too fancy for a bar in Omaha.

  I pulled up to the curb, flicking on my hazard lights as the dive was currently disgorging its contents onto the sidewalk like a cat hacking up a hairball. It was closing time at the Saturday night zoo, and the keepers were kicking everyone out. I mentally ticked off the species as they stumbled into the street: a pack of "Finance Bros" scavenging for any ladies desperate for love after a long night of drinking, a "Dramatic Crier" having a full-blown meltdown into her phone... standard end-of-night chaos. I watched all this as I checked my phone waiting for my fare, Emily, probably a "Lost Puppy" who'd just realized she'd been left behind.

  But the woman who slid into my van wasn't any of those. She was... something else entirely. Like, "wrong file loaded into the Matrix" something else. She was calm. Composed. She moved with a liquid precision that was just wrong in this world of sloshing drinks and slurred "I love you, man!"s. She slid onto the cracked gray faux-leather seat, and the universe didn't even dare to wrinkle her dress.

  I opened my mouth to confirm the name. "Are you Emily?" When I saw her face, the words evaporated on my tongue like morning dew under a harsh sun.

  She was stunning. And I don't mean 'bar-pretty,' which is a scale that peaks at a 5 and bottoms out at "has most of her teeth." Her hair cascaded past her shoulders in a waterfall of silver-white that caught even the dimmest flickers of neon bleeding through the windows. Her eyes were a startling shade of violet. The deep, impossible purple of twilight just before true darkness, met my gaze in the rearview mirror. A faint, knowing smile played on her full lips, painted the exact shade of freshly spilled blood. She wore a gauzy, wine-colored dress that probably cost more than my entire education.

  “Do I look like an ‘Emily’ to you?” she asked with a demure smile that left me sputtering.

  “I…no you don’t. But, I’m sorry. I’m here for someone named Emily. Could you…what I mean to say is…I can’t take you instead of Emily. I’d get fired today of all days. I really need this job.” I knew I was rambling like a nerdy kid talking to the popular girl for the first time but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. There was just something about this woman that felt unreal, like she had stepped out of a dream.

  She laughed softly. A sound so sexy that when it wormed its way into my ears it made me want to do anything the woman wanted.

  “Relax Myles,” she said, leaving me briefly wondering how she knew my name. Must be from the Rydeshare app, but before I could think on it any longer she started speaking again and nothing else seemed to matter. “Emily decided to go home with that man over there. See.”

  She pointed to a brunette in her late thirties in a dress that was barely a dress at all. More like several pieces of cloth stretch across her chest and hips. She had obviously had a lot of fun tonight and was currently shoving her tongue down the throat of a cowboy who had the look on his face of someone that had just won the lottery.

  “We were going to go home together,” the woman said, leaving the thought open enough that it had mental images of the two women naked in a pile of limbs. I shook my head to clear my thoughts. “But now she’s gone and left me to go home all by myself.”

  This entire time I couldn’t look away from those violet eyes. She must be wearing colored contacts. There is no way that's natural.

  “So you will take me home then?” she asked, biting her lower lip.

  “Yeah…yes. Of course. I need to take you home. I mean get you home.” What the fuck is wrong with you Garber? Get a grip. Yeah she is beautiful and yes she seemed to be flirting with you but what are you going to do? Take her back to your dirty efficiency apartment?

  I took a deep breath. My hands were strangling the steering wheel, so I forced them to relax.

  "Same destination?" I asked, my throat felt so tight, the words scratched their way out. I pulled away from the curb, my ancient van splashing through an oily puddle.

  But when I glanced down at my phone the screen was black. I jabbed at it once, twice. Nothing. My finger found the power button and held it down for one, two, three seconds. The screen remained a dead, black mirror, reflecting only my increasingly panicked face.

  "Damn it." I yanked the phone from its plastic cradle. "Sorry about this. Just give me a second."

  The van's tires crunched against wet gravel as I pulled to the curb. I twisted the key and the engine died with a shudder. Rain tapped against the windshield in irregular patterns while somewhere down the block, the low whirr of a street sweeper prowled the empty roads. My thumb swiped uselessly across the screen, leaving smudges on the black glass.

  "It won't work, Myles." Her voice poured into the van thick as honey. My thumb froze mid-swipe. Suddenly the hairs on my neck stood at attention. Slowly, I raised my eyes to the rearview mirror, where her violet gaze waited for mine.

  "What do you mean? Do you know what’s going on?"

  Her mysterious smile widened, revealing teeth too white and too perfect, like polished pearls set in crimson velvet. It wasn't menacing, but it was unnervingly confident, the smile of someone who already knew the outcome of a situation. She seemed completely unfazed by anything, as if a stranded Rydeshare with a dead phone at 2 AM was not even an inconvenience.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  "I know a great many things about you, Myles Garber,” she purred from the darkened back seat. Her eyes never leaving mine. “I know you live alone since your girlfriend left you for your roommate. I know you work two pathetic jobs to barely pay your rent and were still evicted this morning. You are about to flunk out of university after moving here from California on a scholarship to escape the pain of your parents', Ken and Sarah’s, deaths four years ago.”

  “I know everything about you except for one thing: why you always reject my gift." she said the last part with an exaggerated pout.

  Anger had begun building inside me as this woman I didn’t know rattled off details of my life that she shouldn’t know about. I didn’t give a shit how beautiful she was; when she started talking about my parents, I turned around to tell her off. But when she said the word 'gift,' it struck a strange chord deep inside me, a dissonant note that vibrated through my bones and made me feel strange inside.

  I froze in place as the strange woman reached out, her violet eyes now glowing in a mesmerizing display of purple light. She extended a single elegant finger until it was pressed softly against my forehead. A sudden, violent torrent of images that flooded my mind, drowning rational thought beneath their crushing weight.

  At her touch it was like the dam of my subconscious had burst, spilling years of forgotten dreams across my consciousness. I remembered everything. Not in a clear narrative, but in dazzling, overwhelming flashes from dreams I never knew I'd had. Dreams that had always faded too fast to remember each morning, leaving only a lingering sense of unease that left me in a cold sweat.

  Her eyes. From the dreams I remembered those impossible violet eyes, not just purple but a shifting kaleidoscope of lavender, amethyst, and midnight, glowing with a sultry, possessive fire.

  Her mouth. I remembered the taste of her lips, a dizzying blend of honey and spice that burned and soothed simultaneously, and the soft, breathless sounds she made against my ear, whispers promising me everything while her sharp nails traced patterns on my skin.

  Her body. A spectacular landscape of pale curves and soft shadows like moonlight on fresh snow, offering itself to me, a promise of unfathomable pleasure. The sensation of absolute bliss crashed over me again like a tsunami of liquid electricity.

  But in the back of my mind I felt something push back. No! I don’t want this.

  These weren’t my thoughts. All of these feelings of pleasure were a lie. They were invasive, an unwanted sensation that when my mind cleared enough to think about it, felt like a violation of my very soul.

  I felt the touch of soft lips on my own. Trying to drown out the warnings and smoother my sense of reason. It felt like my mind was being torn in two.

  Part of me couldn’t quite understand why I was so resistant to embracing this beautiful woman who was throwing herself at me. But another part, the consummate skeptic, felt like it was too desperate. This woman was a goddess that men go to war and write songs about, and for some reason, she was trying to seduce me. Why would someone like her want me? And that didn’t even begin to answer why her eyes were glowing or why she had been invading my dreams.

  I felt the phantom memory of her skin, smooth as silk and cool as marble, under my trembling hands, but my hands in the dream had always been hesitant, unwilling, fighting against an invisible current pulling me toward her. I smelled the overpowering scent of jasmine that was always tangled in her silver hair, so strong it made my eyes water and my throat close. I remembered the pleasure she was trying to force on me, a gift wrapped in thorns that I had somehow found the strength to refuse.

  I gasped, shaking my head. The rain continued to drizzle as I stared forward, wondering how long I had been stuck reliving the memories of those dreams. My knuckles had turned white, balled into fists in my lap. When I shakily opened them I saw I was bleeding from where my fingernails had dug into the flesh. My heart hammered in my chest, and a bead of sweat trickled down my forehead. The visions vanished as quickly as they came, leaving me breathless and shaken, the phantom ache of a long-forgotten internal struggle.

  I blinked, looking up at her in the rearview mirror. I don’t know how this was possible, but it was really her. The woman from the dreams I could never remember. I shook my head so hard my vision blurred. I put my trembling hands against the steering wheel, leaving blood and sweat on the cracked vinyl. Three empty Red Bull cans rattled in the cup holders. The dashboard clock read 2:34 AM. Apparently, I’d lost nearly thirty minutes stuck staring into space.

  “This is crazy,” I mumbled to myself. I’d been awake for my morning shift at the coffee shop at 5 AM, then classes, then back for the second half of my double at the coffee shop, before finally driving rideshare for the last 4 hours. I was completely exhausted and running on less than five hours of sleep. No matter what I thought just happened, it wasn’t real. You are just exhausted, Garber. Ditch this woman as fast as you can and get some sleep before this mental breakdown gets any worse. You have to find a new place to live tomorrow.

  "Listen," I said, forcing my voice into the same tone I used with the college girls who looked like they were about to puke in my backseat. I squared my shoulders and met those violet eyes in the rearview. "You've clearly had a few too many drinks. Let's just... let's just get you home." I tapped my dead phone. "My phone is dead, so how about you just tell me the address? No charge. It's late, and I just want to get you home safely."

  I offered what I hoped was a disarming, professional smile.

  The woman’s violet eyes narrowed and seemed to glow for a fraction of a second. But it was gone so quickly I was sure I must have been imagining things again.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice resonating with a strange power that vibrated through the van’s chassis. “Let’s go.”

  Before I could ask where, the world dissolved.

  It wasn't like falling. It was like being stuffed in a blender that was also inside a paint shaker that was also being fired out of a cannon. The neon signs smeared into violent streaks and then just... collapsed. My poor Dodge Caravan groaned, the sound of twisting metal lost in a ROAR that was so loud it was silent.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, my scream stuck in my throat. My guts tried to swap places with my lungs. My fingernails digging into the steering wheel, the only real thing in a universe that had just shitted the bed.

  And then, as suddenly as it began, it was over.

  The silence was absolute as the violent motion stopped. The roaring ceased. I remained frozen, my eyes screwed shut, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I smelled something new through the van’s open driver-side window. Not rain-slicked pavement and exhaust, but damp earth, rich soil, and the sweet perfume of blooming flowers.

  Slowly, tentatively, I opened my eyes.

  My minivan was parked on a bed of emerald green moss, in a forest. A fucking forest. Complete with towering, ancient trees with bark like polished silver. The canopy was so high I couldn't make out the individual leaves. It just looked like darkness from beneath with golden sunlight... sunlight?... dappling through to the forest floor. Attached to the trees were weird, multicolored mushrooms the size of dinner plates that puffed out little clouds of spores that glittered in the beams of sunlight. Despite the spores, the air smelled clean and crisp. Nothing like the pungent smell of oil and neglect that filled the air moments ago.

  Still sitting in the van absorbing all this, I took a deep breath to try and calm myself.

  “Are you… are you okay?” I asked, my gaze flicking to the rearview mirror.

  The back seat was empty. The woman with violet eyes was gone as if she had never been there.

  I frantically looked around the cabin, then out the windows again at the impossible, alien wilderness that surrounded my mundane minivan. The world I knew was nowhere in sight.

  A single, terrifying question echoed in my head.

  “Where am I?”