Her previous memories a blur, Lily found herself in a fetid grotto, among several other rag-clad prisoners. Most were curled up and shivering in a corner, but Lily, while cold, was more perplexed.
"Where are we?" She asked to no one in particular. "We’re in a cave. We’re here to be hunted like deer." A shaking young man told her, his breath so thick it could have been mistaken for smoke. "Who hunts humans?" She asked with great fear. "The denizens of the cave. They’re inhuman beasts too terrible to ponder." "How do you know all this?" Lily asked. "I’ve been hiding for months." He said.
"Where do you get your food?" "There are many edible fungi that grow in this pit, as well as tiny pests, and puddle water is legion. As many as grow the edible fungi, so many grow poisonous ones. I can’t tell you how many of my companions were killed by eating the wrong lichen. I suggest you stay with me until you can pick for yourself." "Is there no way out?" Lily asked, realizing comparatively how much knowledge the fellow had of the place. "Oh, there are thousands of ways out, but this abyss is more labyrinthine than to let you find any one of them without inconceivable difficulty."
Lily pondered the idea, and chose to make it her immediate goal to escape from the chasm as quickly as possible.
Immediately as she made her mind to do this, a profane howl came from one of the black caves surrounding the one they were in. The prisoners knew better than to stick around, and they escaped through several other caves. A metal arrow tore through a woman directly in front of Lily, so she followed the young man to a large open chasm, and into a tiny crevice. There lay a meaty spider in the corner, and the man swiped it and crammed it into his mouth without even offering any to Lily.
"What’s your name?" Lily asked the man. "My name’s Kyle," he said, chewing the animal with great satisfaction. When he was finished with his repast, he asked "What about you?" "I’m Lily." "Let me tell you what fungi are good and which are bad," Kyle suggested, pointing to a patch of red lichens on the wall. "These red ones are pretty poisonous, I wouldn’t even touch them if I were you, but these mushrooms," he said, pointing to a patch of thin white ones, "are edible. But be careful, there are white ones with a very light reddish tint, which is hard to see in the gloom, that are very poisonous. My friend Jill died from that very mistake."
Kyle’s speech was interrupted by another roar from one of the hateful behemoths. "Quiet!" He whispered. Lily could hear the terrific stomping and smell the putrid fetor radiating from the monster. She closed her eyes as it came closer. Kyle nudged her to go further into the crack. She did so, and the thing walked past, anticlimactically, unaware of prey in such heart-stopping proximity.
Lily spoke. "How long should we stay here before we go?" "When we can’t hear the hideous treading any longer," Kyle answered. With agonizing graduality, the footsteps became inaudible. "Follow me, quickly!" Lily found this lifestyle exhausting, and wondered how the rest could possibly live like this.
As they sprinted silently across the cave, a woman followed them. The three of them entered a cave too small for the hellions to pursue, and Kyle and the woman immediately began to scour the walls for food and the ground for water. "My name’s Lily," she said to the woman. "Hey," She said "I’m Polly. My brother just got killed, any I don’t have anyone to stay with," she continued, troublingly unconcerned with the death of her close relative. "May I stay with you two?" she asked while picking off a lichen from the wall. "That’s fine with me," Lily said, watching Kyle, who’d found a patch of mushrooms. "Sure, you can stay with us as long as you want," he said genially. He offered some of the fungus to his companions. Both took a handful with appetence. The trine squinted through the gloom as they huddled together in their tiny hole, their shivering uncontrolled.
Clusters of roars were shrieked from the west. The three of them, too exhausted to continue running, persisted in their frigid home. This was a grave mistake.
Lily counted the howls of the fiends, and they numbered at least twenty. Of course, they came closer to her sanctuary, and finally, began to walk right by. The problem was, the cave was a mite too evident, and one of them forced its scabrous head down to observe the contents. It found three prizes.
Kyle, a little more experienced in what to do in situations like this, scampered from hiding right past the beast. Lily and Polly followed with terror. It looked to Lily that Kyle had a good idea to where he was absconding. The problem was, neither Lily nor Polly ever figured out where his destination was. An arrow the size of a tree branch tore through him, and the remaining two were left on their own, having no longer any guide.
Through the skein of identical caverns the two fled, until, miraculously, a beam of light shone down upon them. This miracle was stifled somewhat by the great cliff that it was gleaming above.
"Up here!" Polly yelled, and the two of them, as best and as swiftly as they could, scaled the stones. Of course, reckless rock climbing inexorably caused Polly to fall from the cliff, with an added misfortune that they were too high an elevation up for the crust-skinned horrors to reach, even with their ranged weapons. This also meant, of course, that they were too high to survive in case they fell. Polly didn’t.
Her fear ahead of her horror, Lily, just as incautiously as Polly, continued her ascent towards the beam of light. Finally, at the top of the cave, there was a pipe containing a metal ladder, one that Lily zealously began to climb. The new symmetry of her climb infinitely relieved Lily.
It seemed as though she would get out unscathed, but just as that thought crossed her mind, an abominable sting in her right leg nearly sent her into a swoon. Gazing downwards at what could have happened, Lily was nearly petrified to see that one of the pestilential monstrosities had followed her in her ascension, and had taken off her leg with a pointed club. As quickly as she could, with her now three usable limbs, Lily entered the narrow pipe, and at the top, found a manhole cover, a hole in which being the source of the light. She pushed it aside and entered the world of humans.
She found herself on a street next to two wrecked cars, both of which were aflame. The manhole cover closed with deliberation.
"Ma’am, are you all right?" Were the next words she heard. Attempting to rise from the ground, Lily cried out as she descended back to the ground. "An ambulance is on its way, try not to get up, your leg looks pretty bad." The man with her suggested critically.
When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics and the witnesses discussed what went on while Lily was put on a stretcher and into the back of the automobile. "I saw the whole thing," "That girl ought to press charges on that lunatic," and "Look at her leg!" Were among the conversations she heard half-consciously.
Lily’s leg had been losing blood from the beginning, and, as such, became a threat against her life. Unable to really make any sort of decision, Lily’s mother rushed to the hospital to discuss with the Doctor how to handle the situation.
"She’s losing too much blood, Mrs. Douglas," the Doctor said. "My professional opinion is to tourniquet the leg, but, of course, this would inevitably mean amputation." "Is there no other option?" Mrs. Douglas asked, pleading as though it were up to him. "Well, at the rate that Lily’s losing blood, we wouldn’t have time to operate on it before she died, so, in essence, there is really no other option." She sighed, and dropped her head. "Okay. Tourniquet her leg."
Lily discovered an unpleasant surprise when her anesthesia wore off. "They had to amputate it, Lily; it was the only choice," were the first words out of her mother’s mouth. "I’m sorry," she continued, and began to weep. "Is there anything else they could have done?" she asked her mother. "Doctor Carter said that you’d lose too much blood if they operated on it. If it wasn’t amputated, you would have died," she explained, between sobs.
"Lily Douglas?" A greasy-looking man in a suit entered. "Yes. Who are you?" "Lily, this is Phillip Stone. He’s our lawyer."
"The police have informed me that you are the victim. The man in the car that crashed into you ran a stop sign. Because of your injury, and to a much lesser extent, the annihilation of your automobile, you can press charges against him." Lily stared at the man for a moment. She knew the man didn’t wreck her leg, but all hell would brake loose if she told them what really happened.
"I don’t think I want to do that," Lily said, clenching her teeth afterwards, dreading the next question that she just didn’t have an answer for. Predictably, the question came. "Why not?" Her mother asked. "He caused irreversible damage to a vital part of your body, Lily, he cost us thousands and thousands of dollars in hospital bills and car damages!" "I don’t want to because he didn’t do it." "Of course he did it, Lily!" Phillip interjected. "I want to tell you what happened, but I truly doubt you’d believe me." "Well, if you don’t tell us, we can’t decide what to do about it," Phillip said. Lily figured that she had already gotten them interested, and if it were the truth, it would be easy to prove. So she told them.
That didn’t work out too well. Doctor Young, the psychiatrist from the mental ward, visited her the next day. "So, Lily," she began, "Your mother tells me that you had your leg amputated," she said with gross inconsideration. Lily began to sob. "It’s okay, Lily, I want to help you through this difficult time, and help you accept it," she lied.
Too quickly did the conversation funnel into Lily being prodded with questions about her doubtlessly delusional tale. After the hour was up, Young dismissively diagnosed Lily with a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder triggered psychotic episode, despite Lily’s frantic argument that she could prove her tale if only they could return to the manhole.
She was thrown into the mental ward, with the permission of both parents.