text: [Themes: sci-fi, LGBT]
  
  You pull yourself off of the cold wooden floorboards and stand up and look about you. You are on a dark plain that recedes to a twilit gray horizon. Off to the northeast is the dark silhouette of a mansion with several gables. You can't make out too many other details since the house looks like it was cut from black construction paper and pasted onto the dark overcast, but you can see one window radiating light. You look down at the plain you're standing on and realize it could be the cold gray planks of a stage. There are no trees. There is no grass. No roads. The only other thing you notice is a chill, gentle breeze prickling your skin.
  
  You remember that you had been doing something important...
  
  Three more windows light up on the house and suddenly you can make out a tall door on the ground level of the building. It's dark at first, but then a rectangular rim of light frames its edges. The door opens inward and the light from behind it dazzles your eyes. You see the dark figure of a woman standing in the doorway. You feel her calling to you, but it's inside your head.
  
  Should you accept her invitation?
  
  > turn Away from the House and Start Walking
  You nervously turn your back to the dark house and began walking in the opposite direction. Before you are the grey floorboards that stretch to the dim, gray horizon. There are no real landmarks, other than an occasional floorboard that's paler or darker than the others or has more conspicuous dark nail-heads hammered into it. You do notice that the cloudy overcast of the sky undulates like smoke and that after a while you can start to make out dancing patterns in it. After what seems like hours of staring at the changing patterns in the dark sky, you pull your head down and stare at the floorboards instead. You notice that the air has gotten chillier and that the breeze is stronger, more cutting. You begin rubbing your arms with your hands and notice goosebumps on your skin.
  
  Always, always, you're trying to remember what you were doing before you woke up here. You were going somewhere and there was another endless sea... liquid, smelling of salt... that's all that seems to come to mind.
  
  You hear an old woman's voice cackle shrilly in the distance. You look up from the floorboards and stare about you, unsure where the cackle came from. That's when you notice something new on the horizon. They are far away but you can tell that they're tall and thin and dark against the cloudy backdrop of the sky. Trees? Yes, trees... No, mushrooms. Martian mushrooms. Those grow tall in the caverns under the surface of Mars. The surface of that planet is desolate and only inhabited by the Martians' robots. But there are miles and miles of caverns beneath the Red Planet's top-layer. Where the Martians live. And these tall, tall mushrooms. As you near them, they tower over your head like oaks or redwoods. Soon you're in a forest of mushrooms.
  
  You step under the canopy of a mushroom and touch its stem. It's as wide as a bungalow, but that's not what surprises you. No, you're surprised by the cold texture of the stem. It's not spongy and moist like you remember from when you visited Mars as a child, but solid and rough. Like painted wood. You rap on the surface of the stem with your knuckles and realize it is wood. Hollow wood.
  
  There's another cackle, this time nearer. You dart your head around to see who uttered the evil laugh. All you see are the rows and rows of fake mushrooms spreading out across the stage-land. A cold gust of wind ruffles your cloths and you see a large shadow flitting across the floorboards beyond the shade of your mushroom. The old woman's voice cackles again. You step out of the shade of the mushroom and look in the direction you heard the laugh. Then you see her.
  
  She's giant, airborne, and crouched on a ragged-looking broom, her black cloak fluttering behind her. A witch. You squint your eyes and notice that there are thick black wires on either end of the broomstick holding her aloft. You glance up at the sky and see the two wires stretch up into the cloud layers until they are lost from view. She's flying away from you but suddenly curves her broom at an angle and turns back in your direction. Before you realize it, she's hovering over you, blotting out most of the dim light from the sky.
  
  Her green skin has a faint luminescence that lights her features like a blue-tinted flashlight held from below. Her nose is long and crooked and covered in boils, warts, and hairy moles. Her eyes are yellow and glazed. She smiles down at you with a wide mouth full of jagged, broken teeth.
  
  "Well my deary," her booming voice echoes, "we can't have you herey. You're Earth-born like me so we can't douse you in flames."
  
  "I'm not Earth-born," you say. "I'm a native of Venus."
  
  "No matter, little girl. A spawn of Man and Woman I may not burn. Here," she reaches a giant hand down over your head, fingers splayed, "let me take you from here."
  
  You want to run, but where?
  
  > head Back to the Mushroom Stem
  The giant witch is closing in on you faster and faster and you don't want to be out in the open where there's no place to hide. You run to the mushroom stem, hoping the head of the mushroom will block the crone's view of you. You're moving so fast you smash head-long into the stem, splintering wood as you penetrate the barrier. It's black inside the stem. You turn back to look through the opening to see if the witch is still coming for you. Blackness meets your shocked eyes. Frantically, you try looking around you to see if there is any way out or any kind of light source...
  
  You push through the darkness, but not with your body. Just by your will alone.
  
  Groggily, you open your eyes.
  
  Harsh white light shines down on you. You blink several times and then turn your head to the side. You realize there's a pillow underneath your head.
  
  Oh, you think, relieved, it was all a bad dream....
  
  Your eyes focus on a white wall banded with a ribbon window. Through the window you can see men and women in white coats walking back and forth. Beyond them you notice giant rectangular tanks of water. And swimming in those tanks are Leviathans! The creatures sway their fluked tails and grasp at the surface of the water with their tentacles.
  
  You turn your head back to the bright light and notice there are red, blue, and green wires hanging down over you. You tentatively place a hand to them and tug, and feel tape pulling on the skin of your forehead.
  
  What's going on? You're in a bed, there are electrodes taped to your head, and there appear to be scientists beyond the room you're in attending to those giant sea creatures. Then you realize you're not lying on a blanket. No, it's warm and soft and yielding...like flesh. You sit up and look down. A kind of gray, fleshy cocoon is wrapped around your mid-section and legs. It's thick network of veins pulse with an eerie green light.
  
  A door squeaks on its hinges and a man's voice says: "What? You're up?"
  
  You look past the foot of your "bed" and see a tall, gray-haired black man with a beard. He's wearing a white lab coat and a red neck tie and holding a clipboard under one arm. His eyes stare wide with shock.
  
  "How did you wake up?" he asks in what your realize is a Jamaican accent. "Do you know where you are, girl?"
  
  You try to pull your thoughts together, but almost everything in your head is mental haze. "No...No idea. What...is...all...this?" The man steps up to you and reaches over you head, making adjustments on what appear to be banks of machines behind you. "You shouldn't have come out of your stupor, young girl. I'll have to note this." He pulls a pen out of his breast pocket and writes something on the clipboard. "It's only been five years."
  
  "Five years?"
  
  "Since the Leviathan caught you. We were tracking it and noticed it intercepting a small boat. We've kept it here ever since, monitoring your state."
  
  "I've been unconscious for....five years?"
  
  "You weren't supposed to come out. That wasn't part of the plan. We removed the creature's inner membrane to better study you. You're still connected to the leviathan, though. Look."
  
  He points above and behind you. Beyond the banks of machines lies a transparent water tank with a leviathan swimming inside. A series of membranous tissues web from over the rim of the tank and connect their tendrils to the flesh cocoon your body is embedded in.
  
  You gasp in shock. "Let me out of here!"
  
  The scientist grins down at you and shakes his head sadly. "No, no, girl. That would go against orders from higher up. Project Gilgamesh needs to see how long a human being can live inside a leviathan membrane."
  
  He pulls a syringe out of his coat pocket and grabs one of your arms.
  
  "What are you doing?" you ask in terror.
  
  "Don't worry, girl. This hypo should only knock you unconscious." A thoughtful look crosses his face. "Well, we've never actually tried a sedative on a human subject in a membrane. Either you'll go back to your dream world...or maybe your troubles will be over."
  
  You scream in pain as the needle stabs into a vein.
  
  Soon you feel no more discomfort. Soon everything is calm, peaceful.
  
  And you never dream again...
  
  The End