The text said, “Hey, Rob, click here for adventure.”
Normally, Rob didn’t click on links. Busy at work, he barely looked at his cellphone, thinking the message was from a friend. After all, phishing scams didn’t use your first name.
Without thinking, he touched his index finger to the link, then stiffened in his chair, staring at the miniature castle now standing like a hologram above his phone. A tiny tug pulled at his shirt.
A giant hand emerged from the castle. It grabbed Rob by the neck and pulled him forward. The room around him spun. One instant he was sitting at his desk, the next, standing inside the decidedly drafty, though beautiful castle, rubbing his neck. There was no sign of the hand.
“Oh, there you are.”
Rob spun around to see the oddest, most handsome, bearded man, dressed in what looked like a medieval gown. His ears were pointed and his hair purple. Something about him suggested he wasn’t quite human. What was going on? Someone must have slipped something into Rob’s coffee. “This isn’t real,” he whispered.
The man grabbed his hand, pulling him along as he hurried through the hallway in which they had stood. Only now it had become a courtyard, filled with people equally strange. “You’re late. We almost started without you.”
“Where am I exactly?”
“Didn’t you read the contract?”
“What contract?” Rob dug in his heels, refusing to walk any farther.
“Really, Rob, It was right there beneath the link. You agreed to join the menagerie.” The man pointed upward. “Welcome home!”
Rob’s eyes followed the man’s finger to a circular balcony filled with what could only be described as grotesque aliens, laughing and pointing at the humans and near-humans glassed in below them.
Hyperventilating, he realized, too late, that there would be no getting out of the consequences of his ill-advised click.
This was one of the first stories I wrote for Buy Me a Coffee (hereafter to be called BMAC). I also wrote it for my first higher-tier subscriber. Literally. I knew their tastes ran to the strange (sometimes bizarre). They know who they are!
Great one! I love this kind of sinister take the "NevrEnding Story" idea of a story literally pulling the reader in.
That’s why I never click the links! 🤣😂