Our leaders said it’s an honor to be chosen to go to The Below.
I said f*ck that.
So close…I was so f*cking close to aging out of the selection process to be offered up to the monsters from The Below.
We never knew when we could be taken. It wasn’t some annual date we could mark on a calendar and avoid like a plague. We were at the complete whims of the monsters and their demands—demands that have increased over the past few years.
Rumors say the monsters ate all of their sacrifices, that their appetites weren’t easily appeased anymore, but I wasn’t convinced that was all.
What I did know for sure was that anyone selected was never seen again.
Two days before my twenty-fifth birthday, my name was drawn—only forty-eight short hours from becoming exempt.
How could life be so cruel?
I refused to accept this fate. I’d run. I’d fight. I’d do everything but give in.
Yet, The Below is a hostile, foreign terrain hellbent on killing all humans. Our bodies aren’t designed to survive there.
My only chance of living long enough to escape—give in to the monster's desires. Only they could give me what I needed. In return, they’d use me for their own needs.
Needs that I shouldn’t want, but found myself craving.
When they claimed I was their salvation, I started to second guess myself. They revered me like their queen with soft touches and a protectiveness that made my knees weak…
I wondered if I wanted to leave anymore.
Was this why no one ever returned to The Above?
***