Dangerous Days of Daniel X

Chapter 86

HE ACTUALLY DROVE ME down into the stone ground a few inches. Then he wrapped me in his arms and lifted me above his head. Up close, he smelled like death, and yes, unfortunately, I have experience with that particular odor. Far too much for my tender years.

“Oh, Danny,” he said in Phoebe Cook’s voice as he drew me to him. “I love it when we hug.”

Let me walk you through the being-squeezed-to-death-by-an-alien process. First it feels like a dump truck is sitting on your chest. Then it feels like an aircraft carrier landed directly on you. Black stars begin to cloud your vision. I had never seen or even heard of black stars before. Maybe they were the last thing you got to see on your way to the other side.

“I am more,” Seth roared through gritted teeth as he continued to crush me into fine particles. “I am more.”

I could feel my bones about to pulverize, my eyeballs ready to pop from their sockets.

I held on as long as I could.

Then I forced a final smile.

“I told you I was smarter than you, Dumb-Dumb. Didn’t I tell you?”

Seth looked at me curiously, and in the next instant, everything-Seth, the improvised coliseum, the immovable crushing pressure-all of it was gone.

I was on a white sheet.

I’m not talking a regular hospital sheet or something, but an incredibly enormous, billowing white sheet, a virtual desert of a white sheet going off and out of sight in every direction.

I was clinging to it desperately. With my arms and legs and teeth.

My eight, long, segmented, covered-in-an-exoskeleton arms and legs, by the way.

I’d turned myself into a tick.

I was now too small for Seth to squeeze to death. Let’s face it. I was so small I doubted Seth could even see me.