Trixie had barely slept the night before, her mind in a dreadful race over the math of the game's rules, what she could do to escape, and the fact that one of her friends was going to be killed, and not just killed... they'd be [i]assaulted[/i]. She'd tried to cry as silently as she could among the others as she could, but, eventually, she did fall asleep.

Trixie had disturbing dreams. The fox dreamt of the campsite, except no one she knew was there, not even Jacob or Daniel, but, everyone there was a rabbit. She'd only just noticed and felt out of place, when they all jumped her. She screamed, demanded answers, and they explained that [i]she[/i] had been chosen, that now was her turn. Instead of gnolls, they had sent rabbits, and she winced as her nightmare attackers pressed their cocks and balls into every hole nook and cranny she had, and even humped her tail. They peed all over her with both actual pee, and that weird white snot the gnolls splattered Cinnamon with. The more she tried to resist, the more they beat her up, leaving her face bloodied. The pain was muted--the simulation was too good to risk letting nightmares injure the cubs--but the emotional vulnerability felt very real. When they were done, they revealed a giant snake-like rabbit was coming towards her from out of a burrow hole, and Trixie was too beat up to stop it from swallowing over her.

But like Alice in Wonderland, this symbolically sent her tumbling down an actual dirt tunnel, before falling out down a large industrial shaft, lined with windows and missing elevator platforms. She went screaming past, before she saw the sudden reflection of water, and covered her eyes. [i]Splash![/i]

The water was shallow. When Trixie forced herself to her dazed, dream-slowed legs (feeling strangely detached from her digital body the way she did her real body in dreams), she saw out over an inky, knee-shallow lake beneath a black, starless sky. All her friends were there.

And all her friends were dead. Poly, Petal, Ash, Pity, Skylar, Cyber, Sebastian, Daniel, Jake, and that mysterious skunk girl too. They were all dead, and here to great her. To welcome her. She understood this intuitively. "Why are you all here?" she begged. "I died, no one else should have... right? What happened to you all?"

"We're here to vote for you..." one of them said, and then all of them began leaking jet-black water from every visible orifice, and impossibly, even seemed to sweat out from their skin and fur. Like brackish halos. All of her dead friends, each with unique injuries that seemed to change with every glance, surged towards her.

Trixie ran.

When she had been a little younger, her Daddy had had the bad sense to let his little girl watch a sci-fi horror movie, insisting that it was a classic and that she'd enjoy it. The movie... had turned out to be [i]Alien.[/i] It had scared the proverbial shit out of her, and definitely her actual piss. She hadn't told Daddy she pee'd herself, just bravely tried to muscle through the whole movie. The Alien had been intensely scary, but fascinating, and she half understood what was going on in the plot enough to know why the adults were so scared, even the scientists. She understood, even if she hadn't considered it in depth, that one of the space truckers had been impregnated and died from it.

But the part of the movie that had sent her [i]screaming[/i] and out of the room, had been the android. The synthetic, Ash, played by a meerkat, had [i]bled[/i] that white snot when Ripley attacked him. She hadn't gotten far after he began vomiting the stuff. It had scared her in a way she couldn't understand, for which she had no [i]context[/i] for.

Trixie had had to ask her father how the movie ended. It turned out that Ripley, a rabbit, a prey, had out-maneuvered the [i]ultimate[/i] predator in the end. She felt disappointed in herself for not finishing the movie, and absolved to be braver. But even years later, she still sometimes had nightmares about the white goo the synthetic bled.

Trixie ran as fast as she could, but it was only a slow shuffle. Her mind knew she was slow, so her body ran slow in dreams. The water sloshed at her knees. The others ran after her as if they were unencumbered. She felt them grabbing at her, yanking... Trixie screamed out for help. Without warning, something shot up out of the water, tall and imposing. With a lurch of horror, Trixie jumped back into the awaiting arms of her pursuers, her trembling gaze looking up at the synthetic Ash from that movie... Her mind made the connection, that white snot coming out of his mouth was the same white snot the gnolls splattered Cinnamon with! It was the same stuff! And the movie [i]knew[/i] that!

Trixie had been afraid of the synthetic from Alien before. She had no idea she could become more afraid of him than ever before. Ash had appeared with him a new horror for Trixie. He had it on a silver platter, in fact. All gooey, covered in the white snot, overrunning at the sides with it. A white-snot stuffed gift.

It was Connie's severed head. 

"Too bad you couldn't vote for all of us!" she giggled. "So much for being popular... what was it your Mommy said? 'What's the use in being popular if you can't help people?'"

Trixie cried fiercely, shaking her head. "N-no, stay away, I don't want that stuff...!" she said while pointing at the cum oozing from Connie's maw.

"It can't be helped now," said Connie, or, all of them did, all of the dream phantoms grabbed her tight, and together... they all sank down into the void.

Trixie woke up as she had fallen asleep, crying silently and looking haunted. She had screamed so much in her dreams, but, she'd likely only shuffled restlessly in her covers. Her throat felt sore and tight as if she'd been screaming regardless. Today was the day. And she was going to lose someone. There was nothing she could do about it.

And then [i]Ash[/i] would come for them.

"Please no," she whispered to herself.

But there was nothing to do. No choice but to start her morning and try and prepare for the inevitable.