Day 494

Her shift ended at around 02:00 hours and as usual everything was deathly still.
The taxi she'd booked the morning before was running late.
Thankfully only ten or so minutes passed before it finally arrived.

She noticed that the name on the side of the taxi was different, perhaps they'd leased her ride out?
The driver was a sullen looking man, not her usual person and certainly in no mood to answer her.
His only words were a very clipped "Where to, miss?".

It sounded like he had a sore throat - his voice was like gravel hitting glass.
As they drove off she realised the taxi didn't appear to have the usual GPS system.
Her house was out of town, hard to find without assistance.

She debated asking the driver if he knew the area but as their eyes met in the rearview mirror she
changed her mind abruptly - something about his pink-tinged gaze made her want to hide.
The glass screen between them now seemed suddenly safer.

The view from the window was dull, dawn was hours away and she couldn't see much.
It was a fair distance through the town and everything was either shut or empty.
Occasionally the headlights would catch a small critter darting past as they turned to the countryside.

From there her view was mainly hedges and black fields of barley.
She recognised a cluster of grain silos and expected to be home within the next few minutes.
However, after this the landscape was utterly alien to her.

Nothing was where it should have been, all her usual landmarks were gone or drastically changed.
The broken down tractor was three times larger than it should have been and somehow transparent
and the forest that came after wasn't there at all, some kind of city was.

The driver took a left and turned towards the strange new area.
She tried to get his attention, to tell him he was going the wrong way but all he did was groan.
It was a low sound, like an animal in pain.

His neck snapped to one side, bone splintering through skin as his head rolled to face her.
Where his pink-tinged eyes had been were heavily bleeding holes and his mouth was now little
more than a gaping maw filled with what looked to be jagged shards of glass.

Despite this the taxi drove onwards and into the city and she was helpless to stop it.
After what felt like hours of her staring into his bleeding face as he groaned, the taxi halted.
She was outside her house though it was now sandwiched between two skyscrapers.

The driver opened his door first, stepped out to hold hers open as his head limply rolled about.
Gingerly she stepped out, giving him a wide berth and sprinting for her door as quickly as she could.
A large notice had been stapled to the wooden surface.

Dear miss REDACTED,
Your home has been relocated to Salcottness, please do not question this.
Inside you will find your new family and an envelope detailing who you now are.