I woke up to a high pitched mewling outside my window.
It was dark out, and I wasn't sure how long I'd been sleeping. I was, however, certain that I had been having a wonderful dream filled with scantily clad nubile women, so I wasn't particularly happy about being so rudely awoken from my slumber.
Grunting with sleep-addled annoyance, I sat up in my bed and looked to the source of the mewling sounds, as well as the scratching noises that I now recognized as accompanying them. There, outside my window, was a big stray cat with a missing eye and matted grey fur. It was positively screaming at me while scratching at the glass with the zeal and vigor of man possessed.
"What in the hells…?" I muttered. And then I laid back down and put my back to window and tried to go back to sleep.
"No, don't ignore me!"
Once again, I sat up and looked groggily around my room. I swear, I had just heard a gruff voice telling me not ignore it. And it had sounded almost as if it had come from…
"Get out of bed and get out here!" the cat growled. "You are in danger!"
I stared blankly at the cat. "Oh," I said. "I'm still asleep and dreaming." I put my head back down on the pillow.
"You stupid fuck, get up!" the cat barked, which is a word that I do not use lightly, given the context.
With a grunt of annoyance, I climbed out of bed and walked to my window. "This is not really happening," I said. "You are not real. I am dreaming. Cats do not talk."
The cat scoffed. "We've never talked to you," it said. "We've never had reason to, until now. Now hurry up and get out here. The mice are coming."
"The what?"
"The mice!" the cat cried. "Now hurry up; I'll explain later."
Well alright then. The mice. Of course. How silly of me. I guess my only real course of action at this point was to just follow along with the dream and see where it was going. I was bound to wake up eventually.
I crept out of the apartment as silently as I could, praying to whatever gods were listening that I didn't wake up my family. Soon, I was standing in the back alley, and the grey tomcat was trotting toward me.
"There's not much time," the cat said. "Our enemies are converging."
"Our enemies?" I asked.
"The mice," the cat said. "And the Serpentfolk as well."
"Sorry," I said. "Serpentfolk are involved now too?"
It was at this point that a crossbow bolt grazed my arm. I yelped and clutched the stinging cut in my limb, and stared in horror at the bolt embedded in the wall behind me.
My gaze traced its trajectory to a woman holding a crossbow and looking back at me with yellow, snakeline eyes.
"Oh," I said. "Serpentfolk."
And then I registered just how much the cut on my arm stung.
"Oh shit," I said out loud. This was not a dream.