I gradually awakened, my mind reeling, as if I had just been pulled through thick fog. My body was weighty, frozen to the marrow, and the air was dense and wet, near suffocating. Aching all over, as if I had remained still for so long, everything hurt. Everything around me was black, too black, and I could hardly make sense of anything. I saw poorly, thought slowly.
Then, I sensed it—a heavy weight above me, warm and familiar. It lay upon my chest, a reassuring pressure. I breathed out in relief. It was George. It had to be. The warmth, the steady weight, the orange glow. wait, the orange glow? Slowly, with hesitant fingers, my hand was above the thing. My fingers touched the creature. The texture shocked me.
It wasn’t soft, not even remotely. The skin was oily, nearly wet to the touch, and unaccountably cold. It had a stickiness to it, as if it weren’t living the way I expected it to be. I jerked my hand back, my gut knotting in response, but before I could fully respond, the creature let out that noise again—low, almost a purring vibration, deep in its chest. “pe.?? I blink more firmly, my breath racing. Desperately, I pushed my eyes wide open.
And I saw it.
The thing—it—was not my cat. The dim glow lit up its shape, and the horror of what it was hit me with the force of a freight train. My heart stuttered. My chest convulsed. I couldn’t breathe. Everything was wrong—its slippery, sticky hide, its cold throb, the way it rippled in the dim light.”.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
Instinctively, I screamed. “AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH, GET OFF OF ME!!!!”, The noise ripped from my throat, harsh and afraid, as I burst upright. My hands went out, flailing to push the creature off of me, slapping at it with both hands, pushing as hard as I could. The creature didn’t just slide off. It bounced. The object flew off of me like it was rubber, bouncing off with a weird, unnerving bounce, as if it were a volleyball. It hit the ground with an odd, jarring thud, its slimy body rolling and wobbling before it finally came to rest a few feet away.
The bounce was so sudden, so violent, that I fell back. My feet tripped on the rough surface, and I crashed down awkwardly, my lungs burning for air as I landed on the ground. My heart pounded inside my chest, my body shuddering involuntarily.
As I struggled to sit up, the beast made a low, purring noise, “peeeooooooooor!!!” but it was off—weak, almost taunting, like a warped copy of a cat’s purr. The sound echoed in the air, like a diseased hum.
I coughed, still panting, my hands on the floor as I pushed myself up, staring at the creature. It did not stir, only lay there, softly radiating, but that purr-like noise persisted, filling the black space with its unsettling beat.
Suddenly, without warning, the creature started to move, inching its way back toward me, its smooth, elastic body swaying from side to side in a nearly hypnotic rhythm. With each inch it inched closer, my skin crawled. The glow pulsed, brightening with each step, and the air seemed to thicken. My brain was shrieking for me to run from it, but my body was rooted in fear.
Get away from me!” I screamed, my voice shaking as fear set in. My heart was thundering so fiercely it seemed about to explode out of my ribcage.
I crawled backward, pulling myself across the bumpy ground, my hands and feet scrabbling for grip, but somehow the ground was moving beneath my feet. The creature, unmoving, moved closer.
And then I saw something. A razor-sharp, jagged rock next to me, close to where I had slipped, under the dark light. Instinctively, I picked it up with both hands, swinging it back as hard as I could. The rock soared through the air, straight at the beast.
For an instant, I was sure I’d struck it. But rather than the creature retreating or being injured, it did something utterly unnatural. It. hurled the rock back at me.
It whipped back like a rubber band, the stone flying through the air with awful velocity. I had no time to defend myself. The rock brushed against my left hand, cutting deeply into my skin.
Pain erupted in my hand, and I stared down at the blood flowing from the gash. Dark red blood saturated my palm and fell onto the earth, collecting in the rocky earth.
I couldn’t catch my breath. Seeing my own blood, so much of it, spun me around. The blood, the pain, the creature. all of it conflated.
My vision narrowed, the borders of my vision going dark as the world whirled around me. The last thing I could see before the blackness consumed me was the creature, still inching closer, its pale, glowing body sliding ever nearer. Its purring noise seemed to fill the entire room, and I couldn’t get away from it.
Then, my world goes black again.
