for the spotlight to do that very thing.
Mike forgets to breathe as the whole tent flattens and the front folds back like a hood, exposing a pale white triangular shape that might be an angular head with blind, boiled egg eyes. Long thin jaws with curved and curiously blunt yellow teeth snap at the clouds of breath that spume from its narrow throat, and Mike gets another whiff of methane, or perhaps sulfur. The vellum walls of the tent rise up and out before collapsing to the saturated ground with a splash as if abandoning the idea of flight, like kites in a day that has lost its breath. The wings, heavily veined and shaped like those he has seen in illustrations of dragons, now lie flat at right angles to its body, and he can see small thorny nicotine-colored protrusions along the ridge of the wing closest to him. In the center of the creature’s mass, beneath its knuckled spine, the skin ripples as something moves beneath it, the same arachnid-like thing he glimpsed in silhouette, the thing that killed his wife. The bulbous light, the lure, pulsates as if in warning, or alarm. For a moment, the cow skull-like head of the creature seems to writhe in protest or in pain, its wings beating clumsily and uselessly at the ground, spattering Mike with rain water. And though he can’t be certain of anything given his pedestrian knowledge of such matters, a suspicion floats up through the murk of horror in Mike’s mind: He is not looking at one creature, but two, one of them feeding off the other, controlling it. A parasite and its host.
Before he can discover what that parasite might be advising its host to do next, Mike braces himself and allows all the terror, the grief, and the rage to come rushing up from the core of him. The resulting maelstrom of adrenaline is as unknown to him as a foreign language being whispered into his ear, as alien as his enemy, and with a lunatic scream, he closes the distance between them with a series of ungainly steps, and throws himself on top of the flailing creature. He is immediately struck by the fetid stench of the thing and the repulsive feel of its skin against his own. It is like nylon coated in glue and as he scrambles for purchase, tries to dig his nails into its skin, it thrashes beneath him. Struggling not to slide or be thrown free of the creature, thereby losing the only advantage he might get, he brings the walking stick up high, his gaze fixated on the agitated movement in the center of the creature’s mass, the engine fueling this horror, the spider-thing that tore his wife from him, and, teeth clenched, brings the stick down with every ounce of strength he has left. It connects with a satisfying crunch, and the skin above it rips, allowing the light to shine through. It is pulsating faster now, and darkening to an orangey-red. The parasite does not make a sound, but wrenches itself away, which has the simultaneous effect of forcing the larger creature to do the same. And when it does, the wing to which Mike clings pulls away, revealing the ground underneath, and any sense of victory he might have felt is quashed as his grip begins to slacken and he begins to slide. Because there is no ground underneath, only a deep dark hole, the hole he suspects with mounting horror is the place from which this creature—both of them—came, their ecology forced aboveground perhaps by their own conflict, or hunger, or by man. Such questions will never be answered for Mike, or anyone else, unless these monstrosities grow bolder still and force themselves out further into the world.
He tries to push himself free of the creature, tries to get his feet beneath him, but this, he suspects, is part of the creature’s design, a backup plan in case of attack. It has been here for however long, squatting over the hole, safeguarding it, staying close to the only form of egress that makes any sense , while luring in idiot humans.
And how like an idiot Mike feels now as h e continues to slide, the
Mike forgets to breathe as the whole tent flattens and the front folds back like a hood, exposing a pale white triangular shape that might be an angular head with blind, boiled egg eyes. Long thin jaws with curved and curiously blunt yellow teeth snap at the clouds of breath that spume from its narrow throat, and Mike gets another whiff of methane, or perhaps sulfur. The vellum walls of the tent rise up and out before collapsing to the saturated ground with a splash as if abandoning the idea of flight, like kites in a day that has lost its breath. The wings, heavily veined and shaped like those he has seen in illustrations of dragons, now lie flat at right angles to its body, and he can see small thorny nicotine-colored protrusions along the ridge of the wing closest to him. In the center of the creature’s mass, beneath its knuckled spine, the skin ripples as something moves beneath it, the same arachnid-like thing he glimpsed in silhouette, the thing that killed his wife. The bulbous light, the lure, pulsates as if in warning, or alarm. For a moment, the cow skull-like head of the creature seems to writhe in protest or in pain, its wings beating clumsily and uselessly at the ground, spattering Mike with rain water. And though he can’t be certain of anything given his pedestrian knowledge of such matters, a suspicion floats up through the murk of horror in Mike’s mind: He is not looking at one creature, but two, one of them feeding off the other, controlling it. A parasite and its host.
Before he can discover what that parasite might be advising its host to do next, Mike braces himself and allows all the terror, the grief, and the rage to come rushing up from the core of him. The resulting maelstrom of adrenaline is as unknown to him as a foreign language being whispered into his ear, as alien as his enemy, and with a lunatic scream, he closes the distance between them with a series of ungainly steps, and throws himself on top of the flailing creature. He is immediately struck by the fetid stench of the thing and the repulsive feel of its skin against his own. It is like nylon coated in glue and as he scrambles for purchase, tries to dig his nails into its skin, it thrashes beneath him. Struggling not to slide or be thrown free of the creature, thereby losing the only advantage he might get, he brings the walking stick up high, his gaze fixated on the agitated movement in the center of the creature’s mass, the engine fueling this horror, the spider-thing that tore his wife from him, and, teeth clenched, brings the stick down with every ounce of strength he has left. It connects with a satisfying crunch, and the skin above it rips, allowing the light to shine through. It is pulsating faster now, and darkening to an orangey-red. The parasite does not make a sound, but wrenches itself away, which has the simultaneous effect of forcing the larger creature to do the same. And when it does, the wing to which Mike clings pulls away, revealing the ground underneath, and any sense of victory he might have felt is quashed as his grip begins to slacken and he begins to slide. Because there is no ground underneath, only a deep dark hole, the hole he suspects with mounting horror is the place from which this creature—both of them—came, their ecology forced aboveground perhaps by their own conflict, or hunger, or by man. Such questions will never be answered for Mike, or anyone else, unless these monstrosities grow bolder still and force themselves out further into the world.
He tries to push himself free of the creature, tries to get his feet beneath him, but this, he suspects, is part of the creature’s design, a backup plan in case of attack. It has been here for however long, squatting over the hole, safeguarding it, staying close to the only form of egress that makes any sense , while luring in idiot humans.
And how like an idiot Mike feels now as h e continues to slide, the
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