…her head snapped up and her eyes flew open. Where am I, she had time to think before something large and very non-human encircled her throat. The scream that had been building there was immediately cut off. Her arms flailed wildly as she tried to get away. Its grip was so strong, so unstoppable. In an attempt to get free, she dug her nails in to the thing- for it certainly was a thing- and met nothing. It was as if its body absorbed her very fingers. There was no pain, no numbness, no feeling, her fingers simply ceased to exist. Her mind was overwhelmed with the need to understand what was happening and she felt it beginning to slip with its lack of ability to do so.

She yanked her hand back only to discover she no longer had her fingers. Again, there was no pain, no blood, they were simply gone. Embracing the gravity of her situation, Jill at last found her voice. Screaming over and over in to the quiet sunny afternoon, she was ruthlessly torn from the sanctity of her steaming hot tub and thrown to the grass just beyond the perimeter of her patio. She had time to look back and watch her attacker as it approached.

What her eyes took in, her mind could not accept. It stood about six and a half feet tall, but it had no legs to speak of. Instead, the lower portion of its body consisted of bright purple vascular fibers, nine of them, each about five feet long. Tube like tentacles of every color and length ringed its middle like a kind of disgusting wet grass skirt. Jill’s eyes traveled upward towards what had to be its face, but resembled no face she’d ever seen. No horror movie she could recall could come close to the monstrosity moving towards her now.

The remaining foot and a half of it was a deep rust brown color, flecked throughout with bright gold, and vaguely shaped like a large horn. Some twenty dark openings, each about an inch in diameter, flexed and glistened in the bright sun. Small and disgusting bright purple tongues jerked moistly and eagerly in each. God, please no, please, this can’t be it, Jill thought. But she knew that it was. Four long arms and two shorter ones extended from the very top of it and they reached out for her now. Like the rest of the monster’s body, these, too were brilliantly colored, though they pulsed with fleshy bits just beneath the clear membrane covering them..

All she could absorb were the damn colors. How wrong that such beauty could exist with such horror. As it at last made contact, Jill had one final thought. Where was everyone? It was New Year’s Day, everyone should be home. College bowl games and hangovers, right? Screaming at the top of her lungs should have brought, at the very least, her next door neighbors. They had to be home, she’d gone to their house for the party last night, so she knew they weren’t out of town. In fact, she realized, it had been completely silent from the time she had stepped outside. What was going on?

And then it descended upon her with such zest, such hunger, with such whole and absolute sick eagerness, she no longer had any thoughts at all.