I let go of it instantly.

  My hands released the pair of boobs I'd grabbed as if my skin had suddenly caught fire, and I scrambled backward on my elbows, my spine scraping painfully against the stone floor. My heart was pounding so violently I thought it might rupture, my breath coming in short, panicked bursts as I tried to put space between myself and whatever had crawled into my cave.

  "Goddamnit!" I muttered hoarsely, my voice shaking. "Fuck—fuck—"

  I couldn't even be safe in a damn cave.

  The thing rose fully into view, and my blood ran cold.

  Its upper half was humanoid—disturbingly so. From the waist up, it looked almost like a woman carved from pale stone: smooth skin, a graceful torso. That was where its beauty stopped. It had unnaturally long arms that ended in fingers that might as well have been cws. It would have been beautiful—manageably beautiful, like an arachnid I had read about in fiction—if not for what I already knew lurked where its face should have been.

  And the lower half—

  My stomach twisted.

  Its lower body was insectoid, an obscene fusion of human and arthropod. Eight limbs extended from its sides, but instead of spider legs, they resembled elongated human legs—jointed wrong, bending in ways flesh had no right to bend. They moved with unnatural coordination, gripping the rock as if gravity itself was optional.

  Its fingers flexed slowly.

  Each one ended in a sharp, cw-like tip coated in some bck, oily substance that caught the faint light and gleamed wetly even in the dark.

  Then it shrieked.

  The sound ripped through the cave like a physical force. It wasn't just loud—it vibrated. The noise smmed into my skull and rattled my brain, a high-pitched shriek yered with something deeper, something definitely wrong. My muscles locked instantly, my body betraying me as if every nerve had short-circuited at once.

  I couldn't move.

  The creature raised its left cwed hand and brought it down toward me.

  Something drove me to action—be it panic, adrenaline, or desperation—and snapped something loose from whatever the monster's shriek had done to me. My body obeyed again just in time. I rolled clumsily to the side, my shoulder smming into stone as the cws struck where I'd been.

  The rock didn't crack.

  The creature's fingers sank into the cave wall as easily as a hot knife through butter, stone parting around them with a sickening sound. Dust and debris rained down as it tore free, leaving deep gouges behind.

  I scrambled to my feet, vision swimming, and snatched up the stick I'd gathered earlier. I hadn't sharpened it—hadn't thought I'd need to.

  That was a mistake.

  I took a stance, training coming in naturally, and pnned to drive my spear through its chest as the thing lunged again, but the weapon may as well have been air. Its other hand moved too fast to track, striking me across the chest with brutal force.

  I smmed into the cave wall.

  Pain exploded behind my eyes, stars bursting across my vision as the air was knocked from my lungs. Before I could recover, something cmped around my leg.

  I screamed as the creature seized my ankle and ran.

  It dragged me out of the cave and toward the waterfall, my back and shoulders smming against stone as I filed uselessly. The world became a blur of rushing water and jagged rock. Somehow—impossibly—it clung to the cliff face, those malformed legs gripping stone with terrifying ease as it leapt from surface to surface.

  I dangled upside down, held by one foot, my head narrowly missing rock as we plunged downward.

  It followed the rocks along the side of the waterfall, using outcroppings as stepping stones, then unched itself across open water and into the forest beyond.

  The forest swallowed us whole.

  The canopy was so thick it blotted out the sky entirely, plunging everything into a darkness deeper than night. The air here felt heavier—oppressive, charged with something rotten.

  That's when I saw them again.

  The glowing blobs.

  They were pstered across tree trunks and branches, pulsing faintly with an ominous red light that illuminated the area just enough to see the horror surrounding us. Animals stood frozen in various positions, their bodies turned to stone, faces locked in expressions of terror—if animals even had such expressions. Others hung suspended in thick webbing, wrapped tight in pale cocoons, pus leaking out of their bodies.

  I felt myself being hurled.

  The world spun as I was thrown through the air, and before I smmed into anything, I felt something attach to my limbs, my arms and legs spyed helplessly. Before I could even scream, something struck me—hot, adhesive, fast.

  It hardened instantly.

  My limbs were pinned to the stone as I hung in the middle of the cave entrance next to the cocoons, immobilized by a thick, pale substance that clung like living cement. I thrashed violently, muscles screaming as I tried to tear free, but it didn't budge.

  Panic surged, raw and suffocating.

  The creature approached slowly.

  I didn't want to look, but I couldn't stop myself.

  As it drew closer, its torso shifted, something in its lower body opening—an image I wish I hadn't seen. It was an organ that, when it opened, let me guess where the binding came from, and it all happened in a way that made my stomach lurch. Another wave of that binding substance sprayed outward, reinforcing my restraints, sealing me in pce completely.

  I was trapped.

  It loomed over me, its malformed head lowering until its face was inches from mine. The upper half was still wrong—split, distorted, like fungus growing where eyes should be—but the lower face was horrifyingly human.

  It smiled.

  Jagged teeth gleamed in the red light.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing myself, certain that this was the moment I would be turned to stone, that death would finally come.

  It didn't.

  Instead, its mouth opened far wider than it should have been, stretching unnaturally as something dark and flexible slid free.

  A tentacle.

  It shed toward my face.

  I cmped my mouth shut and screamed through my teeth, thrashing as hard as I could. The creature hissed and reached up, its cws pressing against my jaw, forcing my mouth open inch by inch.

  I fought it with everything I had.

  That's when it hurt me.

  There was a sudden, blinding fsh of pain—white-hot and absolute. I felt something tear, felt warmth flood my chin and neck as my scream turned wet and broken.

  Then the tentacle forced its way down my throat.

  My scream died instantly.

  I gagged and convulsed as something thick and invasive slid deep inside me, pumping something foul and burning into my body. My chest heaved violently, but I couldn't breathe properly—each breath came out in shallow, broken gasps.

  Disgust and agony blurred together as my body betrayed me, spasming uncontrolbly.

  Then something changed.

  A pressure bloomed inside me, deep and wrong. My abdomen began to swell as if something were expanding beneath my skin. Heat flooded my veins, unbearable and relentless, like my blood had been repced with acid.

  I felt like I was on fire.

  My vision went red.

  Then bck.

  I screamed again—or tried to—but no sound came. My eyes burned, pressure building behind them until they burst, and the world disappeared entirely.

  Blindness.

  My breathing became ragged, each inhale a desperate struggle. I stayed like that for hours—burning, swelling, breaking—unable to die.

  I wanted death so badly it hurt.

  But it never came.

  I drifted in and out of consciousness, pain dragging me back every time I thought I might escape. My body changed in ways I couldn't see but could feel. Boils erupted across my skin. My insides twisted and shifted as I was repurposed into something else.

  A container.

  An incubator.

  I regretted everything.

  I regretted trying to escape. Being born. Accepting that card from Mr. Adeyemi. Coming home for Christmas.

  Maybe things would have been different if I'd just spent my holiday like my brother at my university hostel—gone out with my friends or something.

  By the time sunlight filtered weakly through the forest canopy and faded again, I was gone. Not dead—just empty. I couldn't live, and I couldn't die.

  I felt movement under my skin and inside my body. The boils burst as various things burst out of me, and I began to shake as if having a seizure. I heard clicking sounds near me.

  I felt movement.

  Small, skittering shapes crawled across my body, their legs brushing against my skin. Blind and helpless, I had no idea how many there were or what they were.

  I prayed they would kill me.

  Eventually, they did.

  Pain fred one st time as teeth tore into me, and then—finally—everything went dark.