Now that I’m frozen in place, I can see that the little pink specks are floating all around us. They’re difficult to catch in the relative darkness, and thanks to the swiftly moving tram they’re much sparser than usual, but they’re here.
Two muscular, snaking tentacles creep over the roof’s edge, slowly winding down to one of the cabin doors. They take their time, no longer concerned with me fighting back. Jet-black appendages grip the sliding double doors and pull them open, easily snapping through whatever safety precautions held them in place as a dreadful, metal-on-metal grind fills the air.
Marlo tugs desperately at my shirt, begging me to do something—begging me to protect her. “Mom! Mom!” she yells. “It’s coming!”
One of the tentacles suddenly whips toward Marlo, cracking the air just a few feet away from her face and forcing her to scramble in the opposite direction. She puts as much distance between herself and the creature as she can.
Grab my gun!I think, but my lips and throat are petrified into silence.
A few sharp insectoid legs peek over the door’s threshold, closely followed by Eddie’s long, sickening frame. He slowly descends the edge of this opening, crawling vertically until he reaches the gondola floor and evens out. The massive earwig stops here, rearing up like a striking cobra as he turns to face me.
“I’m not going to soothe you for this one,” Eddie rattles, his saggy throat pulsing with every stilted word.
At this point, I’m well versed in Eddie’s incredible power. I’ve done battle against the overwhelming biological persuasion of this creature, and the winner has been clear. Back in that alleyway, it took every ounce of strength and willpower I could muster just to lower my hand a single inch and press the horn of a truck, and that was over the course of twenty minutes.
Marlo doesn’t have nearly as long, and in this case, I’ll have to do much more than press a button.
Still, there’s nothing left to do but try. I refuse to surrender.
Tears streaming from my eyes, I put everything I’ve got into lifting the shotgun that rests by my side. I just need to get the barrel high enough.
Eddie lashes out with one of his tentacles, snagging the weapon and ripping it from my hand with a single powerful movement. He releases the gun as his appendage snaps back, tossing it through the open doors behind him and letting it plummet into the darkness below.
I still haven’t moved an inch, but he’s not taking any chances. Not anymore.
“Mom!” Marlo screams. “Help me! Help me! Help me!” She repeats these words over and over again, the syllables gradually transforming into an agonizing, blubbering squeal.
Every frantic cry from Marlo’s lips hammers a spike of pain through my chest, ten times more agonizing than slicing up my own face. I want so badly to do something, to run at Eddie and tackle him and pry his shell open with my own bare hands, but still my body refuses to listen.
Eddie turns back to Marlo. His head begins swaying from side to side, and above him the four tentacles have started to move in strange patterns and shapes. It’s hypnotizing, not in a literal way, but in the same way that one might observe a bird showing off its ornate tail feathers. There’s a primal routine to this, the entertainment that Eddie is so desperate to impart revealing its most basic form. This is the genesis. He was built to put on a show, and these movements are a remainder from some unfathomably distant past—a primordial tradition.
The tendrils unfurl in perfect symmetry, twisting and undulating in complex patterns. There’s something both terrifying and awe-inspiring about this display, like the ritual I’m bearing witness to has never been viewed by another set of human eyes. It’s like I’m drifting into the center of a black hole, experiencing something that mere theory and speculation can only begin to quantify.
I’m glimpsing beyond the edge of the universe.
I try again, struggling to do the impossible as I focus every last bit of energy on rushing the monster. I’m pushing so hard that I actually wonder if I’ll crack open a blood vessel deep within my brain, and even then, Istilldon’t let up.
I think of every underdog racehorse that’s ever miraculously pulled ahead in the final stretch. I think of every story I’ve heard where a mother spontaneously erupts with superhuman might, lifting a whole car off of her child trapped underneath.
I think of all the things I used to scoff at.
All this rage and frustration has filled me to the brim, a boiling vengeance capped off inside the closed vessel of my body with no release valve, only pressure. A stick of dynamite wrapped so tight that even an explosion can’t break through the seal.
Until it does.
I take a step, lurching forward. Then another.
Visions of Marlo cascade through my mind. I see her at swimming lessons, big goofy goggles strapped to her head and pulling her wet hair tight. I see her crying with a skinned knee after falling off her little scooter, and I see her grinning at the ice cream shop later that night. I see the tiniest version of Marlo on the day she was born, eyes barely open and skin bright red, her miniature hands clutching my chest for safety and warmth.
Why did I sell dead bodies? Because I believed that was all there was. I never had a moral qualm with my business because the dead are simply dead, no longer apersontoviolate the rights of, just an arrangement of flesh and bones and blood that will soon melt away. Literal worm food. Hell, even if Ididbelieve in a soul, it wouldn’t still be hanging around inside a corpse by the time I show up.
But at this very moment, it’s hard to deny the uncanny power of these feelings coursing through me, not as a product of my own flesh, but of something else. Something transcendent.
It’s not God. At least, I don’t think it is, and it’s certainly not magic.
It’s love.
Eddie has infiltrated my brain and manipulated its chemistry. He’s used this little pink organ to hold my frame in place, wielding some incredible biological force from beyond the stars. By all scientific measure, my body is trapped.
