This shit isn’t real — it can’t be real, but the way his jaw cracks when it’s forced past its limits is disgustingly familiar, like a rupture beneath the skin. It fills his mouth with its ropy thickness, pouring itself down inside him, and as he chokes against it Billy can feel it twitch and pulse against the tightening of his throat. It’s fucking his mouth, and it only withdraws long enough for him to puke up his dinner before it shoves back in. Not even enough time for him to scream. The toes of his shoes drag against the midnight dirt.

The smell that fills his nose is overwhelming and acrid, all come and chlorine. Whatever it is, it’s all meat, it’s flesh and blood and bitter sludge that comes away against his skin wherever it touches. It’s marking him, or else it’s shedding its skin. Shedding its coat, like a rotting limb starting to lose its skin from the decay — the thought of that makes Billy jerk and twitch against his restraints, but it’s not him thinking it. It’s not like he has long to dwell on it before those things entangling him — vines, ropes, tentacles, whatever the fuck they’re supposed to be — start snaking their way through his shredded clothes, through the rags of his favorite pair of jeans. He was supposed to be getting laid tonight, for Christ’s sake, he was supposed to be down at the Motel 6 out off of Cornwallis splitting Mrs. Wheeler’s snatch —

One of those rough-slick tendrils forces itself between Billy’s legs, and he can’t even scream. He can only gag. Whatever it is, it shows no mercy — stretching him, piercing him. Not it: the thing is more like a he, and it’s laughing at him as it splits Billy in two.