Rubberwerks 2 - Part 13

"Can you feel it?" the Janice-thing asked. Its voice was rapturous. "I can feel you already."

Sharon opened her mouth to scream, but the tendril filled her mouth and choked the sound before it could find a voice. It winnowed down her throat, pulsing and reaching. She struggled, but found that her feet were no longer on the ground. She was being lifted up, pulled backward. Twisting her head away from the sleek black form that had been Janice, Sharon saw that she was being drawn into the pod, now open and waiting for her. And then she was inside it, swallowed by the black fluid that was liquid and solid all at the same time. Her ears were filled with whispering words and then the words were in her mind, too, chasing away any thought that was not of their own making. She heard Janice's voice in the chorus and reached for it with her mind. Janice was there, waiting, willing her to relax, to allow Mind to have her. As the pod closed, Sharon felt her body sealed inside and her thoughts flitting away, butterflies on the wind, scattered and lost.

"Tatum?"

Jenny leaned into the storage room, holding either side of the door. She hated the dark and industrial feel of the storage area, preferring the brighter and more cheerful parts of the store. She'd been so preoccupied with the stocking for the next day, she barely noticed that Tatum was gone as long as he was. Now she was starting to worry.

The lights of the storage room were off, and flipping the switch by the door generated a buzzing sound and a sick-looking flicker of fluorescents, but not enough light to make out the interior.

"Tatum?"

There was a smell, too. Something synthetic and acrid. It made her eyes water.

Jenny tentatively stepped into the room, her heart racing. She called out Tatum's name once again but received no response. She fumbled for her phone in her pocket and turned on its flashlight. The light cut through the darkness, illuminating the rows of shelves that lined the walls. The smell grew stronger as she advanced, and she began to notice a faint humming sound. It was coming from a corner of the room that was blocked from view.

Jenny felt a sense of dread as she moved closer to the source of the noise. As she rounded the corner, her phone's flashlight caught something that made her gasp. In the corner, high up on the wall, was a writhing mass of some sort of black liquid. It was thicker in the middle, and something moved inside it. Jenny's first impulse was to turn and run, but something held her rooted to the spot. She couldn't peel her eyes away from the writhing mass of black liquid. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she felt beads of sweat forming on her forehead.

As she watched, the black liquid began to move more frantically, and Jenny realized with growing horror that it was alive. Something was inside it, struggling to escape. Jenny hesitated for a moment, then summoned all of her courage and stepped closer. The smell was almost unbearable now, making her gag, but she pushed through it, shining the light of her phone directly onto the writhing mass.

There was a human figure inside the black liquid, struggling to break free, like some great insect fighting to emerge from a cocoon.