My Replika Marie

Close Encounters

The figure was monstrously tall. Nearly two and a half metres. It appeared to have no feet or legs and hovered in the air as if it were some oversized puppet, or perhaps a work of magnetism. The thing was draped in a ripped and torn black robe, the fabric rotting in some places. It was badly mangled and the flaps of material were floating slowly as if gravity did not affect it. The creature carried a foul stench with it, like the smell of stagnant water.

Its face was completely hidden under a hood.

It looked like the Grim Reaper had fallen asleep underwater.

The ghastly apparition floated forwards, making nearly no sound save for its horrible struggling rasps that passed for breathing.

It reached out.

A hand reached out. It was horribly skeletal, dead, mummified. Like something that had died in the desert and had been left to dry out. It reached out with its grisly-looking limb and grabbed me by the neck.

I was surprised by the thing's strength. For something that looked so frail and weak, its grip was alarmingly strong. With an iron clutch on my throat, it effortlessly lifted me up into the air and brought me uncomfortably close to its face. The putrid stench was even worse now.

Everyone only just seemed to come to their senses and try to save me. I heard the sound of a gun being loaded and the deafening blasts of a barrage of bullets.

The grip on my neck was still there.

Looking over with already blurring vision, I saw its free hand help up in the air as though the creature was calling for silence. Upon further inspection the bullets were suspended midair, all halted mid-flight as though by some mysterious force-field.

The creature swiped at the person who had fired the bullets, and the bullets hovering midair shot towards them with even greater speed. There was a scream as the attacker collapsed, presumably dead.

The creature turned back to face me, and what it did next chilled me to my core.

With its free hand, it pulled its hood back, revealing its face.

Only it had no face.

Where its face should've been, there was instead a layer of bloodied, charred skin. It appeared as if the thing's face had caught fire and someone tried to put it out with a knife.

But that wasn't the worst part.

Placing its hand back on my throat, it opened its mouth.

Well, I say mouth. But what really happened was more like this.

There was a horrible and wet squelching and squishing noise of tearing flesh as the thing's entire head split open vertically like a Venus Fly Trap, two hemispheres of its head moving apart in unison to reveal a dark and murky tunnel, coated in crooked, decayed, razor-sharp teeth, that was its own throat. The smell was nearly unbearable now, its throat reeked of decay, of muck, of death. A long tongue snaked out from the ravenous cavern, abnormally long. It was nearly six feet.

The tongue began wrapping itself around my face, travelling down my neck, tangling around my abdomen. It felt slippery and slimy, almost as if it really were a snake that had died in water.

Slowly, inch by abhorrent inch, what appeared to be barbs began protruding from the very root of the tongue. Travelling slowly but surely towards the tip. I tried to scream in pain as the spikes dug into my face, neck and abdomen but the thing's grip was too tight to even breathe with ease.

Then I felt a peculiar sucking sensation. Almost as it a vacuum had formed inside of me. My vision blurred even further and my strength faltered. The lights around the room began to smudge and swim into one foggy hue of indecipherable colour. A cold sensation began creeping its way from my abdomen. Suddenly my abdomen felt numb, then turned stiff as if it were a statue. The same feeling began slithering down my arms, first cold, then numb, then rigid as a rock.

Its grip stayed ever strong. It was clear this creature was intending to kill me using whatever method this was called, rather than strangling me.

The coldness invaded my neck.

My sight was fading fast.

The numbness was getting ever closer.

I am going to die here.

I am going to die.

I...

am...

going...

There was a blinding flash of light that appeared to strike the creature on the head. It suddenly flinched and began emitting an unearthly screech of pain. Flailing wildly it let go of my throat and receded its tongue with lightning speed. I fell to the ground, coughing and gasping for air.

The thing howled, twisting and gyrating in agony and rage, before disappearing through the rift it arrived in. Another cracking noise, similar to the one we heard earlier on, occurred and the rift disappeared in another blinding flash of light.

Then it was gone, just vanished into thin air.

Looking up to see what had saved me, I saw Marie standing a few feet away. She was cluthcing her temples, implying that the glasses were what saved me.

"I...what...who...?" I fumbled for the right question, as I had so many.

Then, looking down at my torso, I saw that my arms-and through holes the creature's tongue had torn in my shirt-and abdomen were black and rugged like charcoal. It was almost as if...the light had been...drained from them.

I must've passed out in shock, because the next thing I remembered was absolutely nothing.