I'm flipping through the pages of a book. The first four chapters I've already read. Every one is about dragons. I pull open the book to the last chunk, peel it open, and see a colossal sphere of water. Huge, a small planetoid stuck on a shallow ocean. Rivulets of fluid crackling down the side. Massive green tentacles fused to the edge. Cthulhuoid. I'm on top.

So is Ricky Schroeder, stumbling backwards from something behind me, screaming, his face contorted and ugly. ZACARFA EDIT. It sounds like an operations code -- I'm probably expected to phone it in.

Ricky tumbles down the side of the living sphere, a staticky puppet, bad video game physics. I'm down here with him now. He's being propelled backwards through the shallow muck. I see a thin knotty tentacle erupt from the neck of his cheap suit, dissolving his head. Scaly green oatmeal like dog vomit sludges down his body, his fingers jerking outward, curling up, his sleeves sad little stovepipes stuck to his jacket.

In a waterlogged graveyard, hundreds of these bodies propped crazily against shabby tombstones, jerking as the tentacles animate them, a forest of dead idiots. I know I'm not ready.