Jason Andresen (order #1578489) - Jump page for Jubei

merely stalked forward into view, seemingly unconcerned. What
I saw then made my stomach knot and my blood turn to ice.
The cloak was thrown off to reveal a nightmarish creature,
a naked, inhumanly muscular and hairless man, his face a grotesque
mask of insane amusement, his mouth far too broad,
full of far too many teeth. His skin was crawling with disturbing
tattoos that writhed and twisted, and as we watched in
stunned horror, his skin peeled away from his body wetly, to
stand on its own, hollow and smiling. The camp immediately
became a confusion of screaming panic, as guards and travelers
alike fled in blind terror. The guard next to me became
hysterical, and it was all I could do to prevent him from running
and hopefully defend him from Gristle and Flay, should
they choose to attack. As I watched helplessly, the grymkin
began to hunt my fellow travelers.
Flay moved with the horrifyingly swift and jerky motions
of a marionette, leaping upon a guard and “swallowing” her, his
skin fitting over her fear-wracked body like a glove. The ghastly
realization that she was still entirely aware occurred to me when
I looked into her horrified eyes. Sickeningly, as Flay began to
89
Gristle & Flay
move, he began to make her move in step with him. Gristle
clutched a struggling merchant in his skinless fists, his twisted
grin growing broader as Flay cavorted closer, still fitted like a
sheath around the female guard. Flay reached down with the
guard’s hand and retrieved a dagger dropped in the panic, and
then began to slowly cut up the merchant bound in Gristle’s
iron grasp. The guard, aware of the horror she was inflicting
from within Flay, wailed piteously, her cries drowned out only
by the agonized screams of the merchant. When the merchant
was close to death, Gristle’s broad mouth opened impossibly
wide, swallowing the mewling unfortunate, the fiend’s stomach
stretching to accommodate a meal little smaller than its
devourer. The merchant’s weakly twitching form could be seen
in horrifying silhouette through the skinless flesh of Gristle’s
stomach. Flay began to constrict around the form of his unwilling
“puppet,” crushing flesh and bone until the female guard’s
whimpers ceased. With a lurch, he then peeled free from her
ruined form, and the horrific pair danced gleefully back into
the darkness beyond the camp.
My travels have brought me into contact with many beasts
Jason Andresen (order #1578489) 9