Join My Cult - Original Falcon Press

of a lock beginning to turn. Time slowed down, forming knots in her
stomach.
This is your dream. Make the intruder go away. Make him disappear.
Jesus gathered her will and concentrated, imagining the intruder vanishing.
Keys still turned in the lock, and she thought she could hear the
muted scratching the rest of the keychain made as it swung against the
rust-blistered door. Doubt intervened, and broke her concentration as
soon as it had begun. The world does what it pleases whether or not I
sleep, it seems. Quickly, she made her escape through the second set of
doors and down the stairs behind them.
“So much for lucidity,” she sighed.
Steam hissed ahead, leaking from one of the insulated pipes running
off into the concrete-lined gloom. Jesus crept forward carefully on the
crunchy floor… Crunchy? She swept the beam of her red light down to
shine on the floor. Little white sticks littered the floor, and round balls.
Rolling one of the balls over with the toe of her boot, she was suddenly
looking into tiny, empty eye sockets. Rat bones? Jesus. She smiled to
herself at the internal pun, then pushed on. Something was dreadfully
wrong here for the floor to be this strewn with rodent remains. The corridor,
filled with fog from the leaking pipes, presently sloped downward,
and the floor became less crispy as the rat remnants gave way to black,
slimy water.
Above her head, safe in its darkness, the Leviathan waited. Minute
hairs on its wet surface vibrated to the disturbance Jesus caused in the
air. As much as it could, it anticipated her arrival. Glands emptied into its
looped digestive system, disgorging their numbing poisons. While it did
take its nourishment from the flesh of its prey, the Leviathan savored the
terror of its victims more than the life they provided. Anesthetized, the
prey could be kept alive, while other enzymes broke down and digested
the still-living tissues. It always saved the eyes for last—that way its
subtle psychic meal of the victims last moments could be viewed through
their own eyes. If it had a human mouth, it would have grinned like a
fool at the very thought. Pseudopods rippled from the surface of its
bloated sac of a body, and began to search through the darkness for the
prey that would prove far more entertaining than the sickly rats it was
used to…
The stagnant water deepened as Jesus waded further. Something up
ahead drew her, and despite the slippery bottom, she all but charged
ahead. Through the fog, she thought she could see movement. As she
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