Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 55551 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 278(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55551 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 278(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
“The first one of you to touch me is going to cry,” I tell them. “Just so you know.”
They look at one another, snarling as they get a little more excited. There’s only one of me, and there’s a whole lot of them. They can’t share me. There’s not even enough to take a little nibble of me each, and they all want a great big bite.
“Do you want to be fucked first or eaten first?”
I’m surprised any of them are trying to intimidate me verbally when they have so much physical threat to bring to bear, but I suppose terrible males of all species like to run the gamut of abusive techniques. Maybe they like the taste of fear. They’re going to be disappointed if that’s the case.
“If you can work out a way to fuck me after you’ve eaten me, be my guest. Idiot.”
Some of the saurians enjoy that quip. The laughter becomes a little mocking in nature, which makes the purple and green behemoth with the swept back fringe of bone on the back of his head angrier and angrier.
He lunges for me, arms outstretched, fingers replete with claws that extend as he throws himself at me. There’s a brief moment in which everything slows down. Time becomes a thick trickle of actions coming one after the other, freeze frame to freeze frame. I don’t have to react yet. I have plenty of time. As he hurls himself across the bar, and the other saurians start to move as well in a big tableau of vicious, hungry muscle, I slide my hand down my hip to my thigh. It’s a very small movement, and that’s why I don’t need much time to make it.
The universe is full of amazing things. But it is also full of terrible things. One of them occupies a particular slot in my suit near my hip. It’s technically a fish, but it’s a very dry, very flat little fish, so dry and flat and small that one can carry it around like a credit card. Some people say it’s an incredible source of protein. But it’s much more than that. So much more.
I chose this seat because the table next to it has a lot of half-finished drinks on it. I slip the card out of my pocket and drop it into the nearest tankard. The Chaos Fish prefers water, but it’ll work in any kind of liquid.
There is a sound that I can only describe as pure hydration and chemical reaction. The tankard shatters, the table it was on breaks. I scramble away as the Chaos Fish emerges from its dormant state in an instant. I don’t want to be between pure anarchy and its prey.
The Chaos Fish expands to over one thousand times its initial size in an instant and starts chomping with piranha-sharp teeth. Chaos Fish don’t really care what they’re biting. They’re just basically angry. Furious, really. See, the Chaos Fish is born with a deep and abiding sense that something is very wrong and very unfair about life in general, and it seeks to undo that wrong by biting the hell out of it.
I don’t think anybody in this bar has ever met a Chaos Fish before. They’re making its acquaintance real fucking well now, though. They’re learning all about the feeding habits of the creature firsthand.
The Chaos Fish isn’t a fish at all. It’s more like a leviathan water bear. Some people don’t know what a water bear looks like. Let’s just say it’s a beastly, sickly, slate-gray looking thing, with gills and tentacles, and a big round mouth right in the middle of its seemingly eyeless face. It’s somewhat cute at certain angles, though it’s currently screaming loudly with a round mouth full of teeth, teeth that don’t go up and down and aren’t attached to gums and jaws. Instead, they emerge from practically every single surface of the interior of its mouth.
They have very stubby little legs with quite cute heinous claws attached, which means they don’t move super fast in terms of running. But this is an enclosed space full of targets, one in particular who has made the terminal mistake of rushing me, and now, the Chaos Fish.
The beast scream-roars, tentacles extending toward the aggressive saurian who now seems to be charging toward the Chaos Fish itself. He doesn’t have enough time to change direction. He was inches away from grabbing me, and now he’s less than an inch away from the fish’s mouth.
What happens next is surprisingly squishy and disturbing, and involves the predator becoming prey in the messiest of ways. The fish’s mouth isn’t quite big enough to fit him in whole, so it sort of bites him up and pushes bits in with bloodied tentacles. I get a very impromptu lesson in saurian internal anatomy as I cower under a nearby fallen table.