Tiny Horror

There was no glory. There was only the plate. A vast, flat slab of polished stone, exposed to the stratosphere.

Albert dragged himself to the center, his legs useless, trailing behind him like dead weight. He checked the canister: the heavy brass survey tube. It was the only inorganic thing left in a world of soft, freezing flesh.

He fumbled with the latches of his logbook. His hands were clumsy, like wooden blocks. He could hear it now. Not the wind. The breathing. A wet, rattling respiration pulling itself over the final ledge. It sounded like a death rattle that refused to end.

He uncapped his pen. The ink was freezing, turning into sludge. He had seconds.

Entry Final: Goman dissolved. Ragobir swallowed. The beast is real. It is not of this earth. It functions like a white corpuscle for the stone. My eyes are failing. I can hear it leaking across the ice. It is weeping with hunger.

He shoved the book into the brass canister and screwed the lid shut with the last ounce of strength in his ruined wrists. He rolled it into a deep fissure in the rock, praying the ice would swallow it before the beast swallowed him.

A shadow fell over him. The air smelled of old blood and bile.

Albert Mummery looked up. The creature stood over him. One arm hung uselessly from Ragobir’s attack, the black ichor freezing into stalactites on its chest. Its pale, wet face twitched. It didn't strike immediately. It watched him, cocking its head, savoring the hypoxia, the fear, the exhaustion. It was a connoisseur of the end.

It knelt. It reached out a hand, fingers elongated, tipped with bone, and caressed Albert’s frozen cheek. The touch burned.

Albert closed his eyes. He didn't scream. He simply waited to be unmade.

The tale continues...