tomb

You follow the shuffling queue cutting through the humid evening. The hot rain just stopped and heat-phantoms rise from the concrete underfoot. You're dead tired, and the ebony dome of the building ahead sets something slithering over your insides, but you need shelter, so at the box office you surrender your last coin, eroded smooth and dull, though a silent voice begs you not to. You grab a damp ticket and push aside thick curtains, submerging yourself in a dense tropical lobby, burgundy wallpaper sweating, peeling, speculative whispers condensing in air that holds the musty scent of decay. A bell tolls and the crowd snakes through obsidian doors, and you are trapped in the human current flowing over the threshold into the crescent-moon amphitheater. Spectators settle into slick leather seats descending toward a murky pool: a perfect placid circle in the center. You remain standing as the dome is plunged into darkness, and a circle of lights just below the surface illuminates the perimeter of the depthless tank. The crowd falls silent; you grip the frayed insides of your pockets as the waters churn and some immense shape rises. You bite your tongue to trap the scream as a single tentacle breaks the waves exposing rows of gaping suckers to the shining spotlight, flinging gallons onto the cheering crowd before it slaps the surface with a triumphant crack. The roar could be the crowd, the beast, or both. You clench your fist to stop the trembling as four more tentacles emerge like fingers on one monstrous hand, prehensile tips twisting overhead like searching periscopes. What have I done? you wonder, for part of you knows what summons this frenzied kraken from its depths. Ladies and gentlemen, booms a voice, I present to you- but a tentacle whips across the crowd, leveling an entire section with one swift movement. Collective gasp, panic, loudspeakers crackle, helpless as an arm pulls them down to the swirling pool in a shower of sparks, and you retreat but the beast knows your mind. A tentacle snaps and a steel beam falls across the exit. A slimy mass engulfs your waist in a lover's embrace, and you fly toward the pool, toward spiraling circles of teeth like concentric crowns of ivory thorns, rows and rows and rows in the warm familiar darkness.