When the pain in Kin’s back had faded to a dull throb, he deemed it safe to exit his cupboard and try to find his way back home. He tucked the body back into a sitting position and, after a bit of fumbling, balanced the head back on top of the ruined spine.

“Goodbye,” whispered Kin. “Goodnight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

Kin soon found himself swimming through yet another rusted pipe, no closer to finding out where he was. Casting his rangefinder at random directions in the dark, with bad reading after bad reading bouncing towards him, Kin finally felt the gravity of the situation settle upon him.

He was lost. He was cold. He had food for a month and air for less than half of that.

Which put his life expectancy right now at 14 days and three minutes, give or take.

His heart began to palpitate wildly.

“Kin, your breath rate has increased by twenty-eight per cent. Is something wrong?”

Which shrank his life expectancy to 9 days and four hours, three minutes.

Stolen novel; please report.

Slow down. Don’t waste air.

Don’t waste life.

Kin slowly regained control of his breathing, gripping the rusted sides of the pipe tightly.

Don’t waste.

Angling his head in all directions, Kin tried to clear the fog from his mind that was oppressively clouding his judgement.

Something moved behind him and his head snapped back.

Where? What?

“Kin, is everything okay?”

“There...didn’t you see it?”

“I...do not have optical perception capabilities.”

“Oh.”

“But my motion sensors indicate there is nothing within a visible 50-meter radius around us.”

Swsh

“There! Again!”

“There’s nothing!”

Kin grabbed his head. “How? I saw it--I saw it right there!”

“Kin, get a hold of yourself--”

“There, there, it’s there again!”

“There is nothing here!”

Kin backed up against a wall and nervously twitched his head from left to right. He swung his flashlight around like a crazed man, the slashing beam casting freakish shadows on the wall.

And then he saw it.

Covered with rust, the thing scuttled past him on all fours. It looked like a human but its skin was patched with oily black, its naked, lithe frame writhing sensually across the floor like a nightmarish spider. And its eyes.

Its eyes.

Pale, pure white, and set into his mother’s face.