Caught off guard by the sudden change, it took Max a while to process the new reality that surrounded him. Instead of the familiar scenery of Brückenfeld, he found himself transported into an endless void. The vast and inky blackness engulfed him from all sides, an infinite space that offered no point of reference or direction. But before he could even begin to make sense of his surroundings, a blinding light pierced through the darkness.
As his vision adjusted to the new environment, he found himself staring at a chaotic scene in a bustling city. A setting sun cast long shadows on what might have been London, based on the black taxis in the background. Chaos was everywhere, people of all ages and backgrounds running in fear, trying to escape whatever horror had befallen them. Families with young kids clutched desperately in their arms, a group of asian women that were obviously there as tourists, an older couple that could barely keep up with the frenzied pace. The woman with short gray hair, hanging on to her husband who pulled her forward hurriedly. Max could feel their fear, see the panic etched on their faces. It was like something out of a nightmare, a disaster movie brought to life.
Max tried to reach out to the scene before him, to somehow intervene, but he was powerless. No matter how much he strained, he remained an uninvolved observer, unable to interact with the world around him. Despite this, everything felt all too real: the rain soaking through his clothes, the smell of smoke in the air, the muffled cries of a child clinging to her father.He was an unwilling voyeur. Over the regular scents of the city there was a strong stench he couldn’t quite place. A metallic odor, reminiscent of copper or rust. But it was overpowering. It was blood.
He barely had time to process the intensity of the smell when he saw the thing drop into his field of vision. The creature was the size of a horse, with long spider-like limbs covered in spiky black fur. Each of its many appendages seemed to have an excessive number of joints and ended in hardened points, similar to an insect's stinger. The sound of its legs on the asphalt produced a clacking sound, adding to the eeriness of the scene.
Max's eyes widened as he watched the creature charging towards the crowd. The things many limbs sprouted from a bulbous, misshapen core in a haphazard manner, lacking the symmetry of a spider or any other recognizable animal. Its awkward gait only made it more repulsive to Max, evoking an immense sense of uncanniness. He felt it on an instinctual level, the creature was wrong.
Despite its unbalanced appearance, the beast raced across the street with surprising speed, its legs making that creepy clacking sound with each step. The people in its path never stood a chance. Max let out a gasp as the creature violently stabbed one of its legs into an old man at the back of the crowd, causing his wife to be dragged along to the ground with him. Max's heart raced with fear and panic as he watched the horrifying scene unfold before him. The man screamed for help, his voice the first one Max could clearly identify, though he wished he couldn't. "Oh God! Please! Marianne...Marianne?! Please, oh God-"
The creature violently shook the man off its leg, flinging him like a ragdoll against a nearby building. The old man collapsed to the ground with a sickening crunch. His wife, without the support of her husband, struggled to get back on her feet, but couldn't muster the strength.
Max screamed at the old lady. “Run! You need to run! Please, just fucking run!” But to no avail. She couldn’t hear him and even if she did, it probably would not have done her much good. The many-legged thing thrust one of its limbs through her back, coming clean out of her chest. With a sudden gasp, she expelled all the air from her lungs. The creature then swiftly retracted its limb, causing the woman to whimper in agony.
The puncture wound had been relatively clean on entry, but the same was not the case for the exit of the spear-like appendage. The claw, or whatever it was, must have some unseen barb. When it was pulled out of its victim, it ripped the wound open, and the old lady made a final strained sound. She collapsed to the ground, and for just a moment, Max got a full view of the horrific wound on her back.
It was a hole he probably could have fit both his arms into, with ragged, uneven edges. On one side, he saw her spine, half shattered by the impact. Hanging out of the horrific wound were shreds of flesh and entrails. Blood was quickly spreading out of her body. Max didn't have to endure the sight for long. The monstrous being loomed over the motionless corpse, its grotesque limbs casting eerie shadows in the dim light. It bent down, collapsing its numerous strangely placed joints and hiding the woman behind a forest of its murderous legs. Once the tumor-like growth at its center had lowered itself to the ground, a wet ripping and gnawing crunching could be heard.
Max felt sick to his stomach, unable to comprehend the horror unfolding before his eyes. He struggled to understand if this was a dream or hallucination, but the life-like details of the scene were too vivid and visceral for him to dismiss.The city faded to black and there was another flash of white, and a new image came into focus.
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Max stood on a beach, feeling the sand squish beneath his shoes and the sun beating down on him. Sweat broke out on his forehead, a combination of the heat and his anxiety about what might happen next. He scanned the crowd of beachgoers, seeing a mass of relaxed people enjoying their day. A group of young women lay on their stomachs, soaking up the sun's rays. Men played volleyball in the sand, and parents watched over their kids as they splashed in the sea. The water was crystal clear, like something out of a commercial.
Off to one side, a group of young boys labored over an intricate sandcastle. One of them, a shaggy-haired blond, poured water into a moat surrounding the castle. Max watched them for a moment, enjoying their laughter and carefree joy.
But suddenly, the beach seemed to shift around him. Max's view changed, though he didn't take a step.. The water and sand seemed to move beneath, and Max found himself next to a couple on a pool float. It was in the form of a slice of watermelon. The red of the float stood against the clear blue water. Paradoxically, it was like he was standing right next to them, even though they were surrounded by nothing but water. He tasted the salt of the sea on his lips and heard the seagulls overhead. The women's skin glistened with droplets of water. Max felt like an intruder to something special, but he couldn't look away.
They were in their early twenties. A thin brunette with caramel skin, wearing a red bikini and big sunglasses lolling on the float and soaking in the sun.. Her girlfriend, a blonde with gorgeous curls that reminded him of Hannah, clung to the rind of the watermelon and paddled them outwards into the sea. She was wearing a black one-piece. The brunette leaned down to kiss her on the lips, and Max couldn't help but stare.
As the women parted, they smiled at each other with warmth and affection. The blonde woman looked up at the sun and laughed, her eyes shining with joy. The brunette leaned in to kiss her again. Max felt a pang of jealousy at their apparent happiness. But the feeling was soon drowned out by a dreading sense of anticipation. Somehow he knew that this serenity would not last.
This time he remained motionless as the woman with the blonde hair was suddenly yanked underwater with a startled scream.. He knew that their love was doomed to end, but that didn't make it any easier to watch. From the elated expression on her face after their kiss, to the shock and disbelief, then fear, and finally sheer horror as a gushing red stream broke the surface, Max watched as the woman on the float experienced a full range of emotions in mere seconds.
The dark shapes beneath the water's surface became more visible, with one of them making a beeline for the woman who had moments ago been enjoying a moment of pure bliss. Something snapped out of the depths, encircling her body before pulling her down with it.. Max barely had time to register what was happening. It wasn't a fish, but he couldn't quite place what it was. For a brief moment, he saw something solid, dark, and dripping with water. It looked more like a giant clamp than an animal bite. The woman in the red bikini never had a chance to scream before being yanked into the ocean..
But the shapes beneath the water's surface were growing larger, and Max's field of vision began to change once again. He was lifted into the air, and as he rose higher, the extent of the danger became more apparent. Whatever had killed the two women was enormous, and there were countless others like it. The coast was teeming with these monstrous creatures, and the beachgoers were beginning to panic even before the first of them made landfall.
Max was back on the sand by this point, surrounded by frantic, barely clothed masses fleeing in every direction. But his attention remained fixed on the creature emerging from the water. What he'd initially mistaken for the creature's entire form was only its claw – a large, sickly gray pincer at least a meter long, with a jagged edge that looked capable of crushing a human in a single attempt. The creature's entire shell was uneven, lacking the smoothness of typical crustaceans. Instead, it was covered in sharp, twisted edges, bizarre growths, and rotting appendages. A putrid odor of decaying fish filled the air and made Max gag.
The beach was swarming with the twisted sea-dwellers..Some had elongated bodies like lobsters, while others were more round like crabs. Their limbs varied in size and shape, with some boasting small, sharp claws and others dragging massive pincers behind them. Max watched in horror as a particularly large specimen with a scorpion-like tail approached. As it passed him by, Max could feel his stomach churning and his heart racing. These creatures weren't just oversized animals - their very existence felt like a violation of the world itself.
The army of shelled calamities marched on and on, their sheer size mind-boggling. The smallest of them was as big as a car, while the largest rivaled some houses. They were like walking tanks, crushing everything in their path. Fences, walls, vehicles - nothing could impede their progress. The gigantic creatures simply waltzed over every obstacle, destroying infrastructure and setting off car alarms. The city was soon an orchestra of wailing sirens, a chorus of despair.
The fleeing population had nowhere to hide. The invaders easily smashed windows with a swing of their oversized claws. Walls toppled when the lumbering giants crashed into them. Whole vehicles were flattened with their pincers, crushing the helpless passengers inside. Max could only watch in abject terror as the slaughter unfolded before him. It was apocalyptic, a nightmare come to life. A small, daring group of police officers shot at one of the creatures in an effort to buy some civilians time to escape. It only seemed to enrage the crustacean - if even that.
The monstrous things that came from the water were not fast, but they rarely stopped walking. Their enormous legs carried them far with each stride, their bulk crushing everything beneath them. In the short time that Max watched them before darkness descended once again, they brought widespread destruction and mayhem to the unknown city.