It was tall and slender, with a long, wide head that trailed off into thick ribbons of twitching flesh that seemed to move on their own, coiling and writhing around its spindly arms and legs like puppet strings. Its torso was a ruined, misshapen mass of bone and meat, with several openings that showed the black, glistening turmoil of its relentlessly churning insides. The worst parts were its eyes and skin, though for wholly different reasons. The skin…I would have to call its skin a kind of yellow, though it was a strangely shining shade that seemed wrong somehow. Just looking at how it glowed in the light make my stomach quiver and something inside my head shift uneasily. As for its eyes…they looked almost human beyond their large size and light purple hue. They were intelligent eyes. Eyes filled with knowledge and emotion.

And it was looking at us with equal parts of curiosity and contempt.

We tried to fight it, but as it stepped forward, most of the men dropped their weapons and fell to the ground, jerking like they were in the throws of a fit. I felt my father’s shotgun fall from my grasp as I sank to my knees. I wanted to close my eyes, to not watch this horrible thing approach and kill us, but I was transfixed. As the men around me grew more violent in their thrashings, I started to hear the first of several dull cracks as they broke their own backs and necks one by one.

As for me, the monster stopped in front of me and squatted down, studying me with what might have been mild amusement on a more human face. After a few moments, it snaked out a speckled orange tongue and ran it up my face. As it finished, it spoke a single word.

”Selah.”

Either my revulsion and fear overcame its control over me or the creature chose to release me. Either way, I ran back to the town as quick as I could. Within two hours we were packed and ready to go Kiev, invitation from my uncle or not. But that’s when the soldiers came, telling us there had been a fire at the plant, and that no one was allowed to leave for the time being.

I am trying to keep up a brave face for my wife-to-be, my beautiful Alena, but I am terrified. Afraid of the radiation if the fires are real, to be sure. But more afraid of the thing this “accident” is meant to cover up. The thing that touched me and gave these troubling thoughts and dreams.

Because while I have slept little in the last two days, what sleep I’ve had has been strange and troubled. And I find my waking hours invaded by memories and thoughts that are not my own. Of a life that is not my own.