God, it was like they were…well, caressing her. Warm. Gentle. Welcome. Familiar. The way she had always wanted her mother to be.

Stop it! Stop it! Are you out of your fucking mind? Look at that thing! Good Christ, look at it, will you? It’s a horror! A fucking monster from a B-Movie! It doesn’t know tenderness or emotion! It eats things! It crushes them! It sucks blood! It lives in a fucking undersea cave full of human bones! Can you doubt that? Well…CAN YOU?

She just wasn’t sure.

One of the tentacles slid up between her legs and she thought she would scream. It pushed up with a not uncomfortable pressure. It was warm, then hot as if she was soaking in a bubble bath.

One of the tentacles rose up and brushed against her face.

(THE RABBIT HOLE ALICE)

What? What?

(YOU WENT DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE)

(YOU RETURNED TO THE DEEPS)

The borehole. It was talking about the borehole. Like Alice in the children’s book, she had gone down the rabbit hole and reality had never been the same again.

The tentacles so warm, so comforting, so soft. She felt the suckers against her cheek, sensed the strength of them and knew they could have sucked the flesh from her bones. But they didn’t. The worming pink tongues came out and began to lick her with corkscrewing motions, tracing circles and lines over her face. Their touch was at first offensive like maggots wriggling against her and she knew she should be horrified. Insane with it. But she wasn’t. Their touch was sedative, soporific.

The tentacle withdrew.

Swallowing, starting to feel less and less afraid, she looked into those eyes.

They were really very beautiful and she wondered if any human had ever been this close to the creature, to gaze into those amazing translucent eyes. They were the eyes of a monster haunted by its own desolation and loneliness. The shades of green they possessed—emerald and jade, aquamarine and sage, the deep green of pine forests and the bright green of fresh, dewy apples—was astonishing. And more…shades of sea-green and summer moss and almost an indigo. Deep and luscious, chromatic and dazzling, crystalline and multifaceted. There were pigments of green she had never seen before and she wanted to sink into them, swim through them.

(YES ALICE)

(YOUR TIME IS NOW)

(I AM YOUR MOTHER)

“Please, Mama, I’m…I’m so scared…”

(I WILL TAKE YOU TO THE CITY)

(YOU WILL SWIM IN ITS DEPTHS)

(YOU WILL EMBRACE THE LIVING GOD)

The water was up to her throat now.

She looked into the eyes, smiling now. Then the smile faded. “I’ve…I’ve been diving for most of my life and now…now I realize what I’m afraid of…”

Drowning.