Vincent watched his breath dissipate into the thick cold air of the bog. He shuddered and clutched the leather jacket closer to him. He stopped short looking at the soft earth beneath his boots. He raised a thick brow and knelt down to examine the puddle of strange goop by his foot. Reaching for a stick, he held his knee to keep balance. The end of the stick gently poked into the strange liquid, and turned to ash the farther he pushed it in. After a second the goop began to consume the stick, sucking it in.

Vincent let go, and stood up, startled. He touched his hand, running the pads of his fingers over his knuckles. His eyes shifted around, and his nose wrinkled as a foul odor took over the area. He put a pale hand under his nose to plug the smell. Unfortunately this forced him to breathe through his mouth, and Vincent found that he could taste the scent worse than he could smell it!

He stumbled around the piles of guck, and exhaled, attempting to rid his lungs and mouth of the stench. It wasn’t working. Vincent looked down at his foot, thinking he’d snapped some of the underbrush and imagined the vibration. It wasn’t his imagination. The earth beneath his feet trembled and shuddered, his body mirroring the effect.

Cold grey eyes, widened with unease, examined the wooded perimeter of the lake. His heart skipped a beat when he saw it. He went to scream, and found his voice had left the vicinity of his body. Vincent had never experienced fear quite like this. His body went numb, and he became a deaf mute as the creature’s wail penetrated his ears.

Her face may have once been pleasant to look at, but Vincent’s eyes burned with tears as he looked at the product of science. He was revolted as the cold diamonds swept over the writhing body. Suddenly a wave hit him, and he dropped to his knees doubling over. He clutched his sides; the empathy of what she had undergone was overwhelming him. His skin crawled as he hallucinated the mad doctor’s scalpel and dirty surgical tools probing his body.

Vincent retched to his right, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The sensations had gotten the better of him. His knees were shaking as he stood, and looked the broken woman over again. The second examination was far worse than the first. He caught every wretched detail of her deformed body. He shook violently, and beckoned his stomach to be still.

His mind flashed back to every woman he’d ever loved, every woman he’d ever taken to bed, every woman he’d brought home, every woman that he’d spoken to, and every woman that he’d ever set eyes upon. The fond memories of the women he’d loved, fondled, seen, and spoken to were mutated into the desperate creature that stood before him.