Chapter 14 Noelle
NOELLE
The world went dark.
Black liquid filled her nose…her mouth…her eyes. The stuff wrapped around her limbs and pulled tight, dragging her down, deeper into the thick, suffocating sludge.
She kicked wildly, finding the surface at last—arms flailing, lungs burning as she dragged in a breath.
No—no, no, NO! I’m not going to die like this! Not here—not in some alien beauty spa on a prison ship!
But the grip around her ankle only tightened… and then another tendril wrapped around her wrist.
Then another around her waist.
Something with too many fingers pressed against her stomach.
Blessed Virgin! she thought, panic exploding in her chest. There’s something in here with me and it’s got me!
The thought ripped through Noelle’s mind, filling her with sheer, whitehot panic as she was pulled violently downward.
The black sludge rushed over her head again, smothering everything—light, air, sound. The stuff wasn’t liquid. It wasn’t even mud. It was thicker, stickier—as if she’d been dragged into the depths of some industrial vat full of hot, viscous tar.
Her arms flailed in the suffocating darkness, but she couldn’t get to the surface again. She tried to scream, but the black goo flooded into her mouth.
Dios, I can’t breathe—can’t breathe!
Her lungs burned. Fireworks exploded behind her eyelids. Her heart was thundering so hard it felt like it would burst out of her chest.
Then—abruptly—her head broke the surface.
Noelle burst upward with a strangled gasp that tore from her throat.
Oh, thank the Virgin—air! Sweet, cold air.
But she barely had time to suck in the precious breath before she was yanked under again.
The thick, rubbery tentacles wrapped around her more tightly, sliding over her skin—slick, cold, and horribly strong.
More limbs joined the fray, coiling around her wrists, pinning her arms to her sides, binding her legs.
She felt as though she was being wrapped up by a python in slimy bands that squeezed the air out of her lungs.
Dimly, she heard Lupin shouting.
“No, no, no—you have to let them breathe!” he scolded sharply. “Didn’t I tell you? Let her breathe!”
The tentacles obeyed.
Her head broke the surface again and she gulped air greedily, coughing and sputtering black sludge. Goo dripped from her lashes, her nose, her chin. Her hair clung to her face in heavy ropes.
“Sorry about that, my dear,” Lupin called, sounding only mildly annoyed. “My assistant is still new to air breathers.”
“Let me out!” Noelle begged, her voice cracking. She tried to reach for the pool’s edge, but the tentacles pulled her back, binding her tighter. “Please—please get this thing off me!”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” Lupin replied briskly. “He hasn’t done his job yet. Hurry up, you!” he snapped at whatever the monstrous thing was, lurking beneath the surface. “Do the treatment or no fish for you tonight! Do you hear me? No fish!”
At once, the tentacles around her body shifted. They began to flex…to writhe.
And then Noelle felt it.
Hundreds—no, thousands—of tiny, circular suction cups latched onto her skin.
A terrified scream ripped its way out of her throat, only to be muffled by the thick air of the spa chamber. Every tiny cup sucked at her flesh with savage force, tugging on her skin, pulling so hard she thought her entire body would be flayed alive.
The sensation was intensely painful, and it was everywhere. Her arms…her breasts…her stomach…her thighs. Even the tender skin at the backs of her knees was being suctioned vigorously.
It felt like a million tiny mouths were kissing her and biting her all at once and it was awful.
Dios… please, Blessed Virgin, it hurts—hurts so much! Oh please, please stop, I can’t stand much more!
The tentacles dragged her through the thick ooze, pulling her deeper, rolling her like dough in the monstrous bath of black goo. She kept trying to grab onto something—anything—but there was nothing solid to hold onto. Only the tarlike substance and the endless, writhing limbs.
Her vision blurred. The edges of her sight began to dim as the world around her started to fade. But Noelle knew she couldn’t allow that.
No… don’t faint… don’t faint… if you pass out, you’re dead. You’ll drown for sure. Stay awake! Stay awake! she ordered herself.
She fought—kicking, twisting, clawing at the creature’s limbs.
But she might as well have been fighting steel cables.
Even when she bit down hard on one of them, the tentacles didn’t loosen.
If anything, they tightened even more, continuing with the savage suctioning of every square inch of her skin.
Time ceased to mean anything.
Her chest was on fire. Her muscles screamed. Her skin felt like it was being ripped away in strips, only to remain whole by some terrible miracle.
It was unbearable, yet Noelle had no choice but to bear it.
She didn’t know if minutes passed, or hours, or if this horror had swallowed her whole and this was her life now—sucked and scraped and dragged through a nightmare beneath black water that wasn’t water at all.
Then—at last—the tentacles loosened. One by one, the suction cups disengaged with horrible pop-pop-pop sounds that echoed inside her skull.
The thick tentacle around her waist lifted her—hoisting her like a rag doll—and pushed her upward.
Noelle broke the surface of the goo one final time, limp and gasping.
Her elbows hit the cold metal edge of the pool, and the creature shoved her fully out of the black goo. She sprawled there, naked and shivering, black sludge dripping from her body in thick, ropey trails as she tried desperately to catch her breath.
Her skin felt like it was on fire—every inch tingling and raw, as though she’d been scrubbed with sandpaper made of stinging nettles. Her lungs heaved and her whole body trembled uncontrollably.
I’m alive… I’m alive… Dios, I can’t believe I’m still alive…
But she didn’t feel safe—not a bit.
Noelle felt like she’d just crawled out of a nightmare—and she had no idea when the next one would begin. What if the tentacle monster dragged her into the pool again? She needed to get up—needed to get as far from the edge of that murky blackness as she could.
But she couldn’t move. She was frozen—her traumatized brain still trying to process what had happened to her.
She lay curled onto her side, trying to catch her breath, the cold of the metal platform seeping into her bones. Her heart hammered a frantic, painful rhythm against her ribs as she coughed and choked, trying to expel the black goo from her lungs and throat.
Had she thought Lupin’s workroom looked like a spa? Well, she had been wrong.
This was no spa—this was hell. Or else, some hellish nightmare.
And try as she might, Noelle couldn’t wake up.