Let's face it. This isn't about games anymore.

I've found out recently that magazines don't like it when you post a whole short story online, then try to sell it to them. Makes sense, and I wish I'd thought of it earlier.

Thing is, they don't seem to mind if you post excerpts, so here's a taste of something I'm working on right now. I'm really enjoying this one.



None of us heard the thunder. We were too close. At this distance, we could only feel the shockwave of the lightning as it pierced the tree. Suze was thrown back by the impact, and landed hard on her side, skidding in the wet grass. We all ran over to her, slipping on the sodden ground.

We were all shouting, useless, meaningless things. "Are you okay?" "Did she land on her back?" "Jesus!" None of us heard or answered each other.

When Jake reached her, he rolled her over on her back. Cyndi was shouting something about not moving a person with a concussion, while she stood over Suze, one hand pulling back her long, stringy, wet black hair. Her other hand gripped the front of her top, holding it away from her body so nobody would notice that she hadn't worn a bra. She just stood over Suze and shouted down ideas, suggestions, things she'd seen on TV. "Don't move her head. Put something on her tongue so she doesn't swallow it. Don't let her drown in the rain."

When Carlos got there, he wasn't even looking at Suze. The lightning had split the tree down the middle, and ripped a crater out of its roots. The split tree looked like a pair of angry, outreaching arms, with a fire that spit through the whole of it. Carlos was pointing at the crater.

We couldn't really see anything, we were so far from the lights. The only light we had was from the flaming tree and the occasional distant lightning. The rain was really coming down now, so when lightning struck, everything looked like a strobe light picture, everything glistening like it was cast in silver.

Jake had propped Suze up in his lap, and was checking for signs like breathing and pulse, while Cyndi kept sweeping her hair back, pointing, and shouting unheard orders. Suzes eyes opened, and she started coughing. She opened her mouth to say something, but she was drowned out by Carlos' shout.

"What the hell is that?" He was pointing at the tree. As we looked, we saw that he was really pointing at the crater. There was something moving inside the crater. In the orange light, we saw the shilouette of the thing as it crawled easily out of the fire.

Surrounded by the fire, we couldn't look directly at it. It was sleek and thin. It had legs like a dog, but the size and build of a panther. The back legs were switched back like a camel, and the forward set of legs were powerful, heavily muscled things like the tensed body of a pitbull terrier. The feet on those legs were shaped like hands, with short, stumpy fingers that dug into the ground.

It's third set of legs were at the point where the shoulders would be on any normal creature. They were thin, wiry, long and strong. The front legs swept out in front of the beast, touching everything, feeling everything in front of it. The fingers were long, thin, and set up with four-inch long nails.

The head itself looked more like a continuation of the back, sweeping over to a flat, thin beak at the front. The beast seemed to have no neck, but rather a swelling of the shoulderblades that stood for a head, and tapered off to a beak. The beak was flattened and wide at the front of the head, like a duck, but it tapered to an end that was sharp and pointed. The shilouette was a black outline against the fire, but deep inside the head we could see tiny, bright, red eyes looking out. Those eyes looked alert, aware, angry, and hungry.

Carlos opened his mouth to say something else, but it was drowned out by another bolt of thunder. The lightning coarsed over us, giving us a bright view of the beast. We could see its color now, the texture of it's skin as it crouched in the crook of the tree.

It looked like it was melting at first, with an oily black substance running off its back and dripping to the forest floor. It was like it had a chocolate fudge coating that was just now slipping off. Underneath it, Milky white smoke boiled off of the beast, whether from the impact or from the fire, we couldn't tell. It was wet and slimy, the way you would think a snakes scales are slimy. It was segmented, like a worm, with pistoning body parts shifting to move the muscles. The beast was pink and gray underneath it's oily coating. Only the beak stood out from the skin of the body, as the grey muscles concentrated to the black hardened bone of the beak.

We only had an instant to see it. Only that frame to confirm that it was there. And even as we looked, it was turning its head to look at us. Cyndi started to scream, as Carlos shouted, "That. That thing's not human. I mean, it's not, y'know, Earth." And as we all started to scramble to our feet, we heard Carlos fall under the weight of the beast as it slammed into him, pounding him into the ground even as the thin wiry arms started slashing at his head and shoulders.