The "Thing"

The thing was only partially on the table and was also the clear source for the stink in the air.

Memories of the unholy homunculus rose in Maria's mind as she moved closer to the thing. This mass of fur and flesh shared a lot in common with the horror. However whilst that thing had been a poorly made mix of other animals but this thing was clearly something that had once been whole.

The thing was huge, easily twice the height of a man and three times as broad. The outer skin that Maria had taken to be covered in what she had taken as fur in actual fact seemed to millions of tiny, needle pointed barbs. The chest cavity was a huge gaping empty gash that only seemed to have the start of a spinal column and a wide set of hipbones to give it form.

Maria began to explore the body and as she did the horrible truth became clear to her.

Whatever it was that had been trying to **** itself into reality had come up with a novel solution to the problem of power retention. Normally, when those from beyond the veil **** themselves into our realm it took so much power that by the time they actually made it through they had the power of a newborn.

So this one had figured out a way to cast a perfect vessel, piece by piece, into our realm. Using the wombs of human women as the medium to do it. What Maria was looking at was maybe a half complete vessel for the Being. When it was complete it would have simply dumped its essence into the form and retained nearly all of its strength instead of trying to **** its full bulk through to our plain.

The idea was hardly a new one but those who had tried it before had run into a problem that had seemed impossible to overcome. Namely that the human vessels had a bad habit of dying before anything could be brought to term. Now it seemed that the solution to that problem had been patients. The previous cases had pushed through whole chunks of the body at a time, the memory of women laying sprawled across cell floor. Stomachs split open to spill twisted limbs out, still haunted Maria.

This time they had taken it slow, each time only bringing across a patch of skin or group of bones. Indeed the object most recently pulled from the late Monica was the skull and brain of the beast. Maria looked at the bare muscle and bone of the skull, the lidless eyes seeming to taunt her with her inability to save these girls.

All of these thoughts slid across Maria's mind without her really feeling any of them. She had slipped down, retreating from the emotion of the moment to take refuge in cold logic and cold logic told her that it must have taken at least a year to get this much of the beast through.

“How many did you pull out?” Maria asked Miller as she looked over the body.

“Twenty,” Miller replied quickly. “We also found about a dozen bodies on deep freeze.”

Even in her fortress of logic Maria felt a stab of pain. That put the total number at at at least thirty five. Thirty five women and girls who have had their lives destroyed and it all happened right under her fucking nose!

“How many are pregnant?” She went on, not wanting to know the answer.

“About 10 for sure,” Miller went on, her voice cold as steel. “Only one of the others seems untouched.”

Maria turned around at that, surely they had not brought someone else in after she got snatched!?

“Where are they?” She asked, the deflated horror forgotten for the moment.