Kira strolled around the flower garden, towards the stinging nettle. It had taken her three days to get to the house, and another week to reach this spot. She'd been struggling through the underbrush for a good three hours, her coat in tatters, when she reached the lip of the water. It was very quiet, stilled by the pool at its center. Her mother was lecturing her father on several gardening issues, calling him stupid and a deadbeat, and then hung up. The shallow grave was already dug. Kira walked over to it, picking up handfuls of dirt. It was always so quiet here.
There was rustling. Kira turned sharply to see a dog, the size of two dogs, lumber out of a hedge. Its jaws were open, and it was growling. Its eyes glowed.
"I should have known there'd be a dog," Kira whispered to herself.
The dog charged. Kira took a step back, raising her again, and fired. The dog burst apart, splashing water and gore across the grass. It fell in a heap on the grass.
There was a thick silence. Nothing moved. No birds chirped. Kira stared at where she had killed the dog. There was no reanimation. This was not supposed to happen. This was not how the story was supposed to go. This was not a part of the 21st-century frame narrative, which was just happening now.
At the center of the pool was a ball, about the size of a golf ball. It was the same dark brown as the bark on the trees, with flecks of white dust.
The flowers around the pool began to wilt, and the smell of rot filled the air. This was a different smell than the wet, humid rot of the swamp. This smell smelled like dry paper and old people.
The dog's corpse began to moan. Kira felt her heart pound.
Part of the pool's surface began to crack. Small bits of dirt fell into the water. The water itself swirled, as if it were agitated.
Kira aimed her pistol again, and watched as the dog's corpse heaved, curling up into a ball. Its eyes were glowing again.
A hand of stone appeared from the ground, rising out of the roots. It looked like a fist with sharp, knifelike fingers. They came together and formed a mouth. The mouth was open, and Kira fired again, bursting the mouth, green goo spraying from the hole. The fist clenched shut again.
A second hand rose from the ground and closed. Kira fired again, and again. The hand never stopped moving. It seemed to rise out of the earth, and then snake through it.
The flowers around the pool wilted even further and began to leak brown liquid. It evaporated into the air, leaving behind a sickly sweet smell of rot.
A third hand rose, and this one was a man's. The hand had a pointed, hooked nose, broad shoulders, and long fingered, wrinkled hands clasped in the air. The hand was turned over, looking empty. There was no sign of the creature it had come from.
Kira fired again. Splinters of bone fell to the ground. The hand clenched again, blood flashing between its knuckles.
The dog turned to look at Kira. Its eyes and teeth were glowing. Kira began to back away, aiming her pistol.
Another pair of hands shot out from the ground, thrusting themselves towards the dog. They cut the dog in twain, and its body nearly split in half. But then the two separate parts began to crawl across the grass, re-assembling themselves.
Beneath the dog, another set of hands rose up. They were larger and stronger, and their fingernails were long enough to scratch the grass.
As both halves of the dog began to crawl, another set of hands rose out of the earth. This time, several pairs of hands came out of the ground, like claws, their fingernails hand-sized. They went into the split of the dog.
The dog began to change. Beneath the split, the stomach ripped open. Out of the split, arms and legs began to grow.
The dog walked forwards, leaning on the arms and the growing legs. The eyes were glowing now. The dog's howls were now inhuman, like a scream that could only be heard in the soul.
Kira tried to breathe. Her hands were shaking. She fired again. There was a flash of light. Nothing happened. She fired a third time, and then a fourth. Nothing happened. No change.
A second pair of arms unfolded from the legs, and then a hand. The hand moved towards the dog.
Kira backed away, until her back hit the fence, and she hit the fence. The dog had the momentum and the strength of a bulldozer. It unrolled onto its back.
The dog's legs had grown longer, and now its legs held the hands in place. The hand moved towards the dog's mouth.
Kira fired. The bullet shattered the hand. Within the hole, the bones and muscle were giving way.
Kira fired once again. The bullet did nothing.
The dog began to shift as it rose to its feet. Bones were changing, growing out of the skin and shrinking. Its eyes were glowing.
Kira fired one more time. The dog was tall, and its stumpy legs looked impossibly long. The bones were spreading apart.
Kira fired again. Billions of red, quivering stars erupted across the second hand. The dog pulled its mouth away. The hole remained, however.
The dog began to move. Its legs flexed, and then spread out like a giant spider. The legs swung from the knee. The dog's arms came off, and the legs began to change. As new arms grew below, the hands, arms, and eyes of the new being wrapped themselves around the pool.
As its second and third set of arms grew, the dog began to transform into a great, lumbering thing. It looked like a goat. Horns grew from its back.
Kira fired again. More glowing red stars spilled across the creature. It did not change.
The creature screamed again, and now its mouth opened to reveal a ring of more teeth, like a mouth of barbed wire. The creature brought its arms together, as if to embrace Kira. The hands were swallowed up by the pool. It began to move towards her.
A soft wind blew through the garden. The flowers began to wither, their petals turning grey.
Kira reached behind her. She found the fence, and felt the cold metal.
Without her knowing, her gun went off twice more. It took seconds. The creature was swallowed up by the pool, and they began to twist and convulse.
The pool began to ripple, flashing with light. There was a crash, and you could hear something moving in the water.
The creature leaned out of the pool, its tongue and jaw distorting. It looked like an enormous octopus, its tentacles reaching towards her.
Kira fired, but the creature's head vanished behind a wall of black smoke. A piece of the creature's tongue fell to the ground. She fired again. She could not tell if the bullets made any difference.
The creature's throat began to distend. Kira turned her gun and pushed, slamming it backwards. The creature's throat was large. There was a hole in the middle of its throat. As it tilted its head back, she could see the sky. She could see the white speckles in the sky.
The dog rose from the water. Its legs were covered in eggs. The eggs began to move. Around them, water began to rise out of the grass.
The creature's mouth opened again. It was a continuation of the cavity in its neck. Its tongue began to writhe, and turned into a mouth filled with sharp, jagged edges. The creature's mouth began to stretch. It became smaller, and then smaller still. Its head faded from sight.
Kira fired, and the creature reached upwards. The thing's skull cracked, and its cranium shattered. The huge, elongated brain split apart from the skull. The creature's eye glowed and it gasped, clicking.
The creature was gone. The pool was empty.
The earth shook.