Jelly Rat

“It’s pretty big, about the size of a German Shepherd. But that’s no dog. It looks more like a giant rat, or a mole. No, both. And it’s completely hairless, exposing wrinkled, translucent skin covered in a thin film of slime. Wait a minute. I remember that creature. They’re called naked mole rats…and they’re not supposed to be that big. They’re also not supposed to have their lower jaws replaced with the tubular mouth and stream of lucid tentacles normally associated with jellyfish. In fact, it’s like the whole thing’s head is a gruesome combination of mole and Jellyfish, with large, black eyes like what I saw on that Giant Ogre spider, covered by a shut eyelid I can see clean through. The thing’s snout is three times the size it should be. Maybe it relied on its sense of smell more than any other sense. Its tail lay sprawled before it, laced with suction cups like on the arms of an octopus. There are two holes in it, looks like it was shot. But slowly oozing from the wound is a yellowish, viscous fluid that actually seems to be slowly burning the thing’s carcass. And are those…Periwinkles growing out of its back? How bizarre is that?”

-Excerpt from “Godmode,” the new sci-fi thriller novel from Quan Williams