No other occurrences happened on the drive back to his apartment. He grabbed his bag from the backseat and marched to the front door. Perhaps someone had slipped some psychedelic in his morning coffee. He and several of his colleagues had participated in LSD sessions in college. The fear and confusion were similar, but that’s about all else that was. The walls were not morphing and no disembodied voices whispered to him. 

Aldous fiddled with his keys before finding the needed utensil. His apartment was just as he had left it. Some TV personality spewed nonsense from the living room and the lights remained on. He stepped into the kitchen and grabbed a glass from the overhead cabinet. Ice clinked together as he tossed them into the vessel. The cubes cracked as bourbon splashed against them, rapidly heating them enough to warp and shatter the water ice.

The first few fingers of ethanol burned like wildfire. But after the initial pain, a comfortable numb settled over his throat. He refilled the glass to its previous condition. His leather rocking chair beckoned him from the living room. Aldous sank into the worn piece of furniture and placed the cold glass against his temple.

A weatherman spouted nonsense from the television set. He looked out through cutthroat eyes, his lips played at a demonic grin. He did not blink but held eye contact with authority not usually commanded by a moving picture. 

“Careful on the roads tomorrow, we have a storm brewing up out in the sound that will be hitting land some time tomorrow evening. Power outages are expected, so stock up on essentials. It’s going to be a blustery one.”

Aldous flipped the station. Agent Mulder sat at his desk with dozens of papers strewn around him. Cinematic concern registered on the federal agent’s face. Aldous flipped the channel again. Today had been weird enough, he didn’t need The X-Files to play off of his paranoia tonight. Wheel of Fortune would have to do. 

The slightly sweet bourbon coated his tongue. He placed the glass snifter onto the side table and retrieved his work bag. Ivan’s report stuck diagonally from the polyester pouch. Aldous doubted the sleep would be accompanying him this evening. Even if the lengthy scientific jargon wasn’t enough to lull him into sleep, the work would occupy an otherwise idle mind.

A contestant on the show bought a vowel, an I. Aldous clicked the volume down a couple of notches and buried his face in the manilla folder. Small lettering was printed single-spaced to save paper. 

Ivan had come out of his drugged stupor two hours after the operation had been completed. A cone was placed around his head to keep him from removing the chemical implant. He had spiked a fever at 3:13-pm. His internal temperature had risen to 105° Fahrenheit. 

Aldous rubbed his temple. Why hadn’t he been informed? Even with Dave’s accident, he was still one of the project’s managers. 

“I’ll take the letter V!” the beautiful woman strutted across the screen and illuminated the consonant.

At 3:25-pm the fever had broken and retreated to a modest 99°. The swelling around the incision had decreased drastically as well. The stitches were removed at 3:30-pm.

Aldous blinked and reread the transcript. He had not been mistaken. Discarding the first page onto the coffee table, he took a sip of bourbon.

“I’d like to buy the vowel A!” A buzzer beeped and money dropped from his podium, no luck.

Cellular repair was recorded at a rapid rate. The point of incision was healed and without a scar. Ivan’s metabolism skyrocketed. An additional 5,000 calories were fed to the primate to keep his levels normal. His white blood cell count doubled. Adult stem cells had pooled to the eye. His optical nerve had taken a mere 30 minutes to repair to normal function.

Aldous looked up from the paper. His project had worked! Months of hard work and trials had accumulated to this document. 

“Sorry, Patricia, there’s no N’s this time.”

A vague notion that the television had been speaking to him drifted into Aldous’ consciousness like fog off of the ocean. Had they just spelled Ivan? He downed his bourbon and flipped the power switch, silencing the box. His confused and anxious reflection grimaced back at him. 

It was time for bed. The bourbon splashed around his otherwise empty stomach. He reached out and steadied himself against the chair. Aldous tumbled onto the mattress and kicked his shoes off at the feet of the bed. The cool pillow felt comforting against his cheek. 

It was dark and it was cold. There was no sound but if there were, Aldous was convinced it would be muted as if underwater. It was a suffocating dark. Every side pressed in. If Aldous had to guess, he would have said that he was at the bottom of an ocean. Which ocean, he had no clue. Something was strange. He had the feeling of being as small as a quark. 

He drifted through the medium without direction. Invisible currents carried him through the void like a marionette. Archetypal vibrations ran their solemn song across Aldous’ flesh. Their hum tickled his skin and raised the hair on his forearm. 

A ball of nervous energy danced in his chest cavity. Aldous pinned his eyes forward, squinting into the ether. A pinprick of pale blue stood out crystal clear in the depths. He couldn’t make it out from this distance, but it looked to be morphing and folding in on itself. 

The current brought Aldous straight to the spectacle. A roaring stream of consciousness emanated from the being. Long undulating tentacles folded in on themselves. It looked to be the size of an elephant, suspended above him.

Aldous starred in a hypnotic trance. A tentacle reached out and hovered a foot from his face. It folded in on itself, like a sock, and sucked itself back to its mass.

“You,” it spoke. Its voice was deep and resonated in Aldous’ ribcage. “You have what I need.”

“What do I have?” His voice sounded muddled in the depths.

The cephalopodic being plucked his words from him. “Ivan.”

Aldous glanced over his shoulder into the abyss behind him. He wanted to run, to swim away; but, where was there to escape to?

He felt his chin being pulled back to the creature. His jugular bulged from his neck as he fought the force, but it was useless.

“Look at me, little creature. Look at me and tremble.” What seemed to be a hundred tentacles burst forth. Each radiated a pale blue, bioluminescent strobe. “You cannot even begin to perceive my ability. I was already ancient at the birth of your world.”

Fear gripped its talons deep in Aldous’ throat. His mouth gaped open. Each pulse of light sent him deeper into a paralytic state. The appendages twitched and darted in front of him. Aldous thought he caught a glimpse of an Iris and pupil, but it was gone in a fraction of a second. 

“I have seen your life, everything that has occurred and everything that will occur. I know it all, I have always known it. You will help me.”

“What if I can’t?” Aldous cried through the dense atmosphere.

The undulations wove in and out of each other. The angered light show reached a fevered frenzy. The being’s body vibrated with force, each tentacle surrounded him. The trembling tendrils parted revealing a single dark black eye. “Then I will devour you.”