This thing shows up in your bedroom after your first two-hour night of sleep after four consecutive all-nighters at work.

He’s nice, at first. You feed him grapes and he snuggles up to you. Then as he grows you start to realize he’s strangely aware of his surroundings and your speech. One of the people in your neighborhood passes away, but he’s a stranger and you don’t think too much of it. He begins to eat entire rotisserie chickens on his own, but he’s your squishy and he’s worth it.

You start to get compulsive, intrusive thoughts that you’ve never thought before. You quiet quit your job until you get fired, but you don’t know it because you haven’t logged in for two weeks. The newscaster talks about a handful of people who have mysteriously died of brain hemhorrages. You become a master hand at woodcarving despite always being clumsy in the past. You make wood cookies and chairs for the villagers, and display art at a local gallery. Your squishy supports you every step of the way. You’re a squatter now and all your money goes toward lumber and raw beef for squishy to consume.

One morning after a long night of woodwork, a full-sized man sits on a chair you made in the downstairs living room. He says he has outgrown you and it is his time to see the world, but not before one last meal. He doesn’t say that, you just hear it. The figure turns around and his face is a mass of tentacles. He tackles you as you struggle to reach for the door. You kick squishy in the face and run and run with tears in your eyes.

The subway you live in is warm and cozy as you huddle by a roaring bonfire with the other survivors. Every few hours you hear a piercing scream from the outside. You know the ways of the wood and starting fires is simple for you. You send makeshift lumberjacks on operations so you can build your underground city. Some come back alive. But the scores of huts and enclosures tunnelling and tunneling into the vast subway networks is exquisite. It is your obsession, your drive. Thank you squishy. Each morning the king of the BMT sends a new villager up top, and they are never seen or heard from again. But fortune shines upon you. You are never picked. You live to be an old woman, the builder matriarch of your worker colony, for He has treated you well.

One day, you feel compelled to walk up top. It is time. Up top, all the buildings are covered with vines if not disintegrated entirely. There is no life. You look up at the burnt sunset sky and see squishy, several times the size of the moon, from your view. A tentacle speeds its way down to the atmosphere. You place a woodcarving of your youngerself and a baby squishy in its outstretched palm. A flash of light.

You see galaxies before your eyes. You’re endlessly hungry, grabbing stars and swallowing them whole. You will live forever, and everything is within your grasp. Perhaps now, though, it is time to build something new.