1 The Change

*Yawn*

Just waking up, I began to stretch my arms, the blanket still covering my legs. As I whipped the crust out of my eyes, the first thing I did was pick up my cell phone.

'It's probably about 5 am judging by how dark it is right now… I should probably check my work schedule,' I thought, unlocking my phone.

It was then that I realized I had no reception and began to panic slightly.

'Did I forget to pay the bill again?' I thought, looking at the blank reception bars.

'Nah. That's definitely not it. It's probably a power outage considering my Wi-Fi isn't working either. I know I paid that one,' I pondered, attempting to turn the lamp on by my nightstand, which only confirmed my suspicions.

*sigh*

'Screw it. I'll worry about that later.'

Luckily, I had the foresight to take a screenshot of my work schedule beforehand.

'Damn,' I muttered, realizing that I had overslept. Not only that, I couldn't even call in considering my situation. I was gonna have to think of a lie to tell my boss, and soon. It was already 2 pm. I was already 4 hours late.

Rolling my eyes in frustration, surrendering to the idea that the end of days in terms of my career was coming soon, I tossed my phone to the side and got out of bed, stretching my stagnating body.

"Why is it so damn dark? It's the middle of the day," I thought, looking at the curtains on my window.

I had a crappy little 1-bedroom apartment, with paint peeling off almost all the walls. It was by no means anything to brag about, but it was mine nonetheless.

*boom*

"Ouch! Fucking bitch!" I shouted, slamming my pinky toe on one of the legs of my bed frame.

After rolling around on my bed for a bit, I got back up and walked a lot more carefully through my dingy little room that I planned on soon upgrading from by moving to the new complex across the street.

Currently, I was 32 and working a retail job as a sales associate for a luxury brand. Jesus fucking Christ, I had a PHD in psychology and a BA in business management. How in the hell was I in the position where I barely had food in the refrigerator right now?!

With moving to my new place, I hoped that it would give me a fresh start. This place was just depressing.

"Another day in paradise…," I mumbled ironically. Today was probably my last day at work.

I had already received my final warning. For the past week, I could sense that management was already sick of me; But perhaps, that wouldn't be a bad thing.

'Maybe me getting fired would give me motivation to actually do something with those shitty pieces of paper in my closet. And if all else fails, I could just sell drugs to the campus kids across the street.' At that thought, I couldn't help but chuckle.

"Ha."

'I'm a piece of shit… a handsome one… but a piece of shit nonetheless. At least I'm self-aware though. That makes me better than all the other pieces of shit—probably.' I shrugged.

Opening the curtains after moving through the pigsty I called a bedroom, my entire attitude shifted.

"What—the—fuck."

Work was something I wouldn't have to worry about today. The world had better things to worry about today.

Blocking out the sun was a creature; A giant, terrifying one that modern-day science had no explanation for. This was more like science fiction.

A giant black and blue glowing Lovecraftian Monster blocked out the sky.

I knew I wasn't in some kind of dream sequence and was very much awake. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have been able to feel metal bolts in my knee from my accident years ago. No—This was real; unreal at the same time.

The leviathan-sized being consisted of an uncountable amount of tentacles and millions of eyeballs varying in size and it was approaching Earth, growing larger as it got closer to the planet.

When I glanced down at the streets and the college campus a few blocks away, buildings were being destroyed, houses were burning down, and vehicles were torn to bits.

People were running in every direction like a bunch of rats in a maze. What I found most unsettling about the situation was that with all this chaos going on, I couldn't hear a thing, which shouldn't have been the case because my apartment wasn't soundproof by any means.

For months now, I constantly heard my neighbors upstairs screwing, which is one of the reasons I was about to move, but I heard nothing. What I saw, however, displayed that it should have been contrary to the case.

The tentacle monster thing… its arms, or whatever the hell they were called, were coming down from the sky latching on the planet like pillars from the heavens.

As they reached the ground, they spread apart like roots going through the soil. Its gigantic pillar-like limbs varied from the size of skyscrapers to the size of houses but all caused a great amount of destruction.

All I could do was watch in horror as these tentacles sprouted from the earth and began to grab people, animals, plants, and cars indiscriminately.

It took household pets, children, the elderly, and even snatched birds from the sky. No form of life was safe from its touch.

Each time it ate something, blue electricity shot up the creature's arm-mouth-thing. There was no running. No hiding from this thing. It was moving, and it wasn't sluggish by any means. As people were attempting to drive, it grabbed entire vehicles, crushed them, then consumed them. That was when I realized the creature was fireproof as well as explosion-proof.

I knew immediately that the government wasn't going to save us. No one was going to save us. All we as humanity could do was pray, with no guarantee our prayers would be answered.

"Ha."

Maybe it was because I was shocked, but my mind was completely set on other things. Maybe changing my thought process was just the only way to keep sanity in this situation.

'I didn't even get a chance to blow my last paycheck.' I thought, washing my hands over my face and taking a deep breath.

I had just watched about 100 people die before my very eyes. Judging by the pure scale of this monster, the death toll was probably a lot higher than that.

Everyone at my job? Probably all dead. My friends? Dead. My loved ones? Everyone that I ever knew was dead or was very much on their way.

While I was in the middle of accepting reality, I heard a creaking coming from behind me.

"Oh shit." I voiced, slowly turning around. I always locked my front door. I knew what was going on, I just didn't want to accept it.

The monster had forced one of its tentacles inside my house, and I gradually took a few steps back. The realization that I would soon share the same fate as the people I saw outside was starting to cement itself in my mind.

Without me even hearing it, my entire bedroom door had broken down, and the creature's black tentacle was now taking up the entire length and width of my door frame, inching towards me like a snake to a mouse.

From what I bore witness to so far, it could move 100 times faster than the rate it was moving. I knew that there was no escaping this thing.

If I had tried to jump out the window, my legs would've snapped because I was on the 6th floor. I couldn't run because the monster was blocking the only path out. Hiding? Not a chance in hell that was going to work. It was deliberately approaching me.

"Ha…" I chuckled.

"Well… that shit doesn't matter anymore. Hey, you big-ass Japanese sex monster! You can kill me if you want to, but know this! I'm not going out like a pussy!"

Quickly rushing to my bed, I grabbed my self-defense baseball bat then opened my top drawer on my dresser and grabbed some bear mace, which was difficult considering how dark it was, but the blue lightning streaks on the monster's limbs lit the room slightly, making it easier for me.

"Die, you big bitch!"

It was bizarre. When I ended my warrior screech, the monster tentacle thing angled itself upright like a snake. After which, at the tip of it, an eyeball formed which made me flinch.

"That's gross but alright."

Jumping on top, I unloaded my lethal weapon while the creature was just a few inches from me.

*spray*

Sparing it right in the eye with my Super effect move… I quickly realized that this wasn't Pokémon and my move wasn't very effective… at all. The monster just kinda stared at me and blinked a few times while I just kinda stood on my bed—in my underwear—with an empty can of pepper spray in my left hand and a baseball bat in my right.

*cough-cough*

"Ah-shit!"

'I got some in my eyes and throat. This sucks.' I thought, with tears and mucus coming out of my nose.

For a moment, I had forgotten that the creature before me transcended all logic. All the mace did was just hurt me. I felt like I just ate a jalapeno on steroids.

"So-uh. You're just gonna make me look stupid right now while I'm making my final stand?" To my statement, the monster just blinked again. My ego was shattered. To it, I probably looked like a pathetic wounded deer.

"Alright. Baseball bat time." Tossing the can to the side and clearing my throat, I gripped the bat with as much might as I could muster and began to swing with all my might.

*bap*

*bap-bap-bap*

Hitting it hurt my hands more than it probably hurt the creature. I kept hitting over again until I physically started gasping for air. Plopping down on my bed, I finally gave up after about 3 minutes.

"Y'know what? Just eat me. I'm not going anywhere." I uttered, taking heavy deep breaths.

With my final sentence, the eyeball tentacle rushed toward me at such a speed that I didn't have enough time to react.

*crunch*

"Agh!"

The giant tentacle encompassed my entire body, lifting me off the ground, cracking my ribs, and forcing the air out of my lungs.

"Just eat me already, you sadistic fuck." I uttered.

*crunch*

*cough*

'Yep… that was another rib. Pretty sure it just punctured my right lung. Pretty sure I'm about to drown in my own blood.' I thought as I slowly angled my head upward.

'This is not how I would have chosen to die. On top of that, I thought that I would at least see my life flash before my eyes… but nothing.'

In my studies, I once wrote a thesis on the phenomenon of one's life flashing before their life. I theorized that the meaning behind it was that a subject's brain enters a state of overclocking and subconsciously begins to search memories in order to find the most optimal route of survival based on past experiences in hopes of finding a past solution to said subject's current predicament.

"Ha… fuck."

'This situation has me thinking about that paper now of all times… turns out, this moment disproves the whole thing, but at least I got a good grade on it.'

My life wasn't flashing. That probably meant that either one's life flashing was just an urban myth, or it meant that my brain knew that there wasn't a way out of my current crisis.'

The monster's eyeball then started to morph into an unnatural fleshy tube that began to get closer and closer to my face. In a few seconds, I was about to be forced down its weird blue-glowing fleshy throat.

"Damn."

'I had a shitty life… But at least I was handsome and got laid a decent amount."

"Ha."

'What the hell does any of that mean right now?' I thought. What did any of my wasted time amount to? I never had kids, a stable relationship that lasted longer than a few months, or even the chance to get on speaking terms with my father. I was 30 and hadn't completed a single objective on my bucket list.

'At least I had a good mom…' As I tried to reflect on the good memories of my childhood, I got alarmed.

"Wait, why can't I remember her face right now?" I could recall my mom as a person, but I couldn't remember her facial features or how tall she was. I couldn't even remember her skin tone. I remembered a woman's presence in my life and her importance to me, but the image of her completely vanished from my memories.

"I was just talking to her yesterday! What the hell is happening?"

What began to make me worry even more was the fact that my mother wasn't the only figure disappearing from my memory. In fact, the rate at which faces were beginning to vanish from my memory increased as the seconds passed.

Before today, I didn't have any neurological problems; now definitely wasn't the case. What I was going through right now wasn't normal. It was supernatural.

Perhaps I was overthinking, and this was some sort of trauma-related prosopagnosia, but that was highly improbable because, to my knowledge, trauma develops after a disturbing or stressful event. I was still in a stressful situation.

"There should be a grace period before any long-term effects take place," I thought, self-diagnosing.

"Come on. Any face! Remember something!" It was like the more I tried to search my memories, the more things became foggy.

Before I knew it, even the faces of well-known actors that I knew were starting to disappear. It was then that I realized modern science couldn't explain this situation.

"Logic's not working. It's making me forget. It's eating my memories."

The monster's mouth then enveloped my entire being with one gulp.

Like a rat going down a snake's throat but in reverse, I was being pulled upwards to what most likely was the creature's stomach. Its weird saliva was coating my entire body, getting in my eyes and mouth.

I felt like if I was at full strength, I would have been able to fight the tide of the slip-n-slide of doom, but now, I was far from that.

I had lost too much blood. I was already slipping in and out of consciousness.

I just couldn't fight anymore. The slightly luminescent dark cave began to get darker as my eyelids became heavier. My fingertips, face, and toes started to lose warmth. My life was over.

<45 minutes later>

*GASP*

My eyes opened wide while air flowed into my lungs once more… I hoped everything that I experienced a moment ago was just a dream; unfortunately, that wasn't the case as I realized that I was in an entirely new environment.

I still couldn't remember a single face from anyone important in my life. What was worse, I understood that I was now in the belly of the beast with six tentacles penetrating my body. I could feel them moving within my body.

I could see them moving around under my skin like worms to dirt but for an odd reason, I couldn't feel pain. I couldn't speak, nor could I blink.

Because I couldn't move my neck, I could only see from my peripheral vision. Luckily or rather unlikely, my head was angled slightly upward because of the fleshy-like pillow underneath it.

What I saw was an endless field of semi-transparent blue domes that lit the entire place and contained a countless amount of people in fetal positions inside of them. More people than I had ever seen in one place before.

When I paid close attention, I realized that there were more than just people here. There were even animals captured near me in the same position; Sea life, cats and dogs, even trees. There were even anomalous creatures that I wasn't even certain were from Earth. I quickly began to realize that I was in some sort of galactic-sized Noah's Ark.

I wanted to move badly and find a way out to live on another day, but that was quite impossible considering there was one tentacle embedded in my skull, one in each of my forearms, a large one in my chest, and one for both of my thighs. I was terrified, to say the least.

This unconventional place went on endlessly. There were mountains of black flesh and clouds in the sky. Tentacles similar to the one that just ate me rained down from the heavens and parted the same sky.

There were no walls to be found. There was no ceiling. There was only an electrifying blue atmosphere and black clouds in the sky.

I couldn't hear anything. I couldn't feel anything. All I could smell was sulfur. All I could taste was the blood that I coughed up.

While lying idle, the tentacles began moving more vigorously.

The creature was doing something to me. What was unsettling was I didn't know what that something was.

Its tendrils were moving around my body as if I didn't have bones or organs, I could feel a slight popping here and there, yet there was still no pain.

This continued on for about 40 minutes until it finally decided to stop using me as a meat puppet, but I knew that whatever it was doing to me, it still wasn't finished.

Shortly after it stopped, the capsules around me began to glow so brightly that their rays began to blind me. Being unable to close my eyes, I felt as if I was staring directly at the sun itself.

It went on like this for what felt like hours… then—everything stopped. The entire environment went dark.

'It's… all over now.'

I thought, maybe, I had finally died for a moment considering everything went dark. I thought that my life was taken painlessly… but then I realized, I could still feel movement inside of my body.

Now, I could feel the tentacles making their way to my eyeballs. Once they did, my vision came back.

'Why won't it just kill me!' I screamed internally.

Looking to the sky, I realized that the tentacle connected to my forehead began to glow a bright blue. It was like a fluid was flowing through it making its way to me. A similar blue liquid that was once enveloping the creatures that surrounded me.

The light got closer, and closer, and closer until—

'AGHHHH!!!'

My jaw went agape against my will.

The feeling began to return to my body, but not a good one. The blue lava-like substance began to pour into my body making me experience an excruciating amount of pain incomparable to anything I ever felt before. No, this was greater than pain. What I was experiencing was despair and agony.

'STOP IT! STOOOOP!' I begged but no sound came out of my mouth.

'PLEASE, GOD! ANYBODY! ANYTHING THING! SATAN! IF ANYTHING EXIST, SAVE ME!'

I wanted to scream so badly, but my vocal cords betrayed me. I wanted to get up more than anything, but my body failed me. I wanted to cry, but I was paralyzed. I wanted to die, but the creature wouldn't allow me. I could do nothing.

As more and more of the blue liquid poured into me, the more my body began to glow. My insides were so illuminated that I could actually see all of my insides from my peripheral vision.

All of my bones had broken into tiny pieces. My organs, they looked like they had been turned into goop. I had no idea how I was alive right now, but I didn't want to be.

The liquid that was flowing through me, it was starting to liquefy everything that made me human.

thing that held its elasticity was my skin.

My body began to spasm uncontrollably. Everything started to fade once more. The pain… It was too much.

(In the endless void of space)

A thoughtless-incomprehensibly-sized ancient and primordial beast roamed through nothingness. Prior to this nothingness was a universe full of stars, planets, life, death, gods, and demons. Unbeknownst to all said beings, entities, and concepts; they all yelled to The Absolute and its insatiable hunger.

Consumption…Destruction… Chaos… even those conceptual ideas weren't enough to truly encapsulate what The Absolute was. No words in existence could describe the relic for it itself was first and last in every cycle.

Before the beginning, it was. Before nothing, it was. Existence was allowed, for it allowed as a farmer allows crops to be harvested.

Sleep. Devour. Spread. Unite. Sleep. Devour. Spread. Unite.

This was The Absolutely's cycle. It allowed the beginning and was responsible for the ending. It was the uncalculated. It was the unaccounted, yet it was The Absolute.

Now, it was time to bring an ending once more. But before that, it was time to spread itself once more.

Inside its core was a singular newly formulated spawn. Although it may have been limited intellectually, Its goal was eventually to consume its spawn and become one once again. Too many variables would jeopardize the food chain.

The Absolute understood intuitively that one spawn was all it needed to achieve its goal and was confident in winning its eventual war.

Once the aforementioned spawn ripened and completed its devouring course, The Absolute, would unite with its extension once more. After which came the slumber, ending and beginning the cycle. Now, it was time to initiate part two of the cycle.

Merging all of its tentacles into one, with a singular swipe of its limb, a white vertical dimensional rift opened, illuminating the nothingness it resided in.

The Absolute then opened its maw, spewing out what appeared to be a tiny humanoid directly into the rift, providing it with the perfect incubation ground while it itself created another omniversal rift. One day, the two creatures would reunite. When that day came, there would be only one Absolute.

<The Guinean forests of West Africa>

It was a bright and beautiful day in The Guinean forests. A young boy with green skin and hair began climbing to the top rather quickly and effectively, reaching the top. As the child began reaching for the tree's fruits, he was halted in place, hearing a shout from below.

"Garfield Logan! Get down from there right now before you hurt yourself!" Shouted the boy's mother who had shoulder-length black hair, glimmering bright blue eyes, and a black beauty mark on her upper lip. She wore cargo shorts, black boots, and a brown shirt to match which matched the boy's outfit.

"Why, Mom? I was just trying to get us all some snacks for dinner tonight." The boy shouted with confusion and disappointment written on his face.

The mother, Marie Logan, looked rather disgruntled, scowling at her child. Not only was it hot, but this was a rather obscure part of the jungle. They would have to drive 20 miles in order to see any sign of civilization. If they encountered any dangerous wildlife on their hike, their safety wasn't guaranteed, which only made Marie more frustrated at her child's sporadic behavior.

*sigh*

"Because I don't want you to fall! On top of that, your dad and I don't know if you're still sick or not. What do you think will happen if you end up fainting from that height?" She asked authoritatively.

"I'm okay now. I don't feel sick anymore. Plus, I think I think the medicine that Dad used made me able to climb like a monkey! I don't think I could fall, even if I—"

On an instinctive level, the boy sensed danger approaching from above; the same feeling an animal felt right before an oncoming natural disaster.

Snapping his head from left to right, he saw nothing. With his new enhanced senses of smell, he smelled nothing either. As seconds passed the boy began to get more nervous.

Notice Garfield's bizarre movements, the woman became unnerved.

"Garfield! Get down this instance, young man!" She cried out.

Garfield, still confused at what was to come, stayed in place, continuing to observe his environment.

"That's it."

Marie was about to begin climbing the large banana tree when all of a sudden she began to hear a faint whistling noise that seemed to be getting louder as it approached. That was when the boy looked up and adopted an expression of absolute horror. "Mom! Somethings—"

Before the boy could finish his sentence, from the sky, a black and blue meteor came crashing down at incalculable speeds aiming directly at Garfield like a heat-seeking missile, disintegrating anything in its path. Before Marie could catch on to what was happening, it was too late.

*Snap-Snap-Splat*

Neither of them had time to react. No human had the capability of doing so. And for that reason, the strange black and blue meteor crashed directly on the boy's person, reducing the 4-year-old child to nothing more than a bloody mist that contained chunks of bone and flesh. A split second later, the alien object landed directly on top of the mother, smashing her into a paste.

*BOOM*

All plant life that previously surrounded the town had been either blown away from impact, or disintegrated to the sheer size and speed at which the object landed. Almost all that remained was a crater imprinted upon the earth filled with gore and fire.

If one were to look closer, they would know that there was something else inside as well. What was left inside the hellish pit was a black mass of flesh that had strange blue bioluminescent light that flickered through its mass like lightning.

As if adapting to the earth's ecosystem, it stalled for a bit before the black flesh mass began inching toward the remains of the fallen.

Upon making contact with the human debris, the black slime creature began to absorb the dismembered chunks of flesh and bone into its body, as if feeding, leaving no remains. After about 10 minutes, all traces of the two people that once were had been completely expunged.

Completing its task, the creature began to spasm, warping and molding itself into the familiar shape of a male toddler-sized human being with a pitch-black skin pigmentation.

Slowly but surely, it began adapting, going so far as to mimic a skin tone that was natural to the planet.

After 30 more minutes, the creature's metamorphosis was complete. Its eye color an unnatural dark, yet neon dark blue color. Its hair was wavy, long black, and had dark blue streaks going through it.

While lying on its back, the alien creature finally opened its newly formed eyes.

*gasp*

"Jesus fucking christ." It mumbled, acclimating to its new domain.

"Am I finally dead?" Taking note of its voice for the first time, it raised a brow in confusion.

The being was confused as if hearing its own voice was unsettling to it. Attempting to clear its newly formed throat, it attempted to speak once more.

"Where am…" silencing itself, it tried to clear its throat yet again.

"Where am I?"

*sigh* the creature took a deep breath in frustration at its own unfamiliar vocal cords.

Standing up, the creature began climbing out of the crater it landed in.

Reaching the top, it then began to inspect itself.

"And why am I naked? And why the hell is everything so small?!" He asked, taking note of his tiny melanated body.

"And why does it look like I just woke up in a place where a meteor landed?" He blurted, still making an effort to get comfortable with his vocal cords.

'I… I'm still not dead, But I feel weird… And I think it's because of that monster.' The boy didn't know what to do.

He didn't even know if he was still in the monster's digestive system or not, but judging by the blue sky and white clouds, the green trees, and the lack of sulfur burning a hole through his nasal cavity, context clues suggested that that was most likely not the case.

He still didn't remember the names of the people of his past. All he remembered was that his name was—

"Ken… I only remember my name now."

What was odd was that Ken couldn't remember his last name, no matter how hard he tried to focus on it. He couldn't remember the names of his loved ones, he couldn't remember any of his fellow coworkers, not even his previous pet animals. But what he could remember was works done by people like books, video games, and famous works of art.

He could remember historical events, he could remember things involving human advancement, he just couldn't put a face to any creator; just like how he still remembered his past and the people in them, but could recall what their faces looked like.

'Alright… I should probably figure out where I am right now. And I also need to see what happened to my body, that hit over there looks like a good place to start,' He thought, looking off a few miles away.