“Hey Mariam, its Brandon”
“Oh, hi Brandon, what's up?” Mariam asked, “Do you want to speak to Mat?”
Mariam didn't know Brandon too well, but he and Mateo hung out a lot, so presumed he'd be wanting to arrange a get together.
“Well either of you really. Is it ok if we come to yours later on? Will you be in?”
“We?”
“Oh sorry, yeah, me and Dan” He replied quickly.
“Yeah sure, we're going to the cinema this afternoon, but we'll be around until about four pm if that's any good?”
Brandon checked his watch, four pm was a few hours away yet, so that gave them plenty of time.
“Okay, sounds good, see you soon” He said putting the phone down quickly.
She placed her laptop on the couch next to her and got up to find Mateo. This seemed a bit out of the blue, Brandon and Danny had never both been round together. They all knew each other, but they normally met at Gina's place.
“Hey Hon” She said poking her head around the door, “Brandon and Dan are going to come around a bit later on before we go out, not sure when, so you might want to put something decent on”.
Mateo was sitting there in a long vest top and his underwear. He didn't get dressed properly at the weekend, unless they were expecting company, and if someone knocked at the door unexpectedly, he let Mariam answer. The fact both of them wanted to come around was quite unusual, but they hadn't seen them for a while, so they probably just wanted to catch up.
“When did we last see either of them? I can't quite remember” He asked Mariam.
Mariam poked her head back round the door.
“I'm not sure actually, seems like ages ago, it must have been round Gina's. Was it your birthday maybe?”
“Umm, possibly” Mateo replied, “I'll get dressed in a minute”.
Mariam walked back into the lounge and sat back down on the couch. It would be nice to see both Brandon and Danny. Mariam and Mateo didn't get out that often to see their friends any more, they were always too busy working, eating out, or catching the latest movie. She really couldn't remember when she had last seen either of them, which was very weird; she normally had a great memory. She didn't dwell on it for too long and sat back down with her laptop to continue scanning the articles that were of interest. She heard Mateo banging around in the bedroom, putting some clothes on. He could never be quiet; she always knew where he was in the house. Just as she was starting to concentrate again her mobile rang. Was it Brandon again? She looked down and this time she saw it was Gina. Gina as well? Mariam felt popular all of a sudden. She accepted the call and put her ear next to the receiver.
“Hi Gi-” She was cut off by a scratching sound. She could just make out Gina's voice distantly. The line didn't seem to be very good, there was some kind of interference, “I can't hear you Gina, can you try and speak up? The signal is terrible”.
“.... help, Tom's disa.....some kind of .......form..... taken” The voice at the other end of the phone said.
What was she talking about? Her words were breaking up and it was hard to understand what she was saying.
“Gina, the line is bad, can I try calling you back?”
“....sounds crazy.....please” Gina shouted down the phone.
But something was odd; her voice was changing, morphing into some synthetic sounding tone. Sharp static words were being spat out like they weren't wanted, starting to distort.
“Call the cops?..... get through” Gina said.
She wasn't so sure that this was Gina's voice at all; it had altered beyond all recognition. It had twisted into a fiendish sounding analogue grunt. She then heard this analogue grunt rise into a hellish scream, pulses of static wildly flailing out of her earpiece, almost deafening. Mariam pulled the phone away from her ear immediately wondering what was happening. She looked at her mobile as it started to flash. What was wrong with this thing? Was the battery going to explode? She quickly placed it on the glass coffee table in front of her, put her laptop to the side and stood up frightened; expecting the phone to burst into flames any second. The phone vibrated, the flashes taking on a blue hue, before tentacle-like fibres sprung out of it in all directions. Mariam stood there startled, suddenly feeling complete panic which turned into a reflexive squeal. From the bedroom Mateo realised something was wrong and darted towards the lounge as quick as he could.
The blue pulses from the phone raced up each tentacle structure, all the while multiplying, filling the room around Mariam. The walls were covered in them, pulsing and flashing in a web like structure. The floor beneath her was undulating, appearing to sway with the same pulses. The room began to cave in, to condense into an unfathomable mesh of blue pulsing veins with Mariam at the centre. She looked across to the hallway and decided to make a dash for it, at the same time screaming to Mateo to get out of the house. This was all happened so quickly that Mateo hadn't quite reached the lounge, but was desperately running down the back corridor. In the distance he saw an unexpected sight, the unfathomable blue radiating from their lounge.
Mariam reached the hallway. As she looked behind her, she saw the incomprehensible flashes of tentacles fluttering into an expression into itself. She was now staring at some kind of beast made of electro-static pulses, each pulse a strand of its body, somehow forever changing. That gave her the final impetus to sprint for the front door, yelling Mateo again. She was completely terrified; and terrified for Mateo as much as herself. What was this thing? What was happening? She barely had time to let those questions form
