A Veritable Buffet!

By C. Rommial Butler

The body trapped in the ice was not human. 

It was a tentacled monstrosity with bulbous eyes and what appeared to be a long anteater-like proboscis. 

Merrill was excited. He’d never seen this species before. Was it something from Earth’s ancient past or from beyond our orbit?

When he took the job as Director of Research at the Arctic outpost, he hadn’t expected to find anything like this, and he doubted the folks who hired him did either.

Merrill and his crew worked tirelessly to cut out the block containing the creature. 

Merrill had no way of knowing what exposure would do to it, so he’d keep it frozen and study it through nature’s glass.

His main concern was whether he could trust his crew to keep quiet about the find. He’d told them all to keep a lid on it, but this was no military operation. 

They were studying the glaciers, measuring the melting ice. They weren’t supposed to be poking into the mysteries which emerged from the receding frost. 

He would report it, of course. But he wanted a few days to study it for himself. 

Just a few days. Then he’d notify the Institute.

***** ****

They transported the creature to a deep vault on base. It was a lot of work and the crew was glad to be done with it. 

The dogs hadn’t liked it. They seemed to be running away from the thing more than pulling the sled. They whimpered and whined the entire time it was in their cargo and couldn’t wait to depart once it was off.

Samson, the dog trainer, gave the creature a hearty one finger salute as they left to partake of the relative warmth of their rooms. 

Merrill stayed behind and stared at the thing for awhile. 

It seemed to him that sometimes the bulbous eyes moved when he shined his flashlight at them, but he suspected it was an optical illusion created by the refraction of light through the ice.

Nevertheless, as he stood there he felt like he was the one being studied.

It wasn’t lost on Merrill that he was living in the plot of a horror film. He’d caught Carpenter’s The Thing in theaters when he was only twelve, with his pop. 

Science Fiction was a large reason he became a scientist, but that film wasn’t what inspired him to work in the Arctic!

He was just spooking himself though. There was no way that creature was escaping the ice, and it wasn’t likely to be alive when they did finally release it. 

It will be an interesting autopsy, Merrill thought before he went to join the crew. But I won’t get to perform it.

***** ****

The barking dogs invaded Samson's dreams but didn’t wake him.

What woke him was when one of the them yelped and they all fell silent. 

Like Merrill, his thoughts went to the John Carpenter classic, and more so now that he could not hear a single dog whimper or pant, let alone bark.

He laid there a long time, staring into the dark, praying for just one husky to make a sound.  

When none did, he pulled himself together and went out to the pen to check. 

He found only bones, scattered all about, picked clean of every spare morsel, even the sinew and gristle. 

In his mind were two people.

The first Samson was catatonic. He didn’t know what to make of such a sight. The implications were beyond him. 

The second Samson was suspended in a state of terror, as the implications were well understood. Something had eaten his dogs, sucking every piece of flesh, muscle, and organ, leaving only cracked and splintered bones. 

Frozen by terror, wonder, and the Arctic cold, Samson didn’t register the sensation of tentacles sneaking around his legs until they were crawling halfway up his back. 

By the time he started to turn, it was too late. 

One of the slimy appendages slid into his mouth and down his throat, obstructing his final, feeble attempt to scream. 

He was thrown violently to the ground and could already feel the many muscular extensions of the creature's strange body tearing his flesh from the bone.

Before he was ripped asunder, he touched a canine collarbone and comforted himself with the thought that he would see his dogs soon.

***** ****

Skrellorg hadn’t thought much of the furry quadrupeds, but the fleshy biped was delicious! Having been brought here by a group of them, Skrellorg knew they must be nearby. 

He was sure he could commandeer some of their inferior tech to dig out his exploration pod and send a beacon to his Cregarian shipmates. 

But first he’d eat them all. Being frozen in ice had developed in him a mighty hunger. 

He needn’t even worry about saving any for his compatriots. The life readings he’d taken in his pod confirmed there was a whole planet of them!

A veritable buffet!