At the last instant, I reacted. Or at least my orbs did: two swung to intercept the onrushing mass while the third shoved me away.

The fleshy Spandle eruption swallowed the first two orbs in a foamy mass the consistency of yesterday’s oatmeal. They went dark. I felt them swallowed by blackness ... then they blinked back into my awareness as the sludge fell around them to the dirt floor, leaving them hovering in the air.

The mound of fleshy muck on the floor writhed like a million worms before the leading edge rose and swiveled toward me--while the other end was still pouring from Mrs. Spandle.

Or from what was left of her. She’d melted.

That stuff was her. Four tons of sludge poured from a hundred-pound woman--like clowns from a circus car--spewing like a wave of wet cement, and bearing down on me.

My mind stuttering in horror, I backpedaled into a cramped corner with a plywood ceiling two feet overhead.

"PJ!" I begged. "Call her off!"

His voice sounded far away. "I could do that, kid. Or I could tell her to feed."

The fleshy wave surged forward and swallowed me. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe. I was drowning in a vat of oatmeal, warm and thick. Fear tightened my throat, and I struck out blindly, I kicked and punched, but the mush didn’t react. I lashed the orbs in crazy circles but nothing happened.

No matter how fast you stir, you can’t break oatmeal.

My lungs strained, my mind sparked with panic. There was nothing to hit, nobody to fight. I was suspended in suffocating darkness. Drowning in paste.

Then my right foot jolted against the floor. I struggled until I got both feet on the ground then, in a sudden burst, I pressed all three orbs into the floor and sprang upward, swimming through Mrs. Spandle, using the orbs to drive myself higher, then flinging one orb overhead to smash through the makeshift plywood ceiling.

My head broke the surface of the sludge and I gulped air and thrashed for a handhold. I’d popped into the second level of the scaffolding, through a crack the orbs opened between two plywood sheets.

At least my head and neck and arms had. The rest of me still dangled down below, engulfed in living goo.

Make that living, acidic goo: Spandle was excreting some sort of acid. Not all that strong, she couldn’t strip a cow in thirty seconds, but she could dissolve a millimeter of flesh in a minute.

And here’s a fun fact: your epidermis is two or three millimeters thick. Three minutes trapped inside that gunk and you’d be skinned alive. At least if you were naked. Fortunately, I was fully clothed, and my exposed skin--my face and neck and hands--were safe.

For now. The suction increased as she pulled me down. Only the orbs pressing into the walkway, kept me aboveground.

Abovegunk. Whatever.

My shins burned where the goop touched skin, and I almost sobbed as the pain added to my throbbing arm and face and ribs.

Then I heard footsteps coming closer. And I felt them, vibrating the plywood I was clinging to. Better and better. PJ had come upstairs to kick me in the brain while Spandle dragged medown into her suffocating gut.

Except when I squinted upward in the gloom through tear-blurred eyes, I saw that the footsteps didn’t belong to PJ.

They belonged a woman, three or four years older than me. Dark-haired, strong-featured, holding a flashlight and a gun in a combined two-handed grip like something on TV.

The beam of light speared through the darkness, moving this way and that--then it shone down at my face, blinding me, and I heard a soft gasp.

"Holy Jesus," the girl said. "I thought you were just a head."

"Go away!" I gasped. I didn't know who she was, but I didn't want them to kill her, too. "Get out of here--run."

She holstered her gun. "You fell through?"

"Listen to me!" I begged. "This place is going to blow. There’s a--a gas leak."

"Uh-huh, that’s why--" She sniffed. "Oh. That gas."

The rancid seaweedy stench. PJ.

"Please," I said. "Just go. I’m fine."

"If this is fine, I’d hate to see your idea of screwed." She crouched down and tugged my arm but I didn’t budge. "What’re you stuck in?"

"Spandle," I gasped, and heaved with the orbs. But I still didn’t budge. "Please! There are people down here who will--"

"Smells like PJ," she said, looking around the walkway. "I recognize the cologne."

"You know him?"

She frowned at me, then walked away, disappearing into the darkness where my orbs--focused on keeping me from beind swallowed whole--couldn't track her.

A sudden pang of abandonment made my pain and fear even worse. My grip on the plywood started slipping. I whimpered and clawed for purchase, then the woman reappeared, dragging a length of PVC pipe.

"Hold this," she said, laying the pipe across the hole where I was sinking.

I wrapped my arms around it like it was a lifeline. Which it kind of was.

"Yeah, I know PJ," she continued. "I gave him that scar."

"He’s going to mess with your head."

"Not if I breathe through my mouth."

When Spandle tugged at me from below, the pipe started bending. "You’re kidding. That's all it takes?"

"PJ’s mostly olfactory. If you smell him, you're in trouble. What’s Spandle?"

"A librarian. She turns into five tons of oatmeal and--" I grimaced as the suction increased. "--I’m about to lose my grip."

"I wouldn't, if I were you," she told me. Then she shouted, "PJ! I know you’re in here, you fat freak, I can smell you."

His voice came from the depths. "Rachel Boone? This is my lucky day. You’re here alone … and you stink of prison."

"Released for good behavior," she called back, and stalked into the darkness.

"Great," I muttered. "Nice meeting you too."

The PVC pipe bowed in my arms; I held on for another five seconds, another ten seconds, and felt myself weakening. What a way to die. Eaten by a goop monster.

Spandle gave a tremendous tug and I clamped the pipe under my arms. I clung for my life--and the pipe bent into a U-shape and slipped through the hole.

I fell into the sticky darkness, into the center of the sludgy whirlpool. A sunburn tingle started on my face before I even hit the floor.

I crouched, holding my breath, and a sort of slow-motion clarity surrounded me. With my eyes closed against the stinging muck, I groped with the orbs until they slipped inside the open ends of the PVC pipe. Then I ducked low and spun the orbs in a circle, moving the pipe as fast as a helicopter blade … and the sludge shifted. Only a few inches, but I’d finally done something to affect Spandle. I spun the orbs faster, like blender blades in a smoothie, and an air pocket formed beneath me, a five-inch gap above the dirt floor. I gulped one stinking breath and heard gunfire. A few pistol pops, then a fully-automatic reply. Then another pop.

The orbs slowed. I was injured and out of breath, and still drugged by PJ-- I couldn’t maintain that speed. I fell to my knees inside the sticky mass. Starbursts glittered behind my eyes. My lungs screamed for air, but if I inhaled Spandle, I was dead.

And finally, I couldn't hold out any longer.

I breathed.