"Blurb?"

Petre had arrived home without much issue. Georjii had not asked to come inside (He had not even offered to see Petre to his door) and for that Petre was most thankful. While he liked Georjii (Most of the time), he had long since concluded that he was one of nuncle's spies.

Cautiously, Petre peeked his head into the kitchen. There were no black blobs, but the purr of the refrigerator reminded him it was well past lunch. He had not thought to ask Georjii to stop somewhere along the way.

"And I have never been one to forgo a meal," Petre said as he opened the refrigerator door, slowly, as if Blurb might jump out in a gooey spray of delight.

He recovered an old bowl of beef, barley, and leak soup from the back-most corner. He lifted the lid, sniffed, and did not faint.

"Which is good enough for my belly," Petre said. He slapped his lean gut, and thought of Yakov.

"Just ridicolous," he muttered to himself. Because he had somehow sent the bull Yakov flying. "I can't even remember the last time I did a pushup. But!"

There was the Blurb issue, and so he shoved his soup into the microwave, and as it began its own mechanical purr, he peeked a furtive head out from the kitchen.

There was nothing in the living room, or the bedroom or the hallway closet. The bathroom had some black mold, but not the gooey sort.

"B-blurb?" Petre called.

He jumped and then cussed under his breath as the microwave announced lunch was ready.

"Forget it!"

Petre rinsed off the bowl, his eyes wide and searching. He knew that Blurb would appear the moment he stopped looking. That was how monsters worked, be they real or hallucinations.

"I am going to have a heart attack," Petre said as he wiped the bowl dry. He should have used soap, but a spritz of hot water was so much faster.

He put the bowl away and tried to steel his nerves, but a small groan still escaped his lips as he stuck his head out into the hallway.

"I shouldn't be this nervous," Petre said as his eyes scanned the living room. "Which is a stupid thing to say when you are either suffering from vivid hallucinations or are... newfound friends with some alien monster."

He stepped out of the kitchen and almost tiptoed back to the security of his small bedroom.

With a sigh, Petre plopped down at his desk.

His Gogal M1 Titan was an awful laptop, but Petre scarcely used it other than to watch YUTube and visit more... adult websites. It was also heavy enough to bludgeon a small animal to death, so there was a little comfort there.

"What a terrific use of my time," Petre muttered as he navigated to YUTube and typed in funny videos. He needed to relax.

"This is terrific," he said through a wide smile, his worries elsewhere. The video had been particularly well-edited, and the superimposed look on the dog's face had tickled free an actual laugh. "I bet Manya would like that."

His cuz slipped into his thoughts, and Petre bit his lip in frustration.

Because he was such a retched creature that even hours later, he still flushed when he remembered their hug, remembered the weight of her, and how she had pressed her weight against his.

"Pathetic." Petre scolded himself with a slap to the thigh. "She is family, and it was a hug. Thirty-year-old man getting riled up over a hug. Not that I am thirty."

He slumped over his desk, tapping his foot in rhythmic annoyance. After a few moments, his willpower faltered.

Petre straightened up and scooted forward as if someone else had made a decision for him.

"It has been a few days, I suppose," he muttered with the beginnings of a smile as he navigated towards the more adult side of the internet. "I do need to relax."

The internet was full of fun and fancy. One could browse YUTube for days and never grow bored. And as wholesome as one corner of the internet could be, so too could another be rank with smut and violence.

Petre went from video to video, from photo shoot to photo shoot. A hundred dozen beautiful women flashed across his screen who, if Petre were to meet them on the street, would not offer him even a wayward glance. But here, in this sanctum of filth...

"This is the one," Petre said after an exhaustive search.

He rose from his desk without a thought of Blurb or of Manya or of the mall. He lived alone, but habit (Another word for paranoia) meant he had to make sure that the front-door was locked, that the curtains were drawn (Because people from miles around wanted to watch Petre Predav polish his banister), and that he would not be interrupted.

He latched the front-door door. He yanked on the window curtains, and clicked his tongue.

"How long has this been open?"

But Petre did not care. He slammed the window shut, drew the curtains, and almost skipped back to his bedroom in pathetic anticipation. He had spent an hour or two in search for the ideal woman, and the real fun would only last a few minutes. Pathetic.

And there was someone in his room.

Petre stopped at the doorway, a thin smile stitched across his face.

Because a woman was in his room, and he recognized her, but he had no idea who she was.

She was staring down at his laptop, watching and listening to the video Petre had chosen after careful deliberation. Her lithe body did not so much as twitch as obscene slaps of flesh filled the room.

And then she turned towards him, and Petre knew who she was.

Because he had spent an hour looking for her on the internet. Because she writhed in an adult pleasure on his laptop screen.

[ bLuRb TaKe! ]

Blurb had not created legs for themselves, or perhaps the video had not shown them. Instead, their gooey black body, full of feminine wiles, slid across the floor towards Petre.

He was knocked onto his back as the weight of their new form cloyed to his chest. The actress' familiar face, made gray and bloodless with Blurb's goo, stared into Petre's eyes with childlike delight.

He opened his mouth, to scream or to shout. But Blurb descended on the him like a hungry animal, and he felt their wet fill him, choke him, in a sopping kiss.

How much had Blurb seen? How long had Blurb watched Petre scroll through smut?

Special Entity Zero-One watched Petre Predav as a curious itch burned from within their new abdomen.

After seven minutes and fifteen seconds, Special Entity Zero-One looked away from the human's restful face and focused on the itch. There were three, and each seemed contained to the small white essence Special Entity Zero-One had extracted from the human.

They left the bedroom and stalked towards the windows. They still assumed the human woman's form, the one that had produced the elevated levels of stimuli. Special Entity Zero-One had attempted to replicate the human foot and leg, but had found the appendages were sub-optimal for movement.

Special Entity Zero-One reached into their abdomen and retrieved the source of the three itches. They covered the human essence in five protective layers and rolled them into small orbs. There was no sense to the action. Special Entity Zero-One acted entirely on instinct as they opened the window and tossed each of the three orbs, and their collected white fluid, into the air.

They was beset with a sudden emptiness as the wind carried the three black orbs out of sight, to safety.

Special Entity Zero-One wanted to make more of the black orbs, and so they slid away from the windows and back into the human's bedroom. But he remained asleep and unable to produce additional human essence.

Special Entity Zero-One lowered themselves beside the human's face and stared at their slack-jawed mouth for forty-three minutes and thirteen seconds.

And then a decision was made, and Special Entity Zero-One shoved one of their new fingers into the human's mouth. Slowly, drip by drip, Special Entity Zero-One filled the human's mouth with their color and massaged their throat.

"MiNe."