[Intro] [Instrumental] [Verse] (Spoken word) The smell hit first: warm, rancid butter cut with something coppery and hot. Mike scrambled backward against the tiled wall of the pharmacy alley, his sneakers slipping in puddle water and sticky, melted sugar. The shadow stretching across the asphalt didn’t belong to a man. It swelled—bulbous shoulders draped in satin, a head that wobbled like an overfilled water balloon. Out from under the sodium streetlight stepped the thing. It stood eight feet tall. Its skin wasn’t facepaint; it was slick, rubbery flesh dyed curdled chalk-white, crisscrossed with thick, purple veins that pulsed beneath the surface. The nose was a raw, glistening bulb of wet cherry cartilage that twitched with every wheeze drawn through its maw. And the mouth—split ear-to-ear—peeled back to expose rows of needles, yellowed and jagged, dripping a stringy, pinkish saliva that hissed faintly where it hit the damp pavement. Mike’s throat seized. "Stay back—" The creature tilted its massive, frizzy-fringed skull. Its painted-on cerulean eyelids fluttered over glassy, pupil-less yellow marbles. Then it giggled. It wasn't a human laugh; it was a rhythmic, mechanized honk, wheezing out from deep within a bloated ribcage. In its oversized, four-fingered gloved hand, it raised a metallic apparatus that looked like an antique bazooka dipped in candy-apple enamel. A glass canister on top swirled with boiling, magenta sludge. Mike hauled himself up and bolted toward the mouth of the alley. A high-pitched, pneumatic thwump cracked behind him. The blast didn't hit him with concussive force; it engulfed him. A spray of boiling, semi-translucent pink fibers hit Mike’s back and legs, instantly solidifying into tight, suffocating strands. The heat scalded straight through his denim jacket, blistering the skin beneath. He slammed onto his stomach, kicking wildly, but the fibers contracted with terrifying speed. Every jerk of his limbs only spun the web tighter, pulling his arms flat against his ribs, pinning his knees together. The clown sauntered over, shoes squeaking rhythmically—squick, squeak, squick. Mike twisted his head, chest heaving against the tightening cocoon. "Help! Somebody—" The creature planted one massive, bulbous boot onto Mike’s lower spine, pressing down just enough to crack cartilage. Leaning down, its painted, rotting grin hovered inches above Mike’s face. The breath rolling off it smelled of burnt corn syrup and formaldehyde. A tiny hatch slid open on the muzzle of the clown’s weapon. A single, crystalline pellet shot out and buried itself deep into the thick mound of pink web right over Mike’s ribs. Instantly, the fluff turned opaque, hardening into a thick, fibrous shell. Inside, the heat spiked violently. Mike shrieked as a flood of acidic, syrupy digestive fluid began to seep inward from the cocoon walls, melting through his shirt, searing into his chest, dissolving flesh into a warm, sloshing broth to be harvested later. Above him, through the translucent hardening dome, the grotesque silhouette clapped its oversized mittens together, threw its head back, and let out a triumphant, squealing bray into the night sky.
