Resolve

She thought it had been bad when Max, the younger dog, had died first: a six-year-old mutt she had rescued in a moment of weakness and guilt as she passed by a shelter during a particularly fearsome time of the month. But it had been the death of June, her ten-year-old Vizsla, a dog who had slept under the covers with her every night and would not allow anyone else to walk her while in her mistress’ presence, that had caused the air to seem quite still and heavy. She had died in her sleep. Christine covered her mouth and sat. Her eyes surged with hot water on her dry eyes, she sucked in her breath, hot and tasting of vomit; she inhaled sharply as if she had been stabbed. Then her crying began. It was a dark ocean of pain, grief, sorrow, regret, fear, loneliness. Her world went black as her eyes shut to drown out the light and allow the ache inside to grow. Wracked and convulsive for a moment, she felt she needed to calm herself down; nobody was home save her, if she fainted and hit her head, she would die next to her dog, and wouldn’t that just be awfully embarrassing? The grief lifted for a second as her little joke brought her back to her senses. Then she heard it. Her breath stopped, she held her eyes shut, clutching her chest, immobile, she heard it. The claws. June’s claws were scraping the linoleum, as if she were waking up. Christine opened her eyes. Had she been wrong? She had been so sure that June wasn’t breathing…could she have been in a deep sleep after all? Christine watched her try to get up, but it seemed more like a drunken puppeteer was trying to operate June’s limbs but had no idea of how the whole thing worked in concert. Finally, after several seconds of discovery, June stood. Facing away from her mistress, she tested each leg by pulling each one up to her torso. She seemed to yawn widely, and Christine relaxed. She had been wrong; it had been a deep doggy nap after all.
Then June turned around, sinews on the side of her face snapping like bloody rubber bands, as a giant putrescent tentacle grew out of June’s face. The thing smelled of death, dark and sharp. The bile in Christine’s stomach roiled with a fiery cauldron-like intensity, and her stomach contracted. The tentacle was opalescent and vaguely translucent, Christine thought, and malevolent. She had heard that word used back in high school, but she had never thought she would actually witness it.
Then it lashed out at Christine, who found her resolve.