Now, let us go ahead and roll this story back to what for Alyx was merely yesterday.

The first of many alarms set into his cellphone began to shriek at Alyx, rousing him from beneath the comforter and blankets that draped across his bed. Winter had come to Maine in force these past couple of weeks, and being a Florida native, Alyx had not taken kindly to the frost and snow.

With dead eyes of the hateful Alyx glared at his cellphone. Alas, despite his best efforts, it neither shut itself off of its own accord nor burst into flames.

Throwing off the bedcovers and beginning his evening routine to prepare for the midnight shift in the factory, Alyx thought once more about what had brought him to the frigid north.

A typical millennial having just turned thirty, with a baby face that made him look like he was in his early to mid-twenties. Alyx had a college degree that had never been used in the field for which it was intended. And in his twenties had spent his time working while waiting for some magical opportunity to appear.

Seeing as it had clearly failed to do so, Alyx became fairly competent at distracting himself from the reality of his problems, diving into books, comics, video games, D&D, working out, really anything that kept him from actually facing the realities around him.

Until at last, as he approached thirty and realized he wasn’t where he wanted to be. Looking at his investments, the cost of living, and the work available, Alyx decided to move and take up a factory position near a small town in Maine.

So far, things were going pretty well, actually. He didn’t have a huge salary, but it had only taken a couple of months for him to save up enough to put a down payment on a small cabin style home on an acre of land. Heck, in a year and a half, he’d probably have it all paid off, and he could start putting that money elsewhere.

The only thing he hadn’t accounted for was the cold. Alyx could stand working midnight to 8. 3rd shift made a dollar more an hour to compensate for the fact that they seldom got to interact with the sun in their daily lives. No, the real problem was snow, blasted evil, fluffy, crunchy, falling from the sky, thrice-damned to the hells snow. Seventy degrees counted as cold for Alyx before he moved up north. Now the average temperature during the day was thirty-four degrees.

Shivering, just from thinking about the cold, Alyx finished his routine, virtually on autopilot as he stuffed his feet into steel-toed boots and shrugged on the thick wooly jacket he had purchased for at first what seemed like way too much money. Still, now it was something for which he would gladly pay double for.

Looking out the window by the front door of his small cabin, he could see the road at the end of his driveway, and to his delight, it was mostly clear of snow. However, some had begun falling from the sky as if to spite him.

“Car keys, wallet, cellphone, Check. Ok, time to go.” Trudging out into the winter evening and into his truck, an old Toyota that may not look pretty anymore, but the engine had been well taken care of. Alyx shivered as the engine came to life, sounding like an old bull that long should have been put out to pasture. “Yeah yeah, a hundred and fifty more miles, then you can have your oil change.”

Work being a blessedly short distance from home, was in fact, one of the major perks of living where Alyx did. Three miles of farmland, a single right turn, and bam the smallest town you’ve ever seen and the factory that supports it.

We all know Alyx never made it to work, of course, Instead as he was adjusting his radio dial, hoping to find a decent song, something moved across the road in front of his truck. Something is a bad descriptor in this case, as these things don’t exist. It would be more akin to say a mass of nothing moved in front of Alyx’s truck and was promptly slammed into by the two and a half-ton vehicle going at fifty-five miles an hour.

If not for his seatbelt, Alyx would have likely been thrown from his seat and through his windshield. As it stands, he was still knocked around pretty badly by the crash, the mass of nothing able to grip the asphalt beneath it so thoroughly that the truck was nearly stopped cold.

Alyx put the truck shakily in park with a ragged cough and looked around for what he had hit. Unfortunately, his windows were reduced to a series of spiderwebbing cracks, and he couldn’t see much. So in defiance of what every horror movie has taught him, Alyx stumbled out of his truck and staggered around to the front end of his vehicle to try and figure out what the heck had just happened.

There is no way to accurately describe the creature that was pinned halfway beneath the front end of Alyx’s old Toyota. A mass of writhing tentacles without beginning or end, upon which eyes and teeth would grow into existence and then shrivel away. Eyes and teeth of all kinds, by the by, as if it was not horrifying enough, it looked like the creature simply couldn’t decide which ones it wanted, human eyes, cat eyes, goat eyes, fish eyes, frog eyes, the eyes of flies. The teeth were almost worse to watch grow into existence, molars, fangs, and everything in between, jutting out at all angles only to yellow and simple fall off before dispersing into a strange black mist. Even its blood, which seemed to be leaking from where the truck impacted, was evaporating away, leaving no trace behind.

It was without a doubt the worst thing Alyx had ever laid his eyes upon. Worse than its appearance, though, was the fact that it spotted Alyx at the same moment he came across it. The nothing creature, an enemy of existence that it was, did not hesitate a moment before whipping out its tentacles and grappling Alyx’s arms and legs, teeth growing into existence to Peirce his flesh so it might better pull him forward.

Whether due to the nothing monster not being incredibly bright or the damage from the truck being worse than it expected, even as Alyx let out a scream of terror and pain, the creature ripped itself away from its own flesh in its attempt to pull Alyx towards it. The vast majority of the nothing monster still stuck under the old Toyota. The creature was now more a beach ball-sized writhing mass that had latched onto Alyx.

Alyx might well be some kind of idiot, but quick decision making in times of crisis can save lives, even if it’s not an optimal decision. Instead of trying to free himself, Alyx grabbed hold of the tentacles that had wrapped themselves around his arms, staggering as he spun in a circle, figuring the monster must weigh somewhere between fifty and sixty pounds. Alyx used both his momentum and the weight of the monster to slam the damn thing into the front fender of his truck.

It impacted with a loud squelch and a puff of black mist. Which hopefully meant that had done some damage. Alyx was vaguely aware that the monster didn’t have a mouth with which to scream or growl. Unfortunately for him, the tentacles were twining farther up his limbs, sprouting more fangs and losing old ones, piercing his flesh, gouging wounds into his arms and legs even as he did his best to raise the creatures main mass up above his head and slam it down onto the truck. Only able to reach shoulder height, however, due to the weight of the creature and the damage to his arms, Alyx somehow managed to miss the hood of the truck entirely, his momentum carrying both him and the creature to the ground.

Arms and legs on fire with pain, as the warm wet feeling of his own blood flowed down his arms and legs, Alyx began to panic. His movements were slowing, his limbs becoming harder to move as the tentacles tightened around them. “I’m going to die...even if I kill this thing, I’ve lost so much blood...will I even be able to bind this many wounds? Fuck! Fuck you! Stupid tentacle ball!” Alyx's mind began to rally around the idea of causing as much damage to the monster as he could, struggling on the ground with the Eldritch horror, his clawed, bit, kicked and slammed his body against that of the creature. With every passing moment, Alyx’s struggles grew weaker his ability to fight diminished.

He couldn’t even tell if he was doing much damage to the monster. Its writhing mass of tentacles difficult to discern damage on. Eventually, ALyxs struggled ended. His labored ragged breathing finally came to a stop, and he died, not knowing why this was happening or if he’d managed to defeat the monster that had taken his life.

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