Moment of Fear

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As we walked toward these eerie orbs, my chest tightened as a flash of fear froze me in my footsteps. For a tenth of a second, I imagined a slimy facehugger breaking open from one of the pulsating eggs with its spindly limbs, leaping onto my face and wrapping its tail around my neck, neutralizing me to implant an embryo down my throat.

Upon closer inspection, I noticed they were not alien eggs, but a ring of mushrooms encircling a tree trunk, like fleshy contagious pustules.

- Cassaendra