Julie’s heart was pounding a frenzied beat against her ribcage while rivulets of sweat collected in the deep canyons that now marred her once beautiful face, but her hazel eyes were fixed upon the child standing mere feet away.

The child was screaming, his eyes wild with the force of his passionate silent screeches. But she could not focus on his message. Not when she could drink in his beautifully tousled hair and his precious delicate hands.

But as her tears welled, her body betrayed her. Her lashes fell and her world disintegrated.

Her baby boy was standing before her once again but now flesh hung from the bones jutting through his flesh and blood dripped from a mouth twisted in a mockery of the carefree grin he once wore. His fleshy shell lurched across the floor, its dead eyes sizing her up pound by pound while licking its lips in anticipation.

When the creature was so close she could watch the maggots writhe beneath its flesh, it smirked and asked,

“Hey mom, what’s for dinner?”