The tendrils, the Maw, the Thing

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It attacks indiscriminately. It slithers and grabs whoever it desires. Beware the dark tendrils as they lace around you. Slithering up and around till you're firmly in its grasp. They'll latch onto you and refuse to let go. You'll look around to see if anyone else notices.

They don't.

It'll drag you slowly, every so indolently, down and down to its deep cavern. Every inch it drags you, you'll feel as it takes you away. No one will notice you slip away. Until, eventually, you're at the entrance to its maw. It will encompass you whole within its cavernous dark maw and no light will come to meet you.

There, in the depths of its maw, you'll meet the thing that set the tendrils upon you and drew you to its cavern. A malformed dark figure, small in stature and limbs spindly. It is not a beast nor a monster of quick death. It is a master of the slow death. Beware its primordial power to invoke within you despondence and apathy.

As you gaze up to its face and meet its eyes, a slow crooked smile growing on its face, it begins to gnaw. It takes bits and pieces of you, slowly, leisurely. Pieces that you will never get back. Pieces that will forever be missing. It gnaws and gnaws and gnaws. Until you are a shell of your former self. A husk. Snuffed of your light.

Think of your life like a rope. You hang and grasp at this rope now. Clinging to it with all your feeble might. Desperately trying to climb out of its maw, out of this dark cavern. Once this thing has had its fill of you, it moves to the rope. It gnaws at the threads, snipping them one by one. It cuts and trims one thread at a time, over the course of an extremely long time.

The thing lets the dread build up within you, lets you know it's winning. You peer outside, only because it allows you too, but there is no color. You see all around you, but you don't feel it, don't experience it. It is colorless. And towards the end, it is not this thing that takes you. As it gnaws and chews, your rope dwindles and dwindles.
Then the rope frays under your own weight. In the end, it is the weight of self that snaps the rope.

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