The streets surrounding the bakery are just as deserted as they were during my first visit. There's no sign of Marty or Penny or anyone else. It's dark, and I'm the only one standing beneath this dim streetlight, balancing myself on crutches. The department didn't feel comfortable letting me keep my pistol outside of work hours. Now I'm the one not feeling so comfortable.

The bakery ruins look larger now, perhaps because I can't make out the contours of their borders. Staring at them with bleary eyes strained by a day of computer screens, Penny's stories don't seem nearly as far-fetched. There could be anything lurking in those twists of wreckage.

Something calls me to the bakery door we visited earlier. Call it a police officer's intuition, call it trusting my gut, but a feeling pushes me to check it out. Maybe that's where Marty and Penny went. It'd make as much sense as anything else on this silent street.

I click on a mini flashlight and stick it between my teeth. I shore up my grip on the crutches and hobble in the direction of the bakery door. Using my lips, I point the light onto its dented paneling a few hundred feet away, then stop in my tracks.

The door is open.

The light must be playing tricks on me. There's no way that door could've budged an inch.

I look over my shoulder and scan my surroundings. It's empty. Silent. Still. I'd compare the feeling to standing at the bottom of a canyon and looking up. Lost. Helpless.

The crutches grind grit against the sidewalk as I make my way to the door. A sound from behind me has me struggling to turn 180 degrees to face it. Almost sounded like someone calling my name. Must be Marty.

That's him, alright. Standing beneath the streetlight, he's got his back turned to me. I respond with, "Over here, Marty."

Marty turns to face me. There's something off about the way he does it, though. It's slow, especially by police standards. Someone calls out your name in a place like this, you don't take your sweet time figuring out what's happening. The way he turns is mechanical, like a gear turning. Wait. No, it's not even like that. It's like he lifts up off the ground a couple inches, twists in place and is set back down on the ground. His arms remain motionless.

Here comes that policeman's intuition again. It tells me my odds are better heading into that bakery door that isn't supposed to be open. I ignore it. This is Marty, in the flesh, not some random creep.

"You feeling OK, Marty?" I say and hobble back toward the streetlight. I can't make out his face yet.

"Come here," Marty says in a terse whisper. It's barely audible.

"What were you doing out here? Is Penny around?" I say, scanning my surroundings. We're still the only two out here.

"No," comes Marty's response, the quiet word almost eaten alive by a gentle breeze. Something isn't right. Is he hurt? His posture mimics the streetlight.

My eyes look for signs of injury. Nothing.

I stop in place once I get close enough for a good look at his face. I'm reminded of something Penny mentioned before. What was it? Having a "loose face?" I'd say that sums up Marty's appearance. His skin sags from his skull, as if the muscles and ligaments beneath it had been snipped. Did he have a stroke?

"Come here," Marty says again, once more requiring my full attention in order to hear the words.

His face isn't the end of it. There's something else. My eyes trace its thin form running from inside Marty's pant leg, onto the pavement and back to the open bakery door. It's a cord.

No, not a cord.

It's a tentacle.

And its path runs on the ground beneath me, gently crossing over a foot. I had no idea it was even there until just now.

My mind connects dots but refuses to consider the complete picture. What the hell is going on?

I ask Marty exactly that.

"I'll show you," he says, whispering, before taking a step toward me. Except it's not a step. It's once again as if he is picked up slightly and shuffled forward before being set back down. Reminds me of how my nieces play with their dolls.

I wish I still had that pistol.

I take a step backward with the crutches in response, but trip on something. The cord, the tentacle, between my feet suddenly becomes taut and rockets upward a few feet. It's strong as steel, and it flips me onto my back.

Marty takes another "step" toward me.

"You better tell me what's going on, Marty, or I swear I'll...," I start to say.

A shriek from inside the bakery door cuts me off. It's Penny. She's shouting something, but I can't make it out. I only know something is definitely wrong. I need to get back to the police station and get help.

"It's me. It's Marty. Don't be scared," Marty says and gets even closer. Whatever that tentacle is, it's clear to me now it's manipulating him like a puppet. It's the only way I can make sense of it.

After what sounds like legs kicking against a wall, I can finally make out what Penny is screaming. She says it over and over again. "Kill it! Killlllll it! Killllllll itttttttt!"

But I can't tell what "it" is, at least not from the ground and on my back. I only know Marty is a few feet away, and he's grabbing at my crutches.

"You don't need," Marty says as he clutches one of them.

Marty might be a prick, but he'd never take my crutches. I revert to the fight-or-flight instincts that kept me alive up to this point. Seeing as how I can't run, I take the other option. I sit up like I'm doing an ab crunch, and I hit Marty across the face with the free crutch.

The blow twists Marty's face to the side, but what happens next is almost beyond comprehension. While the bulk of Marty's head turns to look at me once again, his face does not. Along with his shaved scalp, it stays in place right where the crutch left it, allowing the bone beneath it to slide beneath the skin like tectonic plates.

I freeze in place. This shouldn't be happening. This can't be happening.

Despite its contorted location on the side of his head, Marty's mouth still manages to say something. "Good."

Good? What does that mean?

The blast of light that follows is so bright I can feel it as much as I can see it. I can't tell if I close my eyes or not, but suddenly I become aware of being dragged along the pavement on my back. Also, I can't breathe. An intense pressure sends my fingers scrambling to find space between my throat and whatever is wrapped around my neck.

But I know what it is. It's just as Penny told me. Or, tried to tell me.

I hear her voice screaming above the cacophony of my body being reeled in toward the open bakery door. It's either getting louder or quieter. I can't tell. I'm too busy flexing my neck against the tentacle, desperately trying to eek out a little space to grab a fresh breath.

My body twists in place, desperately trying to get some leverage to work against my unwilling journey, as I approach the door. I figure if I can stand I can dig my heels in and at least come to a stop. But I can't stand. The "accident" catches up with me, just like everything else in this overheated city. We're all smoldering in here, slowly cremating until a patient spark puts an end to everything.

My attempts to come to a halt only speed things up even more, although I manage to catch a sip of air. I can see inside the bakery door now. It's a small room, just as Penny described, with walls decorated by red and brown graffiti. But as I get closer, I realize I'm not looking at graffiti or walls at all. Those are stacks of bodies. Dozens of them. They're too mangled and deformed to make out their familiar edges, having been rolled into one another like dough, their humanity squeezed out of them. This is where it must keep its humans, its food, its bait.

And yet, even in that moment of absolute terror, of gore beyond gore, a connection. A familiarity. A set of eyes looking back at me. I hone in on them by sheer instinct, by a sense of shared humanity. They belong to Penny. Slumped against the ambient violence of the room, she's in her final moments, a tentacle gyrating against her throat. She stares into me, and I into her, and suddenly I am no longer a police officer. She is no longer a prostitute. We are equals in death, finally, even if not in life, or so I thought. Or so Marty thought. Or so everyone at the station thought. Or so this city thought. And just as I know now, and Penny knows, and Marty knows, so will they. We all will. We'll know where the dead ones go.

I watch in crippling horror as Penny's body is added to a stack of corpses. The tentacles – and there are several now – all originate from a deep, wide hole in one corner of the room. They work my body into place on the greasy floor, and I briefly catch a glimpse at the creature at the bottom of the hole. The mere sight of it crumples what's left of my will to fight. I can only describe it as being like the vapors of hell distilled into a single, horrific drop, the essences of that awful realm's most forgotten corners suspended within its abominable form. To see it is to know your life has come to an end.

It's almost a relief when the tentacles wrap around my forehead and, with an effortless twist, break my neck.

The End