It leans forward, dreadful teeth and twitching fibers close enough for Jeff to feel its warmth and its coolness and its intoxicating presence.

As it speaks, it speaks with a voice cobbled together from millions of distinct sounds, parroted back to create a semblance of a voice through the squeak of fruiting fungal bodies rubbing past each other.

"Wiggly thing... made of lines... ^covered in bugs... do you like the tailed ones? The hollow ones? Do you wear ^hats, rightside ^up, ndsᴉpǝ _poʍu? You could be made of skins, and bones, and sinews, gifted to so many, many, many, and the bugs _cr^aw_l inside their ears."