Rue sat on her bed engrossed in a hand-held Nintendo console, mindlessly playing. The winter this year had been colder and the small wooden cabin did its best to keep out the frost. The fireplace in the next room was audible, firewood cracking as it turned to cinders from the smouldering flame. She shivered as the cold became unbearable and left the room, her dog following closely behind her.

She planted herself on one of the chairs in front of the fireplace and basked in the warm, comforting embrace of the flames moving like an exotic dancer performing a caged show.

Her mother sat beside her, her face pale likely from frost, she had spent hours outside earlier in the day foraging for firewood. "Your father is coming to see us today, sunshine."

Rue looked at her with a blank face before giggling playfully, mom loved making 'edgy' jokes. Dad hadn't visited us, Ever. "Mom, you really have to stop with the dad jokes," Rue responded still giggly.

"I am not joking. He called last night while you were sleeping. He will be here for dinner."

Rue looked stared at her reflection in the medium-sized bathroom mirror. Big green eyes staring back at her, she scrutinised her almond complexion and curly hair. Her mother had white skin, blonde hair and green eyes. "GUESS I have an idea of what you might look like, dear old dad."

Three loud knocks on the door, she went to answer but her mother was already attending to it. A tall bulky figure entered slowly, taking the mother into a gentle familial hug, wrapping his arms around her waist. A slimy small tendril seemed to protrude from where his right hand was supposed to be. The dog began barking aggressively. "Seth, no! Calm down, boy. Shhhh," Rue hushed her dog. She looked back at the man and saw a dark hand where she thought she had seen a…Must be my imagination

"Let me take your coat, Harold." Her mother helped take the fuzzy dark looking coat off the man. He had dark brown skin and eyes of the same colour, sharp hardened features but was also handsome unlike her and her mother's soft cute faces. "Mhm, I had missed the smell of your cooking, Tina. Is that CHICKEN?"

"Yes, I made it just the way you like it." She beamed and looked at Rue. "Sweety, help me set the table, PRESENTATION is key."

The three of them sat around a large dinner, warm and bright but Rue still felt something amiss. Mom was acting…weird. Harold had left them before she was born yet here she was playing happy family. She had made it clear she resented him for abandoning them. The food looked delicious though, a large cooked chicken decorated with roast CORN and mashed potatoes. Harold drooled as he dug a fork into the chicken, he tore off a large chunk of meat with his bare hands and left the fork there. Tina looked at him as if craving something, his drooling persisted as he brought the meat closer to his mouth. The slimy saliva was pooling on the red oak dinner table as a long and forked tongue escaped his mouth and latched the chunk of meat into his mouth. "What the fuck?" Rue exclaimed at the display.

"Do not worry, sweety. Your father is feeding, he misses earthly pleasures." Tina placed a hand under the table. Rue did not want to think about whatever was happening down there.

Harold set his gaze on his daughter. She felt his eyes peering deep into her like a cold wet grip on bare skin. She fidgeted in her seat, the cold spreading slowly to her fingertips. She wondered, how did he make it through all that snow outside on foot? We can barely go out a few hundred metres. The Russian war had caused the launch of a mega nuclear warhead, it had made the Earth colder and governments uneasy. It was not the apocalypse but it was enough to get Mom to move them far out into the boonies.

"So, Harold. Where have you been these past seventeen years?" Rue asked awkwardly. "I was waiting, daughter."

"Waiting for what?!" Rue banged her fist on the table.

"For the seed to ripen," Harold licked his lips with his gooey swamp-green tongue. Rue was certain, this was not her father. Whoever, whatever it was. She was not going to sleep under the same roof as it.

His white shirt now looked drenched, an ooze stained it from the inside. "Wow, it's getting late. Talk to you tomorrow, thank you for the meal, Mom."

"But, sweety, you have not even taken a bi-

Rue had already slammed the bedroom door shut. She packed a small bag of essentials and pretended to sleep. The big woolly blankets almost made her doze off but that slimy tongue kept her eyes wide open. The Lights had been turned off, the fireplace put out and all that was left was for her to make a break for it. She snuck out of her room careful not to step on one of the creaking tiles. She tiptoed expertly while Seth followed beside her, not making a single sound. She grabbed the car keys by the tv stand on the way to the door and felt relief as she closed it behind her.

She ran to the vehicle and as she struggled to unlock it, a voice called behind her. "Daughter" She looked back and saw the same bulky tall figure standing by the door. A growling noise escaped from it and what looked to be spider-like claws burst out from his back, tearing through the pyjamas he was wearing. "Come here, I won't hurt you. I'm your father." Seth began barking and rushed for the figure. Rue ran away from it, the sound of flesh being ripped and dog cries chased behind her but the figure did not. She ran until her lungs hurt. "My dog, Mom, I should go back but, no. I can't. I'll die." Why didn't I do something earlier, Mom hasn't used a single contraction since this morning. That was red flag number one. Fuck!

Rue shook herself and kept on moving. The frost that she had powered through due to adrenaline now flooded her. She felt it, thawing her. That voice again but now, now slimier, deeper. "Daughter" Rue panicked. She saw him in front of her, standing in the snow but clear as daylight. The same tall bulky figure, his form shifted like gelatin, erupting from it like puss out of a giant boil, the ooze boiled. The porridge moulded back together again ever slowly. A mass of eyes held together by loose flesh dripping with fudge. An abstract form, it changed more times than she could count and keep track of. Rue stood in place, unmoving and unwilling, held in a trance that forbade her from peeling her eyes off it. She wanted to run but she felt drawn. This was the truth, why he waited all this time to see me. I am his but I was unripe.

Long serpent-like follicles welcomed her, tearing away until she stood bare but the cold did not touch her. They wrapped around her as the voice rang in her mind repeatedly in ecstasy. "Daughter"

Her skin crawled from the overly wet contact, her pupils widened as her being was filled through every orifice. Seemingly no part of exit nor entry, her jaw broke from one of the tendrils forcing its way through as it had other places.

Rue felt her mother, her fallen companion, Seth and she felt her father's, dear love. She could feel every animal, every life, every death. She joined them and she understood, that there was no beginning and there was no end. Her mind opened and she…tried to understand. This was not love, this was subjugation, a sadistic joke of what her life was. She looked into the cosmos as if she understood nothing. The SPECTRUM of everything was a lie. It was all hubris, ignorance, all insignificant. She looked at her father once more and saw that which could not be understood. No reason, no malice, only will and what kind of will?

"God help me!" She screamed in thought as she spun through the cosmos but still in place as dear father's voice whispered one last time.

"I am."