The chameleon started to unwrap itself slowly from the cactus. It walked horizontally on six legs. It put me in mind of a lion crossed with a silverback gorilla and then crossed with the entire rest of the zoo. The back two sets of legs each had two joints, both bending the opposite way, like a dog. The front legs were thinner and ended in eight noodle-like fingers. The monster came up to about my belly button, but if it lifted its chest up, I guessed it would reach my collarbone.

  I couldn’t see a face anywhere. Both ends of it had a wild mane of fur, but no visible eyes or mouth. There were two bat-like ears at the end with the thinner legs, and that made me think of it as the front of the creature. I took a step back, the grass-like fungus squishing underfoot, and the monster’s ears twitched.

  Half of it was still the green of the cactus, but the front half was already blooming into a dour maroon to match the colour of the ground.

  I checked the infobox still in the corner of my vision, desperate for more information. It expanded as if responding to my attention.

  Chamelion. Not chameleon. Cute.

  I swiped the infobox away, and it minimized in the corner of my vision. I’m not sure how I knew, but I could sense that if I focused on it again, it would re-enlarge. It felt like an instinct that came from outside myself.

  I realised I couldn’t see the chamelion.

  While I’d been distracted by the infobox, it must have finished matching its skin to the environment. I looked from cactus to cactus searching for it. Before, I’d only noticed it when it moved. Otherwise, its camouflage was too perfect.

  I ran.

  Past more cactus parasols, over swaying fronds of white fungus, down a small incline, and then running through a small rivulet that came up to my ankles. In the reflection of the water, I noticed my shirt was still unbuttoned from the party, and my chest and stomach were covered in hastily scrawled dicks. I kept looking over my shoulder, trying to catch the chamelion’s movement.

  Nothing. Just the strange rust-coloured landscape, the pale blue sky, the wide-brimmed cacti. The only movement was the undulation of the grass-like fungi. I kept running, pushing my battered body, even though my head pounded, and my throat felt like I’d spent the entirety of last night gargling razor blades. Despite all this, my brain was still working, humming with other ways to draw out the monster.

  It was a smaller space than I’d first realised and I reached the wall quickly. From afar, my brain had thought they were hills on the horizon because they reached all the way up to the sky. But as I got closer, I realised that my perspective was wrong. The sky wasn’t a sky. It was a light blue ceiling with the illusion of depth. The wall wasn’t gigantic. It didn’t stretch for kilometres to touch the blue. The ceiling just looked far away. If I climbed a cactus, I’d be able to touch it.

  I put my back to the wall.

  Everything in this place was too new, too novel. It beat at my senses. The air smelt of pepper and vinegar. A fungal tendril wiggled against my shoe. My stomach churned. My head throbbed. I craved a diet coke more than I’ve ever wanted anything else in my life. And I swear I could feel a heartbeat through the wall. Too much weirdness all at once.

  I took a deep breath, tried my best to notice the gap of emptiness where inhalation became exhalation, tried to find calm in that moment, tried to centre myself.

  I saw the movement right before its fingers struck my face. I dove to the side, but I wasn’t fast enough. Its touch left a streak of burning across my cheek to my ear, like the lick of a Bunsen burner on a calloused finger, but I didn’t have time to notice it yet. I got to my feet, swung my hips forward, and punched as hard as I could at where I thought it would be.

  It didn’t make a noise as my fist broke through its skin.

  I did.

  I screamed.

  My fist immediately felt like I’d submerged it in a grease fire.

  “Fucking fuck,” I yelled. I pulled my hand out with a slurping noise, but the pain only seemed to get worse. I let out a scream that hurt my throat, deeper than I thought my voice could go, coming all the way from the pit of my being.

  “What the fuck?”

  The chamelion quivered in place. Its outline pulsed in a blue that matched the ceiling. I saw its ears swivel back and forth, then settle. The fist-shaped hole in its face started to fill in. Before it could disappear from view again, I scooped up a fistful of fungus and dirt and hurled it at the monster, hoping the dirt would stick to its acid blood, then ran.

  The stream of water. I raced towards it as fast as my legs would carry me. The acid burnt on my arm, and I tried to wipe it off as I ran, but it just made my hand burn as well. The pain was worse than anything I’d ever felt. It wasn’t just the skin. It was deeper, in the muscle, in the bone. It felt like someone was doing a root canal on my arm bone with one of those old car cigarette lighters.

  I reached the rivulet and plunged both arms in. The relief was immediate. A cold wave up to my shoulders. The pain was still there, but muted, and as the cold seeped through, the pain receded further. If it had chased after me, the chamelion could have killed me at any moment. For that minute, there was nothing else in the universe except the pain and how good it felt not to feel that pain.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  But it didn’t kill like that.

  I saw the creature coming this time. It had cleaned itself off as best it could without a mirror or water, but there were still specks of dirt on its chest, breaking the camouflage, like a dead pixel on a screen. It moved like how I imagined a detached hand would move. It scuttled soundlessly, legs moving independently of each other, finding the quietest space to step with preternatural speed. An infobox writhed across my eyes.

  Questions rose up and I pushed them away along with the infobox. I didn’t have to move my hand this time. It seemed to react to what I was going to do just before I did it. Anticipating my wants.

  I pretended to scan the fungal forest, acting like I couldn’t see the chamelion, and then I fell back towards where I’d woken up. I walked backwards, making sure to keep an eye on the creature. It moved slowly and the distance between us grew. It seemed to be waiting for me to turn my back to it.

  I thought again and again that I had to almost be back where I started. I had a plan, but when I glanced behind me, I saw the same fungal growths and cacti, and it seemed like I was moving in circles. I kept looking all about, searching frantically. I needed something besides my hands to beat this thing, but there was nothing else around I could use. The fungal-grass was only about a hand tall and every inch of the cactus trees was covered in barbs. I needed something with range, something sharp, hard. I’m sure I had it in my hands when I woke. I wasn’t misremembering. I had had it.

  I saw the vuvuzela first. A bright yellow cone of plastic lying next to the bottle of tequila. They were partially hidden by the fungal grass, so I didn’t see them until I was right next to them. No-one has ever been happier to see a vuvuzela.

  I picked both up and turned back to face the monster.

  I only took my eyes off the chamelion for a second. My plan was to throw the bottle of tequila at the monster. The punch before had hurt it. Something in the way it moved afterwards made me sure it was injured. Not as bad as me, yeah, but I thought—hoped, prayed—that if I could clock it directly with the half-full bottle, the shattering glass might hurt it more. If I could slow it down, it might give me enough space to find something else to hit it with. I’d kill for even a stick, a branch, a bit of metal pole.

  It wasn’t much of a plan. Calling it a plan was an insult to the word. But it was all I had.

  And when I turned back to face it, it was almost on me, closing the space between us in seconds. It hadn’t been injured. I had thought myself smart for tricking it into thinking I couldn’t see it. It had known. It had put on a little act of its own. This thing was smarter than I was giving it credit for.

  I threw the bottle.

  And I missed.

  The bottle sailed past its head, and settled gently into the fungus far away with a soft thud. The chamelion reared back on its two legs, bringing its chest up tall so that its ears were in line with my eyes. Its fingers moved faster than I could follow them, almost flickering across the five metres between us like one of those silicone sticky hand toys. I didn’t know body parts could stretch that much. The fingers almost touched my bare chest, but I managed to hit them away with the vuvuzela. They rocketed back to the chamelion, reformed into their original shape.

  I yelped. Not out of pain or anything, just an involuntary scared little squeak. I yelped and the chamelion shivered, its ears twitching towards my mouth.

  I had an idea.

  A stupid, brain-numbing idea. My only excuse for coming up with it was that I was disoriented, hungover, and full of a kind of pain I hadn’t been able to imagine until now.

  I raised the vuvuzela to my lips, took a deep breath, and blew.

  If you’ve never heard a vuvuzela, you’ve lived a good life. I’d first heard it during the 2010 World Cup. The stands had been full of people with the inexpensive plastic horn, and the sound had been a constant drone in every match. My mum had been sick then, her last winter, and the memory of watching it with her had always been bittersweet. We’d latched onto the Ghana team for some reason. Underdog. We’d watched it in the cold dark mornings before school, 5am, awake long before I should, mum giving me a hot chocolate, resting my head on her thighs.

  All you need to know about the vuvuzela is that after the 2010 World Cup was over, they’d been banned from basically every soccer stadium in the world.

  The effect of the noise was immediate on the chamelion. It froze in place. Its skin seemed to ripple green, like it was an ocean and the sound of the vuvuzela was a rock skipped across it. I blew again and again. Its bat ears twitched with each blast of the horn. It didn’t make a sound, but slowly sunk into a sitting position.

  I stepped closer to it, blowing on the vuvuzela with each step. When I was in range, I pulled the vuvuzela away from my mouth, and bopped the chamelion on the head. The plastic bounced off it harmlessly. As if waiting for that moment, the creature leaped forward butting my face with its own.

  I put the vuvuzela to my lips and blew. My eyes were coals. There were tears on my face and I couldn’t feel the end of the vuvuzela on my lips. I swung wildly with my free hand, hitting the chamelion over and over again, my fist burning on each impact. But the pain in my hand was a small spark compared to the nova of my face. One last punch, and my fist went deeper into the creature, and I sank in all the way to my shoulder.

  I didn’t know what all those zeros meant, but I felt the difference in my body. Not stronger, really. But like someone had given me a shot of B12.

  I tried stumbling back to the rivulet, blind, but kicked my bottle of tequila first. I opened the bottle and poured it over my face. The tequila stung my eyes, but the acid pain subsided. It was still there, but manageable, more like being near the fire rather than in it.

  I let myself breathe for a moment. There was snot running down my face and I couldn’t stop crying. I spat on my fingers, rubbed them into the dirt to scrape off the acid, more out of desperation than anything.

  I had killed it.

  In the moment, I didn’t feel anything.

  Somewhere, in the weird alien landscape, a part of the wall rose up and the light quality changed on my eyelids. I opened my eyes, blinked against the fluorescent lights. I could see figures through my tears. Human-shaped. Office chairs. An overhead projector. And voices speaking. English. Words I could understand, but couldn’t quite parse in my current state. I stumbled towards them, threading my way through cacti. Someone laughed.

  It was the strangest thing I’d ever heard. That laugh. I didn’t know if it was directed at me or at something someone else had said. I didn’t know what could make me laugh again.

  There were nine people in the room. Three were sitting in the chairs, but the rest were standing in a circle at the far wall, talking amongst themselves. They turned to watch me as I collapsed on the carpet. I wiped the snot and tears from my face, felt myself smile despite everything. People. I’d found people. I forced my eyes open.

  And looked directly into the eyes of the woman from the bonfire.