Out of nowhere a black whirlwind came hurtling from the corner of my vision, vast slavering jaws agape briefly and then buried in the neck of my erstwhile tormentor with a meaty crunching sound as though bone had been pulverised. Jean screamed, a thin, ragged all too human sound which mercifully meant she released me before she was propelled by the beast’s momentum off of me and over the other side of the room. Something must have been broken in the beast’s attack, because Jean just lay there claws slashing ineffectually through the air monstrous head feebly moving from side to side, quite unable to ward off the snarling, frenzied black beast as it sought her throat and life blood. It had to have taken a massive amount of power to have done that and at first I groggily wondered if it was Jack come to save the damsel in distress.

With the benefit of surprise and the sheer size of the beast, it was able simultaneously to avoid Jean’s still lethal teeth and bite down savagely into the flesh of her throat, growling for a moment before shaking its head and ripping it out completely. A geyser of blood and gobbets of flesh and oesophagus rained over the room, the remnants of which could be clearly seen in the ruin of her throat. With a blood-curdling, rapid growl through the meat in its mouth, the beast shook its strangely familiar head as though reliving the moment it had been torn out and Jean’s life blood was sprayed around the walls for a second time. The enormous teeth bared in a snarl still gripping the flesh which had so recently belonged to Jean. The massive head tipped back and it ate the still quivering jellied mass, blood running down its jaws onto the carpet along with some pieces of muscle and tendon that had fallen out.

And as suddenly as it had begun, it was all over. I wasn’t naïve enough to think Jean would die, but it might give her something to think about for a while at least. The room swam with black spots which threatened to engulf the room and I felt myself losing consciousness, but before I did the black beast turned its huge head toward me and the huge red eyes seared themselves into my retina. Then I knew no more as a yawning black chasm began to draw me towards it. I remember wondering if this is what death was like.

Then, nothing.