It was young enough that it hadn't settled on a shape yet, eyes and arms sprouting and reabsorbing as its gelatinous body walked/slithered/writhed across the road. Its flesh almost seemed to ripple, changing texture and opacity as its eyes and body drifted closer to the town.
Anything it saw it briefly became, selecting the most useful traits and discarding the rest. Every now and then a tendril would develop and lash out, dragging struggling creatures back to the body to be used for fuel and leaving the inedible remains in its trail.
Before it hit the town it managed to silently make its way into a trailer park on the outskirts. By the time it reached the town itself, it looked perfectly human if one could look past the indistinguishable clumps of viscera it held tightly to its chest and the blood smeared around its mouth.
It wasn't used to having so few teeth and such an upright form, choosing to stagger from side to side and occasionally drop to all fours and sprint to cover more ground. Were it any other time of the year there would be hysterics and it would have been shot dead before it could consume anyone else.
But it was Halloween and by the time its victims had been found it was already on a train to the next town.
It wore a someone else's face, carried someone else's bag and spoke with someone else's voice.
This form suited it just fine and for the first time in its brief life - it smiled.
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