He stepped out onto the stage to a rapturous applause. As the orchestra struck up the music of his latest composition he began mentally counting off the beats until his cue, a barely perceptible nod of his head keeping time with an introduction he was sure he’d become very familiar with over the next three months of his European tour. As the eight bars became four, a confused look broke out on his face. As the four became two, confusion turned to panic. As his cue came and went, with nothing but a nervous, acrid belch passing his lips, his face turned pink. As the music continued on, now notably missing his voice, it turned from pink to red. Then red to purple, then purple to green. Then it exploded.

The initial screams of horror from the packed auditorium seemed to change in tone as a large, dark green slug-like creature emerged from the ex-singer’s neck cavity. The beast seemed to be expanding rapidly as it emerged. As its tail finally slipped out with a flick, at last allowing its host to fall out of his standing position, the creature’s body, had anyone been able to measure it, stood roughly six feet tall at its thickest point, and 90 feet long from its eyeless head to slimy tail.

Standing in the wings was the late crooner’s tour manager, Eric Fogarty. Indeed, he was the only person in the auditorium standing, as opposed to running, screaming, falling over, being trampled, etc. He was also the only one in the venue who’d heard of the Slugajug, having read about it during their recently concluded mission to bring easy-listening to South-East Asia. He guessed, correctly as it turned out, that his employer had picked up the parasite while sampling the street food in one of the many towns and villages they passed through between gigs. He recalled with a smile how he would be ridiculed for sticking to the European menus in their five star hotels, and for snacking on crisps and nuts bought from 7Elevens while his boss feasted on the reproductive organs of some near-extinct animal fried on a hotplate atop the sidecar of a street vendor’s motorbike.

The mythical animal was now similarly feasting on the contents of the orchestra pit, and by the speed at which its giant, toothless mouth was sucking them down, clearly had a liking for live, tuxedo-clad musicians. This tallied with Eric’s knowledge of the Slugajug which he had read enjoyed consuming the flesh of whichever species it had been cocooned within during the early, parasitic phase of its life.

The consumption of the musicians (who, remembered Eric, would now face an agonising 72 hours slowly dissolving in the digestive acids of the beast,) had given most of the attendees time to exit the building. However, a few stragglers near the front, having been temporarily disabled by their fellow music-lovers during the initial panicked rush for the exits, gave the now 200 foot long creature its next course.

Eric, aware that the Slugajug had no peripheral vision, felt quite safe wandering out onto the stage, where the ever-expanding cryptid’s tail remained, slowly wiggling with joy as it sucked on a pensioner, who in turn was sucking on a boiled sweet. This elderly gentleman was the last patron remaining in the stalls, and so the Slugajug squirmed its way towards the exit door at the back right of the arena, and began the process of squeezing its vast body through the doorway, towards the lobby and the busy street beyond.

This was what Eric was waiting for, and he now made his move. His study of the Slugajug had revealed the one reason the creature had not taken over the continent: it was the world’s only inflatable land animal – it was thought to be distantly related to the pufferfish. There existed, on the underside of the tail, a safety valve, presumably put there by Mother Nature to stop it getting too big for its boots.

The Slugajug’s body tensed as Eric grabbed the narrow tip of the tail. As he lifted the back end of the cryptid and peeked underneath, he could feel a change in its movement, and knew it was in the process of turning around. A sense of urgency gripped him. Eric remembered the diagram he had seen in the book; the valve was about a foot from the tip of the tail. He plunged his hand through the 4-inch thick layer of dark green slime into this position. Nothing. What size was the creature in the book? No idea, but smaller than this one anyway. So allowing for the difference in scale, the valve must be further up. No choice but to start working his way slowly up the undercarriage of the Slugajug until he found it. As Eric had this thought, the beast’s head burst through the doors to the back left of the theatre. The knowledge that it was being attacked seemed to have given it a new sense of urgency and increased its aggression. A loud, gurgling, throaty roar burst from its mouth as it advanced down the aisle.

Eric, by now getting used to being wrist-deep in disgusting slime, now panicked as he felt its absence. The Slugajug was pulling its tail away from the stage and into the stalls. And its head was getting ever closer to Eric, and therefore his slow, painful death. He took a chance and stage-dove over the orchestra pit, grabbing the tail with both hands. He managed to hold on for about 1.5 seconds, which happens to be a world record for holding onto a moving Slugajug tail, before crashing face-first into a third-row seat. The Slugajug, now unsure as to Eric’s whereabouts, snuffled blindly in the area around the pit. Finding nothing, it advanced on the first row of seats, squeezing its considerable mass into one end and slithering its way along to the other, before turning back into the second row and working its way down that. Eric, stuck on the floor of the third row with coils of Slugajug for a ceiling, watched this with a resigned horror. To make things worse, the rough seat upholstery was removing gallons of slime from the bottom of the creature, a good chunk of it landing on and around Eric, and revealing an underbelly the colour of an undercooked prawn. The Slugajug had finished with the second row and was now starting on the third, squeezing its considerable mass into the narrow space between seats. Eric now resigned himself to his fate, looking upwards to avoid the sight of the cavernous mouth now a mere fifteen seats-width away from him. His eyes settled on something unusual. The coil of worm directly above him wasn’t completely pink; there was a large black circle sitting just proud of the skin. The valve! He reached up and pressed hard into the surface. Nothing happened. To his left, the mouth was now just ten seats away. He pushed harder. A slight hiss. Now six seats away. He put all his strength into it. And whoosh! A strong gust of foul-smelling air blasted him back to the ground. He managed to open his eyes just in time to see the head of the beast retract away from him and the coils of its body above deflate. The stench was unbearable and he found himself losing consciousness.

He awoke to the sound of wretching. Pulling himself upright, he witnessed the strange sight of people tearing their way out of the now translucent skin of the dead Slugajug, using penknives, keys and even teeth to rip the pelt. The ones already out were being copiously sick. Whether this was from the sight of Slugajug guts covering their bodies, the smell of the same, the memory of being in the stomach of the beast, or a combination of all three, was not a question Eric felt was worth clarifying.

As he wandered off to find the promoter – no harm in at least asking about the fee – he felt an unusual pain in his stomach, and thought back to the kebab he’d been peer-pressured into eating in that Thai village on the last leg of the previous tour. Oh well, he thought, probably nothing.