I had a scary dream about a sinister slug and a sea cove.
Apparently some time in the distant future, mankind had established a human colony on an alien world that was mostly similar to Earth. The planet's sun was much larger, but much dimmer, giving an orange hue.
The colony I was living in had a few hundred dome-shaped homes of various sizes and colors, situated at the confluence of two rivers, which formed a larger third river that fed into the sea a few miles away.
Being in my late twenties, I was a single parent with two identical twin daughters and a son, all three around 7 or 8 years old. A few years prior, I had a wife that vanished one day for unknown reasons. No one in the colony knew anything about it, and she was believed dead. The day she disappeared, we had fought about something petty and my anger flared up and she left to get some space. I never saw her again, and for years, guilt and anxiety became insidious within me.
One day, I decided to explore the nearby sea shore with my children. We rode bicycles on a trail that followed the river down to the sea, which ended on a wide sandy beach. We occasionally stopped to rest and stare at the sea.
We came to a sea cove that had a small beach of it's own. The cove was round with turquoise water, surrounded by cliffs that had a few caves. This was a peaceful place to play, so I let my children swim while I sat on the shore. I would occasionally look across the cove toward the inky black cave entrances, and I got an uneasy feeling that something was watching us from the void.
After a few hours, it began to get dark, so it was time to leave the cove and go back home. When we tried to do so, we found that the tide had come in and the beach was fully submerged. The cliffs were almost vertical and too steep to climb. We were trapped in the cove.
In the fading light, I was deeply startled as I suddenly spotted a shadowy figure peering out at us from one of the cave entrances. It had the shape of a slug, with grotesque limbs and a clammy hide. This nightmarish slug creature seemed to shift and contort it's shape in a subtle manner.
Instinctually, I knew something was very wrong, and I needed to get my children to safety. We decided to just swim out of the cove into the open water and find the nearest shore from there. As we swam out, I looked back and saw that the slug had vanished.
As we made our way into the open water, the current became overpowering, and we were all pulled further out to sea. My children began crying, and I was helpless to prevent them from drowning. The waves grew larger, and I no longer heard nor saw my children anywhere. The sea had claimed them, and I felt myself sinking...
~~~~~~~~~~~~
I awoke laying on the shore of the cove's small beach. It was early morning, and there was a naked wet woman with jet black hair kneeling over me, staring at me with enchanting green eyes. It was my wife, but it didn't feel like her. Something was very wrong and I wanted to get away, but also, part of me had hope that it was really her.
This woman was seductive, beautiful, and charming. We chatted at length about all the future memories we'd make together. She never once mentioned our children, which caused my suspicions about her true nature to deepen.
She kept bringing up our last fight. I emotionally told her that I couldn't remember what I had even been angry about, and that I had felt guilty for her disappearance. I knew I was sluggish and stubborn in some things, but I wanted her back.
As I expressed my remorse for the past, she seemed to react coldly with a nonchalant attitude. She persisted on the point that she wanted to build a future with me - just us - alone in the caves of this cove. This greatly amplified my suspicions that she was an imposter that couldn't be trusted. I knew that my real wife had been much more empathetic and forgiving. This was not my wife.
Pushing her away, I ran into the caves to hide. Inside, I found countless bones of various creatures, including humans, piled up along the walls of cave tunnels and passages. Amongst them, I found my wife's clothes and jewelry. In anger and sorrow, I realized that this creature mimicked anyone it destroyed or devoured.
Behind me, I could hear a slithering sound approaching me. With dread, I went deeper into the caves. I hid behind a boulder, and I saw the imposter in her true form... a monstrous shape-shifting slippery slug of the shadows.
After the slug slithered past me, I found a tunnel that led me up and out of the cove's cliffs. I could see the colony a few miles away, and I saw a family entering the cove on bicycles. Then, I saw the secretive sinister slug emerge from her cave and she began to entice the family to follow her into the caves, and there was nothing I could do.
Then I woke up. THE END.