If anyone here is a (rabid)fan like me of John Carpenter's The Thing, you're gonna love this:
I am being Blair. I escape out the back as the world comes in through the front.
I am being Copper. I am rising from the dead.
I am being Childs. I am guarding the main entrance.
The names don't matter. They are placeholders, nothing more; all biomass is interchangeable. What matters is that these are all that is left of me. The world has burned everything else.
I see myself through the window, loping through the storm, wearing Blair. MacReady has told me to burn Blair if he comes back alone, but MacReady still thinks I am one of him. I am not: I am being Blair, and I am at the door. I am being Childs, and I let myself in. I take brief communion, tendrils writhing forth from my faces, intertwining: I am BlairChilds, exchanging news of the world.
The world has found me out. It has discovered my burrow beneath the tool shed, the half-finished lifeboat cannibalized from the viscera of dead helicopters. The world is busy destroying my means of escape. Then it will come back for me.
Read the rest of the short story here:
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/
Blog posts following the development of 'The Things' from the initial idea onward:
http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=84
http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=481
http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=435
plus a podcast here:
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/audio_01_10/
Just for fun and contrast, here's the original inspiration for The Thing, a short story by Editor extraordinaire John W. Campbell titled 'Who goes there?':
http://www.scaryforkids.com/who-goes-th ... -campbell/