The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror - 3rd Annual Collection - 1989 - featuring Greg Bear, Joyce Carol Oates, Tanith Lee, Bruce Sterling, Jane Yolen and Emma Bull
In the depths of the mutant rain forest where the water falls each afternoon in a light filtered to vermilion, a feline stone idol stands against the opaque foliage.
On the screen of the monitor it rises up from nowhere,
upon its hind legs, both taller and thicker than a man.
See how the cellular accretion has distended its skull,
how the naturally sleek architecture of the countenance
has evolved into a distorted and angular grotesquerie,
how the taloned forepaws now possess opposable digits.
In the humid caves and tunnels carved from living vines,
where leprous anacondas coil, a virulent faith calls us.
A sudden species fashions godhood in its own apotheosis
- from Return to the Mutant Rain Forest by Bruce Boston and Robert Fraizer, page 160
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