You carefully kneel at the edge of the quicksand and stretch your hand out towards the stricken man, commanding him to grab hold. With effort he pulls an arm clear of the treacherous powder and, straining, reaches out to grab the very tips of your fingers... before, with a triumphant sneer, pulling as hard as he can. Thrown off-balance, you fall face first into the quicksand. Coughing, you right yourself and struggle desperately to get back up the side, but you have no leverage, and your thrashing causes you to sink waist deep into what feels like dry, impossibly heavy water.
“Don’t struggle,” says the man, drifting further away from you as easily as if he were swimming. You can see a second collarbone flexing beneath his first as his arms rest easily upon the surface, a whole second pair of limbs doing the delicate balancing work, and he speaks in a buzzing, fluttering voice which is nothing like the one he enticed you into his trap with. He smiles at you - or at least displays his teeth - and with a kind of horror you watch two sets of small, black eyes open on either side of his first pair to stare at you hungrily. “Don’t you know struggling just makes it worse? Just relax. Let me do all the work.”