We finally followed the sound to the end of the mass, which tapered to a knobbly point like...well, fine, like a skeletal finger, but it kept extending and growing several inches by the second. It couldn't seem to grow in a straight line for more than two to five meters before it seemingly had to bend in a new direction, and every so often another "finger" branched off. We discovered it was actually pretty fragile, and that it stopped growing wherever it was broken off, but once we started snapping it apart we noticed that its many "tips" were starting to all gravitate towards us, and we had to work together to make sure it didn't try to impale anybody or whatever it intended to do.
All seemed to be going fairly well until I heard one of my seniors, Jim, drop an uncharacteristic F bomb. He said it didn't hurt him, just surprised him, but that once a "fingertip" got close enough it actually squirted him with some kind of black stuff, like squid ink, and it was like a concentrated blast of that awful, awful plastic funk.
That's when the forest went suddenly, very weirdly silent. The whistly sound stopped, the snapping and cracking of its growth stopped, and it was replaced by what I swear to god is a chorus of high-pitched giggling, like an unseen audience of cartoon chipmunks, as the tangled pipes started to "wilt" before our eyes. Its tubular segments shrunk, like all the air getting sucked out of a straw, as the whole structure slowly crumpled in on itself. All the while the giggling continued, but slower and more warped, until it faded as the mass began to blacken and crumble. Soon, it looked like nothing more than a pile of burnt twigs, and I heard the analysis couldn't really identify anything about its structure; it had carbonized itself, becoming pure charcoal without even burning.
It wasn't the first "monster" we had seen self-destruct in some way, or reach the end of some fast-paced "life" cycle. It felt a lot like it had simply "fulfilled its purpose" and decided to "leave," kind of. Like it had done the one and only thing it had come into existence to achieve, which was apparently to make at least one person smell bad, and by God, did he ever. We were all gagging and complaining the whole way back, even with the windows down, and Jim took off for home as soon as he could.
That was the last I saw him. He called in sick the next day, saying the smell wouldn't go away, that the black stuff had soaked through his clothes. Two days later, he called in letting us know he'd tried everything he could and it had only gotten worse. In another three days, he was dead.
Jim had killed himself, but not on purpose. Not exactly. I mean, his goal wasn't to kill himself, no. It makes me too sick to think about what he did, but it was obvious that he was trying to get rid of the stench, and I can't possibly get into the details here without getting nauseous myself. Just imagine how bad something would have to smell for you to light yourself on fire, for instance, without a care for the danger or the pain. Now imagine that's only one of the first things you probably tried, and when that failed, you tried worse. And when that failed, you tried worse. It seems like a sick joke that a monster could kill one of us with nothing but a stink, but I can't begin to imagine how revolting it must have gotten to drive what he finally did to himself. His final few hours had to be sheer torture, and considering the biohazard crews that were in and out of his house for days after, I know he still didn't succeed; that he was still inhaling a stench straight from the asshole of hell until his very last agonizing breath.
I've brought up my contention with the classification system a couple times now, but no way was this just a two. It almost pisses me off, like they're diminishing what happened. We were calling the thing "stinkfinger" at first, before we found out just how grave things had gotten, and then a funny nickname felt a little disrespectful after that point. Those of us who were there don't call it anything other than "the one that got Jim."