Within Stranger Aeons

by Fisher, Michael

  Turning to the tall man, she started tugging her tank top up, to expose her augmented breasts. “I’ll do whatever you want, if you let me live,” she screamed, hoping to appeal to his baser natures. “I mean it! Anything!”

  Ström glanced down at her silicone-modified attributes, obviously pushed to its limits, before turning his eyes back up. “Looks like those were expensive. Minimal scars. So you’ll do anything I want?’ he asked, taking her hand, pulling her to her feet. The woman desperately nodded her head, pushing her chest out farther.

  “Good, I’d like that,” Ström replied, sliding one arm under her shoulders, the other under her knees, cradling her body like a baby. He looked gently into her eyes. “I’d like you to meet my Lord and Master,” he said, tossing her out into the swamp. She let out a shrill cry, as she left his arms. “By the way, I’m gay!” he called, as she splashed into the churning waters.

  Her scream ended when her head went under the surface. Quite differently from the previous women, Lena came back up, not of her own power however. Acosta’s eyes went even wider; as he saw the woman’s choking form emerge from the water, held aloft by a massive hand.

  The hand was easily five feet across, covered in scaly black skin, ending in six-inch long talons. The hand wrapped about her body, holding her tight. The rest of the arm, heavily muscled, bearing the same reptilian skin, followed the hand. The horror that was the creature’s head broke the surface.

  The massive head was the same snout Acosta had just witnessed, rending the elderly woman to scraps. The head belonged to an alligator, but it was more in line with the fossils of prehistoric alligators, a full eight feet in length. The tiny eyes glowed with an evil red light, showing the intelligence inside this animalistic shell.

  The creature’s head seamlessly merged into the humanoid, if scaly, shoulders, giving it the appearance of an ancient Egyptian god. It was, however, missing any sign of benevolence commonly associated with those long-past deities. This being, continuing to rise to a full twenty feet in height, was malevolence incarnate. Deputy Acosta knew that he needed to do whatever he could to stop this evil from moving out into the city he was sworn to protect.

  Lockhart ran forward, taking his place at Ström’s side, Acosta all but forgotten, in the presence of his god. The two men dropped to their knees, prostrating themselves. “Lord Chlphahteh,” they cried out in unison. “Please accept our offerings, so that you might rule this world again.” The ever-increasing winds tore at the robes, cracking them like whips about acolytes’ figures.

  The malignant creature turned its gaze down upon them, their cries acknowledged. The earth shook as the reptilian gods strode from the water, the vibrations echoing the rolling thunder; the shrieking winds drowning out the few remaining prisoners.

  As the glistening form left the swamp, its massive clawed feet gouged craters in the soft earth. The cries of adoration changed to cries of fear and pain, joining the screams of the women in the pen as one of the thing’s feet slammed down on Lockhart, crushing him into the muck. Ström tried to scurry out of the way, but every time he would partially gain his footing, he would fall, slipping in the mud or blown over by the hurricane winds.

  Acosta watched in horror, shielded from the brunt of the gale by the massive royal palm tree, as the unholy thing bent down and scooped up the large man, who looked no more substantial than a rat in the titanic claws. The killer let out one final cry of despair, knowing his worship was misplaced, as he was tossed into the gaping maw: no more than a snack to the primordial lizard man. The teeth cut of Ström’s screams in one bite.

  Acosta reacted on a primal level, his empty stomach churning, letting out a choked scream. The malevolent eyes turned their crimson light to Acosta, and he felt his blood turn to ice. He desperately tried to free his hands, but Lockhart had tied the ropes tightly.

  Knowing his death was stomping closer on those massive clawed feet, the deputy tried to close his eyes. In the last moment before he clamped his eyelids shut, he saw Lockhart’s poncho trailing from one enormous talon. I thought flashed through his mind of Good! The bastard deserved what he got.

  His body was wracked with tremors, as he awaited his doom. An unearthly roar snapped his eyes open, realizing too late that was the last thing he wanted to do; no one wants to see their death coming.

  He looked up at eldritch horror and noticed one important change. There was a white metal pole protruding from the creature’s chest, black blood spurting from the wound. It took a moment and Acosta realized what the pole was; the rusted steel gate from the road behind had been ripped free from its mountings. Blown by the devastating winds, it had plunged into the false god’s chest, impaling the thing.

  Watching the abhorrent creature staggering about in pain, Acosta started chuckling as he remembered the wisdom most Floridians learn during their first hurricane season. It isn’t that the wind is blowing hard; it’s what the wind is blowing hard.

  The behemoth stumbled and fell over, driving the reinforced steel pipe completely through its body, a geyser of viscous black blood shot out the end of the tube, splattering the area around the fallen god. With a shuddering groan, the massive form went still.

  “Take that, you unholy fucker!” the deputy screamed at the hulking form. Acosta’s giggling degraded into full on laughter when he saw the shape emerging from the sheets of rain. The murky light revealed the long, glistening shape of Fluffy approaching. He struggled, straining at the ropes around his wrists, but only felt them tighten further. They cut deeply into his flesh, drawing blood, which he was certain the alligator could smell.

  As the realization hit Acosta that, while he had survived a corrupt deputy, a serial killer and a primordial alligator god, and he now found himself immobilized against one of the planet’s oldest predators, he lost any semblance of sanity. He cackled maniacally as the reptile closed the distance between life and death.

  Deputy Raphael Acosta, of the Broward Sheriff’s Office, embraced his lunacy to the end. That is, until he felt the alligator’s teeth scrape along his skull; that was when it became clear that his life was nothing. He was merely a speck in the mad universe.

  Michael Fisher, Fish to his friends and family, has worn many hats in his long life. He’s done a little of everything, including US Navy Hospital Corpsman, club DJ, security specialist, psychiatric technician, painter, and currently, father, Mason, author and tattooer, not necessarily in that order. He has a love of ugly Hawaian shirts. He also bears a passing resemblance to Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski.

  His work includes the collaborative novel Feral Hearts, his first novel DC’s Dead, and short stories in Midnight Remains, Rejected for Content: Splattergore, Rejected for Content 2: Aberrant Menagerie, Floppy Shoes Apocalypse, TrollKind: Under the Bridge, Urban Legends: Emergence of Fear, FVM: The Deadliest of the Species, Doorway to Death as well as many other upcoming anthologies. Within Stranger Aeons is the first anthology on which he has taken lead.

  Michael is an award-winning author, artist and editor with J. Ellington Ashton Press. Awards include Honorable Mention for Short Story of the Year 2013 for the Return of the Devil Fly in Midnight Remains, as well as Top Ten Artist and Top Ten Editor from Critters Workshop Annual Preditors & Editors 2014 Awards and Top Ten Author, Artist, Editor, Book Cover, Nonfiction Article and Short Story from Critters Workshop Annual Preditors & Editors 2015. DC’s Dead was awarded J. Ellington Ashton Press’ Editor’s Choice Award for 2015.

  GORLOTH: LIVE AND ON FIRE!

  KEVIN CANDELA

  The show was the thing, and it began with a clear day eaten alive shortly after noon by a brooding, sky-spanning squall that did everything—roil, swoop, bubble—but shed a drop of rain. The winds beneath the great gray billowing quilt mirrored its confused anger, whipping this way and that and occasionally threatening to tear off part, or quite possibly all, of the canvas roof as it flapped wildly over the stage and orchestra pit.

  The crowd didn’t mind for the most part. T
hose in the orchestra pit mostly didn’t even notice, wrapped up in the show as they were. The few that did happen to look out to the sides of the stage, past the edges of the pit, saw only purple-gray strips above the treetops lining the festival grounds—strips whose upper edges were the slapping fringes along the red and blue striped roof’s periphery. Only those farther back, up the hillside on the heat-fried Midwestern grass could really see just how intimidating the sky had become. And with no rain, thunder or lightning, even they were for the most part not yet panicked about the curtain of clouds that had swept in most rapidly to block out the blazing sun.

  In fact, most were relieved. Until that storm rolled in, entertaining and galvanizing as it had been the show had suffered from “sweat fest syndrome.” But the squid-squirt black, purple and gray clouds, ominous as they were, had brought with them a cooling breeze.

  Make that a chill wind.

  “I’m cold,” Aurora Farland said, her mild voice straining over diminishing applause for a just-ended song.

  “Five minutes ago you were hot,” her boyfriend, Deacon Reiss, said. “Pick one.”

  “Five minutes ago I was hot.”

  Deacon looked around. Headliners Gorloth were re-tuning, slugging from glasses and bottles and smoking cigarettes—and getting away with the latter because the concert security guards weren’t about to shut down the outdoor show over it.

  “You’re right,” he said, and he handed her his soft “crotch flask” to sip. “Here. Pre-warmed.”

  “Gross, Deak.”

  Aurora checked the clear plastic pouch over carefully and cautiously sniffed the screw cap end prior to putting her glossy black lips on it. She swigged a little and instantly puckered her cute little round face.

  “Damn,” she said, and she shuddered. “Hold me, you idiot.”

  Deak relented and, pulling a pale, long-fingered hand from his sweat jacket pocket, he slipped it around her low, narrow waist and pulled her in close. The top of her head was at the long-limbed youth’s armpit.

  Aurora pushed in against his side and put her cold hands on his back and stomach without thinking. Deak yelped and jumped clear, bumping the guy next to him—the guy with the I (Squished Heart) Nice Things T-shirt who’d been checking Aurora out every chance he got.

  “Fuckin’ watch it man!” the big man said.

  “Sorry ZZ Top,” Deak said. “My lady cold-handed me.”

  “The name’s Chaos. Wanna see why?”

  “Not right now man,” Deak said, giving the guy a smile and a peace sign. “Watching the show.”

  “Then watch it and don’t be a pussy. I know where your lady can warm her hands if you can’t handle it.”

  “Hey…”

  “Hey what?”

  Deak was scared of the shorter but far tougher-looking man, no doubt, but there was no way he could just let that pass.

  “Leave my girl out of it,” he said, feeling like his voice was faltering whether it was or not.

  “Gladly,” Chaos said. “Wanna go out and…”

  To both Deak’s relief and Aurora’s, as well as quite a few nearby who couldn’t miss hearing the escalating disagreement, Gorloth kicked into Cthugha’s Return—a new classic, undoubtedly bound to become one of their signature songs. Five million YouTube hits, after all, can’t all be wrong.

  Cthugha’s Return was in effect a miniature opera: a mind-boggling twenty-six-minute romp back and forth between the sublime and the insane; between the gloriously, inspiringly harmonious and the hideously cacophonic raging of utter madness; between light and darkness, order and chaos, fire and water and ether that could nearly drive one to primitivism with its primal beats alone.

  Yes, it was fun to dance to.

  Beginning with a galloping bass and drum gait, like the thundering of Hades’ horses, lead singer Eingar Miskatonia gave it a few measures to get the crowd cheering and stomping and then laid a major surprise on their first audience in two years.

  “Okay friends,” Eingar said. “You may have heard through the gadgetry of this modern world…some rumors…silly ones, mind you…that this song as recorded on the album is not quite the full tune.”

  An ominously excited swell of “Ohhhhh…” wafted through the crowd.

  “Yes,” Eingar said as the beat rumbled on—guitars, bass and drums now in insistent, almost military sync. “As I said, rumors.”

  Devon Ian, the band’s lead guitarist, was cutting random riffs like shards of broken glass and tossing them carelessly out at the crowd. Technically, the song hadn’t even started yet…this was just the core riff of the first “movement.”

  “And you know tonight is the first—and biggest—show of our tour,” Eingar said, and a groundswell of deep cheering rang through the crowd. “This is where we’re from,” he went on, “and it’s the middle of fucking nowhere. I admit it.”

  More barbed thunderbolts from Devon as the sky over the canvas roof pinched and spun about.

  “So,” Eingar said, “the mere fact that you fans out there are so dedicated that you all drove at least a hundred miles or so to get here—well, that says something. That tells me you are special. Very special. You folks out there are the truest followers we have. And tonight, above all else, is about true devotion.”

  Sharp, weird, disjointed riffs from Devon, as though he were receiving a series of shock-like inputs from outside his body and his hands and fingers were reacting in accordance.

  “Calm down Dev,” Eingar said, and many in the eager, nervous crowd laughed. “We’ll get there.”

  Dev showed that angular smirk of his as sweat beaded down his face.

  “All right true devotees of the Gorloth,” Eingar said, addressing the crowd once again. “Back to that rumor. It’s absolutely fucking true. We DID leave part of the song off the record, and you lucky, lucky people are going to hear it tonight. Hit it Jolley!”

  Drummer Jolley Job slammed the band into gear.

  Mel Yog, the crew-cut bassist, rolled his eyes back into his head and made himself look even more like a huge, lanky zombie—if indeed a zombie could hold its fingers together working those fretless bass strings that hard.

  “Okay, here it is true believers,” Eingar said, “it’s time for you go give in to…the Ultimate Sacrifice.”

  That of course was the name of the first part of the suite-like song.

  “From the darkened wa-ters,” Eingar moaned with deep-voiced menace, “from beyond the twinkling of the stars. Old Ones coming, blazing in on guitars…”

  ~

  Deak and Aurora bounced up and down, handling the chill better with more exertion. Deak was deliberately pushing Aurora to the right, toward a jiggling female fan with unrestrained breasts larger than his girl’s head, in order to stay clear of Chaos. That bouncy fan had been holding the focus of Yog, the bassist, through the first half dozen songs and she was more than returning it, so she wasn’t even noticing how close Aurora had been scooted over toward her.

  And she didn’t until she lowered her arms, tired from clapping, and banged Aurora right in the temple with her elbow.

  Aurora went limp and slid down Deak’s side.

  “Oh shit!” the large-breasted girl said, eyes wide as she watched Deak get a grip on his dazed girl. “Shit! I’m sorry!”

  “There’s a storm that’s co-ming,” Eingar crooned on in metal-rock dead earnest, scowling, crouched, pointing out at the horizon—at the storm that was in fact already there. “Fire and rain and snow and ice …”

  As Deak held the nearly limp Aurora to keep her on her feet—and the large-chested girl kept apologizing, though she was virtually inaudible over the band—Chaos looked all three of them over. None of them saw it, nor did any of them see how black and glassy his eyes looked.

  “Better get rea-dy…” Edgar sang “…for the ultimate sac-ri-fice…”

  The crowd went wild.

  That line ended the first movement. The great thundering rhythm ceased abruptly, to be replaced just as the cr
owd was becoming edgy by the gentle swaying of the second movement, entitled “Prepare Them Upon the Stone.”

  Driving power gave way to slow, hypnotizing undulations. Almost everyone in the crowd was swaying slowly at the hips. Their eyes were glazing over, their pupils dilating. The stage lighting had softened greatly and—owing to the swirling storm clouds—the orchestra pit was nearly as dark as early evening.

  Deak’s eyes weren’t glazed over. He was hardly hypnotized. His heart was pounding because he was scared for Aurora, who was out cold and looked ashen. The woman who’d elbow-concussed her was still apologizing.

  “Look,” Deak said to her, “can you just help me get her up to the first aid tent?”

  She agreed and led the way for him. Nobody was too happy about the three of them pushing out during such a killer song, so the chesty girl had to work hard. And she had to take a couple of evil little feels along the way, the price she paid to make her way up out of the pit.

  “Shit,” Deak said under his breath. “We’re gonna miss the part they left off the damn record!”

  The first aid tent stood at the very back edge of the natural valley amphitheater, back by the eight-foot chain link fencing that surrounded the place and only a few yards from the entry gates. Deak and Megyn—that was the well-endowed woman’s name—brought a still unconscious Aurora in and were immediately sent over to a wall to lay her down on a cot.

  “Cover Her with Oils,” Deak said, hearing the second song end and the third, a sexy, sleazy sway at a more urgent pace than Prepare Them, begin.

  “What?” the attending nurse said, pausing and glancing up at him from where she was knelt while placing a blood pressure cuff on Aurora’s skinny arm.

  “The song,” Deak said. “Sorry. It’s just…is she gonna be okay?”

  The tech was pumping up the cuff and studying the dial.

  “I think so. Just knocked unconscious, I believe,” he said.