Fossil Lake II: The Refossiling

by H. P. Lovecraft

  “How old are you?” I ask, cutting into her monologue.

  “Uh, twenty-one,” she stammers.

  Twenty-one. That’s perfect. She’ll still have a nice, firm body. And great tits. Really perky. She probably shaves herself, too … all the young girls do that these days, judging by what I see on Jizzspot and Teenwet.

  The girl goes back to her monologue. How Jeff, her boyfriend, kissed this other girl. In the background, I can hear a bathtub filling. “I’m holding a razorblade right now,” she says. Good, so she’s serious.

  I hate wasting my time with attention whores.

  “I’m sure you still have a lot to offer,” I say. I’m scrolling through thumbnails on Teenwet until I find this hot little brunette number totally ramming herself with a big, pink dildo. She’s fucking amazing. Nice tan legs, round tits. The tits look fake, but her nipples are like little pink bullets, so fucking hard and pointy. She has freckles on her nose. How cute.

  This is what I imagine the girl on the phone looks like as she sniffles into the mouthpiece. Standing naked in front of her tub, nice shaved pussy, good firm tits, a blade winking like a lover in her fingers, urging her to test its sharpness with her flesh.

  “You don’t want to do this,” I say.

  The chick on the phone — was it Kenzie? — probably doesn’t realize what’s at stake yet. A lot of our callers are too young to fully grasp the enormity of the decision they are about to make. Ending life. Calling it quits. That’s an eternal decision. Yet every day, every hour I’ve got sobbers on the line begging me to talk them out of it. That’s how it is with these suicide hotlines: you get a lot of really needy people. Girls just craving attention. Guys who don’t have an outlet for their frustrations. It’s my job to walk these crackpots back from that ledge, but I can just as easily tip things the other way, force them forward … give them a nice and gentle push toward the soundless drop. Heaven, hell, fate, eternity — all hang on the balance of my words. God, that’s a lot of power.

  “You aren’t going to do it,” I say.

  “Excuse me?” The girl’s tears stop just long enough for her to sound indignant.

  “You obviously haven’t been doing your research. I bet you don’t even know how to cut yourself properly.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not easy, cutting yourself the right way. Most girls fuck it up. They miss the artery and some family member winds up finding them. You’ll wind up with crazy scars, and for what?”

  The girl doesn’t realize it, but I’m standing in the room with her, as invisible as my voice, quiet as the silence between our sentences. Pressing myself against her naked flesh. Feeling my cock throb and swell as her ass presses into my jeans. I put one hand between her legs while with the other I grab her wrist to guide that blade. It’s a new blade. Fresh out of the package. Nice and sharp. Grinning light. Just what she needs to do the job.

  Will she? I hope so.

  “I know how to do it,” she stammers.

  “How to what?”

  “How to cut myself properly.”

  “Well I’m proud of you. So would you say that the girl your boyfriend kissed is hotter than you are?”

  I turn the lights in my bedroom off. A nightlight next to the door provides the only illumination. I’m lying on my bed with my pants around my knees, toying with my cock, which is now stiff and hungry. Ready to play.

  “Yes,” my slut says.

  “Really? How sad. So what did you do to him to make him go looking for another woman?”

  “I didn’t … do anything.”

  “Right.” I chuckle. “Just tell yourself that.”

  “What do you mean?” My slut doesn’t realize it, but my fingers are now deep inside her pussy. I have four crammed in there. She has a very loose pussy … too much banging with that dildo, I guess. “What did that mean?”

  “I mean sure I believe you. It’s not your fault that he left.”

  “You sound sarcastic. Are you saying it is my fault?”

  “I’m just saying there must have been a reason.”

  The chick — was it Kasey? — starts sobbing again. I am really good and hard now. My God she’s precious. I wish I could remember her name — it’s hard to really get a good visual without a name.

  “What was your name again?” I ask.

  Sniff, sniff, sob. “Kelsey.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Kelsey, the slut bent over the bathtub with my entire fist inside of her. The razorblade is hovering over her wrist, inching closer as I pull my fist free and unzip my pants. My cock pops out to fill up that pink wet hole that’s gaping open in front of me …

  This is a good call. Not like that last chick who hung up before I could establish a solid rapport.

  “Listen, I think I need to go,” Kelsey says. Through the phone I can hear her turn the water off. Bathtub’s full.

  “Wait. Hold on. We’re not done yet. You haven’t told me how you plan to tell your mom that you’re failing.”

  “I … I don’t,” big gulp of air. “I don’t know.”

  … God my cock slides right inside of her. She’s so wet and ready. My eyes roll back and I can’t quite stifle a groan as I pound her until her tits start jiggling …

  “I’d be careful. She’s going to be pissed.”

  “I know.”

  “College is expensive. I’d be so mad if my kid went and fucked it up like a moron. But I wouldn’t worry too much … I’m sure she’ll get over it.”

  “I …” Kelsey’s voice cracks. “I have to go.”

  She hangs up the phone. Damn! I mean, I’m like 89 percent sure she’ll go through with it, but I wish I could have kept her on the line just a little longer — really feel her out, maybe even listen in while she did the deed, but I’ll be sure to watch the obits for Kelsey.

  … in my mind my cock is deep inside of her and suddenly I’m cumming, cumming, cumming as the blade starts its long, wet slide up her arm …

  Remember that: Kelsey. Kelsey. Kelsey. Rhymes with Chelsea.

  BLIND DATE

  David Neilsen

  As the slightly balding priest raised the human entrails over his head and cried out in a language not heard by human ears for centuries, Horace Whitley looked down at his coat and frowned.

  Not only had the frothing waves, whipped to a frenzy by the man’s flamboyant ritual, utterly soaked him to the bone, but several flecks of viscera had found their way from the bloody innards being used to summon the great beast supposedly slumbering below onto his $6,700 Cesare Attolini Checkered Cashmere jacket.

  Those stains were going to be impossible to remove.

  He supposed it was his own fault. He had known full well the messy nature of the evening’s undertaking, but had dearly wanted to impress his date, the lovely and untalented Miss Peggy Balderheim. Normally, Horace did not stoop to being set up on a blind date by an acquaintance, but his old friend Wallace Gronk of the Saxonville Gronks had been adamant, and in the wake of the old boy’s ghastly demise, Horace had not the heart to cancel. His first sight of the uncommonly gorgeous Miss Balderheim had lifted his spirits immensely, and he thanked God and the late Wallace Gronk of the Saxonville Gronks for his good fortune, as well as his decision to go all out and wear the Cesare Attolini.

  Alas, Miss Balderheim seemed far more interested in the morbidly ghoulish atrocities currently underway than in the quality of Horace’s wardrobe.

  He was rudely shaken from his thoughts when his spellbound companion suddenly clutched his arm and screamed. Looking up, Horace quickly noted the emptiness of the priest’s hands and how the remaining passengers were now staring at expanding ripples on the surface of lake and he deduced the entrails were even now descending into the watery abyss.

  “So, that’s it then, is it?” he asked. “Lovely. Is there any cognac onboard?”

  “How can you think of cognac at a time like this?” asked Lady Gaithwaite, a matronly woman whose face was a mask of passivity due to an overin
dulgence in Botox.

  “Maggie’s absolutely right,” said her husband, Sir Reginald Gaithwaite. “Full moon. Demonic ritual. A haunting chill rising from the lake. I’d say it’s more of a brandy moment.” The unapologetically obese British Lord tossed a wink at Horace, who couldn’t help but admit to himself a growing fondness for the man, despite Gaithwaite’s prosthetic leg.

  “Do not mock G’Wyb’leh!” shouted the balding priest whose name Horace was incapable of remembering and whom Horace felt had been taking the entire experience far too seriously. “Or he shall devour your very souls and slowly digest them within his Star Temple over the course of a thousand years.”

  His eyes bugged out as he spoke, and Horace thought it gave the man’s face a spectacularly frog-like quality.

  “Oh, I don’t think I’d like that,” said Peggy with her usual bluntness.

  “My apologies,” said Horace. “I was merely suggesting that a good bolt would ease the tension as we wait for Gullible-”

  “G’Wyb’leh!” interrupted the priest.

  “Yes, that’s what I said,” continued Horace. “As we wait for Him to make an appearance.”

  “How long would you say we’ll have to wait, Brother Fiff.. Fitfhth…Fffithppp...” Sir Reginald’s attempts to pronounce the enigmatic leader of the evening’s pleasure cruise caused him to spray his wife with spittle.

  “Fiffthithimithiff,” said Brother Fiffthithimithiff. “No mortal can know the mind of the mighty G’Wyb’leh. We have requested a summons. Only time will tell if He will choose to answer.”

  The four passengers exchanged looks, none of them overly satisfied with Brother Fiffthithimithiff’s answer.

  “So.. what? Ten minutes?” asked Sir Reginald.

  “Fools! Time has no meaning to Mighty G’Wyb’leh!” barked the increasingly-annoyed cultist with what Horace felt was a dash more animosity than was absolutely necessary. Still, his outburst had what he could only assume was the desired effect of cowing everyone into an awkward silence.

  Everyone, that is, except for Lady Gaithwaite. “Excuse me young man,” asked the septuagenarian condescendingly. “In your experience, how long does your little abomination generally take to show up? My doctor insists that I’m in bed by nine, and the moisture in the air is playing havoc with my rheumatism.”

  Brother Fiffthithimithiff sagged and turned away. “He has never answered my summons,” he said.

  The four passengers stared at him.

  “Yet,” he added.

  “My good man,” began Horace. “When I booked passage, I was promised a romantic couple’s evening under the stars on a moonlit lake featuring the summoning of an apocalyptic horror from beyond time and space.”

  “I never said the summoning would succeed,” said Brother Fiffthithimithiff, avoiding eye contact.

  “Boo,” said Peggy. “I want a demon.”

  Horace frowned as his date released her grip on his arm, signaling her displeasure at the disappointing turn of events. Feeling his chance of future coital activity with Miss Balderheim rapidly evaporating, he pressed his point.

  “Now look here,” he said. “I paid good money to see an abomination, and I expect to be fully satisfied or I shall raise a stink. Now you either bring your elder terror forth this very minute or prepare to face my full wrath!”

  “Here, here!” said an animated Sir Reginald. “That goes double for me!”

  “Don’t raise your voice, Reggie,” scolded his wife.

  “Yes, dear,” he replied.

  Brother Fiffthithimithiff spun around, gyrating his arms wildly and acting, as far as Horace was concerned, incriminatingly defensive. “Did you not see me toss human entrails into the lake?” he asked. “Do you know how difficult it is to find fresh human entrails? Do you have any idea what I went through to secure them for your entertainment?”

  A part of Horace empathized with the sprout little cult priest, however it was not the part of him that still entertained hopes of sinful activity with Peggy Balderheim, and that’s the part which held sway over his thoughts and actions. “This has nothing to do with human entrails,” he argued. “Though I will admit. Nice touch. However, the complete lack of mind-bending horror is unacceptable! I promised Peggy an unspeakable eldritch horror and I’ll be damned if I’m going to disappoint her!”

  Normally, of course, Horace would never have raised his voiced and let loose with such language, but he felt the occasion merited vulgarities. He even went so far as to clench a fist in the hopes that Miss Balderheim might be impressed with such a blatant display of manliness.

  Unfortunately, before he could properly gauge the effectiveness of his sudden burst of testosterone, the world went mad.

  There was a horrific sucking sound, which Horace could only equate with the flushing of an enormous toilet bowl, and a violent quake which rocked the flimsy, seventeen-foot craft back and forth like a badly-oiled pirate ship ride at an amusement park. The five souls on board were tossed hither and yon, their bodies crushed together into a mass of startled human flesh. Screams were heard, private parts inadvertently groped, and at one point someone was speared by the ship’s mast.

  When it was over the boat rested motionless at a slight angle. Horace slowly climbed to his disturbingly off-balance feet, awed by the eerie silence. Even the soft tickle of the lake lapping against the sides of the vessel was absent. “Well now,” he said. “That was extremely unnerving. Was that part of the summoning, then?”

  Brother Fiffthithimithiff pulled himself out from beneath the awkwardly-spread legs of Peggy Balderheim and nervously rubbed his bald head. “I… uhm… yes. Yes, I suppose so.”

  “A bit excessive, wouldn’t you say?”

  Brother Fiffthithimithiff grunted in agreement.

  The others got to their feet and stood around limply, not quite sure if they should be terrified, startled, or in Sir Reginald’s case, screaming in agony from the long wooden mast which had snapped in half and pierced his chest.

  He chose to quietly die, instead.

  “The water’s gone,” said Peggy with her usual aplomb.

  Brother Fiffthithimithiff spun around and gasped. His gasp caused the others to gasp as well, aside from Sir Reginald, who, as has been mentioned, was now dead.

  All around them, where there ought to have been the crystal clear waters of a mountain lake, there was instead a vast, glassy surface stretching to the shoreline. Horace was very put out by the sight.

  “Good Heavens!” exclaimed Lady Gaithwaite. “Reginald look! The lake’s gone! Reginald? Reggie?”

  Lady Gaithwaite took a wobbly step towards the fresh corpse of her suddenly-late husband before Horace managed to stop her with a gentle touch to the shoulder. “I’m terribly sorry, Lady Gaithwaite,” he said. “But it would appear from the amount of blood seeping through his clothes that your husband has passed on. Again, terribly sorry.”

  Various muscles around the corners of Lady Gaithwaite’s mouth twitched as the desire to break down into cries of incommunicable grief fought against her basic breeding. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I see. Pity, that.”

  A growing pool of crimson flowed effortlessly out from Sir Reginald’s body, eventually coming into contact with the toes of Peggy Balderheim’s Gucci ankle-strap patent leather stilettos, whose heels she’d told Horace were coated with meteorite dust- a fact he was certain had been told her by the salesman to justify fleecing an extra thousand dollars from the naive little waif.

  “Ew. Ick,” she said, quickly stepping away.

  “Behold!” shouted Brother Fiffthithimithiff, holding out his arms theatrically. “Mighty G’Wyb’leh has come!”

  Horace looked out, expecting to see some sort of unmitigated horror shambling towards them from across the oddly-glassy surface. Or perhaps a roiling ball of other-worldly smoke. Or at the very least a decrepit old man with a cane. Instead, his penetrating gaze came up empty.

  “What, behind the nothing?” he asked.

  “Now lo
ok here, Brother Fiffthithimithiff,” said a surprisingly plucky Lady Gaithwaite, impressing Horace not only with her ability to bounce back so soon after her husband’s death but also her ability to pronounce the man’s ridiculously complicated name. “This has not been the most pleasant of outings, what with poor Reggie’s death and all, and quite frankly I no longer care to witness an ungodly horror from the depths of humanity’s worst nightmares. That was always more his thing anyway. I demand that you turn this boat around and row us back to shore at once!”

  Brother Fiffthithimithiff staggered back a step from the force of this unexpected verbal onslaught before steadying himself and gesturing (once again unnecessarily theatrically, thought Horace) to the glassy surface surrounding the boat. “Foolish human female!” he cried. “G’Wyb’leh has vanished the very waters needed to fulfill your faithless request!”

  “Yes, about that,” said Horace. “ Just how, exactly, did you rid the lake of all water?”

  “It was consumed by G’Wyb’leh!”

  “Right, yes. Well done, Gweeby,” continued Horace. “Excellent parlor trick and all. Reminds me of the time I was seven and my uncle pulled nickels out of my bellybutton. But seriously, where did it go?”

  The evil smile which appeared on Brother Fiffthithimithiff’s face could have curdled milk and tortured puppies. “He drained it through his tear ducts.”

  The three remaining passengers stared uncomprehendingly at the self-satisfied cultist. Though in truth, Peggy just happened to be looking in that direction.

  “Tear ducts?” repeated Horace, rather hoping the man had answered ‘a giant, industrial-strength pump facility hidden just out of sight sucked out all the water’ and he’d simply misheard him.

  “Behold!” shouted Brother Fiffthithimithiff yet again. “G’Wyb’leh has come!”

  This time when the balding little man gestured theatrically with his arms, Horace allowed his gaze to look out and really take in what he was seeing.

  Which was when he realized their boat was currently resting on the surface of a very large eyeball.