Urban Temples of Cthulhu - Modern Mythos Anthology

by Khurt Khave

broom and dustpan, “Can't believe those guys fucked up my party like that.” Seg was sprinting down the street as fast as he could go. He pulled

  out his phone and made a call.

  “What's up, Seg?” the man asked.

  “Marco! Nyarlathotep stole my couch! I'm gonna kill that mofofo!” “What!?”

  “Well, it's my couch now, but it was Philly's.”

  “Wait. Which Philly? South Philadelphia Avenue C Philly or

  Philaberto Philly?”

  “Philaberto Philly. The after party was at his place. Nyarlathotep

  busted in, cheap shotted me, then took off with the couch.”

  “Why did he do that? Is it a magic couch?”

  “No. I don't know, maybe. It is a really nice couch. Soft velvet. I

  need to go back for the matching pillows later.”

  Marco could hear him breathing heavily, “Where you at? You actually

  chasing him right now?”

  “Yeah. I'm running down 59th. He's crossing the parking lot at Wally

  World. Get down here. Bring the boys with you. And bring me an extra pair

  of pants.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  “And don't ask about the pants.”

  “You got it.”

  Seg glanced up momentarily at the Galactic Empire-like sunburst logo sign glowing in the darkness and he couldn't help wonder if it was another form of the Yellow Sign. He would have to ask one of the Hastur priests about it later.

  The fat man was tired of running. This pissed him off. Got his blood boiling. Nyarlathotep was not going to escape. Not with his couch. And that triggered Seg's berserker rage. A supernatural fury flowed through the big basher's body. “Gnarly-asshole-tep!” he blared out.

  The xenojogger stopped, turned and smiled at his pursuer. The couch still held fast on his back by tethering tentacles, he raised both his hands and made a taunting “Bring it!” gesture.

  Seg began grabbing shopping carts from the corral next to him and lobbing them at Nyarlathotep. They hit everything except their intended target. He left a mess of minivans, a sea of shattered glistening glass, broken branches from twisted shade trees, and repulsed rubberneckers running and recoiling.

  Nyarlathotep just laughed that deep wicked laugh again as he leapt atop a '69 Ford Mustang, partially collapsing the roof from the weighted impact of his landing. He ran across the top of the row of cars and disappeared through the automatic doors.

  The elderly greeter was cowering behind the courtesy disinfecting wipes dispenser. He just pointed “thattaway” as Seg entered the store. You can imagine the customer service interaction that just went on between the old man forced back into the workplace and the lumbering betentacled quasigod thing.

  Seg looked back and forth down the main aisle in front of the registers. No Gnarly. He picked up 2 liter bottles of Big Kahuna Surf Punch from the sale rack and began chucking them randomly through the air across the length of the store. Sweet slippery explosions everywhere. Cleanup and inventory recount was going to be a nightmare. “Gnarly! I'm coming for yoooooo!” He stopped and listened. He heard the laughing bastard at the back of the store, lurking about in the electronics department. “Now I know where you are, you dumb son of a shub.” He scanned the overhead signs, “That's what I want,” Seg said to himself. “Patio and Garden.”

  He grabbed a shovel and busted open the lock to the cage where they kept the propane tanks. Too many hoodlums had been stealing them when the cage was out front so they moved it back to the Patio and Garden section.

  Seg pulled down a pretty pink Peppy Princess bicycle and jammed the propane tank into the basket on front; it bulged near to bursting but somehow managed to fit. He had grabbed the little girl's bike because it was the only one with a banana seat and all the others had those tiny little ones that rode up his ass. Fighting a wedgie and an exogod at the same time are not what you want to do.

  He wobbled a bit but then got his rhythm. A quick stop in the automotive department. “Duct tape. Always gotta have duct tape.” He grimaced in confusion. “LED road flares? What are you gonna have a roadside wreckage rave? Oontz, oontz, oontz,” he made a mocking electronic dance beat. “Ah, here they are. Nothin' like the real thing, baby.” He grabbed a handful of the burny glowy real road flares. He sat the roll of tape over the propane tank nozzle and wedged the road flares into a secured resting position between the handle ringing the top of the tank and the roll of tape.

  Next stop: Guns! Thank Gerd for redneck retail. One smashed display case later, Seg had a box of ammo shoved in his back pocket and a loaded Remington 770 scoped rifle strapped to his back.

  Seg stood on the pedals and pushed as hard as he could. The bike swung back and forth and the handle streamers flitted with the momentum. Nyarlathotep had put down the couch in the middle of the big aisle and was sitting there watching the video game trailer for the new Kingdom Hearts play over and over again.

  The store had set up a cardboard display that was designed to look like a movie theater concession stand to celebrate the release of Army of Darkness – Dark Side of the Oldsmobile (Pink Deadite edition). Nyarlathotep was crunching on unpopped popcorn kernels and downing boxes of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites.

  With a shout of, “Gnarly Charlie! Welcome to the barbecue!” Seg leapt off the princess pedaler and it careened into the couch. He had duct taped the road flares to the side of the propane tank to aid in ignition when the bullet ruptured it. Seg pulled the rifle around, aimed and fired.

  **KATHOOM**

  The detonation flipped the couch over and projected Nyarlathotep backwards about twenty feet. Bags of microwave popcorn instapopped sending a storm of burning artificial butter and fluffy popcorn raining across the electronics department and filing the air with the smell of nostalgic cinematic memories. Disney Infinité Marketing Ploy video game playable character collectible figurines melted into a pile of bubbling goo. All the display tv's had been shattered by flying debris. A few of the cheap particle board display cases had been singed but everything else caught within the blast of the fireball was fairly nonflammable. Not nonmeltable, but fairly nonflammable.

  Nyarlathotep looked sincerely disappointed that his tracksuit had been scorched.

  Standing next to the home improvement aisle, Seg grabbed a ten pound mallet from a shelf. As he lifted forth the hammer he immediately got a Thor complex. “Yeah. Yeah! YEAH!” He began shaking with rage, raised the hammer, then charged down the aisle at Nyarlathotep, both an equal distance from the sacred couch between them.

  They both reached the fantastical furniture focus at the same time. Seg swung the hammer down, determined to crush Nyarlathotep's skull. Or to squish the insides out of whatever was hiding behind that warped smile. But instead of fighting or defending himself the odd god simply grabbed the couch, which had survived the explosion surprisingly unscathed save for maybe a bit of smoke damage. And in an iridescent plasmic wavering burst both Nyarlathotep and the couch disappeared!

  The heavy hammer passed through the space they had just occupied and smashed to the floor, tile and concrete breaking beneath it. Seg “grrr'ed” in anger.

  “Hey, chief,” came a voice from behind. It was Marco and the crew.

  “Hey, Marco.”

  Marco handed him a pair of sweatpants, “These should fit ya.”

  “Thanks.” He pulled them on. “Yeah, these'll work.”

  “I'm guessing by the mess but lack of a body that Narcathotep has eluded us once again.”

  “Yeah. We'll get him though. You check the police scanner on your way over?”

  “Yeah. We know that when they're calling out cult activity they use the police radio code 418G which is a standard Civil Standby – Unwanted Guest but will usually tag it with Sunday School to indicate to the officers that it is

  really an escalated call. They called the party out as a 918. Jose Manny has the list saved on his phone. 918 is Insane Person. Haha.”

  “Hah
a. Nice. They tie that in to here yet?”

  “I don't think so. They haven't mentioned it on air if they have. But we've got a new code. This one was dispatched as a 927F. A regular 927 is Unknown Trouble. Fitting. But Phoenix doesn't have a 927F on the official books. Nobody does. Other cities have a couple differing codes, 927A is a Panic Alarm, 927D is Possible Dead Body, 927H is a 911 hangup; but no 927F. Could be for Fiend, or Fight, or Fear, or Fucked.”

  “Regardless of what it means to them, to us it means bad news. They're probably calling in some heavy artillery.”

  “I thought the military took Sheriff Joe's tank?”

  “They did. But that crooked bastard probably has a dozen more stashed somewhere. I don't want to wait around for the SWAT with itchy trigger fingers to arrive. Let's get out of here.”

  “You think you know where he went?”

  “Maybe. We'll shake down the local Starry Wisdom churchers. I feel like breaking someone. A few someones. Maybe a few dozen.”

  Seg's goon squad all squeezed into Marco's '84 Nissan Skyline sedan: Marco was driving, Seg took shotgun, Jose Manny, Tommy, and McBastard clown-carred their way into the backseat.

  “Damn, Marco, we gotta get you a new ride,” Tommy said. “Get you a ute, start rollin' an Escalade,” Jose Manny said. You seen that Proso guy's whip? That Cthulhu mother fucker's got a purple, armored hearse with tentacles painted on it. Fhtagn wagon.”

  “I'd hate to see what kind of gibbering horrors he's got hiding in the back,” Seg said.

  “Armored suvver?” Marco wondered aloud. “We should steal us one of those fed trucks.” Everyone agreed that was a good idea.

  “What were you guys up to before the sudden change in agendas?” Seg asked.

  “We were still hangin' at the Electric Ballroom,” Marco said. “I guess we know how the after party went. You obviously haven't heard what happened to Sarah. Some of the Shubs jumped her.”

  “What the fuck happened!?!?” Seg exclaimed. “Greasy little spawn gang. I'm gonna blow up their whole damn neighborhood.”

  “She was coming back from getting fast food.”

  “Fuck. She was on her Vespa, wasn't she?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I told her she needed to get something bigger with a little bit of get up and go, for this very reason.”

  “Luckily she's always strapped.”

  “Thank you Arizona open carry.”

  “She was in downtown Phoenix so she tried to ditch them through one of the alleys but there was a high fence connected to the buildings blocking her exit. They had her trapped in a dead end. But this is the good part. You're going to love this. So she's trapped in the alley, no way out. She grabs a can of spray paint from her bag and starts magtagging the wall. And it worked!”

  “What?”

  “She painted a summoning sigil and did one of her incantations and it worked! There was this wave of energy like when you can see the heat coming off the highway and these three monstrous dogs appeared and attacked the Shubs.”

  “She did it! She actually did it! She's been researching that and trying for months. I thought it was bullshit magic, maybe a bad spellbook or never really worked in the first place. She broke the barrier between worlds! And do you know what those were? They weren't just regular dogs. Those were hounds of Carcosa!”

  “No way. Dimensional doggies?”

  “Yeah, she's been focusing on Carcosa in everything she does now. Is she alright?”

  “Oh man! Those dogs tore the Shubs to pieces – literally!” Everyone laughed. “They did kill one of the dogs though.” Everyone sighed. “But she's back safe and sound over at Train House.”

  “I wish she wouldn't stay there with all those crusties, just a bunch of useless junkies and squatters. Plus all the shady things that go down at the railyard.” Seg had a big crush on the little girl.

  “Mike C and a couple of the other Signers are over there with her, so she's okay,” Tommy said.

  “We ain't Yellow Signers anymore,” McBastard corrected him. “What? That true, Seg?” Tommy asked.

  “Yeah, it is. Rip got tired of the inaction of the Brothers of the Yellow Sign. And the treachery, lies, deceit, backstabbing. The usual stuff that cults do. With crazy tentacle-headed fucks like Nyarlathotep running around you can't count on Hastur showing up and fighting your battles for you. The Brothers are just, 'wait and see.' And that doesn't work for people like us.”

  “So who are we now?” Tommy asked.

  “We are the Lost Children of Carcosa.”

  “Nice,” he replied.

  “Cool,” remarked Marco.

  “Very poetic,” McBastard emoted.

  “LCC,” Jose Manny said. “I don't know how we're gonna make a gang sign or elder sign out of that, but I'm down.”

  The entire car started chanting, “L-C-C! L-C-C! L-C-C!

  They rolled through the historic neighborhoods of the downtown Phoenix renovated arts district. They pulled up to a small brick church that had been converted into a hipster hangout. Gentrification and the erosion of faith was foreclosing on the already-spiritually-bankrupt modern religions. Holy wars for the hearts and minds of the congregations of the straw man theocracies had already been fought and lost online. An old world order for the new age, their internet inquisitions and cybercrusades failed. Holy ghosts in the machine.

  “Cathedral Coffee? This is the Starry Wisdom's tentacley tabernacle?”

  Jose Manny asked.

  “Yeah. It's supposed to be ironic,” Seg told him. “They call

  themselves the Bloody Gnosis.”

  “So it's like an art house, vegan poetry slam, indie keytar band, Perry

  Comosexual autobio book reading and Como-ing Out Party, passive subirrigation hydroponic urban winery, and deity-safe beanery. . .of Starry

  Wisdom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I'm really gonna enjoy pummeling these fools.”

  “And look for that circle-upside-down-triangle symbol of theirs. Let's

  try to minimize onlooker casualties this time.”

  They entered the coffeehouse, “This is worse than I thought,” Tommy

  said. Instead of traditional robes they wore hoodies. If that wasn't a dead

  giveaway separating the Gnarlies from the normals, they also had tattoos of

  their unholy symbol or some had it on their plugs for their gauged ears in

  place of the popular ornamental necklace variety.

  The barista even had it on her shirt like a small fashion logo. She

  came storming out from behind the counter. She had immediately recognized

  the pins with the yellow sign that some of Seg's crew wore on their jackets.

  “Hey!,” she bellowed, “you fuckers can't come in here.”

  “I never hit a lady,” Seg said, “but since you're a Gnarly squirmer,” the

  big man punched her in the face, knocking her out, “you ain't no lady.” Chaos

  ensued.

  Fashional Socialites (fashis) don't stand a chance against seasoned

  street fighters and bar brawlers. The LCC mopped the floor with the Bloody

  Gnosis.

  Seg saw a flash in his peripheral vision. He wincing in expectant

  death, thinking it was a muzzle flash and that his brains would be splattered

  across the coffeehouse before his ears could register the report of the gun. Tommy had taken a picture with his phone.

  “What the fuck!?” Seg yelled.

  “I'm uploading a pic to Facebook,” Tommy said. “Don't worry, it's a

  secret group.”

  Seg grabbed the phone and flung it against the painted stone wall,

  shattering it into pieces. “You don't upload criminal evidence, dumbass!” “Oh,” was all he could say.

  The leader of the battle punks was in all black. He was wearing full

  body, light tactile armor. He had a long, loose, sleeveless, medieval surcoat

 
over it. It was open all the way down on both sides but belted in the middle.

  Emblazoned in yellow on the front was the new symbol of Hastur. A yellow

  sign for the 21st century, one that better represented their chaos and fury;

  sharp, deadly, precise. Over the surcoat he wore a leather jacket. His thick

  stompy boots caused the old wooden ex-church floorboards to creak in fear

  beneath him as he strode about the Coffee Cathedral checking to make sure

  there were no more enemies lying in wait.

  “Seg! C'mere! What the fuck did you do?” the spiky-haired man

  yelled, but in a calm, even tone. “Why did I have to get suited up and go to war

  tonight, Seg?” The big bald wolf walked over to the leader with his head hung

  low.

  “Sorry, Rip. Me and the boys were down at the Electric Ballroom

  having a few drinks and watching the bands. After the Rape Jokes were done

  playing, Justin, their guitarist, invited us to the after party. Christine showed

  up at the Ballroom, stoned of course. She goes up to Vinny C and. . .” “No. Skip all that. Marco tells me Nyarlathotep actually crashed the

  party. What guise was he in?”

  “Guys?”

  Rip closed his eyes momentarily instead of rolling them at Seg's lack

  of comprehension. Maintaining his levelheadedness, he began again, “Form.

  What form? What shape? What did he look like?”

  “Ohhhh.” The light bulb went on. “Like we've seen before. A black

  guy that's not a black guy. Just kinda weird inbetween looking. I don't know

  why he can't get that shit right, the dude's at least a demigod or somethin' like

  that. And he was wearing a red tracksuit. I mean, was he out jogging?

  Wutdafuq?”

  “Alright. Just stop.” Rip was still keeping his cool. “What exactly

  happened? He just showed up at the party out of nowhere?”

  “Well, I was fucking the couch. . .”

  “Wait. You were, weren't you. You actually had your dick out and

  you were fucking the couch, weren't you.”

  “Yeah. It was for fun. I was just messing around.”