by Khurt Khave
Rip smacked Seg so hard across the face that it left a bright red
handprint. “I'm only going to explain this to you one more time.
Nyarlathotep can sense your madness. Every emotion; happy, sad, angry,
scared, whatever, has a specific, identifiable brain activity that corresponds
with it. When you do stupid fucked up shit like that, it's produces a specific,
identifiable neural activation pattern that says to this guy, 'Hey! Look at me!
I'm crazy! Come fuck me in the brain with your writhing tentacles.' It's like
you sent him a text calling him an asshole and daring him to come fuck with
you. Guess what? He got your message.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“And it's not just him. All of them are getting bolder. Sinister deeds
and clandestine events abound.” Rip could tell Seg wasn't getting it. “The big
dogs are coming out to play. You're my heavy hitter, I need you to keep your
shit together. Now more than ever. Got me?”
“Yeah. Sorry, Rip.”
“Don't be sorry, be ready.” He gave Seg a consolatory shake on the
shoulder to let him know the disciplinary action was over. “'Cause any
number of hells is about to break loose and apocalypse is not a strong enough
word for what we will rain down up them. Who knows, we might even get to
meet Hastur himself; itself. Though that would probably be a bad thing.” “You got it, Rip. Me and the boys are ready for it,” Seg said. “But to
continue about Nyarlathotep. He was already at the party, must have just
walked right in like everybody else. He came up and cheap shotted me,
knocked me across the room. Then he threw Philaberto's couch through the
front window, picked it up again, and took off running.”
“So an interdimensional godlike being snuck into the party, sucker
punched you, then stole the couch. That's what happened?”
“Yes. That's exactly what happened.”
“Were there any Cthulhists at the party?”
“No. None of the Cthulhu people were there. At least not that I saw.” “Okay. Good. 'Cause they're cool with us and I want to make sure it
stays that way. Now tell me about your incident at Walmart.”
“I chased after him and he went into the Walmart over on 59th.
Breaking stuff, scaring the shit out of the customers. So of course it was my
duty to stop this mad god from terrorizing our fellow human beings.” “Of course. That's why we exist. To stop these astrocreeps.” “Right. So I got a propane tank and tried to blow his ass up with it.
And that's where I need to stop with the story and we need to ask Tor a
question.”
“Tor, come here for a minute,” Rip said to a man standing with the
other Hastur punks. He was wearing a thin kevlar vest that had been custom
tailored to be quite fashionable, more like an armored jerkin, a close-fitting
sleeveless jacket with a collar. It was snug over a yellow dress shirt. He had on
black slacks and pointy-toed pimp shoes. Tor'th'thoth was their resident
caner. Caner was the street slang abbreviation for someone with arcane
knowledge or power because calling someone a wizard made you sound like an
idiot. “Harry Potter mother fucker! Patronus my dickus. You best be gettin' your ass
back to the Renaissance Festival before I put a cap in you. Fuckin' wizard, please.” Or
bug zapper. Seg liked that one and it was rather fitting considering the bizarre
creatures that had started coming out of the cosmic woodwork. Weirdwork?
Anyway, his real name was Eddie Wong but he felt Edward was too plain, too
boring, and one in every three Chinese Americans had the last name Wong. So
he named himself Tor'th'thoth. Tor is a rocky pinnacle. Thoth is the Egyptian
god of magic and knowledge. Maybe the extra th is like those Outof gods Cthulhu and their unpronounceable names. He had a zoetic tattoo that was inked with living darkness. It literally made his skin crawl. Very unnerving to
see. “Seg has a question for you.”
“I was fighting Nyarlathotep in Walmart. I had chased him down
because he stole my buddy Philaberto's couch. Anyway, we're fighting, when
suddenly he grabs the couch and just fuckin' disappears. Gone. No
spellcasting. No dimensional portals. Nothing.”
“Hmm, I'd heard of this phenomenon. It's called telemartation. The
entire store is slightly unaligned with our physical reality. Other places that
have a similar planar signature can be linked. Essentially the whole store is a
dimensional portal.”
“Whoa,” was all Seg could say.
“Is this something we can use to our advantage?” Rip asked. “I'll have to look more into it. See if we can harness the gateway
energy that would have to be present for Nyarlathotep to so easily step
through it,” Tor answered. “It was originally called telewalmartation,
Walmart teleportation. Supposedly set up by the Walton family so they could
spy on their employees' activities anywhere in the world but probably utilized
for much more nefarious purposes. You know how most of their stores have a
uniform design and setup, and you visit one that you don't normally go to, and
you get a sense of déjà vu because you suddenly realize that you're not in
Glendale but over in Peoria; it's called geographic luxation, geolux, like being
lost in the woods or going around in circles, or scopaesthesia, the feeling that
you're being watched, or that feeling of we've been here before. Sometimes that
erroneous familiarity created by Walmart can trigger the gate and actually
transport that person to another place. Whether or not that place is in our
physical reality or another is unknown.”
“Yeah, sounds good,” Seg replied, as if he understood even half of
what Tor had just said. Rip just nodded in acknowledgment.
“Do you think it might be a case of haunted furniture?” Rip asked with
a straight face.
“Possibly,” Tor replied. “As insane as many of Nyarlathotep's actions
seem to us, we have to remember we're dealing with an alien intelligence
beyond anything we have ever known. We need to proceed with the belief
that his reason for taking it is not just a case of petty theft. Until we can
reclaim it and fully determine if there is or is not any special properties, we
need to consider it an artifact of highest priority, an eldritch couch. And we
should get out of here. We paid for some radio static to keep the cops away
but that only bought us a small amount of time.”
“Okay. Do we have anyone that can work the psychometry after we
retrieve the couch?”
“Eleanor over at Spook House can.”
“Okay. Good.” Rip then turned to the zerkonaut, “Seg, go home, wash
all the blood and slime off, and get some sleep. Tor will do his thing and see if he can get a fix on the couch. NO MORE temple smashing until I give you the
word. Understand?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“I have to go have a talk with Cíor now, the dumbass has been getting
cursed shotguns from the cult of Tsathoggua and selling them on the street to
the mundanes.”
Three days later, Seg received a text from Rip, “820 Amorarte Ln. Your couch is there. 8am Sunday. Foe's crew will be joining you. Kill everyone inside and torch the place.”
Crammed back into Marco's Car, they rolled up on
the location. The address was clearly and boldly marked on the side of the building.
“You gotta be fuckin' kidding me. Your couch is in there?” Tommy squawked. “Andanza Family Planning.”
“So?” Seg didn't see the problem.
“You know me, I'm the farthest thing from political, but. . .”
“But what?”
“Assuming Rip has the right place, and I'd never question him, we're about ready to raid the Abortion Clinic of Nyarlathotep.”
It finally dawned on Seg what family planning meant.
“Shit. Well, it's gotta be a front. They all gotta be members of Starry Wisdom. Otherwise Rip wouldn't have sent us here on a seek and destroy. We run it just like Coffee Cathedral. If they're not marked in some way then we consider them innocent bystanders. Let 'em go. Regular people are gonna try and get out as fast as possible. It's only the cultists that will stick around and try to fuck with us.”
Foe was a zerkonaut like Seg, except that he was the epitome of unhinged. Seg at least had some semblance of restraint, it might not be much but at least he had some, focus for whatever the job at hand was. Foe had been sent on more and more suicide missions but always came out of them on the other end. It was like they were trying to get rid of him but nothing could stop the crazy bastard.
His real name is Edgar. Which lead to being called Edgar Allan Poe when he was in school, then shortened to Poe, then his true combative nature came out. He would fight anyone, anytime. Troublemaker was an understatement. Which earned him the switch in title to Edgar Allan Foe, with Foe becoming his scene name amongst the punks. And now it is his greatly feared street name in the underground world of the occult wars. He was dressed in the standard issue “uniform” of black pants, black band shirt, black leather jacket, black steel-toed boots, black shades, and short black mohawk. The word FHTAGN had been seared into his forehead with a wood burning tool.
His crew had already arrived and were harassing the pro-life
protestors. Seg and his boys got out of the car. “Foe!” Seg yelled, “disperse the crowd!” A wicked smile lit his face and the master maniac started tearing up Bible verse signs and knocking people around. He snatched the bullhorn from their preacher and began verbally abusing the hateful hypocrites. “My body, my rights!” he shouted and began humping on their spiritual leader. They began to flee down the street to their cars. “Wait! Come back! I need to be saved! Bwahaha!” Then he found the buttons on the megaphone that played the musical tones.
“Hey! Enough!” Seg bellowed over the noise. “We've got work to do!”
“Alright,” Foe said. “But I'm keeping this.”
They all entered the Andanza Family Planning center. The counter had shatterproof glass to protect the medical assistants from any overzealous patrons or protestors. There was a small sliding window but Seg couldn't see anyone inside.
Fortunately there was only one patient in the waiting room. It was a punk chick with a flaring mohawk and wearing a spiked dog collar. She had on candy apple red fleck boots, a black and gray plaid skirt, and a 12 Feet Under shirt.
“Well, this must be my lucky day,” Foe said to her, “Hello beautiful.
What's your name?”
“Athena,” she said blushing. “Aren't you in that band Ethanol Party?” “No, but I. . .”
“Foe, we're not here for that,” Seg said.
“Don't tell me what to fucking do,” he responded. Both crews tensed
up. This was not a complication they needed in the path to their objective. “Seg, this isn't gonna help us get your couch back,” Jose Manny said. “Couch? This is all about a fucking couch?” Foe blurted. “Not just any couch,” Seg said, squinting in anger and stepping closer,
“Tor said it's an eldritch couch, magical artifact. You wanna give Rip a call and tell him he's full of shit?”
“No man, it's cool,” Foe said. “If Rip says it's a magic couch then it's a magic fuckin' couch.”
“Alright then.”
Athena grabbed Foe's shirt and attention. She pulled him close, “Kiss me.”
They locked lips. Lesson for the day: Don't make out with aeonic strangers.
Foe tried to pull away but she had latched onto his head. He pried his mouth off of hers but a thin tentacle had hold of his tongue. He started zerking out and punching her in the stomach but it didn't effect her. The tentacle quivered, tickling his tongue, as she laughed at his futile attempt.
The rest of Foe's crew rushed to his aid and tried to pull her off of him. They twisted her arms behind her back and slammed her against the wall. She thudded soundly– and headlessly!
Everyone froze in astonishment. Foe and Athena were still stuck sucking face except that her head had torn away from her body to reveal a congeries of tentacles protruding below her neck. With a quick flip and rip, her mouth tentacle tore out Foes' tongue. Then her head leapt over to the counter, scuttled through the service window, and was gone; tongue in tentacled tow.
Blood flowed down Foe's front as he garble-gurgled an insulting battle cry.
“Get that head!” Seg yelled! He punched Foe really hard in the arm, “I told you.”
The only door leading further into the clinic was locked but easily kicked in by the big bruisers. They started searching through the exam rooms for the marauding headmistress. Seg's crew took the left corridor, Foe's took the right.
“Geez that's cold,” Tommy said when a wave of freezing air hit him as he opened a door with a biohazard warning sign on it. “What the fuck? Seg, check this out.”
“Oh man, that's gruesome. These people are fucked up.” “What is it?” Marco asked, trying to see past the two men. “Dead baby cold storage,” Tommy said.
“Oh shit, nevermind. I don't wanna see that,” Marco said. “Nah, look over there, those are adult limbs hanging on that rack,”
Seg corrected.
“What do you think they're doing with them?” Tommy asked. “Biogate research facility,” Jose Manny answered. “Opening
dimensional gates usually requires a living sacrifice, but they might be working on another method with the dead flesh. That's why the couch is here. They're studying its dimensional distortions in an attempt to figure out how it works and to find out exactly how powerful it is.”
McBastard came up to the group and handed Jose Manny a medical journal he had found.
“Nope. Looks like I was wrong,” Jose Manny said. “It's a corpse mender shop, where they fix and maintain the undead.”
“Either way, tonight ends in fire,” Seg said.
“Yeah, but we gotta be careful, we don't know what kind of zombie beasties could be lurking about,” Marco said.
Shouting and the sounds of fighting erupted from down the hall and around the corner.
“Looks like they found Foe's new girlfriend. Let's go,” Seg commanded. They raced in the direction of the commotion. Foe and his crew were fighting some bizarre creature that looked like a giant sea anemone, it was just a black mass of writhing tentacles. Seg's boys pulled out knives and went to work slicing and dicing while Seg held still as many of the tentacles that he could.
The hallway was littered with bodies. “What happened?” Seg asked Foe. He started to answer but couldn't get out any words. No tongue. So he slapped his buddy, who told Seg what happened, “We found the waiting room of the dead. Opened the door and they came pouring out. Rotting bastards bleeding black blood out of their eyes and their fingers all twisted into deformed claws. Didn't notice that black tentacley thing in the corner of the room hidden from sight until it jumped out at us.”
“Oh shit, boss!” Marco exclaimed, pointing. Seg turned to see the ichorous pool of black gore and blood rising up into a semisolid humanoid shape. Its body surface rippled as every cell in it vibrated giving intelligibility to an incorporeal voice.
“Almawt 'iilaa alnnujum alssuda' karkusa!*” it bellowed. They all shuddered involuntarily, feeling the impact of the words like they were physical objects, soul pun
ched darknessence.
Then with a deep, mocking laugh it exploded! splattering black blood everywhere.
“Open window in the backroom, the squid bitch must have gotten out there. Along with any corpse menders that were in the building before we started trashing the place,” Jose Manny said. “Oh. We found this.” He threw Foe's tongue to him, then continued saying to Seg, “Good news is we found your couch. Bad news is that Nyarlathotep must have warped it in there himself. Need a weird angle to make it through the door, and we can't quite get it.”
“Knock down the fucking wall. We're taking it with us,” Seg replied. “I'm gonna get that tentacle-headed void-spawn if it's the last thing I do.”
“Ywa ffa ibuh,” Foe said, trying to unsuccessfully put his tongue back in and talk at the same time.
Seg punched him. “You're a fucking idiot, too. Light it up and let's go.”
“At least I got my fucking couch back.”
Khurt Khave is the head priest of the First United Church of Cthulhu, the only real and legally recognized nonprofit religious organization whose faith is based on the Cthulhu Mythos and the visions of our mad prophet H. P. Lovecraft. He has written seven books, most involving the Mythos, including Chainsaw Alice in Wonderland and Got a Bad Case of the Horribly Wrongs. He also wrote down his astral travels and contact with Yog-Sothoth in the church's unholy book Astronomicon minorem.
Find the church at FUCC.IT or his personal site at ChainsawAlice.com * “Death to the black stars of Carcosa!”
The Face of God Within Brian H. Seitzman
Lenny Balcerzak had arrived at a precarious point in life at which too many middle-aged people eventually find themselves. It's a thorny thicket in which to become lost, this whole business of involuntarily pausing midway on the road from puberty to the great goodnight, forced to take stock of where one stands and what the destination looks like. It's gloomy terrain strewn with bones and serpents, uncomfortable for most and terrifying for many.
Lenny Balcerzak was one of the terrified. He had been let go from a job pulling wire at a factory at age 50 along with quite a few of his low-skilled confederates. He had no savings to speak of, an ex-wife of five years, no kids. His domicile, a dismal four room apartment on the third floor of a building on the East Side of Worcester, had been constructed during the city's manufacturing boom years. If he had been the druggy sort, which he resolutely wasn't, he knew that he could have scored anything he wanted from several neighbors. He had never seen it coming, this loss of everything he once thought he would have when he had been a clean cut, by the rules, full of life teenager ready to sign up for the military and plow a path clear through life's sweet spots. Every time he mused over those days he came back to today feeling the wind kicked out of him, so he did not look back too often. Today, he couldn't help it. Looking forward felt much, much worse. His job had at least paid the bills, as empty as it was otherwise. Even that paltry comfort had forsaken him when Plymouth Wire and Die cut its workforce a couple of weeks ago. Once upon a time, he mused, a man worked a lifetime and got a gold watch and a pension when retirement rolled around. Nowadays, the end was a pink slip and an escort off the property.
